Jesus has never come riding to the rescue of humanity before, so why do the evangelicals think he will when large parts of the globe become uninhabitable? By the time they figure it out, it will be far too late to do anything about it. As always, they seem convinced their religious beliefs trump science.
Sadly, this attitude isn't even all that new. Who here remembers Secretary of the Interior, James Watt, who seemed to think that we didn't really need to work on the environment because: “I do not know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns” [and yes, that's a direct quote from the New York Times!]? I was a considerable distance from being a committed atheist during the Reagan administration and even then, I thought that Watt was being both irresponsible and foolish in his statement.
The obvious problem is that there are a whole bunch of evangelicals who think precisely the same way. Armageddon will arrive and Jesus and Yahweh will clean EVERYTHING up, smooch it on the head and make it all better, yadda-yadda-yadda. SPARE ME.
The ONLY saving grace in the midst of all of this is that such people are in a currently shrinking minority, while those who either dismiss or utterly reject religion and its irrationality are on the rise. The hell of it is, once and IF we are able to cure this planet of our stupidity, what evangelicals may have survived from that fracas will probably claim that their prayers are what saved us.
Well, reality and white Christian Conservatives have never been the best of friends. But it is completely justified and biblical. See if you rearrange the letters in "Climate Change" you get "George Soros smuggling illegal aliens to force guns to get gay-marry so that you AR-15 changes its pronoun to Ze/Zer and thus steal the election from Trump and have Hillary preform abortions on the American Flag." It the rest of the world that doesn't get how satanic reality real is.
They still think the Earth is 6 - 10,000 years old. You also have people truly believing the word is flat. Both despite the mountain of evidence that quite clearly states otherwise.
Oh, for goodness sake. I can’t believe that, this deep into the 21st Century, we still have people who apparently don’t understand the difference between weather and climate. Here’s the deal:
• Weather is short-term; climate is long-term.
• Weather is individual measurements; climate is average measurements.
• Weather is what you get; climate is what you expect.
• Weather is umbrellas; climate is ice ages.
• Weather is the city council; climate is the United Nations.
• Weather is 3 minutes on TV; climate is doctoral dissertations.
• Weather comes and goes; climate just keeps on coming.
• Weather change kills off individual plants and animals; climate change kills off entire species.
• Weather is Angry Birds; climate is <I>The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire</I>.
Any American adult who doesn’t understand this by now must be:
1) a social promotion from a special-ed class.
2) working for a fossil-fuel company and whose salary depends on the public not wising up during her or his lifetime.
3) deliberately disingenuous.
4) a religious fanatic who buys into the 2000-year-old lie that their favorite dead guy is due back tomoro, having disappointed a hundred previous generations of True Believers because he’s been waiting especially for YOU to be around when it happens, because that’s how important YOU are!
Well, it's just an extension of that Secretary of the Interior's "bibilical" attitude (was that Watt?) - the Rapture and/or Armageddon (esp. in view of recent events in Israel) is just around the corner, so use up natural resources, no matter what the effect on the climate of continued use of fossil fuels, etc. No need to save anything for generations to come, because there won't be any future generations, etc.
Faith is belief in something in the absence of supporting evidence, or even in the presence of contradictory evidence. So when people are convinced that faith is a primary moral virtue, then the more absurdly unrealistic a person's beliefs are, the more virtuous they think they are. Want to be seen as a better person? Believe in sillier things.
The chart shows that Mormons and white Evangelical Protestants are the least accepting of climate change. These two groups in particular pride themselves on the "strength of their faith," which translates to the extreme refusal to accept reality.
The funny thing is that none of those quoted "ideas" from Christian Evangelical leaders are biblical. They're based in American consumer capitalism that views the self and personal comfort as the highest good.
The Earth was a gift according to that book. Mankind was to stand in the place of God as an administrator and take care of the Earth and the creatures and flora it contained which include other people, the poor, the powerless, the oppressed, the forgotten, the people who will suffer the most during Climate Change. Who already are suffering with land lost to the oceans. Christians are supposed to sacrifice their own personal comfort for the good of others.
But that message doesn't keep the tithes rolling in, I guess.
People whose worldview is based on reality are more likely to accept reality? 𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘢𝘢𝘢𝘢𝘢𝘵? Next you'll be telling me water is wet. Get outta here with that nonsense.
Jehovah’s Witnesses are threading the needle. The ones that show up on my porch try to connect with me through my obvious appreciation of nature (lots of plants on my porch and more natural landscaping). I mentioned to them that there’s stuff in the Bible about man being obligated to protect nature, and that the planet was basically a natural “Eden” before we shat upon it. They wholeheartedly agreed! And that’s why their god is gonna punish everyone who doesn’t respect its creations, and climate change is the warning, and it’s way too late to stop the retribution so the best course of action is to get right with their god while there’s still time. No need to try and fix what we broke and show that type of respect for the creation. That can’t be done just by the “good” people because there are more “bad” people who don’t care. Lost cause. But don’t fret. Just get your butt to their church and probably give them some money so they can keep up the good work of not saving the planet but saving the “good” people. Lol! They are actually pretty adept at marketing though.
These arguments don't even make theological sense. Starting with a conservative biblical worldview that there was a garden of eden and it's somewhere in the middle east, it is now a desert. So very clearly, even within the context of a biblical worldview, God can and does allow the climate to change in ways that are bad for humans.
***
In any event, IMO my generation has failed, and will continue to fail to do much. We should, but we lack the political will to do so. The millenials and beyond are going to inherit our problems "with interest" and be forced to clean up everyone else's mess. I think they will take it more seriously. The only upside is, as Mr. Silk says, there are fewer denialists with every year, and thus the calculus on "do we have the political will to do something about it" is slowly, year by year, going more towards "yes."
Well of course they don't care. God is in charge of climate so nothing we can do. As far as they are concerned, climate disaster gets them all a bit closer to the rapture.
Jesus has never come riding to the rescue of humanity before, so why do the evangelicals think he will when large parts of the globe become uninhabitable? By the time they figure it out, it will be far too late to do anything about it. As always, they seem convinced their religious beliefs trump science.
Sadly, this attitude isn't even all that new. Who here remembers Secretary of the Interior, James Watt, who seemed to think that we didn't really need to work on the environment because: “I do not know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns” [and yes, that's a direct quote from the New York Times!]? I was a considerable distance from being a committed atheist during the Reagan administration and even then, I thought that Watt was being both irresponsible and foolish in his statement.
The obvious problem is that there are a whole bunch of evangelicals who think precisely the same way. Armageddon will arrive and Jesus and Yahweh will clean EVERYTHING up, smooch it on the head and make it all better, yadda-yadda-yadda. SPARE ME.
The ONLY saving grace in the midst of all of this is that such people are in a currently shrinking minority, while those who either dismiss or utterly reject religion and its irrationality are on the rise. The hell of it is, once and IF we are able to cure this planet of our stupidity, what evangelicals may have survived from that fracas will probably claim that their prayers are what saved us.
Typical.
Well, reality and white Christian Conservatives have never been the best of friends. But it is completely justified and biblical. See if you rearrange the letters in "Climate Change" you get "George Soros smuggling illegal aliens to force guns to get gay-marry so that you AR-15 changes its pronoun to Ze/Zer and thus steal the election from Trump and have Hillary preform abortions on the American Flag." It the rest of the world that doesn't get how satanic reality real is.
They still think the Earth is 6 - 10,000 years old. You also have people truly believing the word is flat. Both despite the mountain of evidence that quite clearly states otherwise.
How did humankind ever make it this far.
Oh, for goodness sake. I can’t believe that, this deep into the 21st Century, we still have people who apparently don’t understand the difference between weather and climate. Here’s the deal:
• Weather is short-term; climate is long-term.
• Weather is individual measurements; climate is average measurements.
• Weather is what you get; climate is what you expect.
• Weather is umbrellas; climate is ice ages.
• Weather is the city council; climate is the United Nations.
• Weather is 3 minutes on TV; climate is doctoral dissertations.
• Weather comes and goes; climate just keeps on coming.
• Weather change kills off individual plants and animals; climate change kills off entire species.
• Weather is Angry Birds; climate is <I>The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire</I>.
Any American adult who doesn’t understand this by now must be:
1) a social promotion from a special-ed class.
2) working for a fossil-fuel company and whose salary depends on the public not wising up during her or his lifetime.
3) deliberately disingenuous.
4) a religious fanatic who buys into the 2000-year-old lie that their favorite dead guy is due back tomoro, having disappointed a hundred previous generations of True Believers because he’s been waiting especially for YOU to be around when it happens, because that’s how important YOU are!
These categories are not mutually exclusive.
Well, it's just an extension of that Secretary of the Interior's "bibilical" attitude (was that Watt?) - the Rapture and/or Armageddon (esp. in view of recent events in Israel) is just around the corner, so use up natural resources, no matter what the effect on the climate of continued use of fossil fuels, etc. No need to save anything for generations to come, because there won't be any future generations, etc.
Faith is belief in something in the absence of supporting evidence, or even in the presence of contradictory evidence. So when people are convinced that faith is a primary moral virtue, then the more absurdly unrealistic a person's beliefs are, the more virtuous they think they are. Want to be seen as a better person? Believe in sillier things.
The chart shows that Mormons and white Evangelical Protestants are the least accepting of climate change. These two groups in particular pride themselves on the "strength of their faith," which translates to the extreme refusal to accept reality.
The funny thing is that none of those quoted "ideas" from Christian Evangelical leaders are biblical. They're based in American consumer capitalism that views the self and personal comfort as the highest good.
The Earth was a gift according to that book. Mankind was to stand in the place of God as an administrator and take care of the Earth and the creatures and flora it contained which include other people, the poor, the powerless, the oppressed, the forgotten, the people who will suffer the most during Climate Change. Who already are suffering with land lost to the oceans. Christians are supposed to sacrifice their own personal comfort for the good of others.
But that message doesn't keep the tithes rolling in, I guess.
People whose worldview is based on reality are more likely to accept reality? 𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘢𝘢𝘢𝘢𝘢𝘵? Next you'll be telling me water is wet. Get outta here with that nonsense.
Jehovah’s Witnesses are threading the needle. The ones that show up on my porch try to connect with me through my obvious appreciation of nature (lots of plants on my porch and more natural landscaping). I mentioned to them that there’s stuff in the Bible about man being obligated to protect nature, and that the planet was basically a natural “Eden” before we shat upon it. They wholeheartedly agreed! And that’s why their god is gonna punish everyone who doesn’t respect its creations, and climate change is the warning, and it’s way too late to stop the retribution so the best course of action is to get right with their god while there’s still time. No need to try and fix what we broke and show that type of respect for the creation. That can’t be done just by the “good” people because there are more “bad” people who don’t care. Lost cause. But don’t fret. Just get your butt to their church and probably give them some money so they can keep up the good work of not saving the planet but saving the “good” people. Lol! They are actually pretty adept at marketing though.
𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑝𝑜𝑙𝑎𝑟 𝑖𝑐𝑒 𝑐𝑎𝑝𝑠 𝑎𝑟𝑒𝑛’𝑡 𝑔𝑜𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡𝑜 𝑚𝑒𝑙𝑡 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑓𝑙𝑜𝑜𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑙𝑑 𝑎𝑔𝑎𝑖𝑛
𝐺𝑜𝑑 𝑤𝑖𝑙𝑙 𝑎𝑙𝑤𝑎𝑦𝑠 “𝑔𝑖𝑣𝑒 𝑢𝑠 𝑡𝑖𝑚𝑒” 𝑡𝑜 𝑠𝑜𝑙𝑣𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑏𝑙𝑒𝑚. 𝑂𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑤𝑒 𝑠ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝑠𝑡𝑜𝑝 𝑝𝑎𝑦𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑎𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑡𝑜 𝑒𝑛𝑣𝑖𝑟𝑜𝑛𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑎𝑙 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑐𝑒𝑟𝑛𝑠 𝑎𝑙𝑡𝑜𝑔𝑒𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑏𝑒𝑐𝑎𝑢𝑠𝑒 𝐺𝑜𝑑 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑚𝑖𝑠𝑒𝑑 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑡𝑜 𝑑𝑒𝑠𝑡𝑟𝑜𝑦 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑙𝑑… 𝑎𝑔𝑎𝑖𝑛.
These arguments don't even make theological sense. Starting with a conservative biblical worldview that there was a garden of eden and it's somewhere in the middle east, it is now a desert. So very clearly, even within the context of a biblical worldview, God can and does allow the climate to change in ways that are bad for humans.
***
In any event, IMO my generation has failed, and will continue to fail to do much. We should, but we lack the political will to do so. The millenials and beyond are going to inherit our problems "with interest" and be forced to clean up everyone else's mess. I think they will take it more seriously. The only upside is, as Mr. Silk says, there are fewer denialists with every year, and thus the calculus on "do we have the political will to do something about it" is slowly, year by year, going more towards "yes."
To Jesus...
Would you PLEASE rapture your followers up to your gated community?
This is the religion that has a deity who destroyed a planet through a flood.
Think THEY give a rat's ass about either the Earth or its inhabitants?
Well of course they don't care. God is in charge of climate so nothing we can do. As far as they are concerned, climate disaster gets them all a bit closer to the rapture.
shocked I tell you.
https://www.wmur.com/article/church-pastor-stephen-bates-child-sex-abuse-images/45521919
OT
You know you're old when your SNL references stump younger people
https://www.gocomics.com/pearlsbeforeswine/2023/10/10