Swimming Against the Rising Tide

[cbayer]

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/10/opinion/sunday/secular-climate-change-activists-can-learn-from-evangelical-christians.html?_r=0

Secular Climate-Change Activists Can Learn From Evangelical Christians

By KRISTIN DOMBEK
AUG. 9, 2014


Credit Jon Han

IT never feels like summer starts until the first time I go to the beach. To stand nearly naked and heavy from winter on the water’s edge, wade awkwardly into the shallows, dive under the first cold wave, taste first salt, surface and dive again to reach the calmer waters beyond, floating there until water and skin become the same temperature — this is the best way I know to belong again, body and soul, to some larger part of the planet, not just the city, not just the job. But it’s already August, and I still haven’t gone swimming.

I teach, so I spent May reading student papers. When the school year ended and I caught up on the news, California was burning, Alaska melting and the Northeast soaking. The 2014 National Climate Assessment report explained that what we’ve been thinking of as the future is happening now. Then scientists announced that the West Antarctic ice sheet had begun to split apart, so the rising of ocean waters was pretty much irreversible.

The National Climate Assessment also argued that cutting emissions would still mitigate costs substantially, but Gallup reported that 25 percent of Americans were sure all this had nothing to do with greenhouse gases. Among evangelical Christians, it was 58 percent.

Outside, the bus stops of New York City were wrapped in signs that depicted rising floods and said “Know Your Zone.” I learned that my zone is Five. Beyond this, I was unsure what to do.

more at link

[Brettongarcia]

1. The Current Global Crisis, Caused by "Good" Religion Too

Many Christians today insist that the days of “bad” religion are over, in our modern era. But suppose we update the history of our religions to the present day. As we see the water levels rising, due to global warming.

Around 1947, “good” Judaism, the foundation of Judeo Christianity, more than a thousand years after the collapse of its very brief kingdom of David, renews its “eternal” claim to Palestine, and invades and takes over Israel. Thus setting off a series of Islamic wars that continue to the present day. In response, c. 2000 AD, “good” Christian George Bush invades Iraq, then Afghanistan, in a “new crusade,” on pretext of looking for “weapons of mass destruction” that were not there. Setting up a peaceful, “good” regime of religious tolerance there - that begins to collapse as soon as our own weapons of mass destruction leave the religion. Last month, July 2014, Muslim fundamentalist ISIS invades the wreck of our “good” regime in Iraq (which may have furnished oil to the West at specially low prices), executing thousands in what the press currently suspects might be “genocide,” and which apparently at least includes execution of Iraqi soldiers and local allies of the US.

Meanwhile Catholic anti-contraception rules insure that constantly increasing population pressures will constantly increase conflicts for limited resources. As exploding population density and mobility, also increase the likelihood of worldwide plagues. Exploding population also increases pressure on the environment.

And this week? Someone might say, “good” American doctors thoughtfully import (missionary victims and) the Ebola plague to the US. On the theory that it is immoral to fail to treat illness of the poor? As a day or two ago on DU, our local religious medical representative Ms. Cbayer currently assures us that thoughtful individuals (like herself?) can separate the bad from the liberal, “good” religion, depending on individual judgement, and their own sense of good religion.

Which updates all that, to you yourself. And to be sure, your responsibilities as a critical, thinking human being.

Right now.

[skepticscott]

2. Another faitheist hack

Who mouths all of the right platitudes to keep her (she imagines) on top of Mount Superior. Creating false and dishonest equivalencies, paying the necessary lip service to skepticism, while underlying it all is a deep need to somehow maintain and argue for the legitimacy of religion and religious belief.

Much like a few posters here. And we're seeing first hand the consequences of belief in the face of contradictory evidence.