What does the Bible have to say about climate change?

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/uncategorized/audio-what-does-the-bible-have-to-say-about-climate-change/5972/

What does the Bible have to say about climate change?

December 22, 2010By Erin Chapman, Lauren Feeney, Sal Gentile, and Win Rosenfeld

With the collapse of last year’s international climate talks in Copenhagen and the resurgence of the Republican Party here in the United States, many observers have begun to doubt whether the world will ever be able to agree on a framework to fight global climate change. Believing that progress is possible, they say, may take a leap of faith.

And that’s exactly what some religious groups are offering.

With the holidays around the corner, The Climate Desk Podcast decided to take a closer look at the emerging environmental movement among faith-based communities in the United States, and the considerable disagreement among some denominations, especially evangelicals and born-again Christians, about what the Bible teaches us when it comes to climate change and the environment.

Subscribe to this podcast on http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/id379692066">iTunes.

Podcast: http://www-tc.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/files/2010/12/ClimateReligion_1-2.mp3">Play in new window | http://www-tc.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/files/2010/12/ClimateReligion_1-2.mp3">Download | http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/uncategorized/audio-what-does-the-bible-have-to-say-about-climate-change/5972/#">Embed

[kickysnana]

1. Not to build your house on sand.... n/t

[Warren Stupidity]

2. I am almost at a loss for words

but I'll try: what friggin difference does it make what some religious tract says or does not say about the catastrophic climate change crisis we are in?

We need more people to stop looking for magical solutions to our problems. The problems are real, and we need real solutions.

[OKIsItJustMe]

4. Yes, we need real solutions

However, if a rather large percentage of US citizens aren’t on board, because of what they feel their God tells them, then, that makes a huge “friggin difference.”

http://hnn.us/articles/121037.html

Obama, Copenhagen, and the Global Warming Skeptics

By Walter G. Moss

Mr. Moss is a professor of history at Eastern Michigan University. For a list of his recent books and online publications, click http://people.emich.edu/wmoss/pub.htm">here.

Next week President Obama will appear at an international climate summit in Copenhagen. A few weeks ago, he pledged his administration would work toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions by about 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050. In June a House of Representatives’ bill had already approved these targets, but the full Senate still needs to address the issue.

…

And indeed there are some scientists who are skeptics. A mid-2009 Pew Research Center poll stated that only 84 percent of U.S. scientists said that “the earth is getting warmer because of human activity such as burning fossil fuels”--only 49 percent of the public agreed. But it is not science that seems mainly to motivate most skeptics. It is ideology or political inclination, chiefly of the right-wing variety. To better understand this motivation a brief look backwards is necessary.

Denying what most leading scientists think is nothing new in U.S. history. It was dramatically illustrated already in the famous Scopes “monkey trial” of 1925. In it a Tennessee biology teacher was found guilty of teaching evolution rather than the biblical account of creation. Almost a century later, many Americans continued to think contrary to what most scientists maintained regarding evolution. According to the 2009 Pew poll mentioned above, while 87 percent of U. S. scientists maintain “that humans and other living things have evolved over time and that evolution is the result of natural processes such as natural selection,” only “32 percent of the U. S. public accepts this as true.”

In the 1990s a U.S. “cultural war” raged. On one side were conservatives who usually believed that their church and/or scripture guided them in determining truth and God’s will. Opposing them were those whom the book Culture Wars (1991) called progressives. They relied more on reason, their inner selves, and contemporary conditions in deciding right from wrong. But these progressives included not only atheists and agnostics, but also some religious believers of various faiths.

…

[Warren Stupidity]

6. here is a clue: the bible says absolutely nothing about this subject.

So instead idiot preachers will opine from pulpits about what they have decided their god wants people to do. As the vast majority of preachers are rightwing loons, it turns that god wants them to drive more SUVs while sending our vast techno-armies out to secure the dwindling oil fields for our use.

[OKIsItJustMe]

8. Oddly enough, not everyone agrees with you

http://www.greenletterbible.com/
http://papercuts.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/30/gods-green-earth/

October 30, 2008, 1:00 am

God’s Green Earth

By LIESL SCHILLINGER

In the beginning was the Word. In the Old Testament, it was black; in some editions of the New Testament, it was red — when the words of Jesus were cited. But not until now has the Word been green. “http://www.harpercollins.com/books/9780061627996/The_Green_Bible/index.aspx">The Green Bible,” printed on eco-friendly recycled paper, with cotton/linen cover and soy-based ink, makes the Word of God not only accessible (it’s the New Revised Standard Version, not the sonorous King James) but exceptionally biodegradable.

Mostly, though, it’s colorful. Every passage that features the most taken-for-granted player in the Bible’s vast cast — the planet Earth — is printed in grass-green ink. The effect can be powerful, chastening and even exhilarating, as when you come upon these lines in the book of Isaiah, glinting green: “The mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.”

In a foreword, Archbishop Desmond Tutu reveals the unsubtle message of this edition: “We, who should have been responsible stewards preserving our vulnerable, fragile planet home, have been wantonly wasteful through our reckless consumerism, devouring irreplaceable natural resources.” Repent while ye may … and along the way, recycle.

http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Christianity/2009/03/Green-Bible-Passages.aspx

[Warren Stupidity]

9. That is preachers offering opinions.

The vast majority of preachers are in fact rightwing loons. They will have quite a different opinion that Desmond Tutu. So if you are counting on the bible-besotted, you are doomed.

[OKIsItJustMe]

11. Have you surveyed "preachers?"

How do you know that, "The vast majority of preachers are in fact rightwing loons."

The right-wing nuts make for the most entertaining news coverage. However, there's a reason why “The Christian Right" is called “The Christian Right” and not “Mainstream Christianity” (it’s because they’re further to the Right than the majority.)

[Warren Stupidity]

14. religiousity and rightwingery are correlative

no I have not surveyed preachers, have you? I have looked at polling data from election after election, and 'the religious' are overwhelmingly on the right.

[OKIsItJustMe]

15. I actually know a number of "preachers" personally

Most of them are not "right wing" but, then, as I like to say, “Statistically speaking, ‘the people I know,’ make a lousy sample.”

[Warren Stupidity]

18. so you are rejecting polling data in favor of anecdotal evidence?

and you intend this to be a serious discussion?

I think we are done. I concede, you win.

[OKIsItJustMe]

24. I'm sorry?

Did you say you had polling data?

Please! Trot it out!

[WhiteTara]

12. actually, we were told to be stewards of the Earth

somewhere in the "dominion over" thing. But all they read was dominion over.

[OKIsItJustMe]

16. So, what does "dominion over" mean anyway?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kristin-m-swenson-phd/the-bible-and-human-domin_b_681363.html

…

Genesis was originally written in Hebrew, and since every translation involves interpretation, we do well to ask about that English word, "dominion." (Some translations read "rule over," instead.) In biblical Hebrew, the word indeed supposes a hierarchy -- someone in a position of power exercises this quality over inferiors. So "rule over" or "have dominion" is actually quite accurate. However, its interpretation as the right to exploit and despoil is not.

On the contrary, in this biblical story, human superiority brings not self-serving privilege but grave responsibility. That "dominion" phrase appears in an intriguing description of the creation of human beings in which God makes human beings, simultaneously male and female, "in the image of God." Part of the story of God's creating the universe in seven days, the image of God is represented by God's power and authority in creating and organizing a cosmos that God made to be good. Human beings have the unique responsibility, then, to work creatively at maintaining an order that allows each thing to be and do all of what it is and does. And that, this first chapter in Genesis declares, is good.

This story no more justifies rejecting animals' capacities to think, dream, feel, suffer, and be happy than it does prioritizing men over women. While the text may allow for the necessity of employing and controlling animals to survive in terribly difficult circumstances, it does not deny those animals the possibility of diverse intelligences.

…

[TheMadMonk]

19. The difference unfortunately to strict rationalists is that other people...

...do BELIEVE.

I'm not so proud that I won't twist a bible phrase or two if that will get some of them listening.

Personally I often vociferously parallel the shifting sands parable at the TV whenever, surprise, surprise, a town built upon a flood plain is flooded. (And right this moment I'm railing at dickheads complaining that they can't get through to airline information, that their flights are delayed, etc. when a simple look out the window reveals the blizard which is the reason why tens of thousands of dickheads are ringing info lines to ask about THEIR flight, and why THEIR flight is in fact delayed/cancelled.)

Where's the wrong in using the lever that works to shift their "Use it (the world and it's bounty) as you will" mindset to something more eco friendly with a caveat or two winkled out other Bible phrases: beginning with "It's God's CREATION, he gave it to you to use, but you have NO RIGHT to destroy it.

[Warren Stupidity]

20. there is something wrong about lying to people

even 'for a good cause'. But my point was that counting on the religious to help out is not a good strategy.

[TheMadMonk]

22. Nor is calling them a pack of ignorant supersticious c*nts and...

...telling them the are irrelevant and will be ignored.

When the only "lie" on my part is to let them keep believing in THEIR lie, whilst I point out that there is no injuction in that "truth" to either destroy, OR "use up" the world, I'm not going to fear for my non-existant imortal soul.

Are you familliar with the statement: "All myths are true, for a given value of true."?

For about 40% of Americans, Creationism is absolutely true, as is an imminent Armageddon. If our first step is to call that 40% that pack of lying, irrelevant cunts, the task before us is not convincing 50% of all people that we might have a point about not shitting on the dinner table, but persuading nearly 85% of those we haven't deliberately alienated.


We ABSOLUTELY have to count on some of the religious to help out here, and if I have to bite my tongue to get it, then by their god or none, I'll "wear" my lisp with pride.

[Warren Stupidity]

25. uh, er what the fuck?

[Speck Tater]

3. What does the Bhagavad Gita have to say? What does the Illiad have to say?

What does Goldilocks and the three bears have to say?

For that matter, what does ANY piece of folklore, legend, fairy tale, or ancient literature have to say?

On the other hand, who gives a damn!

[OKIsItJustMe]

5. You just don’t get it

A tremendous number of people live their lives based on what they read in “The Bible.” (The same cannot be said for Goldilocks and the Three Bears.)

Like it or not, without the Bible believers on board, it will be difficult to accomplish the sorts of change we need to accomplish.

[Warren Stupidity]

7. "without the Bible believers on board, it will be difficult..."

then we are doomed.

[OKIsItJustMe]

10. We may be doomed any way

There is a http://christiansandclimate.org">movement gaining ground among conservative Christians. That's something that needs to be encouraged, not belittled.

[pscot]

13. Preach it, brother

Right now, society at large seems to be operating without regard to any ethical considerations at all. "Greed is good", doesn't exactly feed the soul. If Pat Robertson started preaching climate change, millions of people would listenup.

[hatrack]

21. If so, then they'd better hurry up . . .

As in "today".

[Kolesar]

17. The baptists fired Cizik, who was their climate protection PR guy...eom

[OKIsItJustMe]

23. Cizik is now heading up "The New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good"

http://www.newevangelicalpartnership.org/

I know very little about it, but I like the name.