Colder than it’s supposed to be

  • The dog and I have retired to the den. My office is a pret­tier room, but right now it’s also a colder room which trumps other con­sid­er­a­tions. Mis­souri isn’t being hit as hard as other Mid­west­ern states with this nasty cold front. But it’s still cold enough to make me say what I always say at about this time of the win­ter: if we’re going to have global warm­ing and melt­ing ice caps, could we hurry that along, please?

    But then, I shouldn’t be such a smart aleck. I know the global warm­ing idea is sup­posed to be about more than just anec­do­tal evi­dence. The prob­lem is, the sup­pos­edly hard data for it doesn’t seem all that hard; if it were, you wouldn’t have dis­sen­sion like this from CNN and The Weather Channel’s founder. And there’s an aspect of my life expe­ri­ence that I can’t over­look when I hear about it. Namely, that it only works if you remove God from the picture.

    If you believe in the God of the Old and New Tes­ta­ment, then you believe in a God who did in fact nearly wipe out human­ity one time by a flood. But He didn’t do it because we were pol­luters; He did it because of sin. And He made a covenant with us that He would never destroy the world by flood again. So to believe in global warm­ing, you have to believe that the wrath of God will be unleashed because of indus­try, incan­des­cent light bulbs and long show­ers, rather than sin. And you have to believe that God would break His own covenant. That just doesn’t sound like the God the Church has known.

    Now, we all know that that kind of rea­son­ing holds no water with non-religious peo­ple. But those same peo­ple do have beliefs, and that’s what wor­ries me. This whole idea of man-made global warm­ing cor­re­sponds a lit­tle too closely with their beliefs — if they didn’t have “sci­en­tific” proof for global warm­ing, they’d have to invent it. Which is a problem.

    If you don’t believe in an omnipo­tent and liv­ing God, you can believe that human action will end life in all kinds of ways — nuclear holo­caust, over­pop­u­la­tion, green­house gases.

    Maybe it’s that I’ve lived too long and seen us go through it before. I wasn’t around for the big fears of nuclear armaged­don in the 50s, but over­pop­u­la­tion was the fear of the 60′s and 70′s, when I grew up. And for the past 30 years, it’s been some kind of cli­mate cat­a­stro­phe — first an ice age, then a hole in the ozone (which we all clev­erly filled in by using roll-on deodor­ant instead of spray-on). And now the Global Warm­ing Thing, which even­tu­ally had to become the Cli­mate Change Thing when peo­ple noticed that it wasn’t actu­ally get­ting warmer.

    The prob­lem that I have with it is that it fits very well into the story of the world with­out God — so well in fact that it smacks to me of human inven­tion. God-challenged peo­ple have two dif­fer­ent extremes for human­ity — good and beau­ti­ful or bad and awful. When we’re good, we’re SO good that we shouldn’t have to suf­fer the least dis­com­fort and should live for­ever. When we’re bad, we’re SO bad that the we’re a ter­ri­ble plague on the lovely planet and should be wiped out for­ever, amen. The first view is usu­ally per­sonal — *I* should live for­ever. The sec­ond is gen­eral — *other peo­ple* are a plague.

    And Baby Boomers, who are more god­less and more self­ish than pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions, are get­ting older and fig­ur­ing out that — won­der of won­ders — they actu­ally might not live for­ever. (Sucks to be us.) So it’s a good time to take some dis­parate and incon­clu­sive infor­ma­tion and build it into some­thing that sounds all the right notes. It all just seems too con­ve­nient, if you ask me.

    Which is why, no mat­ter how the end of the world comes about, I can’t see it being that I drown next to pen­guins and polar bears.

    Just call me a skeptic.


    Related posts:

    1. Love the planet, hate the people
    2. The dis­hon­esty of atheism
    3. Global warm­ing or just Big City warming?
    4. Oprah and her reli­gious beliefs feelings
    5. Begin­nings and The Big Finale

    January 16th, 2009 | Grace | 4 Comments |

4 Responses and Counting...

  • Anam Cara 01.16.2009

    I was around for the nuclear holo­caust fears (and I con­fess that I still have a bit of sur­vival men­tal­ity that is help­ful dur­ing hur­ri­cane sea­son or ice storms — when­ever the elec­tric­ity is off.…)

    I remem­ber prac­tic­ing drills where we would all go into the hall­way at school and curl up into lit­tle balls. I lived near a large mil­i­tary com­mu­nity (Air Force Base and Polaris Navy Base) and we were cer­tain to be a prime tar­get for the enemy. As a result, I grew up with a strange fear of hear­ing air­planes (bad thing if you’re close to an AF Base!) as I was sure it was the plane com­ing to drop the bomb. That lasted until the Octo­ber of 1973 when I was vis­it­ing a friend at an AFB. All the planes left (or were grounded) We were at DEFCON 3 and the silence was eerie. Since then I have come to love those sounds as the sounds of freedom!

    As for global warm­ing.… My mother was excited to see us land on the moon. She told me that God always pro­vides a place for His peo­ple — when per­se­cu­tion came to the peo­ple in Europe, God pro­vided a new land — Amer­ica. She seemed to think of space as a place peo­ple may seek refuge from the prob­lems man cre­ates in this world. Nor sure I agree with the the­ol­ogy of God mak­ing a dif­fer­ent planet for us to inhabit some­day, but cer­tainly the prin­ci­ple is true — God is in con­trol! Glory to God! As the three young men said ” …the God we serve is able to save us … and he will res­cue us .… But even if he does not … we will not serve your gods or wor­ship the image of gold you have set up. (Includ­ing Gaia!)

  • Rhee Howard

    Our greed and care­less­ness result­ing in destruc­tion and pol­lu­tion of God’s cre­ation — isn’t that sin?

  • Grace

    Anam Cara:

    Well said!

    Love the story about how you over­came the fear of approach­ing air­planes. The good thing about going through things like that is that it instills a steady­ing amount of skep­ti­cism. God is con­stant and all-providing; the scare-of-the-day is change­able and doesn’t pro­vide any­thing but an excuse to be afraid of things you can’t control.

  • Grace

    Rhee:
    That state­ment doesn’t strike me as being quite accu­rate. Greed is a sin and has con­se­quences. Care­less­ness is more of a human weak­ness, and pol­lu­tion is an ugly byprod­uct of civ­i­liza­tion — just like noise or waste. So in that way, I feel that the global warm­ing believer’s nar­ra­tive doesn’t align seam­lessly with an Ortho­dox per­spec­tive. Sin is what sep­a­rates us from God — does dri­ving SUVs and let­ting cows belch too much qualify?

    Espe­cially since in order to com­ply with the global warm­ing doc­trine, a per­son would have to say not only are these things sins but they con­sti­tute THE sin of all sins — some inex­cus­able sin that will make God go back on His own covenant and destroy His cre­ation. Are we really say­ing that God stays His hand in the face of abor­tion, geno­cide, blas­phemy and war but just *can’t* over­look car­bon emissions?

    That just doesn’t sound like the God I know. On the other hand, it does fit the belief sys­tem of a part of the pop­u­la­tion that tends to enshrine “nature” and demo­nize any­thing industrial.

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