Stupid Things

It is almost impossible to notice all the stupid things advocated and said by all environmentalists. It is just next to impossible to notice all the stupid thing advocated and said by environmentalists and some who are "Christian environmentalists" - especially now that some Christian leaders have made this their new hobby campaign. So here I will just take note of the little tip of the iceberg of stupidity on this matter from sources that I happen to stumble upon. I'm sure it will be more than enough to keep me busy.

Kangaroo culling begins at Australian site where animals are causing environmental damage
Monday, May 19, 2008
AP

SYDNEY, Australia -- Australian authorities have started the controversial killing about 400 kangaroos on the outskirts of Australia's capital of Canberra, animal rights activists said Monday. Between 20 to 40 kangaroos were tranquilized and then killed with lethal injections by defense contractors, said Angie Stephenson, project manager of Animal Liberation New South Wales. She said a baby kangaroo was trampled and killed when the animals were rounded up into a pen.

The Defense Department said last week it would begin culling the eastern gray kangaroos at the abandoned military site outside Canberra after a proposal to truck them to remote forest land proved too costly. Authorities say the overabundant kangaroos are crowding out other native species, but many animal rights activists are against the killing of Australia's beloved national symbol.

Stephenson said there were a handful of activists at the site Monday to witness the killing, and that dozens more were expected to gather in the coming days. Last week some vowed they would protest the culling. The issue has split Australians over the merits of killing kangaroos to protect rare lizards and insects that share their grassy habitat. Because of the suburban environment, contractors are using tranquilizer darts to catch the kangaroos, then kill them with lethal injections.

Scientists point out that eastern gray kangaroos are abundant and destroying the native grassland habitat of threatened species such as the grassland earless dragon lizard, striped legless lizard, golden sun moth and perunga grasshopper. European settlers built Australia's cattle and sheep industries on grass seed imported from Britain, and native grassland, which is imperative for some species, is now rare. In some parts of Australia it can only be found in old cemeteries where livestock never grazed.

Kent says: Lizards and insects, or kangaroos - you make the call! "Down under" they have decided that the kangaroos must die. They do look a bit more like humans, whom environmentalists hate. Finally, is this really what the Defense Department does in Australia - conduct a war on kangaroos?!

Evangelicals are waking up to our responsibility to the environment. Evangelical initiatives on the environment are growing in cultural impact, but they continue to garner stout resistance within the most conservative sector of our own community. Too often, politics and capitalism get in the way of a clear evangelical consensus.

I have been involved in evangelical environmentalism since 1993, helped draft the Evangelical Climate Initiative, and will continue to be involved in creation care. Here's why I think creation care is important -- and why some evangelicals still resist it.

I believe that, through Christ, God created the heavens and the earth. The created order includes an amazingly beautiful and diverse array of creatures (including us) as well as the natural systems required to sustain their (our) existence. When God made the world he commanded human beings to exercise dominion-as-stewardship; that is, he commanded that we care for creation as wise managers of the created order.

I believe that human sin affects every dimension of the human experience. This includes sins of omission and commission, what we do and what we fail to do. It also includes sins both personal and social, both corporate and individual.

I believe that basic scientific evidence available in any biology or ecology class documents that the modern, industrialized world created by human ingenuity has brought many amazing gains to human life but also has created considerable damage to God’s creation, which is understood to include human beings, other creatures, and the ecosystems that sustain our lives. These damages, I believe, should be understood as constituting both personal and social sins against God and his creation.

A January statement jointly authored by evangelicals and leading scientists puts it this way: "The harm is seen throughout the natural world, including a cascading set of problems such as climate change, habitat destruction, species extinction, the spread of infectious diseases, and other accelerating threats to the health of people and the well-being of societies…. [W]e are gradually destroying the sustaining community of life on which all living things on Earth depend." Notice that climate change is only one of the problems mentioned. Climate change is not the only environmental issue.

I believe that when Christian disciples discover that we have been participating in sin, we are mandated to repent. We are required (and should be eager) to figure out what we have done wrong, why we have done it, and how to change our ways so that we don’t do it anymore. I believe that the kinds of creation-care efforts that many of us are involved in represent an aspect of Christian discipleship.

Not wanting to pick a fight, but because we are already in one, I must say that it seems to me that those who resist creation care sometimes are motivated by a misreading of Scripture. I have been in conversations where people suggest that stewardship primarily means mastery of earth to use it as we please or need; or that human beings do not have the power to do real harm to creation; or that God has promised ever since Noah never to allow humans to do serious harm to creation; or that the earth will be destroyed by fire anyway, and soon, so what we do now to the earth isn’t really all that significant.

I believe that all of these ideas are erroneous, and that we need to keep working deeply on the theology of creation care to move beyond them.

I believe that those who resist creation care sometimes offer a misreading of science, sometimes undertake a patent misuse of science, and sometimes are driven by a basic mistrust of science. In being concerned about the unraveling of the fabric of the divinely designed creation order, I stand with the great majority of ecologists, biologists, climatologists, and other mainstream scientists. A number of very influential evangelicals are staking their reputations and the public witness of our community on a profound mishandling of science.

I believe that those who resist creation care are sometimes motivated by an inordinate loyalty to laissez-faire capitalism, as if it is clearly unbiblical to favor any measure that might affect the operations of the free market. I believe that such economic libertarianism is a political ideology, and nothing more, and like all political ideologies it must submit to the mandates of God’s Word.

I believe that those who resist creation care are sometimes motivated by an inordinate loyalty to political leaders, groups within political parties, or political ideologies that are suspicious of environmental concern. I fear that they are taking their cues from such political loyalties rather than opening themselves up to the witness both of our troubled creation and of Scripture itself. I believe that this is clearly wrong.

I believe that if evangelical Christians drop their resistance to creation care, our nation’s culture and politics will change rapidly. I believe that this will be one of the best contributions we will ever make to this country and to the world.

Kent says: I offer this whole essay because, though it seems rather reasonable in tone, it still falls into the category of "stupid." First is the subtle assumption, omnipresent among environmentALists, that any change of the world is necessarily bad IF it is caused by humans. The theological problems here is that God gave the creation to us to USE, and use necessarily implies change.

At this point questions of fact come into play. Consider "global warming." Let us assume that something humans beings are doing is causing this - something that, as far as all the evidence is concerned, has not been proven. Notice that the assumption is also made that a warmer earth would be a ruined earth. Other that projections from models which involve all kinds of unproven assumptions, where is the evidence for this? There are many reasons to think that a warmer earth would be a better earth.

The problem is, this whole matter is a cultural snowball that keeps rolling and getting larger. (I know, that particular metaphor is funny here.) It has become a pop cause which, unfortunately, a lot of Christians have decided to jump on. The "climate change" maniacs are people of faith, in a manner of speaking. But their faith is like that of Kierkegaard: they "believe" because what they believe is absurd.

Today's cold, dry climate on Mars evolved about 3.5 billion years ago, ending a period of moist conditions, research indicates.

An international team of scientists developed a timeline for the planet's geological evolution, reporting in today's issue of the journal Science that it had three distinct eras.

If Mars had been hospitable to life, it would have been only in its early, wet years, according to the researchers led by Jean-Pierre Bibring of France's Institute for Space Astrophysics.

I'd like you to be among the first to see a new series of television ads designed to encourage people to protect the world that was given to us.

The Ad Council has launched a campaign urging Americans to take steps in their daily lives to help prevent climate change.

As the climate grows hotter, the Earth will react with potentially devastating consequences. Scientists, as well as many religious leaders, tell us we can no longer ignore this problem.

As entrusted stewards of the Earth, it is our responsibility to protect the most vulnerable in our society. We can ensure that our children don't inherit a damaged Earth.

I hope you will help us spread this message of collective stewardship and responsibility. Please watch these two ads, let us know which you think is more effective, and pass them on to others.

Kent says: So, Steve, I have a question. You seem to be claiming that Americans can do something to stop climate change. This implies that human action is the key thing that changes climates. My question is this: who has been at work changing that climate on Mars???

Kent says: Get a load of the latest from Oxford University Press. You will find my comments formatted like this throughout the announcement as it came to me recently from OUP.

Roger Gottlieb has written a seminal book examining the emerging debate on environmental ethics among the world's great faith traditions and what that means for the future of environmental stewardship.
--Carl Pope, Executive Director, The Sierra Club

Roger Gottlieb presents a comprehensive view of the nexus of religion and the environment. The specific stories of faith-based environmentalism provide a bright picture of the faith community's capacity for caring for God's creation. If we actively follow his lead, we will go a long way toward being more effective stewards of our fragile planet.
--Dr. Bob Edgar, General Secretary, National Council of Churches USA

In a time of darkening environmental prospects, [read "we're all gonna' die!] frightening religious fundamentalism, [whoever wrote this should consider how environmentalism itself is one of the worst kinds of "religious fundamentalism"] and moribund liberalism, the remarkable and historically unprecedented rise of religious environmentalism is a profound source of hope. [Hope, that is, that socialism can finally conquer the world] Theologians are recovering nature-honoring elements of traditional religions and forging bold new theologies connecting devotion to God and spiritual truth with love for God's creation and care for the Earth. And religious people throughout the world are transforming the meaning of their faiths in the face of the environmental crisis. [Here, at last, is a grain of truth. Christianity, for example, must be transformed into some strange kind of mystical pantheism to make it compatible with modern environmental religion] The successes and significance of religious environmentalism are manifest in statements by leaders of virtually all the world's religions, in new and "green" prayers and rituals, [green, and we should add, pagan "prayers and rituals"] and in sophisticated criticisms of modern society's economy, politics, and culture. [read "repent, and become totalitarian socialists"] Most important: from the Evangelical Environmental Network [which is more correctly called the "Evangelical Environmental Nitwit Network"] to the Buddhist prime minister of Mongolia, the National Council of Churches to tree-planting campaigns in Zimbabwe, religious environmentalism has become a powerful component of the world environmental movement.

Kent says: the motto of the Evangelical Environmental Nitwit Network should be: if you love God, hug and tree and save a squirrel! By these things shall you know that you are an EENN disciple.

Christianity Today Poll [as of 8-3-06]

Should evangelicals lobby on global warming?

No, there is no such thing. 10%
No, our priority should be evangelism. 12%
No, the science is still unclear. 16%
Yes, it is our job to care for creation. 35%
Yes, concern for the climate is neighbor love. 8%
Yes, we need to address all social issues. 15%
I don't know. 4%

Total Votes: 10778

Kent says: Is this good news, or bad news? With these kinds of self-selected polls and such a small sample, it's hard to tell. But even accounting for the fact that this group is self-selected, it is more than a little scary to think that 58% in this poll think that evangelicals should "lobby on global warming." But while it's scary, it's not surprising. Christianity Today and other evangelical nitwits have been harping about this for some time now, so that it has become the cause of the supposed avant-garde in Christendom.

What, exactly, should we "lobby" regarding global warming? Should we lobby for global cooling? Would a nice little mini-ice age please these people? It is sadly the case that, more and more, "evangelicals" have decided to "catch up" with political leftists in advocating worthless causes.

The good news from the poll is this: 38% apparently don't care to jump on this bandwagon, and the 4% know something that the 58% should learn - they don't know.

The earth is our ship, an ark for everything that lives. It is the only vessel available to carry humans through the ocean of space, and it is rapidly becoming unseaworthy."
J. Matthew Sleeth, Serve God, Save the Planet

Kent says: As someone - I won't mention who - once said, the best lie is a big lie. I know, I know - we are supposed to assume that, even if wrong, people like this are sincere. Sincere or not, at some point people must be held responsible for culpability that borders on stupidity.