You really hit the nail on the head. I have noticed that the environmentalists are religious in nature too. I think there is more involved than just a vaccum of repentant servitude needing to be filled though. The environmental movement, in my view, is nothing more than an evolution of several populace movements starting with womens suffrage, continuing through the civil rights movement of the '60's and the following anti-war movement. Once the cause is over, these political action committees, lobbyists, congressmen, they all need another disaster to save the public from so they can all keep their jobs. Al Gore needs money, the Scientists need their funding, because, after all, if your a climatologist, global warming is your gravy train. And skeptics are fearfull of being blackballed so they keep their mouth shut. That, and it's politically expedient to agree with global warming. Who wants MSNBC calling them polar bear killers and flat-earthers.
I´ve aways thought about this. You can even see it in the countries that are Protestant, with their work ethic and viewing success as a sort of personal salvation, versus Catholic countries, which think that leaving behind all earthly things and stuff will lead them to salvation and tend to shun richness and/or prosperity. Think North America vs South America.
There have been various articles written that seriously consider how the global warming hysteria is really a religious cult. They have their prophet (Al Gore), something they need salvation from (GLOBAL WARMING!!!!!!!!!)... and they even have indulgences (AKA Carbon Credits) American Thinker Blog: Carbon credits: indulgence or commutation fee? And elsewhere, how liberals obsessively try to justify themselves: Can buying organic produce and natural shampoo turn you into a heartless jerk? - By Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow - Slate Magazine
Very good read and I agree with your conclusion 100% Lke it or not, religion permeates every other fabric of life. Perhaps this is why I'm always bringing it up.
I often equate Atheism and Science itself to religion. Everybody's trying to answer something there is no answer to. I think that is mostly (if not entirely) what this world is comprised of.
ok then anyone who is into a cuase and tells people they are dumb for not believing in the cause is relgious too. Like christians there always telling me i'm going to hell for not believing in god.........oh wait.
But I don't believe that's the issue. The issue as mentioned in the article is obession and passion. Nothing is wrong with having a little bit of both but when you take it overboard and find yourself condeming everyone against your cause. Well, then we have a problem.
This was definitely an interesting article, thank you for posting it. I agree with the author's conclusion that the green movement can be equated to a religion. I find it as silly as all other religions, for the same reasons. The problem isn't that climate change isn't happening, it's that it caught on with the uninformed public. Instead of doing the research on what's actually going on, and what actually needs to happen, people are content with a zealous crusade on people who drive Hummers or don't recycle. As the author noted towards the end of the article, it's not really that bad of a thing really, it does some good, like other religions. The problem I have with the green movement is that their behavior makes it easy to see that what they're doing is silly and ridiculous, and unfortunately the opposition to them expands to include the people who are ACTUALLY informed about the environment and what is actually endangering it. My biggest fear is that the green movement will rightfully be seen as silly and frivolous, but it's downfall will pull actual conservation efforts down with it. Also, I wanted to address this point: Please don't lump scientists (or atheists for that matter, where did that even come from?) in with green crusaders. I assure you there is a world of difference between the two.
Basically.....yes. Anyone who holds a BELIEF in something which as of today, is unprovable either way, should respect anyone who disagrees. I don't run around calling Christians idiots, eventhough I myself, am not religeous.
I disagree. I owe no respect so someone, regardless of what it is that they believe, who arrives at that belief through intellectual dishonesty, laziness, willful ignorance or stupidity. The whole reason we're in this situation in the first place is because we started giving respect to stupid ideas, and now everyone can say whatever they want and no one bats and eyelash. By all means, say what you want, but don't get offended when I've done my fact checking and called you out on it. You're free (encouraged even) to do the same to me.
I agree with science in the vein of 'this happens because this works like this'; calculations, observations, etc. (Forgive this wall of text) : However, using science to defend an idea like the creation or destruction of our universe is just another form of religious zealotry. Scientists can't even agree on whether the universe is flat or round! And if they agree they can still be wrong. There are so many paradoxes, so many contradictions to the scientific theories of how the universe came to be, that it's just all bullshit. The big bang for example: something from nothing. There's scientists, people with degrees, who believe the big bang happened, that a tiny singularity expanded, and there are other people with the same degrees that say the universe is infinitely large. And all of them would say that's physically impossible and argue with each other. Atheism makes the claim 'there is no god'. You can't know that! There's no evidence proving or disproving a god. Atheism is a religious claim about our existence. So then more people can argue about something you can't see. More on topic, the Green movement is backed by science. There's people who look back 30 years and say humans cause global warming, there's people who look back millions of years and say humans don't cause it but its happening, and there's people who deny its happening all together. Maybe everybody's just wasting their fucking time, because, like a god, the universe and this planet can choose to end our lives at any moment. They show it to you all the time: giant meteors, gamma rays, solar flares, the fucking volcano in Yellowstone. At anytime, all of this can go away, and we would have no control over it. Yet we have the gall to say some carbon dioxide and plastic bags are going to destroy the planet? Get fucking real. We don't know shit. IMO, the whole green movement is just a way to make more money (an inside joke to those who thought it up), because they've been telling me for years that we have the capability to make electric cars, clean burning fuel, and solar fucking panels. Yet THE greatest renewable resource is globally illegal and my car still runs off 89 octane. If it was any type of big deal, it would be done with already. My government doesn't give a shit about what I want. We'd be living in houses that run everything off of a panel on your roof tomorrow if it was completely necessary. But it's not completely necessary because its all fucking bullshit. We're complacent sheep stuck in a cycle of serving people who don't want to lose power, people who love stroking their own egos (and pay others to stroke it for them), people who love money more than their own families, and people who are just fucking smarter than everybody else, and then we bitch and whine that we want change when we find out we get lied to, and then get coaxed back to sleep by another lie. If we wanted change we would make it. We wouldn't sit and hope something happens, we wouldn't elect someone we hope makes change for us. Fuck hope. We like Starbucks and McDonalds and 24 hour television and phones that play our music and websites that make all our friends for us far too much to truly want any change to happen. Fuck hope. Lie back and take it. /rant
I'm going to pick apart your post, not because I only want to deal with parts of it, but because I don't entirely disagree. The parts that I quote I will deal with, so assume the rest is kosher with me. First, regarding science: I think the reason you think this way is because you have some misconceptions about science in general, and how the scientific community works. You're right, there are many, many things that scientists don't agree on. However, that's what makes science as useful as it is. Scientists work against each other, not with each other. It's a very, very competitive field, because of peer review. I'll explain. (and I apologize if you already understand this.) To mean anything in science, to get anywhere, and most importantly, to get grant money, you have to submit your findings to peer review. This is a process where EVERY other scientist in your field picks apart your hypothesis, theory, research data and conclusion. And try to replicate your experiment. If they can't replicate your data using your experiment, your experiment means nothing. No grant, no Nobel prize, no anything. (they may even question your methods, in which case you may lose your job), and you lose credibility to boot. As you may imagine, it's within the interest of every scientist to do their best at this, because for every grant dollar you have, that's one that they don't. That's why science works as well as it does, because they're all working against each other. That's also why climate change is serious. It's not as sound a theory as say, Evolution, and I'm not saying there's no room for debate, but enough of them agree that you should be concerned. I'll keep this part short, as it's not really on topic. Atheism, by definition, makes no claims about anything. It's simply the lack of a belief of a deity. An atheist who claims that there is NO god, is making a positive claim, and the burden of proof lays on him. However, there aren't many atheists that claim this. Intelligent atheists should say to you that they are unconvinced by the evidence for a God, and thus they have no reason to believe one exists. Sorry, my version of short is pretty long. Back on topic: That's true, all of that stuff could destroy us very quickly and there's likely nothing we could do about it. In my opinion, all the more reason to make sure we don't destroy ourselves. Give ourselves a better chance of survival, yeah? Also, we're not worried about destroying the planet, or even hurting it. What we're concerned about is keeping it a hospitable place for us to live. That's the difference really, between scientists and green activists. The green crusaders (for some reason) have this desire to make the earth feel better or something, while scientists just want to make sure we can still fucking live here, ya dig? I'm obviously with you on the pot being illegal thing, but it's worth noting that the worlds greatest renewable resource is a giant fusion generator, i.e., our sun, Sol. (As a side note, when we figure out how to create a large enough fusion generator here, our energy problems will essentially vanish overnight.) As to why we're still using a resource that's quickly running out, I have no idea. It's pretty much ingrained into our global economy, but that's that, anyway. The rest of it, I'm good with. I hope I've cleared some things up, or at the very least, given you a different perspective on things.
I understand what you're saying and there's a lot I could address but there's like 3 different topics going on lol, so I'll keep it short. Where does the grant money come from? As in if the peer review is good, who actually hands out the dough?
I'm not a scientist so I can't give you a definite answer on this, my knowledge is pretty limited on the particulars. As I understand it, most of the money for scientific research comes from the government. Universities apply for grants at a governmental level, but I couldn't tell you who within the government handles that kind of thing. Some of the more wealthy universities also supplement research grants with their own money.
If you can't even handle basic questions like that, and you have to start talking about how limited your knowledge is... Perhaps you should rethink your opinion?
Why? Where they get their funding doesn't affect how the scientific method works, everything I said in my previous post still stands. Edit: Here, a quick list of funding programs I found: http://grantsnet.org/search/fund_di..._levl=&global_session_id=&alpha=A&submitted=1