Global Warming is a Religion

As I have noted before, the blind fervor of global warming alarmists has all the characteristics of a religion. Now that observation has official government sanction in the UK.

A fired British executive is suing his former employer on the grounds that he was unfairly dismissed due to religious views – his belief in global warming.

As Marc Sheppard comments,

Greenies scoffed when Michael Crichton first called environmentalism “one of the most powerful religions in the Western World” over five years ago, insisting that “settled science” was on their side. Since then it’s become increasingly evident that alarmists’ warming beliefs are based not on reason or evidence, but a trusting acceptance in the absence of either.  They outright refuse to discuss it, debate it, or abide those daring to question it.

Consumer-Based Religion

Andrew Santella describes the growth of consumer-based religion, as more people “shop around” for churches that suit their tastes, and churches respond by adapting to market demands. The result is often religion that is watered down and commercialized.

However, the results are not entirely negative:

Knowing that churchgoers have so many options should keep pastors and preachers on their toes. In that sense, church shopping transfers a bit of power from the pulpit to the pews. And keeping a check on the power of church leaders is never a bad idea.

Religion and Self-Control

Atheists have been working overtime lately trying to portray religion as the primary source of much of the world’s suffering and evil. Convince people to abandon religion, they say, and our lives would be a lot better.

But the evidence doesn’t support that view. John Tierney quotes one researcher, Michael McCullough, who has been studying the coorelation between religion and self-control:

I’m not claiming that religion is a panacea, but the scientific support for the idea that religiosity is associated with many benefits for health, well-being, and social adjustment is now quite overwhelming.

Which is what the Bible has been claiming for over 2,000 years.

Where Was God?

(photo by James Nachtwey)

On this seventh anniversary of the most horrible day in America’s history, the usual memorials will be posted to remember those we lost on that day. It’s fitting that we should do so.

But there is a deeper issue this event should force us to grapple with, one that is rarely addressed. The depth and intensity of the raw evil that was displayed that day raises the disturbing question, Where was God? If God exists, and if He is so kind and good and compassionate, how could He possibly have allowed such a demonic crime to be committed?

The answer is really quite simple: He was where He’s always been — on His throne in heaven, grieving over the fallen state of His creatures.

God did not create robots. He created free moral agents who have the capacity for great evil as well as great good. What we do with that freedom is our choice. And some people, as we witness all too often, choose to use their freedom in nefarious ways. That’s not God’s fault.

As a believer, 9/11 did not shake my confidence in God. On the contrary, it further strengthens my conviction that there is a God who will someday sit in final judgment on the entire human race. On that day, the villians of 9/11 — and of every other despicable act of evil throughout history — will receive their just reward.

In the meantime, it remains our duty to do what is right, no matter the cost.

“Though a sinner does evil a hundred times, and his days are prolonged, yet I surely know that it will be well with those who fear God, who fear before Him. But it will not be well with the wicked; nor will he prolong his days, which are as a shadow, because he does not fear before God” (Ecclesiastes 8:12-13).

The Wright Strategy

Michael Barone quotes an earlier piece from Steve Sailer suggesting a curious strategy on the part of Obama’s pastor, Jeremiah Wright: Wright is deliberating sabotaging Obama’s campaign, in order to buttress his black racist message.

I bet that Wright doesn’t want Obama to win—that would disprove his whole world view that whites will never give a black man an even break. He wants Obama to go down in flames to prove he was right, and he wants to be the torch. Just as the conventional wisdom has become that white racism cost Michael Dukakis the Presidency in 1988 over Willie Horton, he wants to go down in history in conjunction with the next myth—that white racism cost Obama the Presidency or Vice-Presidency over Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr.

Makes sense to me. And the fact that Obama still refuses to disassociate himself from this racist hate-monger proves that Obama is either too dumb to figure out what his “friend” is doing to him, or he shares his pastor’s twisted view of America. Either way, this whole episode has not been good for Obama’s campaign.

UPDATE: Victor Davis Hanson thinks Obama’s recent speech trying to explain all this was not a master stroke, as the elite media is trying to spin it, but the final nail in his campaign’s demise.

Even elites will wake up to the fact that they’ve been had, in a sense, once they deconstruct the speech carefully and fathom that their utopian candidate just may have managed to destroy what was once a near-certain Democratic sweep in the fall. And a number of African-Americans will come to resent that they are being lumped into a majority akin to the Rev. Wright, millions of whom the majestic Sen. Obama has nobly chosen not to “disown,” despite their apparently similar embarrassing racialism.

The Obama Speech

Barack Obama’s speech in Philadelphia yesterday was an attempt to distance himself from the inflammatory rhetoric of his black liberation theology pastor, Jeremiah Wright. The pundits are still busy dissecting the speech, but this analogy from Michael Gerson in the Washington Post pretty well sums up the crux of the matter.

What if a Republican presidential candidate spent years in the pew of a theonomist church — a fanatical fragment of Protestantism that teaches the modern political validity of ancient Hebrew law? What if the church’s pastor attacked the American government as illegitimate and accepted the stoning of homosexuals and recalcitrant children as appropriate legal penalties (which some theonomists interpret as biblical requirements)? Surely we would conclude, at the very least, that the Republican candidate attending this church lacked judgment, and that his donations were subsidizing hatred. And we would be right.

It really doesn’t matter what Obama says now about Wright’s theology. The fact that he sat in the man’s pew for twenty years and supported his church with his money means they are joined at the hip.  He can’t just wave that history aside now that it’s inconvenient to his campaign.

Submit — Or Be Expelled

They claim the debate is over on this one, too, but the skeptics just won’t go away — thank goodness. Ben Stein has a new documentary coming out this spring on the ideological war against those who would question Darwinism.

I remember well as a junior high school student in the early 1960’s the furor that arose when some educators wanted the freedom to merely mention evolution as a possible alternative to the traditional “divine origin” theory of cosmogony. Today, the controversy has been completely reversed: secularists control the reigns of power in academe, and those who even question Darwinism are silenced without mercy.

If it was a “freedom of speech” issue in the 1960’s, why is it not a freedom of speech issue today? (Hint: It was never about free speech.)

[Thanks for the link, Kay!]

The Decline of Religion in America

The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life just released the results of an exhaustive study on the current state of religion in America. The research does not paint a pretty picture.

Among the findings:

• “The United States is 78 percent Christian and about to lose its status as a majority Protestant nation, at 51 percent and slipping.”
• “More than one-quarter of American adults have left the faith of their childhood for another religion or no religion at all.”
• “One in four adults ages 18 to 29 claim no affiliation with a religious institution.”
• “The majority of the unaffiliated — 12 percent of the overall population — describe their religion as “nothing in particular,” and about half of those say faith is at least somewhat important to them.”
• “The Roman Catholic Church has lost more members than any faith tradition . . . roughly 10 percent of all Americans are ex-Catholics.”
• “Non-denominational churches are growing.”
• “Although evangelical churches strive to win new Christian believers from the ‘unchurched,’ the survey found most converts to evangelical churches were raised Protestant.”
• “Atheists or agnostics account for 4 percent of the total population.”
• “The group with the worst retention is one of the fastest growing — Jehovah’s Witnesses. Only 37 percent of those raised in the sect known for door-to-door proselytizing said they remain members.”

These findings suggest several important lessons for churches today.

• Despite the effort to remain “relevant” over the last several decades, usually by providing all kinds of social activities, American churches are increasingly viewed by Americans as irrelevant. For all its good intentions, the social gospel is a failure; it does not address the deepest needs of humanity.
• Evangelism efforts directed at converting members of other churches are facing a shrinking market. Increasingly, churches must adapt their message to reach people who have little or no religious background.
• Religions built upon a highly authoritative command structure (such as Catholicism and Jehovah’s Witnesses) have the most difficult time holding on to members, while churches with the least authoritative command structure (non-denominational) are bucking the trend and growing.

Put all of this together, and a simple picture emerges: People find the greatest fulfillment in a religion that emphasizes personal spirituality without bureaucratic control. Do a fresh reading of the New Testament, and you’ll find that’s exactly why early Christianity became so popular. It consisted of independent local churches that were dedicated to a simple program of character development.

I suspect the same approach would work today, if churches would only try it.  Of course, it would require that a lot of very powerful people give up their positions of prominence, so I don’t expect a mass movement in that direction.

The Cult of Obama

Kathleen Parker explores the sociological underpinnings of the Cult of Obi-Wan Obama. In her view, we are witnessing a narcissistic generation’s search for meaning in a culture that has long ago abandoned spirituality.

In post-Judeo-Christian America, the sports club is the new church. Global warming is the new religion. Vegetarianism is the new sacrament. Hooking up, the new prayer. Talk therapy, the new witnessing. Tattooing and piercing, the new sacred symbols and rituals.

And apparently, Barack Obama is the new messiah.

I suspect by the time this campaign is over, some of the glamor will have faded. But there can be no doubt that the irrational swooning over this man extends far beyond normal political partisanship. It speaks more to the character of our country, than the personality of the man.