Opposing views points to the scary ignorance and bible-thumping to which GOP representatives in Congress are appealing in their genocidal stand against quick action on climate change.
If you have to have a biblical theology about these things, it should be the old-fashioned one that human beings are stewards of the earth and have a duty to make it flourish, not to turn it into a desolate wasteland. Leviticus 25:23-24, for instance, has “The land is mine and you are but aliens and my tenants. Throughout the country that you hold as a possession, you must provide for the redemption of the land.”
In contrast to irresponsible reactionaries like James Inhofe (who is in the back pocket of Mammon– I mean, Big Oil), some churches are doing the right thing and putting up solar panels on their roofs
Climate Desk did a mash-up of this bad theology and bad environment thinking:
All better. MT : GOP: No Climate Change because Bible says. link to t.co link to t.co
It is truly amazing that in technologically the most developed country of the world there are seemingly sane people in positions of power who still hold such nonsensical ideas that one hoped we had left behind a long time ago. Somebody should ask them if they really believe that the world was created six thousand years ago over six days as set out in the Bible too. Some of them presumably do. It is scary to think that these people with the belief in the End Days and the Armageddon also have the power to start wars and crusades and kill hundreds of thousands of fellow human beings on the basis of some ancient myths.
It is possible that these people why say they believe (whatever) actually do believe it. Could be. why not? Strict upbringing may condition a person to believe anything — including what local religious leaders tell him the Bible says. And he will not inquire (or hear) what ELSE the Bible says. You betcha.
so, it is possible. But it is also possible that some politicians are just saying what the oligarchs (BIG-OIL, BIG-BANKs, BIG-DEFENSE, etc) want them to say. Congress, after all gets a small salary from the USa but a LARGE CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTION from the oligarchs and they know which side their bread is buttered on.
We are SEEING the effects of climate change daily. But these fellow have eyes but will not see. (Check the Bible on that one.) trees dying in colorado and opints north from beetles which nio longer die in cold winterse because winters are no longer cold enough. Ethiopia drying out. Crop failures. water failures. Arctic ice melting.
Oh well.
They believe in the flying sky genie, that a man sat in the belly if a whale for 3 days, that all the creatures on the planet descended from an Arc some guy built by himself, that a talking fire bush told a man some lands belong to his people, that a man walked on water, once, and only once, and that he did other magic tricks, once and only once, yet never once in front of a king, or governor, or anyone else who could read and write. They believe in infantile fantasies and delusions and that renders their capacity to lead to that of a child. Until this nation opens their eyes to the greatest Con ever imagined (All religions from the Middle East!) we will be led by child-like feeble minded people.
You miss the point. This has nothing to do with the Bible or Christianity. These guys are not Christians, they are simply greedy politicians with an agenda. Christianity appreciates that the world is imperfect and would never be so. This is why it must eventually pass away but as our brother’s or sister’s keeper we shouldn’t condone the wanton poisoning of our environment. Yes, there is global warming and we are harming the planet by our activities. And we have a living God as well that chooses not to interfere at the moment. These views are not incompatible.
It amazes me that anyone with any education or sense could spout this nonsense. While I have doubts about the cause of climate change (from a scientific viewpoint), to state that its ok to trash the environment because God said its ok is ridiculous. They make it sound like God is some school janitor who comes along behind man and cleans up his messes. Let’s see, just a short list of what God hasn’t cleaned up; Bhopal, Exxon Valdez, BP Gulf, Chernobyl, Fukushima, Hanford Site. And the list goes on.
This involves a double whammy: willful ignorance of climate change, and a profound ignorance of what the Bible is really about, how it was written, and when. I should highly recommend the work of Jacob Neusner, of Bard College, Ammondale-on-Hudson, on the idea of history in rabbinic Judaism.
-“[E]vangelicals have been notoriously uninterested in environmental preservation. If Jesus is going to return soon to rescue the true believers and to unleash judgment on those left behind, why should we devote any attention whatsoever to care of the earth, which will soon be destroyed in the apocalypse predicted in the book of Revelation?” President Reagan’s evangelical secretary of the interior echoed this belief when he “remarked to stunned members of the House Interior Committee, ‘I don’t know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns.’”
-Georgia Republican Representative, Paul “Broun, who sits on the House Science, Space and Technology Committee,” made the following “comments in a videotaped Sept. 27″ 2012 speech: “God’s word is true….All that stuff I was taught about evolution, embryology, Big Bang theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of hell. It’s lies to try to keep me and all the folks who are taught that from understanding that they need a savior….” The sad reality is that Rep. Broun’s views are not “radically out of whack with other Republicans on the House Science, Space and Technology Committee.”
link to detailedpoliticalquizzes.wordpress.com
” The sad reality is that Rep. Broun’s views are not “radically out of whack with other Republicans on the House Science, Space and Technology Committee.”
Nor are they antithetical to the millions of people who vote these politicians into office.
“It is truly amazing that in technologically the most developed country of the world there are seemingly sane people in positions of power who still hold such nonsensical ideas that one hoped we had left behind a long time ago”
That illustrates one of the problems. They SEEM to be sane no matter how often their actions are contrary to what sane people would do. Vote for one war after the other against people who are not threat to us? Pour hundreds of billions into that five-sided black hole on the Potomac while cutting food stamps for desperate people? That’s sane?
Notice how no one ever brought up the “world will end when God decides it” argument during the Cold War. We could have saved the effort of building all those nukes!
Ugh! Look, Homer claimed to speak the divine word. Hesiod claimed to speak the divine word. Pindar claimed to speak the divine word. So too did Socrates. Livy claimed divine sanction for the Roman people in his history, in an almost identical way the Hebrews claim a sacred text from Yahweh.
With so many people claiming divine authority, how the hell do you decide which text, which voice, to privilege?
Pretty goofy, and pure mumbo-jumbo: and those are not my words. Cicero in the De Divinatione noted that two augurs couldn’t pass one another in the street without smirking.
It boggles the mind that anyone could see fit to live based on a single text whose origin is so nebulous and whose divine authority is . . . bunk. Perhaps we should live according only to the ancient Roman laws of the Twelve Tables: they were, after all, handed down by the god at Delphi.
All of this is moot though – the idea that we will set policy according to the words of an ancient Near Eastern text smacks of a society that hasn’t progressed much further than the Neolithic.
Last I heard, the Bible promises that God won’t destroy the world by flooding it again. Instead, some fundamentalists, God will destroy the world with fire.
Has anyone pointed out to these folks that fire makes things warmer?
Yes. Real complaints and many corruptions.
But no suggestions of real sound solutions.
Reading this site is getting boring, it’s a broken record playing the same song over and over–complaints, corruption, criminal actions by the US government, the MIC-military industrial complex, corporations, big oil, big money, etc.
Most important first step, take the money out of all elections.
Some European countries have done this. But the damn billionaires, millionaires and their puppets won’t give up their control of Americans nor the money and wealth they’re stealing.
Second start a new party to elect people to represent the 99% of Americans which means voting out most of the Democrats and Republicans.
Third, base healthcare insurance costs and non-covered costs on fixed percents of the family’s or the individual’s gross income, average wealth and average liquid assets. You get the picture?
The third step should be applied to property taxes, all types of insurance policies, public licenses, education costs/loans, public utilities, fines, etc. Pay your fair share.
Please, all of you so called intelligent commenters, give at least one solid action that could possibly result in changes for each complaint you comment on.
Whose going to get the ball rolling? Maybe a real President, not a useless smooth talking lawyer. Prohibit lawyers from elections.
Why did the Occupy Wall Street fail?
Are there any honest, intelligent and wise vigilantes?
The bankers keep stealing the money.
I’ll be glad to. Write or call your Senate and Congressional reps. and say you are 100% behind the interim agreement between the P5+1 and Iran and want to see something like it as a permanent deal.
Make that “you”.
“Dominion” is an ancient hebrew term meaning “Care taker”. This, plus a million other reasons, is why I wouldn’t touch religion with a 10 ft pole. Embracing ignorance and trashing science is the hallmark of stupidity and the goal of the fascist right, including the bulk of western religions who embrace and support these war-mongering anti-environmental nutcases. Maybe Scalia is right, the Devil lis amongst us – in the form of the geopolitical elite who couldn’t care less about the future of our descendants.
In any other country, a wave of laughter and mockery erupts when politicians speak Biblical inspired nonsense, Why are so many Americans religious crackpots?
The first step is certainly to eliminate any funding of elections and mass media other than registered individual contributions capped at perhaps the average day’s pay.
But we will still have the nutcases around for generations due simply to ignorance, a sort of entropy. It is the right-wing fear-mongering and other organized deceptions which we may hope to eliminate by restoring public debate and fair elections.
That is probably impossible here. Not only the dark state problems and other repression of effective dissent, but the fact that without public debate it cannot be restored. The US is an empty suit of armor which will stand until it has enough enemies to topple it; whose occupant has been quite digested by economic concentrations and has little value but to fertilize the growth of some better organization.