While I think the broader point that Christians are frequently wrong on extra-church issues (and frequently wrong on doctrinal ones, too…a topic for a different blog post), I think the contention that global warming and Copernicus’ findings are moral equivalents of one another is problematic on several levels.
First, scientific findings like Galileo’s and Copernicus’ have withstood the test of time. They have quite simply been around long enough to go unchallenged. The global warming hypothesis is so recent that many can actually remember when the same crowd was going around predicting global cooling. Factually, the ideas put forth by Vice President Gore and the Western European cabal of Kool-Aid Drinkers have not stood up well to actual challenge—and that’s just in the same decade in which they were made famous. After the scandal involving the emails of East Anglia University, most of the rational world understands a hoax when they see it. Christians should not be in the business of jumping on bandwagons of questionable repute—whether that bandwagon be Republican or Democrat. And the global warming thing is, quite frankly, pretty questionable. For every True Believer who claims that it’s man-made and demands that we all drive Priuses and listen to the Indigo Girls, there are two or three equally reputable scientists who view the same data and offer different conclusions. For many, the belief that Man is capable alone of destroying God’s great earth smacks of an arrogance typical of the godlessness inherent in Marxist thought—but unbecoming to the Christian. Ironically, the greater community of global warming evangelists resemble the classical definition of “religion” in the strictest sense: they have a creation/destruction mythology, a salvation (by works) message, and punish nonconformists with excommunication from the community.
Second, those of us who would like to be objective about this issue keep running into another pesky problem: the proposed solution. If the Warmers didn’t all fall lock-step into the same formation of collectivism in order to solve the “problem,” the rest of us wouldn’t be so suspect. Why is it that the only solution to the problem of colossal planetary warming and eventual destruction is that a strong, centralized governmental entity must be empowered to strip property away from one sector of humanity and redistribute it to another? I say the “only solution” because IT’S THE ONLY SOLUTION THAT’S EVER BEEN ADVANCED BY THE WARMERS. I am old enough to recall that that was the primary argument of the militant feminist movement, as well: a societal ill exists, and the only solution to it is a form of Marxism. A movement loses instant credibility with freedom lovers whenever it advances collectivism, for the end result of collectivism is always totalitarianism—and totalitarianism definitely does not honor God. I would venture a guess that the only Christians left who don’t have a problem with collectivism are those too young to remember the Soviet Union, or have read Huxley’s Brave New World or Orwell’s 1984 (I might be wrong, but it’s just a guess).
If we’re going to have a free society, we’re going to have people who make choices with which we disagree. If the solution to an alleged “problem” like global warming is that we strip them of those choices, ridicule them for disbelieving us, and forcibly take their property and give it to others—well, then, surely a reasonable individual could conceivably be forgiven for finding the whole movement suspect.
Lastly, when I think of Christianity philosophically, I am struck by how nonconformist it is, historically speaking. Notwithstanding, the effortless speed with which many younger evangelicals have conformed to a worldview that has been historically hostile to Christian thought has always been disturbing to me and others. Again, I’m probably exaggerating here, but it feels to me like the next twenty-something evangelical who stands up and questions the orthodoxies made popular by the mainstream media will be the first. When I think of Christians being “led by their noses” by others, it isn’t the Global Warming Deniers who come to mind: it’s the True Believers. Before we place Al Gore in the same sainted category as Galileo or Copernicus, perhaps we could approach the issue with the right mixture of contrarianism and true pursuit of Truth.
Now many on the other side of this issue will surely label me as an earth-hating heretic because of this contention. Not so, says I: I may not wear Tom’s shoes or drive a Hybrid, but neither do I consider it responsible to litter. I pay steep fees each year to legally hunt in two states, and that money goes to the proper conservation of the wilds in which I spend a good deal of time. I maintain my vehicle and teach my children that we are to be responsible stewards of the earth. I own property and maintain it over and above any municipal codes. I’m not going to sign on to the onerous, freedom-squelching shackling of private citizenry at the exact same moment as the kiddo’s who can’t actually remember the Carter Administration—but that doesn’t make me wrong.
Yet.
