Creationist = Anti-Environmentalist?

Hi, AdminNosy.I suggested earlier to Nuggin that the involvement of evangelical Christians in a political coalition that has opposed environmental stewardship and supported environmental plunder is sufficient to support the charges in the OP. I still believe that is true.In particular, I sympathize with his outrage: after witnessing the contempt for environmental concerns that evangelical Christians displayed for decades, it is galling to listen to denials.Let me point out that while their participation in the Republican coalition may center on other social issues--e.g., abortion, opposition to gay marriage, etc.--that does not absolve them of responsibility for the other actions that their support makes possible.Hitler was elected in complex historical circumstances--but we do not absolve those German citizens who enabled the Holocaust merely because they were primarily concerned about, say, the devastating effects of WWI reparations on the German economy.Shall we think that evangelicals have always loved the environment, but they loved beating up homosexuals more?It is important to note that a sea change is stirring among evangelicals. Beginning quietly in the 1990s with the National Religious Partnership for the Environment, which coordinates efforts by Jews, Catholics, mainstream Protestants and evangelicals, and picking up steam with the Evangelical Environmental Network (the folks who brought us "What would Jesus drive?"), attitudes among evangelicals toward environmental issues in general, and global warming in particular, have begun to shift. It seems likely to me that this is a generational shift that parallels the shift I see in general among younger Americans toward passionate environmentalism.But these are relatively recent developments, and the resistance among many evangelical leaders and groups has been sharp and accusatory.In the stories about the new evangelical concern for the environment and the reactions of the old guard can be found some of the strongest evidence for the longstanding linkage between evangelicals and disregard for the environment.Those stories are readily available and well known. It seems superfluous to document an evangelical sin that has been a loud and strident chapter of U.S. social and political history for the past few decdes, but if someone doesn't beat me to it, I'll post links to a few tomorrow.

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And I have. NJ himself is a fundamentalist creationist who is denying global warming continuously throughout the thread.If having one here and present and active isn't sufficient evidence that he exists, I don't know what more I can do. No, you have show that your subjective search has turned up no evidence. And, as you put it: What's good for the goose...
If you feel that my experience of what I've seen is insufficient, then I counter that yours is equally insufficient, and we are back to square one.As it happens, I have the advantage of having NJ denying global warming IN THIS VERY THREAD.Are you, and I suspect NJ, suggesting that I prove that ALL fundamentalists are GW deniers? Do you have a phone list of all the fundamentalists so you can double check the evidence?

No, the logic that doesn't follow is that in defense of your position you site shills for the oil industry who have a documented history of being bought and paid to take the positions they take. Some how we are supposed to believe that you, siding with Big Oil, are denying global warming because you honestly feel that there is debate.Either you are being intentionally deceptive, or you are ignorant of the people you are using for the defense of your position, either way, you aren't to be taken seriously. Oh really? Let's review:
NJ: re: Rage Against the Machine "Listen one song-- any song."Me: Asked, Answered - How is this insufficient?NJ: "Give me one name in order to keep this thread going."
Crash: "Becky Fischer, director of Kids in Ministry International, as featured in the documentary Jesus Camp."By the way, if you watch Jesus Camp, you'll also see Fundy parents homeschooling their kids in one sequence actively denying global warming to their kids.How is this answer insufficient? You asked, it was answered. You move on like it never happened.More lies? Or just more ignorance? I claimed that I see these people. You immediately stood up and said - Hey! I'm one of those people! Prove it!That's about as audacious as calling for a show of hands.Are you now suggesting that you've been LYING this whole time? That, in your fevered desire to deny everything everyone says, you're not going to reverse your position just to spite us. Fantastic. Would this be the same Mother Theresa that horded wealth and watched sick children die because her intentions were simply to convert not to cure? Yes, I agree - you are arrogant AND she has some explaining to do. Yup, and your prostrating yourself to Big Oil helps that day grow ever closer. Who cares if it's going to kill the kids! We'll all be together in White Straight Fundamentalist Christian Heaven! Whoopie!

I have to say that I find this almost completely irrelevant - not to mention, boring. Who gives a crap what those fruits on their boat are doing? What on Earth does that have to do with the science?It's a trend with you, NJ. I think you're much more interested in demonizing and attacking people - finding which side has the most odious members - than in evaluating the evidence to come to the right conclusion.Don't you think? Why is it that, in every single discussion where a point of fact is being disputed - is there anthropogenic climate change, is Mumia guilty of shooting a cop - you immediately highlight some perceived fault or funny business on the side you oppose as thought it makes any sort of difference?Pat Moore jumping off the ship doesn't, as far as I can tell, take any CO2 out of the atmosphere. It doesn't lower global temperatures by even a tenth of a degree. I think you only think its relevant because you're a slothful thinker who assumes that organizations that contain bad people must themselves be bad, and therefore wrong in everything they do, and lying with every statement they make.Nearly every single argument you've ever made proceeds from that assumption of bad faith. Of course, god forbid that the same technique be used against you - you're completely blind to any fault of any organization you support, particularly any uniformed authority figure.Incidentally - all of the above is completely consistent with Altemeyer's Right-Wing Authoritarian Follower personality type. Just a heads-up. How did you find my answers? I notice they've gone completely ignored. I especially liked how you asked for "just one name", and then when I came up with one, you started acting like you had never asked any such thing.

Can I add to it? There is nothing wrong with people who care about the environment. The issue, at least for me, is that many of these groups are extreme. Their efforts are often counter-productive, whiny, criminal, and above all, dangerous. I see many of them as using the environment as a platform to spew rhetoric about their political enemies. I'm not trying to be offensive when I say this, but what do you want, a medal? Teaching one's kids or nephews to pick up after themselves is as basic as tying shoelaces. I wouldn't exactly call you an eco-warrior for that. Well, Sonne claims to lead a group of conservationists, apparently in his/her spare time. But your point is taken. My household makes a very concerted attempt to recycle, to always take trash to a receptacle, etc too. And just how much more can we do, you may be asking yourself. But if someone is going to piously scold me for hating the environment, just because my views are generally more conservative than theirs, I'm going to call them out on it. They had better be doing more than I am. Yeah, but I specifically chose the job. You may be inclined to laud Greenpeace for their efforts, but I doubt you'd dismissively state that its their job. I can't argue with any of that.

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Maybe they are unaware that burning a chemical factory, or any home, really, does vastly more harm to the environment. Geniuses.

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Sure, if you want to mock her for making fun of their perception of conservatives. The problem is, these guys aren't being jocular, and what's worse, they actually do it. Nothing. 'Green' is fashionable these days. All of the 2008 candidates must have a greenthumb or they won't get the votes. Like I said, totally political. Edited by Nemesis Juggernaut, : typo

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"It is better to shun the bait, than struggle in the snare." -Ravi Zacharias

Often? Pointing out a few isolated actions by isolated extremists on either side doesn't do anything to reflect the rest. You know that. You question whether I actually do anything to help the environment. I promptly answered your question. You then accuse me of wanting a medal.This is like...A: You have no education.
B: Well, I got a college degree... does that count?
A: What do you want, a medal?The other thing is... where did I claim I'm an eco-warrior? I already said that the best thing I think we can do for the environment is try not to interfere as much as possible with the environment, and this include teaching the young about it. This may seem insignificant, but do you have any idea how many people just don't care whether their kids litter or not? And as I stated before, the best way to help the environment is to leave it alone. This is what I am advocating.The issue is that you support the groups that actually don't seem to care about the environment. Don't you find it odd that it's always the liberal side that want to push for a curb on emission of poluting gases and it's always the conservative side that want to stop the liberal side? Personally, I don't think much of green peace. I think they don't actually help much in regard to raising awareness.Again, the best way to help the environment is to leave as little mark on it as we can.By the way, did you choose to become a law enforcement officer because of the environment? Even though I don't think much of green peace, they actually do their job solely because of the environment. So, you're saying that Bush don't really believe in GW and that it was purely a political move on his part to admit it? I could have sworn you thought he was Jesus Christ II

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Occasionally, owing to the deficiency of the English language, I have used he/him/his meaning he or she/him or her/his or her in order to avoid awkwardness of style.

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He, him, and his are not intended as exclusively masculine pronouns. They may refer to either sex or to both sexes!

Let's start with this from the OP. Species extinction hasn't been demonstrated. In the 1970s, Norman Meyers predicted a million species would be extinct by the year 2000. Paul Ehrlich predicted that fifty percent of all species would be extinct by the year 2000. But those were just opinions. --Discussion in Lomborg p. 252Opinion in the absence of evidence is prejudice. Do you know how many species are on the planet? No? Neither does anybody else. Estimates range from 3 million to 100 million. Quite a range. So its pretty hard to determine how many species become extinct if you don't know how many there are in the first place. How could you tell if you were robbed if you didn't know how much money you had in your pocket to begin with? There is no known rate of species extinction.After your response we'll start doing Global Warming (which claims species exctinction).Edited by Tal, : No reason given.

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We never seem to acknowledge that we have been wrong in the past, and so might be wrong in the future. Instead, each generation writes off earlier errors as the result of bad thinking by less able minds-and then confidently embarks on fresh errors of its own. --Michael Crichton

Got T. Rex running around your neck of the woods, do ya?

Hi Tal, That has to count as one of the most bizarre and anti-reality claims I've yet seen on this forum. Are you actually serious? If so, I'd quite like you to provide me with a living passenger pigeon, dodo or great auk.
You also mention some wildly erroneous claims for rate of extinction, now proved wrong. So what? They were wrong about the rate of extinction, that does not mean that extinction doesn't occur. Just because the precise rate of extinction is not known, does not mean that we cannot know that a specific known species has become extinct.

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Mutate and Survive

The newbies have met Tal!I was going to write a long post about Tal that would have been a deliberate violation of forum guidelines, but then I decided, why bother? Tal's posts really do speak for themselves.Hey, enjoy, boys and girls!

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It has become fashionable on the left and in Western Europe to compare the Bush administration to the Nazis. The comparison is not without some superficial merit. In both cases the government is run by a small gang of snickering, stupid thugs whose vision of paradise is full of explosions and beautifully designed prisons. -- Matt Taibbi

Oh, Chi.I've read a ton of this guy's stuff.I'm not gonna tangle with him. He's ... unreasonable.I just wanted to jerk his chain a bit.

Heh. I wouldn't say it would be a waste of time to write a response to a particular post of his. Not that engaging in a "debate" with Tal would be all that productive in itself, but it would serve the purpose of educating lurkers and others who would be reading the thread.

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It has become fashionable on the left and in Western Europe to compare the Bush administration to the Nazis. The comparison is not without some superficial merit. In both cases the government is run by a small gang of snickering, stupid thugs whose vision of paradise is full of explosions and beautifully designed prisons. -- Matt Taibbi

Tal obviously isn't saying that things haven't gone extinct. He is saying that we haven't shown that there is a mass extinction going on now.That is rather different from what you have taken him as saying. He did say it clumsily.

I'm afraid I haven't RAZD's patience.Besides.Tal isn't around very much.I would be talking to myself.PSI like your Matt Taibbi quote. I met him in NYC a few years back (at a NY Press Best of Manhattan party).Did you know his dad is NBC's Mike Taibbi?

Hi, Ned. Well, while I think you are correct, to be fair it should be pointed out that, considering his past posting history, it isn't unreasonable to think that Tal did, in fact, claim that things haven't gone extinct.At any rate, mass extinction is only one part of environmental concerns. Tal quoted a sentence about protections of endangered species which, by definition, aren't just part of some hypothetical mass extinction but actual particular examples of species that we know are truly in danger of disappearing. His protest against the idea of mass extinction doesn't really say anything about the many, many species that we definitely do know have gone extinct, and that are currently in danger of extinction, and how many of these species are, like the proverbial canary in a coal mine, indicative of deeper environmental dangers facing us.That said, it just occurred to me that his post is off-topic anyway. This thread was originally supposed to be about a correlation with creationist beliefs and a lack of concern for environmental issues. (although, to be fair, I haven't checked to see whether the thread evolved beyond that).

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It has become fashionable on the left and in Western Europe to compare the Bush administration to the Nazis. The comparison is not without some superficial merit. In both cases the government is run by a small gang of snickering, stupid thugs whose vision of paradise is full of explosions and beautifully designed prisons. -- Matt Taibbi