Environmentalism alone doesn't seem to be good enough:  it has to be environmentalism + strict secularism + hardcore animal rights + Friedman/Hayek-esque unrestricted capitalism, etc... I don't presume to know your political leanings, but you're displaying that progressive tendency to link everything together and then spend endless hours and days and months and years and decades demanding that everyone else agree with you before you can really get down to work. It's well and good to critique one position or another, but at some point, it's just one of those academic point-scoring contests that damages far more than it helps.  What is the problem with letting religious people believe whatever ethic it takes for them to do what needs to be done?  In your first paragraph, you say you don't care what people believe, but you spend the rest of the post arguing exactly the opposite.  

It's counterproductive, it's offputting, and to be perfectly honest, it's something I haven't seen nearly as much from the religious end of the discussion.  

This reminds me of some earlier discussions about animal rights, in which identical issues came up: could you be a carnivore and an environmentalist?  Does every environmentalist have to carry a copy of "Animal Liberation" in their back pocket?  Does every Sierra Club meeting have to inspect the attendees to make sure they're not wearing leather or other animal product?  Can we agree to disagree on some issues?  Do we really have the luxury of time to be this scrupulous?  

I don't know why this couldn't be called educating the public. As Malcom Gladwell implies, political winds don't change simply because people are lectured to. (As a matter of fact, education doesn't always happen because people are lectured to.)

No doubt, we do need to "educate the public" in the straightforward way that you say. But what's wrong with working on other fronts as well? I don't know what we have to gain by being so closed-minded toward potential allies...

J.S.

Economic Illiteracy Harms The Planet! www.voicesofreason.info.

Personally, I think the problem is fundamentalism, not Christianity. And like I said, it's a bad idea to write people off. It comes back to bite you, as we've seen in political elections in recent decades.

J.S.

Economic Illiteracy Harms The Planet! www.voicesofreason.info.

We've had plenty of very good leaders who were religious, for instance MLK and Ghandi, and others that were more "under the radar" but were influential nonetheless, like Reinhold Niebuhr and Thomas Merton. Ideally, we would have more of these types of people influencing the church-going electorate. I'm just saying we should not write everybody off, and pay people some due respect. I'm not expecting that every churchgoer is going to run out and read Thomas Merton's Rain and the Rhinoceros, but maybe some will-- hopefully some leaders of congregations.

For the record, I consider myself an agnostic like David Weinberger.

J.S.

Economic Illiteracy Harms The Planet! www.voicesofreason.info.

http://www.radioopensource.org/groundhog-day/

It has absolutely nothing to do with science or material. Some people find their answers to questions of meaning in religion, and not in Dawkin's The Selfish Gene. I don't think we should write them off just because of this.

J.S.

Economic Illiteracy Harms The Planet! www.voicesofreason.info.

Your argument, if I'm reading it right, is that religion is not a good source for any sort of environmental ethic.  I disagree.  Further, I think repeatedly making that case is not only a distraction, I believe it is a dangerous distraction.  And, to be honest, I don't see many religious environmentalists doing the same from their end, telling secular environmentalists that their own ethic is dangerous.

As I said, I'm really not trying to be a jackass.  But I've read quite a few posts from you - they've all been extremely well-written and well thought out, but they do tend to make connections that really don't need to be made and that exclude ever-widening circles of people.  Sorry, but that's how I see it.  And I don't think it's a good way to go about things.  

You nailed it: We need strong leadership. I don't see it in either of the main parties, do you? How about a strong Party, not just strong leadership? The winds of change, they do blow fiercely, and of a sudden - the idea of a strong third party is not so unrealistic.

As for the religious issue - always remind yourself that many of the millions of self-professed relgious devotees are no more religious than you or I - they are fundamentally opportunists. If we can show them opportunities, they will march with us.

" . . . because the world doesn't matter anymore if you don't have the strength to go ahead and choose something that's really true." - Julio Cortazar

Fundamentalisms of all sorts are a problem. Market fundamentalism is a problem, but that doesn't mean that you don't form alliances with people who happen to be well connected in the market. Similarly, there are religious people out there who would make good allies for us, friends even. Not all of them, to be sure. But it bothers me when someone looks sideways at this sort of effort and calls it, in a blanket way, "strictly pragmatic." I don't think you make allies when you're welcoming people in an insincere way like that.

Many church goers will listen to the preacher, but never read a book, magazine, whatever, and certainly wouldn't want to listen to some egghead from up North or from California. Church is a social and a religious experience with opportunities for education. After all that is how the majority of families either learn their morals or reinforce them.

I am by no means religious. I am, as a matter of fact very anti-organized religion; but churches, synagogues and other places of worship are very important places to way too many people to say that we should not court the religious folks.

J.S.

Economic Illiteracy Harms The Planet! www.voicesofreason.info.

Card-carrying rationalists like Dawkins, who is the nearest thing to a professional atheist we have had since Bertrand Russell, are in one sense the least well-equipped to understand what they castigate, since they don't believe there is anything there to be understood, or at least anything worth understanding. This is why they invariably come up with vulgar caricatures of religious faith that would make a first-year theology student wince. The more they detest religion, the more ill-informed their criticisms of it tend to be. If they were asked to pass judgment on phenomenology or the geopolitics of South Asia, they would no doubt bone up on the question as assiduously as they could. When it comes to theology, however, any shoddy old travesty will pass muster.

Pitch perfect.

--JJW

J.S.

Economic Illiteracy Harms The Planet! www.voicesofreason.info.

I take no solace in trying to interpret the words of men trying to interpret the ravings of a genocidal tyrant in the sky.

I think this is an example of what Terry Eagleton called

vulgar caricatures of religious faith that would make a first-year theology student wince.

But that's fine that you don't believe in a personal god. You're in good company.

What I'm disagreeing with, doctor, is your prescribing that view for the entire environmental movement.

Listen to this quote from Jurgen Habermas:

Christianity, and nothing else, is the ultimate foundation of liberty, conscience, human rights, and democracy, the benchmarks of Western civilization.

Habermas is an atheist. But I think he would disagree with what you imply, that consorting with people in religious congregations is essentially intellectual slumming, bordering on a waste of time, etc.

Another quote, this one from Huston Smith (paraphrasing the Chronicle of Higher Education):

"If anything characterizes modernity, it is the loss of transcendence, a reality which surpasses and encompasses our everyday world." It is a simple logical mistake to think that science alone is the royal road to truth, that it can open the door to truth of every sort.

If someone turns to a 2000 year old religious tradition to find transcendence, and they do not to sign up to the whole Bertrand-Russell-style rationalist paradigm, that's an unsurmountable problem?

Now there is a certain kind of rationalist who can't even relate. In that category I put Richard Dawkins and the chainsmoking Christoper Hitchens. Hitchens writes that the very impulse for anything transcendent is "dangerous" because "it involves, if it does not necessitate, the sleep of reason."

That's fine if you believe that, Christopher, but could you leave Mother Theresa alone? (And while we're at it, in my mind you're not qualified to lecture the rest of us about the sleep of reason. No matter how much Trotsky you read at Oxford.)

But anyway, my point is that I don't think the wholesale prescription of these kinds of views is good for the environmental movement. We should be reasonable, but also inclusive. It's called democracy for a reason.

I think I've just seen a lot of bullying lately on this subject and wanted to clear the air.

J.S.

P.S. Also, I entirely reject that the Enlightenment is due to Christianity...that's like saying it's due entirely to white men because they were the ones who just so happened to be its original proponents. Enlightenment values happen when we move away from religion, not towards it.

Economic Illiteracy Harms The Planet! www.voicesofreason.info.

I think the blind faith and fear of science religions bring out in many is exactly the antithesis of what we need most: reasoned debate and an acceptance that we are not as exceptional as we are accustomed to believing. This last point runs entirely counter to the thrust of all religious thought: that we are somehow elevated by our god above all other living things.

This doesn't characterize all religious people. Many are serious and dedicated, not to mention educated (remember, the task of educating  clergy played a major role in building our  university system). And these people may be an important party to convince in the process of public recognition of environmental problems. As Malcom Gladwell pointed out, a population often changes in unpredictable ways.

The other thing is that a sense of the transcendent and values often go together. I remember seeing a 60 Minutes segment with a Reagan-appointee climate scientist who said that his job wasn't to do anything but report his data to higher ups. This kind of values-free, technocratic approach bothers me. A little bit of populism, even religious populism, shouldn't be dismissed. This could be one of the ways the issue gets "reframed" as Malcom Gladwell put it.

Just lecturing and debating people doesn't always cut it. Here's a George Lakoff quote:

Within traditional liberalism you have a history of rational thought that was born out of the Enlightenment: all meanings should be literal, and everything should follow logically. So if you just tell people the facts, that should be enough -- the truth shall set you free. All people are fully rational, so if you tell them the truth, they should reach the right conclusions. That, of course, has been a disaster.

Now, the average churchgoer may not be as rational as you'd wish them to be. But their leaders went to seminary and studied theology. And theology does have some reasonableness and intellectual weight to it, despite what Richard Dawkins and his ilk may say.

vulgar caricatures of religious faith that would make a first-year theology student wince.

So here's my question:

What is more vulgar, the tales of genocide, terrorism, infantcide, homophobia, and  with abandon in the Bible or people like me who point out what that "holy" book actually says?

Economic Illiteracy Harms The Planet! www.voicesofreason.info.

What is more vulgar, the tales of genocide, terrorism, infantcide, homophobia, and tyranny that our supposed "creator" dishes out with abandon (and plans to again in the future) in the Bible or people like me who point out what that "holy" book actually says?

Economic Illiteracy Harms The Planet! www.voicesofreason.info.

I enjoyed reading your blog entry. It went places I didn't expect and I always like that because it makes me think. I have felt a growing uneasiness about some christian religions jumping on the environmental bandwagon too, but perhaps for slightly different reasons. When religions get involved in areas outside of their primary issue (spiritual matters) they can act in ways that are contradictory to the outside area when the values and agenda of the outside area conflict with their own. One recent example was when the right wing anti-immigration folks tried and very nearly succeeded in taking over the Sierra Club. Of course religious censorship of science and interference with the honest pursuit and discovery of truth has a long a genuinely hideous history that no honest critic can deny. Because some religions teach they they and they alone have the only legitimate and authoritative source of truth, and because there is no objective way to verify their source of truth, the only foundation for thier point of view is in fact arbitrary authority. Those are the ones that worry me, and they do make up the majority of all Judeo/Christian/Muslim religions. I know there are exceptions, but in all honesty, they are few and far inbetween.

So, I find myself wondering how will these religious leaders act if we accept them into the Environmental movement? Will they try to take it over and make it in their own image? Will they accept that it is science that is our source of understanding the environment, and the threats to it? Will they give the science and the scientists primacy and respect even when the science indicates that it is necessary to act in ways that they disagree with? Will they attack environmentalism from within? How can they be real allies when they have so little respect for science? Will they use their arbitrary authority to greenwash their product while failing to genuinely appreciate or support real environmentalism? I think these are legitimate questions and I think that there is a reasonable level of doubt that at minimum requires caution between these strange bedfellows.

Scott Newsom
Pearland, Texas

Professor Scorce--

You can easily find plenty of passages in the Bible that are offensive to our modern sense of right and wrong, there's no denying that. The Bible has God telling people to slay innocent people at certain points, even whole villages, if I remember correctly.

From the religion classes I took as an undergraduate, I think I remember theologians describing God as gradually changing from the Old to New Testaments, essentially becoming more compassionate over successive generations, culminating with the New Testament. But I am no theologian, not too much of a reader of theology either (again, I'm an agnostic) so I really can't adequately speak to this issue.

One thing to remember is that we're talking about ancient times. Even in ancient Greece, the  origins of western democratic ideals, there's slavery, pedophilia, rampant corruption, completely frivolous and brutal wars, even human sacrifice. But of course, it's still a strong influence on modern Western culture and we're not giving up what they left us any time soon. (If anyone's interested in these subjects I suggest Thomas Cahill's highly readable Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels and Sailing the Wine Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter.)

That Alternet article that I linked to before suggests Isaiah Berlin as a good alternative "Oxford man" to Richard Dawkins. I agree with that (although the quick and dirty summary of Berlin doesn't work for me). I think Berlin's notions about the Enlightenment were right on target, and he sometimes sounds like George Lakoff (for instance, in this essay: "The Divorce Between the Sciences and the Humanities.")

Anyway, enough obscure references for a post that probably no one is reading by now...

<<
Even in ancient Greece, the  origins of western democratic ideals, there's slavery, pedophilia, rampant corruption, completely frivolous and brutal wars, even human sacrifice.
>>

Slavery, yes.  Corruption and wars, yes, but the ancient Greeks were hardly unique in that, were they.  But pedophilia?  You could not call Greek homoeroticism by that derogatory term, unless you were a homophobe.  Human sacrifice?  There is no evidence for that; the theme pops up in a couple of myths, but always surrounded by an atmosphere of great horror.  Infanticide, by means of the exposure of unwanted children, was apparently done, but was barely accepted, and much frowned upon.


Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Here's a Wikipedia article on Greek Pederasty:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_pederasty

Cahill talks about this subject in several places in Sailing the Wine Dark Sea.

I don't mean to be homophobic at all.

And looks like you're right, human sacrifice may have been be a pre-Hellenic thing:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Greek_religion#Worsh... (5th paragraph down)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacrifice#Human_sacrifice (5th paragraph down)

I was relying on something I had read a long time ago about the Minotaur myths...

(Admittedly, these are Wikipedia articles. If anyone sees anything wrong or missing from these articles, please chime in.)

But I do reject them- not the entire cultures- but many aspectes of them. The key is that I can pick and choose with a culture because it's created by HUMANS- but with religion we're told that these "holy" books are the work of god and it seems to me that if there was a god and he/she/it was responsible for even 1/10th of the terror in these books we'd want to reject the whole thing because that god was so clearly unjust. If you want to argue that the Bible,etc. are just literature and like decent literature we can pick and choose our favorite passages then so be it- but last time I checked that's not what 90%+ of religion wants people to do.

J.S.

Economic Illiteracy Harms The Planet! www.voicesofreason.info.

<<
I'm someone who has actually read the Bible and most other major religious works.
>>

Good for you.  That is quite a lot of reading.  Not that anyone should ask you for your reading list.  It would be more important to observe, though, that there is reading, and then again there is reading.

<<
While no doubt there are beautiful verses and passages that suggest peaceful and compassionate conduct consistent with a progressive environmental ethic, ...
>>

Why do you say "no doubt," right after boasting that you have read the Bible?  Have you read the Bible, or haven't you?  Do you know which verses and passages you might be referring to, or don't you?

<<
... the god depicted in the Bible acts more often than not like a genocidal terrorist.
>>

There are three especially disgusting theological episodes: the Flood, in which all humanity save for Noah's family, and all animals save for the breeding pairs collected on the Ark, are drowned; the last of the Egyptian plagues, the extermination of the first-born, at the original Passover; and the not altogether consistent mandate to the Israelites to kill off the Canaanites in the Promised Land.  The last of these definitely looks like a genocidal ethnic cleansing.  The first is an incomprehensibly vast evil, much bigger than genocide.  The second is a rather unique story, not exactly genocide, but still a great evil.  And followers of the biblical religions, considering these stories, would themselves be guilty of evil if they regard Yahweh as unquestionably a good moral example.

But, "terrorist" is mostly inaccurate; the Passover slaughter is a terrorist act, i.e. intended to inspire terror, but the other two examples are not.  Nor is it clear that other examples of biblical violence are primarily intended to inspire terror.  And "more often than not" suggests that you can provide us with a carefully reckoned calculation.  I rather doubt that the "genocidal terrorist" column would get the most ticks.

<<
No, that wasn't a typo.
>>

Of course not; who would think otherwise?  What preceded was ill-informed and narrow-minded and prejudicial, so who would doubt that you really intended to write it?

<<
The god of the Bible routinely slaughters innocents to punish them for the "sins" of their ancestors (anyone know the story of Passover?).
>>

"Routinely"?  How many examples can you find?: twenty?; ten?; five?

<<
 He has not only destroyed the world already a few times in his anger, but plans to do so again.
>>

"A few times"?  Aside from the Flood, I know of no other destruction of the world.  Please fill me in.  "Plans to do so again"?  You mean, like, at the end of time, the Eschata, the Res Novissimae?  Do you have any idea what the genre called "eschatology" is about?

<<
In addition, while Jesus is rightly associated with many views of tolerance and peace, such as in the Sermon on the Mount, he is far from the pacifist many claim, according to other accounts in the New Testament.
>>

Thank you for referring to that religious masterpiece, the Sermon on the Mount, which ought to be considered the Christian constitution, found in the Gospel according to Saint Matthew, chapters 5-7.  No, we are not entitled to call Jesus technically a "pacifist."  But it is not at all clear what you have in mind, saying, "he is far from the pacifist many claim, according to other accounts" in the NT.  Which accounts do you mean?

Actually, Sen~or Profesor, I really do not care what you think about the Bible or Christianity, and am not anxiously awaiting your response to any of the questions that I posed here.  But I would like to complain about the hypocritical double standard, to be found occasionally in Gristmill and often elsewhere: Inaccuracies are not tolerated in any assertion having to do with the sciences or technology, e.g. earth science, climate science, biology, biodiversity, energy, economics; writers are swiftly corrected if they have written something incorrect; and so most writers, understanding the high standards they must meet, take care to write as unimpeachably as they can.  But when it comes to the Bible and Christianity, and religion in general, anything goes; writers feel they have every license to indulge their childish ignorance and prejudices.  This is intellectually irresponsible.  Religion is as serious an academic field as physics and economics and chemistry and biology.  And biblical religion is a serious and important specialization within that field.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

J.S.


Economic Illiteracy Harms The Planet! www.voicesofreason.info.

"pederasty" and "pedophilia" are not at all the same thing, with quite different ethical significances, despite the similarity of their etymologies.  Exclusive sexual categorization by orientation, our current model, seems not to have been witnessed in antiquity.  Instead, there was generalized what we call bisexuality: everyone could have sexual encounters with persons of either sex, depending on the situation.  Pedophilia, a pathological and criminal sexual predation on children, is not witnessed in our principal sources, if at all.  Pederasty, the erotic cultivation of a teenage boy by an older man, was common and generally accepted.  And, generally, the man had a wife, and the boy would eventually marry a woman when he reached marrying age.  Much weirder, really, was that men in classical Athens would marry at around age 30, while their wives were around 14 at the oldest; part of the marriage ceremony was the sorrowful leave-taking of the girl from her dolls.

On other matters: JJW, I am grateful for your participation in this discussion, and agree with you on a great deal.

Yes indeed, the ancient Israelites and the ancient Greeks were both disgracefully warlike.  They seem to have shared an early Iron-Age civilization around the eastern Mediterranean, and display many similarities.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

I "spruced up" nothing.  All I did was to point out that, through ignorance and prejudice and the irresponsible license of a double standard, you gravely mischaracterized a body of religious literature.

For my own part, I have no opinion on whether it is a worthwhile project for environmentalists to court evangelical Christians.  I do not know either environmentalists or evangelical Christians well enough to express an opinion worthy of consideration.  If you have doubts about the effectiveness of that project, good for you, you might be right.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

J.S.

Economic Illiteracy Harms The Planet! www.voicesofreason.info.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axial_Age

To JJW: I know, Karl Jaspers, Karen Armstrong and others talk a great talk, but I remain an Axial-Age-denialist.  In Israel and Greece, there are a number of distinct cultural punctuations, which have unique, fairly well understood causations, not similar, and not progressing similarly.  Why did Greek polytheism persist, in an aesthetic way, while Levantine polytheism in Israel was suppressed by a fierce, intolerant monotheistic cult?  What do Homer and Hesiod and Psappho have to do with Amos and Isaiah and Samuel?

It seems entirely coincidental, and rather against the pattern of variety, that the solitary figure of Zarathustra should appear on the dry Iranian plateau.  That has always been a curious region, not itself creative, but receptive of influences whence new ideas could be fashioned.

In the Chinese river valleys, the respective followers of Confucius and Lao-Tse were profitably quarrelling, probably inheriting quarrels much more ancient than themselves, and we only start to hear about them at this time.

In India, sure, the Vedic tradition provoked reactions of various sorts, including the Upanishads, proto-Jainism and proto-Buddhism.  But the Vedas did not hold the same position in India as the Homeric, or larger mythological, traditions did in Greece, so the reactions in the two regions are hardly comparable.

One might add (and perhaps Jaspers said something about this) that the great Mesoamerican calendar was invented around this time, either in older Olmec centers on the Gulf coast or in younger Zapotec centers in Oaxaca.  The Mesoamerican pantheon was probably of earlier genesis, surely Olmec, and was diffused at this period.

The Andes region has been ever a difficult cultural region to parse.  And I shall not claim to say anything about it.  Except that potatoes are happy food; and llamas are very cute.  But they probably knew that before the "axial age."

This all strikes me as a huge coincidence, and nothing more.  India and China have these great, revolutionary thinkers.  But what about Mesopotamia and Egypt?  Surely we have to ask why the Axial Age left them in the dust.  Greece and Israel were peripheral, and only came into positions of influence rather later.  Same with Iran, which has become the major cultural power in central Asia with the rise of Islam: no thanks to Zarathustra.

To say nothing of Stanley Kubrick.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

This is true of most people, though, isn't it? The number of people genuinely interested in and active on environmental issues is fairly small. That's precisely why the effort is being made to persuade other groups to join the fight.

The fact that they're not already persuaded doesn't strike me as a good reason not to persuade them. Or am I missing something?

grist.org

This is probably all obvious enough to you, but I say it anyway because I think you're missing the point.  What is the purpose of this article?  If you're skeptical about whether Christians will take a turn for the better, fine.  But what's your point?  Where does that leave us?

If you don't think that seeking the support of Christians is going to be worthwhile, then don't seek it.  But don't put yourself in opposition to Christians.  Doing so will only frustrate Christians who might otherwise be open to being convinced.

And by the way, environmental issues are very different from the abortion issue.  There is absolutely no reason to assume that because Christians generally oppose abortion they also must oppose environmentalism.  There is simply no connection whatsoever.

I haven't gotten to Karen Armstrong's recent work yet, but it's literally next on my list. I enjoyed her previous work. The Battle for God is a compelling take on fundamentalism, and I find it mostly convincing.

Originally I thought the Axial Age theory was kind of loose and baggy. It's like you say, what do these disparate cultural events have to do with each other? And the period they talk about is pretty long.

But then I heard the case made that there were certain common things going on throughout the world at that time: advances in agricultural technology, political consolidation under monarchs, a more stable (and surely more demanding) collective life.

And it's interesting that Christianity throughout uses images of inverted political power-- "the kingdom of God is within you," "Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum" depicted on the cross, and of course the crown of thorns. And then the Buddha was conspicuously told he could be a very powerful king--by his parents, by the tempter Mara, which he rejected each time. And also the Axial Age's Old Testament prophets were shown to be increasingly speaking truth to Hebrew leaders. (I'm not saying these movements were political, but maybe there were some common "worldly" things that were in the background of each one.)

Then, of course, there is the more obvious fact that all of these people in the axial age were preaching compassion to fellow humans. Mend fences with your neighbor before you make your offerings at temple, etc.

So I think a case can be made that the time was ripe for these kinds of figures to appear and say the types of things they did. But again, I haven't read Armstrong's book yet (or Jaspers' for that matter). I came across the theory in secondary sources. So I can't really give a well-informed opinion at this point...  

J.S.

Economic Illiteracy Harms The Planet! www.voicesofreason.info.

Reaching out to the Christian right will put the environmental destruction up on the list of things, and make the politicians rethink their approach. Talking about abortion, gay marriage, etc. is really not necessary. If the Bush administration was one of the greatest environmentalist ones on record, then what does it matter to this blog whether or not he's against gay marriage? That would have to be a different blog or post.

Backing this up with an example: Britain's parties are tripping head over heels to prove how environmental they are without regard for the rest of their issues.

J.S.

Economic Illiteracy Harms The Planet! www.voicesofreason.info.

I'm not saying that you're creating something that isn't already there.  I realize that positions on environmental issues have long been divided along the same partisan lines as abortion, gay rights, and other issues.  But that no longer needs to be the case, and it is certainly not an arrangement which needs to be perpetuated.

Christians simply need to be educated about environmental issues, just like everybody else.  The advantage is that when Christians on the whole begin to become more educated about the environment, their level of organization can and will be a major factor in mobilizing real changes.  Again, it is a mistake to lump environmentalism with issues like abortion.  Doing so enforces the idea of many that environmentalism is a partisan issue.

If it helps, no, whether or not homosexuals are allowed to marry or obtain a similar legal status is not more important to me than the environment.  Like most people, I vote for the candidates whose platforms I tend to agree with most across the board.  Some issues are more important than others, true, but no one issue trumps all others by any means.

   But, we should also be realistic.  The worst candidates for the environment are from the Christian right.

   And we should note, that many of them use issues such as abortion, gay rights, immigration and other so-called "social issues" to get elected.  They do this, because they believe that such issues trump issues like the environment, minimum wage, health care and the global economy.

   Oh, yeah, and "security" from "terror".

   I hope that Visaudiokin can convince like minded brethren to move the environment higher up the list.  Most polls put it lower than ten, a not very important position (and that is for ALL voters).

   It is nice to say that environmentalists should reach out to the Christian right, but they tend to be least likely to vote for environmental candidates (based on past history and current trends).

   Why not reach out to the Christian center instead?  

   Why not reach out to minority Christians (you know, non-whites) instead?

   If we need to reach Christians, both of those groups are about as numerous as the Christian right, and probably easier to convince.  

   (Ironically, when we discuss Christians and the Christian right, we always seem to be discussing white Christians, who are very different politically from non-white Christians (based on voting patterns)).

   There are a lot of moderate and liberal Christians (especially when you include non-white ones) whose views are more open to environmentalism (for those who haven't already embraced it).

   Shouldn't we start with them?

patrick

You are most certainly correct that as of now "the worst candidates for the environment are from the... right."  I would generalize it more than you do by eliminating the "Christian" qualifier, as I think that the right-wing ignorance of environmental issues is not limited to the Christians on that end of the political spectrum.  But realistically speaking, yes, the right wing has a terrible track record in terms of environmental concerns.

And realistically speaking, yes, there are a number of issues important to Christian conservatives that will always affect their voting decisions.  But then, that is true for almost everyone.  Few people, left-wing or right-wing, Christian or otherwise, would be very likely to vote for an environmentally strong candidate with whom they disagree on every other major issue.  I think we can all agree that it is a rare individual who votes according to environmental concerns and ignores all else.

I don't suggest that we should put on rose-colored glasses and ignore the facts.  Christian conservatives on the whole are currently not paying much attention to environmental issues; they're not doing much to solve our problems.  We can call a spade a spade.  Furthermore, right-wing candidates as a rule are still ignoring the issues.

But this is precisely the reason I believe that efforts to educate Christians about the environment are valuable.  If Christians start paying attention to environmental issues, the natural result will be that conservative candidates are forced to start taking those issues seriously.  Because it will be something that their constituents care about - and this is certainly not necessarily because the constituents are Christians, but because the issues are important.

The worst thing you can do, I believe, is alienate the Christian right.  Allow environmentalism to remain in opposition to Christian conservativism and you are forced to continue to seek environmental reform in spite of the Christian right.

I mentioned earlier that I tend to disagree with your conclusions.  I have two reasons:

1. By specifically targeting the Christian left or Christian moderates, there's a good chance you're preaching to the choir (so to speak).

2. I'm not sure there's a huge difference between targeting the Christian left and targeting Christians generally.

J.S.

Economic Illiteracy Harms The Planet! www.voicesofreason.info.

That's BS.  There's a massive, massive difference between respect and agreement.  Respecting arguments you disagree with prevents you from falling into intellectual hubris, willful ignorance, and self-satisfaction - qualities which, and there's no way to put it delicately, you've shown in spades in your arguments against religion.  You dismiss the opinions of quite a large number of historians, including atheist and agnostic ones, about the origins of the Enlightenment because... what?  You just don't like the sound of it?  Your arguments have an extremely retro feel to them, like reading some late 19th century dusty old tract.  A few provocative insults at God, some red herrings, profound misunderstandings of religion, a little bit of looking down your nose, and there you go.  You can't think people haven't heard this before, can you?   Honestly, it's been done many, many, many, many times before, and with far more style and wit.  I think a bit of study of what you oppose would do you good - it would give your arguments a lot more heft.  

I absolutely respect your skills as an economist.  And, believe it or not, I respect your arguments, because without respecting them, I'll fall victim to the fallacy you've fallen into.  

You don't have to respect me or my opinions.  But it would do you good to learn how to respect differing opinions, so as not to underestimate your opponents - to study those arguments in order to refute them.  Else you'll keep talking a lot about things you know very little about.  

J.S.

Economic Illiteracy Harms The Planet! www.voicesofreason.info.

The boundary between what is acceptable and what is unacceptable in religious tolerance is clearly articulated in Sam Harris's The End of Faith:

It should be easy enough to see that belief in the full efficacy of prayer, for instance, becomes an emphatically public concern the moment it is actually put into practice: the moment a surgeon lays aside his worldly instruments and attempts to suture his patients with prayer, or a pilot tries to land a passenger jet with nothing but repetitions of the word "Hallelujah" applied to the controls, we are swiftly delivered from the provinces of private faith to those of a criminal court. (p. 44)

Which makes clear Jason's point that religion is not a sound basis for public policy.  Almost by definition a religion based on a gallimaufry of diverse folklore (such as the three main monotheistic religions, plus many others) cannot be a sound facilitator of universally applied laws.

So at some point we have to say, "No, certain religious beliefs simply are not compatible with certain environmental precepts."  If you truly believe that the Rapture is coming in your lifetime (as 22% of Americans do), then why must you worry about the state of the earth after that?  Who will be on earth after Judgement Day?  I'm not sure if a library of books on religious tolerance could get the fundamentalist out of this "James Watt dilemma."

Herein lies one of the many philosophical mines for environmentalist in the field of organizing fundamentalist Christians: you cannot get a Bible literalist to care about preserving habitat if the Rapture will make such a principle irrelevant when, for instance, all the things described in Revelation 8:6-13 happen to the earth.

I agree with the practical side of the argument: environmentalists most certainly should try to reach out to evangelicals.  But, to the extent that the principles of environmentalism are contradicted by the principles of a ritualistic, organized religion, either we will fail in our attempt, or the believer will change his or her principles.

These guys (there are precious few women in the club) grew up under an Established Anglican system that exacted a good deal of pietistic submission from its students.  (I was shocked to find out that the State schools in London STILL have manditory Anglican chapel for the better edification of their agnostic and Moslem students.)

So, stuckups like Dawkins, thinking 'turnabout is fair play,' can get more than a little rude when they set out to demonstrate that they have as much right to expect the same instant, awestruck deference due their Phds, as the Clerics expect for their Collars. And, of course, while British can be awfully NEGLIGENT about going to church and saying their prayers ... running into someone who treats Reason as a RELIGION ... well, it seems blasphemous, to them -- and the law, customs, and good manners are on their side.

Dawkins did make this  distinction:  "I did not say Christians are  ignorant; I said CREATIONISTS are ignorant." -- but it didn't seem to help anything.

Of course, a growing number of American Christians do seem feel "offend one, offend all,"  when someone speaks ill of James Dobson, for example. And along the same line, seem far more sensitive to percieved insults from non believers,  than to actual injuries, particularly when inflicted on non-believers.

J.S.

J.S. htt://voicesofreason.info

I entirely agree that atheists are a persecuted group, and are de facto disenfranchised in many ways.  E.g., the way that the case to have the words "under God" struck from the Pledge of Allegiance, brought by that Bay-area atheist father before the Supreme Court, was roundly mocked and dismissed by legal experts in many media sources, was quite disgraceful.  If I were a judge, and this case came before me, I would certainly have called for those words to be dropped, theist Christian that I am.

I also agree that it is not at all clear why any Christians should feel a "sense of victimization" in this country.  That is, I acknowledge that many Christians do feel it, but the feeling seems founded in a religiosity that is totally alien to me, and nothing that I can recognize as true Christianity.

It is indisputable that the Bill of Rights guarantees them their right to practice their religion freely.  No problem there.  But then, they seem to claim that the free practice of their religion involves the preaching of it openly, and expressing it publicly in other ways, to the point where it trespasses on the privacy and dignity of their neighbors.  It is indeed their right to say what they want in any totally free public context.  But do they not see that when they intrude their preaching and their prayer into a constrained governmental context (e.g., as with certain evangelical Christian military chaplains at the Air Force Academy, who want us to believe that in order for them to practise their religion, they must be permitted to preach to young people of all denominations and backgrounds, even while wearing the Air Force uniform), they come across as a species of Taliban?  Have they no sense of the dread they inspire?

That said, it is not prudent of you, dear Jason, to refer to the doctrines of biblical religion as "a fairy tale."  Nor is it courteous.  I have no doubt that you sincerely believe that.  (And of course I disagree with you, but that is not important right now.)  But considering that your words in Gristmill are extremely public, indeed, are global, you may wish to refrain from saying such things, which presumably are intended to offend and provoke.

Your correspondents are, many of them, thoughtful and respectful people, including Visaudiokin, JackH and Brudaimonia.  You owe them sincerity, to be sure, but also the consideration that their thoughtful and respectful participation in this dialogue deserves.

And, with respect to prudence, you might consider that, writing as you do from within the Gristmill flock, you are in some way a representative of all environmentalists.  It would of course be inaccurate to think of you as in any way representative or typical, but you might easily be perceived that way.

I have long admired these sentences:
<<
The comments of Gristmill users reflect the opinions of those individuals only, and do not necessarily reflect the viewpoints of Grist, its staff, its board members, their psychotherapists, or their aestheticians. Got it?
>>

What art!  Written by some anonymous Horace, who no doubt drinks much better coffee than I do, and who gets to see orcas and snow-capped volcanoes.

(I had to let my aesthetician go.  I discovered that she was inflating the botox bill, had authorized that Clairol be used for my weekly blond rinse instead of that top-of-the-line stuff from Monaco, and was about to order a remake of the apartment with a Damien Hirst theme -- the old stuff, that wasn't selling, so was on clearance, moldy cow pieces, remains of bats, stinky sharks.  And don't get me started on how she made it a hell on earth for that poor Ukrainian depilatrice, a true artist with the hot wax.)

Hopefully, dear Jason, it is quite clear to one and all that not only do you not speak for Grist, neither do you speak for any of us who read and write to Gristmill, neither for environmentalists in general.  Congratulations, you are definitely tui generis.  What an American hero!

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.