U.S. Evangelicals and Environmentalism

I think we weren't satisfied with Paradise.
We wanted more than a life tending God's garden.
We dreamed of big towers and golden calves.
And look where it's got us!

They told themselves and said it was god after...

That's nice. Seriously. It is. It's heartening to see that some are waking up.

Unfortunately, there are still plenty of well-placed, high-profile evangelicals that are actively fighting against any attempts to institutionalize environmentally-friendly limitations. And they are, much more often than not, constituents of the GOP who, in turn, suck on any energy lobbyist cock within reach.

True, and let us not forget peoples propensity for greed

I agree, Jan, that some Christian groups (dominionists especially) have used the Bible to justify just about every atrocity you can think of, and rape-and-pillage of the earth is just one of them.

But I do have to say that the Arkansas Baptists in my family are actually reasonable. All I have to do is bring up the part of the Bible that says (very loose quote here) "Take care of the earth and God's creatures as you would want Jesus to take care of you."

Have you ever seen chickens harvested? I'm talking about when the contractors (Foster Farms, for instance) goes out to the subcontractors (like members of my mother's family in Arkansas) to pick up the chickens, live, for transport to Foster Farms (or whatever contractor) for killing and processing.

Well, let's just say it is not for the faint-hearted, especially a faint-hearted vegetarian.

That's when I brought up the idea of "do you want Jesus taking care of you like you take care of the animals that have been entrusted into your care" deal.

Most of the family are very good-hearted Christians. It's just that they were raised raising their own chickens and killing them for their own table, and it was easy to transfer over to comercially raising thousands of chickens and having them harvested. They just had not really thought about it much before. Well, they may have THOUGHT about it, but not in connection to what it says in the Bible.

Then I have an uncle in Arkansas that has a puppy mill...there is no hope for him, and I have as little to do with him as possible.

I think you are correct that religion tells us what we want to hear.

I think religion also tells heinously corrupted individuals what the people the corrupt want to dominate want to hear.

Then the heinously corrupted individuals can pimp religion to the people they want to dominate by telling the "serfs" what they want to hear.

I think of the historical "Negro spirituals" (or "poor white spirituals"; they are often very similar) and regard them as singing justification for not getting what they want, or accepting horrible treatment by their "overseers," so that, in the after-life they can have that "Mansion Just Over the Hilltop," where the streets are all paved with silver and gold."

That's a song I still remember from Bible School. Scary. Talk about unfortunate imprinting.

Thank you.

Did you even bother to read the entire article? There are religious organizations doing everything in their power to prevent anything and anyone trying to solve pressing environmental issues because their religious text somehow tells them that environmentalism is “evil.”

Excerpt From the Cornwall Alliance Declaration on Global Warming:

WHAT WE DENY
1) We deny that Earth and its ecosystems are the fragile and unstable products of chance, and particularly that Earth’s climate system is vulnerable to dangerous alteration because of minuscule changes in atmospheric chemistry. Recent warming was neither abnormally large nor abnormally rapid. There is no convincing scientific evidence that human contribution to greenhouse gases is causing dangerous global warming.
2) We deny that alternative, renewable fuels can, with present or near-term technology, replace fossil and nuclear fuels, either wholly or in significant part, to provide the abundant, affordable energy necessary to sustain prosperous economies or overcome poverty.
3) We deny that carbon dioxide—essential to all plant growth—is a pollutant. Reducing greenhouse gases cannot achieve significant reductions in future global temperatures, and the costs of the policies would far exceed the benefits.
4) We deny that such policies, which amount to a regressive tax, comply with the Biblical requirement of protecting the poor from harm and oppression.

But this post is not about those people though. Is the title of this post not clear enough?

I posted this article because it informs readers about one of the main organizations that actively plot to thwart any efforts at addressing environmental problems. How sinister of me…

If you are here to distract away from the focus of this piece by all means go somewhere else and “spend” or rather waste your time.

Finally, there is no such thing as common ground with climate change and science deniers nor do I or other scientists interested in saving this planet believe that we are obligated in squandering more precious time on people who deny facts. People who deny facts should not be considered and if they are alienated in the process of trying to inform the public and save this planet… well so be it.

I really think "Global warming" is a shield for assholes who just don't want to take the time to care... or don't want to be educated... or basically... they're just plain evil. My reasoning for this is as such:

Even if you completely forget about global warming, there are many other aspects of our destruction that are manifesting as possible methods of our own extinction... Deforestation is slowly cutting off our air supply. Plants filter and create our air. Asthma and allergies are on the rise, and has been linked to lower air quality and toxins in the air. Fish in the ocean are now mostly too toxic to eat, as most of them contain dangerous levels of mercury, pcbs and other toxins.

Honestly, you don't have to be a scientist to understand that we play a role in our OWN survival here. Global warming doesn't even matter... it's EVERYTHING else that we're doing that's the real problem. We know that microbes live faster life cycles than us. Soil samples have been taken from all the corners of the world... and what they found was resistance to all of our antibiotics... in organisms that had never been near them before.

We fit somewhere into this web, and it is fragile. If you don't believe global warming, that's fine. You should believe in the oceans, and clean water, and breathable air, though...

This, to me... seems very suspiciously like it's just a government front organization to help sustain the use of fossil fuel. I mean, it says "we don't believe in renewable energy" right on there.

This organization is against all aspects of environmentalism not just global warming. Also, scroll up and click on the link to ThinkProgress. The information they discovered indicates that they are indeed a front group not for the government but rather oil companies.

That's is so true, Mother Eearth is sending messages we better listen. Now wars are based on religion, power and greed. The future we will have wars because of lack of drinkable water and food.

I am going out on a limb and say that the Koch brothers are probably fundamentalists.

How long is this limb? lol

I think it's a great article to post, it provides insight into the different struggling viewpoints of religious people.

Indeed.

Welcome!