I had the fortune until recently of not knowing that Michael Coren existed, but now that he has been thrust upon my attention by Jerry Coyne’s really hard-hitting “Vacuous Comment of the Week” over at Why Evolution is True, and since, whatever his nationality of origin, Michael Coren writes as a Canadian (for shame! for shame!), I feel the need to venture into the quagmire too, and (mixing metaphors) to hold Michael Coren’s feet to the fire. Let’s start where Jerry starts, with the Amazon.com blurb comment on Coren’s new book: Heresy: Ten Lies They Spread About Christianity:
Michael Coren explores why and how Christians and Christian ideas are caricatured in popular media as well as in sophisticated society. He takes on, and debunks, ten great myths about Christianity: that it supports slavery, is racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-intellectual, anti-Semitic, provokes war, resists progress, and is repressive and irrelevant. In a climate that is increasingly as ignorant of Christianity as it is good at condemning it, Coren gives historical background, provides examples of how these attacks are made, and explains the reality of the Christian response, outlining authentic Christian beliefs.
The interesting thing about this comment is that it is contradicted by statistics. Apparently, in the United States, at least, atheists and agnostics are more knowledgeable about religion than religious believers. Only slightly more than half of Catholics polled knew that the Roman Catholic Church teaches that the bread and wine become substantially the body and blood of Christ when consecrated by a priest! (Google “Atheists and knowledge of religion” for 16 million hits.)
However, there is something even more important to note in the blurb’s claim about Coren’s book. According to Coren, Christianity does not support slavery, is not racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-intellectual, anti-Semitic, does not provoke war, resist progress, and is not repressive or irrelevant. Let’s take them one by one.
First, slavery. Christianity may no longer support slavery, but it is surely significant that the gospel Jesus often tells parables about slaves (δούλος — doulos, in Greek) without any hint of criticism. Indeed, until the 19th century, slavery and Christianity existed quite comfortably together. According to Uta Ranke-Heinemann, in her book Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven, in its determination to enforce the celibacy of priests, the church quite frequently mandated the enslavement of the wives of priests. Leo IX (who died in 1054), at a Roman Synod, had the wives of priests enslaved for the Lateran Palace (p. 107). The Third Synod Toledo (589) ruled that all clerics who had strange women in their homes were to be punished, while the women were to be sold into slavery (p. 122). (And there are numerous other synods which follow this example.)
Second, racism. This belongs together with antisemitism, since antisemitism is a form of racism, as is clearly shown by the fact that the Jesuit order used to require proof that candidates had blood unmixed by Jewish blood (what a strange concept!), “calculating ancestry to the fifth generation,” as David Kertzer points out in his book about The Popes Against the Jews (p. 207). Christian texts are undeniably deeply antisemitic. Indeed, the division of the Christian Bible bears this antisemitism on their title pages: Old (Jewish) Testament, New (Christian) Testament. This antisemtism is inexpungeable, since it is assumed that the texts themselves are sacred.
Third, sexism. Suggesting that Christianity is not sexist must be meant as a joke. Not only are the Christian texts deeply tainted by sexism — “But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence” (1 Timothy 2.12 KJV) — but its practice is almost everywhere sexist. The fact that women could be enslaved by the church should be evidence enough that Christianity is deeply sexist. According to Ranke-Heinemann the practice of the church often implied the sexual enslavement of women. For example, according to Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury (1207-1228): “The wife must rather let herself be killed than her husband sin.” (p. 154) This is still the rule, according to the Vatican (or at least it was when Ranke-Heinemann wrote her book Putting Away Childish Things), for according to the pope’s advisor on family affairs, it is better for an HIV positive husband to infect his wife than to wear a condom during intercourse. And this does not even begin to touch the hem of the church’s cloak of misogyny, for women are to be left to die, rather than to abort the foetus which is killing her; women cannot be priests or bishops or popes, because … well, just because. Jesus was a man, after all. A woman’s sacrifice on a cross could not have redeemed mankind.
Fourth, homophobic. This really has got to be a joke! As Ahannasmi says in a comment over at Why Evolution is True:
If I read this right (English is only my second language), the blurb of Mr Coren’s book asserts that the Church is not homophobic, while his article asserts that the Church cannot be “bullied into accepting homosexuality.” Are the writers of these two pieces the same Mr Coren?
This is surely to place the keystone into a well-built arch. Of course Christianity is homophobic, and Coren contradicts himself. Homosexuality is, according to the Bible, an abomination that will consign a person to hell. Calling homosexuality a grave disorder and then saying that homosexuals should be treated with respect is clearly contradictory, for saying that someone is gravely disordered, when they are not, is already to treat them with disrespect. For a wonderful satire which puts Christianity’s homophobia in hilarious perspective, see Deborah Ross’s “Gay Marriage and the Apocalypse: you have been warned.” Or see Nick Cohen’s Observer article: “A Church fit only for hypocrites and bigots.”
Fifth, anti-intellectualism. In one sense this is obviously not true, since Christianity is, unlike many other religions, deeply theological in its self-understanding, and theological systems of great complexity have been created in order to explain and justify Christian belief. On the other hand, there is a tendency to dogmatism in Christianity, displayed clearly by the title of Coren’s book (Heresy) which is deeply antagonistic to intellectual freedom. Indeed, as I have pointed out before, the Vatican’s Instruction on the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian outlines anti-intellectual principles that are hard to ignore. The Instruction speaks about freedom of research (the sine qua non of intellectual responsibility) as follows:
12. Freedom of research, which the academic community rightly holds most precious, means an openness to accepting the truth that emerges at the end of an investigation in which no element has intruded that is foreign to the methodology corresponding to the object under study.
In theology this freedom of inquiry is the hallmark of a rational discipline whose object is given by Revelation, handed on and interpreted in the Church under the authority of the Magisterium, and received by faith. These givens have the force of principles. To eliminate them would mean to cease doing theology. In order to set forth precisely the ways in which the theologian relates to the Church’s teaching authority, it is appropriate now to reflect upon the role of the Magisterium in the Church.
Clearly, freedom of research is limited by the vigilance (as it is called) of the Magisterium, so that, later the Instruction can say (para 34):
Certainly, it is one of the theologian’s tasks to give a correct interpretation to the texts of the Magisterium and to this end he employs various hermeneutical rules. Among these is the principle which affirms that Magisterial teaching, by virtue of divine assistance, has a validity beyond its argumentation, which may derive at times from a particular theology. As far as theological pluralism is concerned, this is only legitimate to the extent that the unity of the faith in its objective meaning is not jeopardized.(28) Essential bonds link the distinct levels of unity of faith, unity-plurality of expressions of the faith, and plurality of theologies. The ultimate reason for plurality is found in the unfathomable mystery of Christ who transcends every objective systematization. This cannot mean that it is possible to accept conclusions contrary to that mystery and it certainly does not put into question the truth of those assertions by which the Magisterium has declared itself.(29) As to the “parallel magisterium”, it can cause great spiritual harm by opposing itself to the Magisterium of the Pastors. Indeed, when dissent succeeds in extending its influence to the point of shaping; a common opinion, it tends to become the rule of conduct. This cannot but seriously trouble the People of God and lead to contempt for true authority. (30)
Those words – ”a validity beyond its argumentation” — say all that needs to be said about Christianity’s anti-intellectualism. And if the mystery of Christ is truly unfathomable, as this says, it is hard to think how a conclusion could be known to be “contrary to that mystery.”
Sixth, anti-Semitism. Already dealt with under racism above.
Seventh, does not provoke war. The trouble with making general claims of the kind made by the blurb, and presumably by Coren’s book — which I have no intention of reading — life is too short as it is — is that there are bound to be counterexamples. While the crusades are reasonably thought to be a response to Muslim invasion of lands once in the hands of Christians, it is scarcely possible to deny that the church preached the crusades. Nor is it possible to deny the church’s role in the Albegensian Crusade, or in the many appeals to Christians to fight in wars of practically every description. Nor can it be doubted that Christians have assumed, even when they were fighting each other, that the god of Christians was on their side. In light of this it would be exceedingly hard to justify the claim that Christianity does not, has never, will never, provoke war. Indeed, the wars of religion of the sixteenth and seventeeth centuries were all provoked by Christianity.
Eighth, does not resist progress. One need only point to Pius IX’s Syllabus of Errors in order to rebut this claim — of which the eightieth error condemned is this:
The Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization.
Whether, as Michael Coren apparently claims, based on the excerpted bit of his book in the Catholic Register, the church has not impeded scientific progress, is true or not, may be open to question, since, indeed, until fairly recently, most scientists have been Christian believers (and many are still so), and science did arise within a largely Christian Europe in disarray over religious differences.* Nevertheless, there seems to be little doubt that the contribution of Christian belief to scientific exploration and discovery is miniscule. Newton may have been a Christian, but he was an Arian Christian, who did not believe in the Trinity, which he believed was the creation of the anti-Christ the Catholic Church, and his laws of motion, although giving appropriate tribute to his god, even giving it a bit of work to do from time to time, are formulated without so much as a nod in the direction of Christian theology. Christian theology, as the quote above from the CDF’s Instruction indicates, cannot accept anything which is in logical tension with itself. Thus, Pope Karol Józef Wojtyła held, contary to the theory of evolution, not only that evolution is guided by god, but also that god intervened directly in the process to create human beings with souls, which are not animals in the ordinary sense, but ontologically distinct from all other life-forms on earth. This belief is clearly at odds with the discoveries of science, and, given any pressure at all, could easily impede scientific progress.
Ninth, is not repressive. Tell that to the nuns in the United States, or to women in countries where the church has managed to criminalise abortion, or to the dying, where the church continues to interfere with attempts to legalise assisted dying — all evil forms of absolutism and theocracy which make of the church, as it makes of most religions, enemies of truth and freedom.
And, tenth, is not irrelevant. Well, of course it’s irrelevant! It’s not true! How much more irrelevant can you get?!
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*In my view it is precisely this disarray, and the consequent intellectual ferment of dissent and revision, that is the main source of the scientific revolution, and not Christianity or Christian faith as such.
Great article, Eric. It’s as if Coren is trying to defend the indefensible, rather like holocaust denial, it’s not morally acceptable. Christianity is a failed ethical project, and ought to be understood as such, and it’s up to believers to recognize this. I do not believe someone can be so blind to the evils of religion and still claim to be a decent or moral person. I also recognize that being atheist does not make someone moral, there is still much work to do in an ethical project that is defensible.
There are (mostly modern) varieties of Christianity that arguably are indeed innocent of all the charges Coren wishes to rebut. However, Coren is not an adherent of any of them, and indeed probably regards them as apostate.
That’s true, Eamon, and I almost mentioned it, but since they are marginal expressions of Christianity, and are largely unbelieving in many respects, they hardly count against the witness of the Christian centuries before the modern period. Christianity cannot take its current incarnation as definitive of itself, since there is the undoubted evidence of 1600 to 1700 hundred years that compete with its best exemplifications today. But even contemporary Christianity exhibits many if not most of the failings that Coren apparently denies. How can Christianity be taken seriously if the kinds of thing that he says are representative?
Egbert, I agree that Christianity is a largely failed portion of the ethical project. Nevertheless, I would say that Christianity, though not exhibiting this feature widely during most its history, did at least go some way towards putting things like compassion and concern for the downtrodden on the ethical menu, and this is not to be sniffed at. I think it is the more sensitive parts of the Christian experience that Holloway is loath to let go, and I am prepared to go that far with him. I’m glad you liked the post. I have been firming it up and finding spelling mistakes, even though the spell check told me no writing errors were found.
I actually started out intending to speak about Christianity and science, and then found rich picking elsewhere. Then I noticed that science was still in the title, so had to go back and change that. It was perhaps too quickly written, after having already published quite a long post this morning.
It is interesting that in the early days of science, scientists were mining the Bible for hypotheses to test – especially about organismal diversity. Almost all have come up wanting and been replaced, yet we still find the religious trying to claim their holy books predict scientific findings (apologetics?). These are all pretty much post hoc; I am pretty sure none actually inspired scientists originally. Perhaps some historians know some sources. It is also clear that theology is so distinctly not scientific – or why would they insist on it being a different “way of knowing.”
As an exercise, try turning the cause and effect around…
It’s people that support slavery, are racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-intellectual, anti-Semitic, provoke war, resist progress, and repress others. Religion (and specifically Christianity) are too willingly persuaded to provide moral justification for these attitudes.
I’ll agree that the various churches were complicit in these activities and sponsored particular wars etc., but people were all too willing to go along with what suited them.
The extension to this argument is that political movements (Facism, Communism) have also tapped into the same source of bile to drive their regimes.
So my conclusion is not that most religions fail to measure up to modern moral standards, although that is true, but that they have failed to raise the moral standards of their supporters. Which, of course, is what many of them claim to do.
Depends on your definition of “irrelevant”.
To me, all religions are irrelevant as moral or ethical guidance. On an individual level, you cannot get more irrelevant than religion is to me. I don’t need it on Sunday or any other day or the week. Nor for any special occasion. The entire enterprise is cordoned off from my life.
However, religions currently still have a lot of influence in the halls of power. Undeserved influence, to be sure. But that’s relevance in a real, substantive way.
It was religion that persuaded George Bush to ban stem cell research. That’s relevant.
Relevant primarily because the decisions religion reaches about any issue are likely to be anti-rational, anti-human, and anti-enlightenment. And as long as even one Congressman or Member of Parliament listens to those voices which claim to speak on behalf of an angry god, then it’s relevant.
Sadly and wrongly relevant.
“Eighth, does not resist progress.’
The English academic CEM Joad spent some time compiling his own index to the history books in his private collection. He apparently began by writing down the details of every time the functionaries of the various churches objected to some harmless and beneficial bit of progress, but this occurred so often that eventually he was reduced to the shorthand entry: ‘Bishops: at it again’.
Corio. Great story! And, given the kinds of things that have been going on lately, with the CofE and the government, the Vatican and the nuns, the wing-nut pastors and their ideas of herding homosexuals into concentration camps, etc, you can see Joad’s point.
Micheal Coren is indeed a hoary British remittance man now inflicting his troglodyte ways on the new world.
He has a special place in my heart as it was on his “Michael Coren Show” on CTS (
Crossroads Television System – “Television You Can Believe In!”) that I first became acquainted with Justin Trottier who was at the time associated with CFI Canada. Justin was the token atheist on Coren’s show and I was sufficiently impressed Justin’s ability to hold his own in an obviously biased and quite often overtly hostile environment that I joined CFI Canada.
So thank you very much Mr. Coren.
To give Michael Coren his due, compared to the televangelist garbage that oozed out of the other CTS time slots, his show actually addressed controversial issues, with emphasis on free speech, although inevitably with a “poor, poor, persecuted christian” slant.
He’s interviewed Tarek Fatah and I saw the interview with Mohamed Elmasry where when asked by Michael Coren in an interview on October 19, 2004 if “…everyone in Israel, irrespective of gender, over the age of 18 is a valid [military] target?”, CIC President Mohamed Elmasry responded, “Yes, I would say.”
I haven’t watched him for years but I see that he’s moved over to Sun TV, the Canadian answer to Fox TV, so I can just imagine what sort of vile wingnuttery he’s up to now.
Good article as usual, Eric.
You could add to the racism section the whole “Curse of Ham” business, used to support serfdom in Medieval Europe and slavery in Europe and the Americas, and not repudiated by the LDS Church until 1978.
Where to begin?
Eric, I don’t have any axe to grind, it’s OK with me if you don’t want to be a Christian, I’ve only been one myself for the past 6 years, before which I too was an atheist.
But I feel obliged to point out the errors you’re making. Firstly, Christianity does not equate to Catholicism. Catholicism is a good example of how NOT to understand and follow Christ’s example and guidance.
In fact I doubt that Jesus would want to be associated with ANY of the churches that operate in his name. I daresay that all the criticisms levelled at Christianity have to do with the distortions introduced by the industry that has arisen over the last 2000 years feeding off the teachings of Jesus.
So can we get that straight please? If you want to bag the religion industry’s foibles, say so. All true devotees of Jesus and his teachings will heartily agree with you.
The true Christians, the followers of Jesus, are the “ekklesia”, the people. They are not the religious bureaucracies, the “churches”, whose interests are necessarily conflicted by their human desire for wealth.
Next – Jesus endorsement of “slavery”.
He didn’t. The term “slave” today is associated by most, and it seems by you, with African captives crammed into the hulls of sailing ships, spending months bathing in their own vomit and faeces, without adequate food, water, or air and not seeing sunlight until, in the case of the less than 50% of them who survived the trip, their arrival at port where they were sold like cattle in the market.
A slave in 1st century Judea might be a refugee from a war or just someone who couldn’t pay their bills. Slavery for them was usually their preferred option, the only other ones being starvation or begging for a living. It was a legitimate livelihood, in a society where, unlike today, it was not necessarily the norm to have a so-called paid job. They received their recompense in kind – food, lodgings, care, etc.
If you read the NT you will see examples of masters extending affection and taking good care of their “slaves”.
Your claim that “Jesus often tells parables about slaves (δούλος — doulos, in Greek) without any hint of criticism” tells me that you’re looking at 1st century societal mores through modern day lenses.
I don’t have time right now to go through the rest of your points Eric, I will later, but if they’re anything like this one I’d urge your readers to get a 2nd opinion before they take your views on board.
No offence Eric, I bear you no ill-will, but the things you are saying here are doing a disservice to those who haven’t yet come to know Jesus and might be put off from ever doing so by your views. From my own experience, of how discovering Jesus and embracing his teachings can turn around a life of self-centred misery to become one of enormous joy and fulfilment, I would regard that as a tragedy.
Cheers mate.
Eric,
As I mentioned on J. Coyne’s site, it’s ridiculous to see Michael Coren defending the compatibility of Christianity and Science given I have heard him on the radio refer to Evolution as a ridiculous story no rational person could believe. (This was a number of years ago – it seems he’s more cagey these days about expressing doubt on evolution. I’d be interested to see what he says about it in his new book, so see if anything has changed).
RH
No true Scotsman lives!
As for Christianity being anti-intellectual, I have two words for you: Creation Museum. Nuff said.
This is off-topic, but #11, SaviourBreath (?), offers an instance of the “other ways of knowing” we often hear about, in this case Christianity as therapy. This is probably more common than not; people choose to believe because it makes them feel good, helps them achieve their goals, or lets them belong to a group, not because it’s the most likely hypothesis. Independent thinking is actually quite rare, even among public intellectuals, as evidenced by the widespread support of the invasion of Iraq or the newfound enthusiasm for reducing the deficit by all the Very Serious People.
People don’t choose Christianity or reject global warming because they’ve thought about the issues carefully. They choose which side they’re on and put on the appropriate uniform.
Not exactly bad Jim, the causality was in the other direction. I didn’t choose to believe in order to feel good, especially not to “belong to a group” (spare me! where does that come from?)
I came to believe first, THEN discovered the effect it had on my life. When we assume something’s the way it is just so it’ll fit in with our belief system we just stay where we are. I’d still be an atheist if I’d kept doing that
“People don’t choose Christianity or reject global warming because they’ve thought about the issues carefully. ”
Some do. I reject ‘global warming’ — if by that you mean the idea that anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions are causing a large and potentially catastrophic rise in global temperatures — for the same reason I reject Christianity: having started as a believer, I actually read about it, and thought about it, and discovered all the logical flaws and the vile misbehaviour of some of its advocates.
Please don’t equate AGW scepticism with religious belief: if anything the reverse is true. Never underestimate the appeal of an apocalyptic cult with a dollop of guilt to throw around.
SaviourBreath, I’ve been struggling to understand the sales pitches of the evangelists, wondering to whom they’d appeal. I’ve heard testimonials from people who recommend faith because it made them feel better or made them better people, and there are numerous accounts of people who adjusted to a church which they found comfortable. I’m casting the widest net over the range of possibilities I can conceive that are distinct from my own narrow pragmatist epistemology. In other words, two from column A, three from column B; no one is both pork and chicken.
Corio37: you definitely need to find some other sources of information. The idea that global warming is a myth promulgated by a conspiracy of all the world’s scientists and governments, opposed only by a doughty band of coal miners and oil drillers, not incidentally the wealthiest companies on the planet, is harder to swallow than a savior called into existence in a cracker by the snap of a finger.
Back on track, the Vatican has made it clear that philosophers can speculate as freely as they want so long as their conclusions agree with accepted doctrine. One might otherwise wonder why Catholic theology is so generally considered a stagnant backwater.
Dear corio37, I don’t want to debate global warming, theism is hard enough. But I would be interested in hearing about the vile misbehaviour of the climate change advocates.
OK I’m being silly, I knew you meant the Pope. But seriously c37, the fact that some of the “believers”, and they may just be in it for the money, behave badly tells you absolutely nothing about Jesus or his teachings. That’s really the essence of Christianity isn’t it? He’s in no way responsible for what his alleged followers get up to.
Bad Jim, I see where you’re coming from. I was just taking the opportunity to shoot my mouth off, or witness as we call it. I’m really a nice guy, but have to admit I’m a sucker for Jesus these days. I know it can be annoying, it used to annoy the hell out of me when I was an atheist. Peace bro.
I love saviourbrea’s audacity. Perhaps he has no idea Eric is more knowledgeable about Christianity than he, but it is certainly an example of ignorance.
I would also add that DiscoveredJ’s reversal of perspectives is a better explanation for a theory on religion. It starts from external social indoctrination over time, until the unconscious is won over, and only then does it become consciously a belief, which is a rationalization of the religious mindset.
“Corio37: you definitely need to find some other sources of information. The idea that global warming is a myth promulgated by a conspiracy of all the world’s scientists and governments, opposed only by a doughty band of coal miners and oil drillers, not incidentally the wealthiest companies on the planet, is harder to swallow than a savior called into existence in a cracker by the snap of a finger.”
I never said this, and the fact that you feel obliged to caricature sceptic views in this way suggests that you are less certain of your ability to make us see the light than you would have us believe. But if you really feel that you can enlighten AGW sceptics with a few simple facts, why not hop along to Watts Up With That and give it a go? As the winning Science Blog on the web two years running (plus a Lifetime Achievement Award for its founder, Anthony Watts), and approaching 120 million views, it’s an unparalleled forum in which to put forward the simple facts that will convince us all we are wrong. And nobody who has something to say is ever barred from saying it, provided they do it politely — unlike some of the pro-alarmist blogs.
Indeed Egbert I confess to being ignorant of a very many things, including, as you observe, Eric’s extensive knowledge of Christianity. I must say, no disrespect intended, he disguises it well in his writing.
Saviourbreath. There are a number of things I could say in response. First, as Michael Fugate points out, you are committing the “no true Scotsman” fallacy, trying to confine Christianity to a definition which is not open to criticism. But if the central traditions of the church — Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christianity — are not Christian, then the term starts to lose meaning. You say that
On what do you base this claim? While it is obvious that I have a fairly focused opposition to the Roman Catholic Church, chiefly because of its stand on abortion, assisted dying, and homosexuality, the idea that there is any reasonable way to “follow Christ’s example and guidance” seems to me to be impossible. If the gospel Jesus was a real man, then he was simply wrong. He was not going to return in power and glory, and his recommendations that people should no longer think of the morrow, and instead to consider the lilies of the field which neither sow nor spin, are counsels which no one can follow — or should. In a world as populous as ours it would spell disaster on a massive scale. People make up Christs to suit themselves. There is no prescribed pattern of life that can reasonably be thought to reflect Christ’s example and guidance. And Jesus’ ready way of consigning those who do not believe in him to hell should be a moral stumbling block to everyone.
However, in my case — to get back on track — I avoided using fundamentalist protestantism as a foil, because it’s such an easy target, and finding fault would be too easy. At least the Roman Catholic makes some pretence of being intellectually respectable, and attempts to reconcile itself with science. As guilherme says above about the intellectual respectability of Christianity: Creation Museum — ’nuff said.
As to Jesus’ use of the term δούλος, and slavery in the first century. Then, as now, slavery is (and was) a wicked institution, unfeeling, selfish and cruel. Supposing that some owners were kind to their slaves is like saying that Hitler liked dogs. Jesus used the master-slave trope as a model for man’s relation to god, and Paul reinforced it. Paul even sent a runaway slave back to his owner, and whether Philemon was kind to Onesimus or whether he punished him savagely is not known. The survival of the letter might indicate the former, but it might have been a copy, or found amongst Philemon’s possessions after his death. We just don’t know. In any event, Paul encouraged even slaves who could obtain their freedom to remain as they were, and to work that much more sedulously for their owners, lest Christians should be accused of upsetting the social arrangements of the ancient world of which slavery was an integral part. And then he played that cruel game of saying that freemen are really slaves of Christ, while slaves are really free in Christ Jesus. This is palpable nonsense, yet you seem to have taken it to heart.
As to your fears that I might do a disservice by making it impossible for people to come to know Jesus, that is my intention — nor do I think it a disservice. The church that I know is regressive, repressive, and often morally blind. The purpose of my blog is to oppose the religious forces that oppose assisted dying. But I could easily pick out a number of areas where Christianity tends to be a regressive force. And, were it given power, it would become even more so, as is evidenced by the anti-gay statutes in Uganda, or the anti-abortion laws in Chile, and other Central and South American countries where Christianity has the upper hand.
I just read The AGW Smoking Gun by Gary Thompson in American Thinker, and found out a bit about the opposition to AGW. I’m not disputing the evidence that shows no appreciable decrease over the period observed in these three studies, but I have to ask corio37, is that the whole story?
Aren’t the following three facts of concern?
(a) IR radiation eoutward mission is the means by which excess heat is lost from earth and its atmosphere,
(b) CO2 in the atmosphere traps IR radiation, and
(c) the levels of atmospheric CO2 have increased enormously in the last century and especially in the last few decades, with the latest estimate of annual CO2 production by human activity being 30 billion tonnes.
Aren’t these three items worth factoring into the picture? I would have thought, and I confess to being a complete ignoramus in this field as well as several others, that if anything these three facts are more compelling than the three experiments to compare the levels of outgoing long-wave IR radiation on three isolated days in the 36 year period up to 2006.
Can we afford to turn a blind eye to the emission of 30 billion extra tonnes of CO2 a year, whether in the context of concerns about global warming or other potential effects?
steve oberski
Justin Trottier is still associated with CFI Canada; he is the National Communications Director
Thanks for taking the trouble to reply Eric, I appreciate it.
I concede the “no true Scotsman” accusation – so that’s what that comment meant.
The fact is that you and I feel much the same about the Catholic church as an institution, about its doctrines certainly. I think they have it tragically wrong wrt assisted dying and homosexuality. Still thinking about abortion.
“the idea that there is any reasonable way to “follow Christ’s example and guidance” seems to me to be impossible”
No that hasn’t been my experience Eric. It’s too late at night over here to start defending the bible as the key to understanding the existence, nature, and motivation of God/Jesus. Maybe some other time.
“If the gospel Jesus was a real man, then he was simply wrong. He was not going to return in power and glory,”
What if he was talking metaphorically, about your death, my death. You do believe that’s going to happen don’t you? – Sorry, that’s a bit argumentative
It occurs to me tho that the whole 2nd coming thing is just that perhaps, a metaphor. If you start to read Jesus words carefully you see a lot of hidden meanings. You also discover what an appealing sense of humour he had, one of the things that first drew me to him. He is nothing like any of the Popes that you may be thinking of, just the opposite.
“his recommendations that people should no longer think of the morrow, and instead to consider the lilies of the field which neither sow nor spin, are counsels which no one can follow — or should.”
You’re definitely right there, if you take them at face value and to mean never plan for the future. But what he said had a context, one which he was introducing a little balance into.
“People make up Christs to suit themselves. There is no prescribed pattern of life that can reasonably be thought to reflect Christ’s example and guidance.”
It’s remarkably simple Eric as it turns out. It’s not a matter of nailing the precise lifestyle, it’s just following a general motivation in your heart, an intention. God is very understanding and He knows the heart. That’s all that matters.
“And Jesus’ ready way of consigning those who do not believe in him to hell should be a moral stumbling block to everyone”
Yep that’s for sure. But this is another item that I believe is a metaphorical device. In a nutshell, I firstly don’t believe that Jesus/God punishes anyone for anything they (we) do. We punish ourselves by making wrong choices, ones which cause us harm in the long run (and I mean the long run in THIS life too).
God’s “laws” are really guidelines for a lifestyle which will protect us from our own misguided inclinations and the harm they’ll cause us. God knows all about it since He designed us to be in many ways like Himself. I suppose it was actually inevitable that we had to be that way, given that we’re His creations.
“Hell” is, I believe, the consequences we experience, firstly in this life, from our decisions which go against His advice. I meet people every day who are living in hells of their own devising.
I further believe that a life of hell here in this temporal realm sets us up for more of the same in the next. Nothing to do with Jesus shovelling us into a lake of fire.
I do expect these unfortunate consequences to be eternal however, whatever eternal means. It’s possibly quite different form the popular image, of a number of years with more zeros on the right than you can possibly count.
There’s good scientific evidence (more philosophic than scientific I suppose, but good nonetheless) that God is eternal. I’ve concluded that our lives came from His self and so they too are most likely eternal. If that’s so then suicide is impossible, it’s just a transition from the temporal to the eternal.
“I avoided using fundamentalist protestantism as a foil, because it’s such an easy target, and finding fault would be too easy. At least the Roman Catholic makes some pretence of being intellectually respectable, and attempts to reconcile itself with science. As guilherme says above about the intellectual respectability of Christianity: Creation Museum — ’nuff said.”
I don’t disagree with any of that Eric.
“Then, as now, slavery is (and was) a wicked institution, unfeeling, selfish and cruel. Supposing that some owners were kind to their slaves is like saying that Hitler liked dogs. Jesus used the master-slave trope as a model for man’s relation to god, and Paul reinforced it.”
No Eric you’re looking thru your 2012 spectacles again. The fact is the ancient Israelites exhibited an extraordinary degree of compassion towards slaves, at a time when other nations treated them appallingly by comparison.
God abhors cruelty of any kind – and I don’t want to get into a debate on that right now, it’s way past my bedtime.
But He was meeting His children, as always, where they were at the time. Slavery was a given at that time, so He did what He could to make it less onerous. Slaves taken in battle were the survivors, those not killed. They, especially the females, had no recourse other than slavery if they wished to avoid starvation and brutalisation by transient marauders. Generally speaking it was their salvation.
The comparison with Hitler is just wrong. Hitler is to be lined up with the rest of his generation, not with those of the 40th century, and by 20th century standards he was devoid of any redeeming feature, regardless of how he treated his dog.
“that freemen are really slaves of Christ, while slaves are really free in Christ Jesus. This is palpable nonsense, yet you seem to have taken it to heart”
I can understand it appears that way Eric. I have to say that my view of the world and of this life has changed dramatically over the last 7 years, but it didn’t all happen the first day. I have now what I call a “big picture” view, in which things that appear to be tragedies to many people seem less tragic. I realise that this must seem like insanity to you, and maybe even offensive, and that being the case I freely apologise. I’m just telling you what it’s like for me. Yes it’s true that I secretly (well no longer) would love it if you, and any others reading this in disbelief, were to end up going down this same path. But of course that’s not going to happen. Or if it does it won’t be because of anything I say.
“As to your fears that I might do a disservice by making it impossible for people to come to know Jesus, that is my intention — nor do I think it a disservice.”
No. But you would if you were looking through my eyes.
“The church that I know is regressive, repressive, and often morally blind. The purpose of my blog is to oppose the religious forces that oppose assisted dying. But I could easily pick out a number of areas where Christianity tends to be a regressive force. And, were it given power, it would become even more so, as is evidenced by the anti-gay statutes in Uganda, or the anti-abortion laws in Chile, and other Central and South American countries where Christianity has the upper hand”
No argument there. I support your stand on assisted dying, please accept my condolences for the grief you’ve suffered.
It’s quite legitimate to define Christianity as the official bodies that constitute what I call the religion industry. What we see in all of them is the familiar political model of the emergence of an institution based on an ideal, culmination at the height of support for that ideal, and decline into a sustained period of self-preservation. I expect all the churches, Catholic and protestant, are currently operating from an agenda of self preservation and wealth protection by their principals and staff.
But to me that’s not true Christianity, those churches, those bureaucracies, are a counterfeit Christianity. I call the movement that Jesus envisaged, that he sought to promote and see develop down through the ages until the end (as global warming takes over), I call that Christianity. That’s the fair dinkum Christianity that I’m part of.
Saviourbreath… You can’t simply make things up as you go along, convenient as this might be. It saves you from having to present arguments for you beliefs. But, by the same token, it means that your beliefs are just indioscyrcatic preferences. Saying something like this:
is all very well, but this is just a way of wiggling off an logical hook: “These things are wrong — oh, but that isn’t really Christianity.” This is not an acceptable move in the game. You do it elsewhere too, eg., where you say:
Leaving aside the rather snide remark about my believing that I will die, this is simply a cop out. There is absolutely no sign in the gospel stories that Jesus meant his apocalyptic remarks to be taken metaphorically.
Of course, that’s the trouble with most theology. Since it has no firm foundation, people feel empowered to say almost anything in response to doubts and questions. You say the belief came first, and then the experience, but your beliefs are all over the map, and not clearly nailed down anywhere. Obviously, you want your experience of knowing Jesus (whatever that is supposed to mean) to endure, and you’re prepared to play games with words so long as it doesn’t upset the experience, and ready, too, to reject almost everything that is identifiably Christian in order to do so. This is simply a kind of haze of belief that accompanies your feelings, and cannot be taken seriously.
Another sign that you are playing games with words is the ridiculous notion that slavery was ever anything but a horrible fate for most of those caught up in it. Certainly, if slaughtering your enemies was customary, the change to keeping some of your enemies alive (mainly women, as the Bible says, who had not had sex) has elements of mercy, but more likely developed because the idea of having women on tap was a great way to win the approval and obedience of soldiers. Sure, some people were no doubt kind to their slaves, but many were not, and there is absolutely no reason to imagine that “biblical” slavery was anything other than miserable. Trying to whitewash the Bible by taking away the sting of the accusation of slavery, by making slavery humane, is simply special pleading — another fallacy. Of course, there were rules that governed slavery (in the Bible as well as in Greek and Roman and other societies), and it probably was not quite so racist as, say, 18th and 19th century slavery, but this didn’t make slavery a humane institution by any means. In Roman society many slaves held high office, and could buy their freedom. The church, however, as I point out in the post above, not only approved slavery, but practiced it in particularly brutal ways. Of course, you are free to say that that’s not “true” Christianity, but that is simply a “get out of jail free” card. It is an arbitrary way to get yourself out of trouble, and to colour Christianity pure, no matter what. This is not a reasonable type of argumentation.
So far, you haven’t given me any reason that you have any idea at all what you are talking about.
Imagine a holocaust denialist turning up at Auschwitz and lecturing the visitors and Jews on how they’re all wrong. I can’t help but feel that Saviorbrea’s comments are as morally offensive, even if he does not recognize his own sense of entitlement and privilege, the very things which new atheists in their shrill and strident way, have tried to point out for several years now.
I will happily defend the religious if they’re a minority, if they’re being persecuted, but it’s unacceptable to try and extinguish and tramp over the rights of others, simply because you believe you’re the chosen one.
And to highlight the urgency of a moral project amongst rational atheists, Leah Libresco’s public conversion to Catholicism, shows just how fragile the atheist identity can be, when there is no sense of meaning in only a materialistic view of the world.
See Daniel Fincke’s excellent analysis of Libresco’s bizarre conversion.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/camelswithhammers/2012/06/19/on-atheist-blogger-leah-lilbrescos-conversion-to-catholicism/comment-page-1/#comment-346173
It’s my experience that the only people who interpret biblical passage metaphorically are those who don’t like what the plain language of the passage says.
I think that our Ozzy friend’s, Saviourbreath’s, internet handle sounds out as “Save your breath” (the name itself, from a Christian standpoint, reads almost like blasphemy), so it doesn’t make a lot of sense to respond to his woolly thinking. That is the problem, however, with so much religious belief. It is woolly, and as changeable as the weather I read bits of Daniel Fincke’s analysis of Libresco’s conversion. Woolly, that’s the problem. People think it’s okay to believe things because, well, as she says about Christianity, they are “internally consistent and even attractive.” Whatever you can say about consistency, what in particular could she find attractive about it? Gay hating misogyny? Hell and damnation for insubordination? Intolerant dismissal of all other world views? Theocratic intrusions into governance? Her response, like Saviourbreath’s, is woolly. Fincke is probably right. She was an empty just waiting to be filled, and the Catholic got there first. It’s a reminder that intenet atheism is pretty thin intellectual gruel for the most part. Blogs really don’t provide room for developing thoughts at depth.
Apologetics is the art of trying every argument in hope one works. Catholics will use the argument that their faith is “internally consistent” as a defense against concerns about protestant dogma. People like sb will claim Catholics are not really Christians to bolster his faith. My Southern Baptist grandmother believed the pope was truly the anti-christ. Her brother, who lived in the same small town, married a Catholic and converted. She wouldn’t visit his grave because it was in a Catholic cemetery. I think she thought she might melt or be struck by lightning. She also believed that Southern Baptists had never been tainted by the RCC; they could be traced directly to John the Baptist as an entirely separate branch of the Christian lineage. Woolly indeed!
I knew an atheist online who converted to Catholicism due to a breakdown, because his Catholic wife threatened to leave him. He was extremely intelligent and knowledgeable too, so I know these things happen. But I suspect such conversions are not rational decisions, and probably can’t be morally justified.
Not that SB seems to be burdened by what the Christian bible actually says, but:
Exodus 21:20-21
And if a man smite his servant, or his maid, with a rod, and he die under his hand; he shall be surely punished. Notwithstanding, if he continue a day or two, he shall not be punished: for he is his money.
Beat your slave only so badly that he does not die in a day or two and you are in the clear? How is this so much better than the slavery of recent centuries again? I suppose this inconvenient quote needs context that will never be provided, or is just another metaphor.
John K.
Exactly.
Christians so often try to use the argument of “Slavery wasn’t so bad in the old days” and then they talk about purportedly historical facts of how slaves were treated.
What they are missing is how slaver is depicted IN THE BIBLE. The Bible clearly depicts
slavery in terms that any civilized person would renounce as morally reprehensible, and in fact Christians would and do object to any such instance should it occur today.
So for Saviourbreath to actually have an argument he has to show that the slavery the Bible itself depicts, condones or allows would be morally acceptable.
Good luck with that.
RH
I’m glad to see you’ve done some fact-checking, and if you want a serious debate I’ll be happy to oblige, although this is probably not the place: we can continue on my blog at religiousatrocities.wordpress.com if you wish. But in quick response to your three points:
(a) and (b) It’s possibly true that an increase in atmospheric CO2 increases the heat-retention capacity of the atmosphere. But since 99% of the CO2 on earth is taken up by biomass and oceans, and 99.99% of the thermal mass of the lithosphere is made up of solids and liquids, it’s naive to ignore the interaction of the atmosphere with these. It’s also worth pointing out that the average lifespan of CO2 in the atmosphere can be measured in days or weeks rather than years: the stuff is used up pretty fast, and we have very little data on how much its concentration or kinetic energy affects the rate at which it gets used up.
(c) Well, yes, if we had billions of dollars to spare and nothing else to spend them on, it would be an interesting exercise to occupy a few decades investigating the effect of anthropogenic CO2; and no doubt that would be happening whether or not there was an AGW scare campaign. But there are many other much more pressing priorities — malaria, for one — which are being starved for funds and research resources because of the money being thrown at AGW. It’s not a matter of ‘turning a blind eye’ — merely one of adjusting our priorities to match the real data we have about genuinely urgent problems.
Jo Nova’s recent letter goes to the heart of things: http://joannenova.com.au/2012/06/nature-and-that-problem-of-defining-homo-sapiens-denier-is-it-english-or-newspeak/
@unsavourybreath
Well, actually, yes you do. Off to a good start, the very first statement in your post is a lie.
Yes you do mind, very much so.
Whatever you were before you set up your cult of one, it was not an atheist.
Based on the drivel you’ve spattered over this blog, the unwillingness to accept the truth value of the proposition that the zombie son of an invisible sky fairy teleported to earth through the vagina of a jewish virgin to forgive us for sins we never committed – due to a complete lack of evidence and in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary was never one of your qualities.
Bullshit. Your comments reek of smug, ignorant condescension.
I think not.
You really are a nasty piece of work and in my opinion your epitomize evangelical xtianity.
As demonstrated by your comments, you are completely unqualified to judge Eric’s knowledge of Christianity. In my opinion, unlike you, Eric makes no attempt to disguise anything in his writings, he is invariably clear, lucid and forthright which is one of many reasons why I read this blog.
You are indeed ignorant of very many things. There is nothing wrong with ignorance, the remedy is education and the ability to reason, both of which you appear to lack.
You put your ignorance on an altar and worship it as a god.
While it is your right to wallow in your ignorance, should you destroy the life of any other human being under your control with your morally reprehensible philosophy, I would regard that as a tragedy.
In response to Eric (twice), Egbert, Kevin, Michael, Egbert again, John, Rich, and Steve, I don’t have time to answer all your assertions and observations. I don’t know if this is believable to you but in all sincerity I do appreciate a lot of what you have to say. It is quite helpful in the project I’m working on, if a little insulting. The insults are no worse than what I’ve leveled at Christians in the past and I accept them as your right to defend your own positions.
I’m not trying to convince you that my beliefs are correct, nor that I’m especially talented or intelligent. In case it wasn’t mentioned, something I have suffered from for most of my life is laziness in doing my research, and old habits are hard to overcome.
So you’re right to doubt me. Even if I wasn’t as flawed as I am you’d be right to doubt me. You’re right to see the bible as chocful of contradictions, inconsistencies, and evidence that denies what I claim to be true. I admit that I see it completely differently and accept the abuse this attracts. I’m looking for clues to what life is like, what it’s really about, what the purpose is. I don’t accept the basic materialist humanist model any more.
I’ve gone through a few intersections in this quest and for what I believe now, the bible is the only source of clues. And it is such a rich repository of clues, for those who seek them.
How you feel about me personally and my conclusions – I’d rather it was different I suppose, but in the big picture it doesn’t really matter. And as I said your posts contain a number of things that are helpful to me. No hard feelings guys. You too Steve.
PS: Eric I just thought of something that you might see as evidence. You might not either, and it’s totally subjective as I expect you’ll point out, so it’s not much use to anyone other than me.
It’s that I love people now. Seriously. I haven’t met anyone in the last year or two whom I don’t end up loving, and so wanting to help in some way.
Not just informing them of my whacko beliefs, giving them lifts home even when it involves an extra 2 hours driving, giving them my last 50 bucks or my new sleeping bag when they look like they need it.
Don’t miss what I’m saying here in your rush to respond guys. I’m not saying atheists don’t do this sort of thing, I’m saying I (underlined) never did this sort of thing, because I never loved anyone. Now I do. Including all of you. So shoot me.
Oh dear. A cage match between somebody who is rational on religion and a conspiracy nut on AGW and somebody who is rational on AGW and a wishful thinker on religion. Amusing, though in a rather sad way.
Just goes to show how difficult it is to be consistently reasonable, I guess.
Where do you get off calling me rational on AGW? I only just found out what it stands for.
Alex, who — in your opinion — is the ‘conspiracy nut on AGW’? I don’t recall even mentioning the word.
corio37, you might want to watch the videos Potholer54 has put up on YouTube about global warming. Watch and learn. And by the way, why do you suppose that almost all climate scientists around the globe are convinced that CO2 emissions are driving climate change? Are they all wrong? Please do watch Potholer’s videos on this subject.
For me, equality or egalitarianism is the only ethics that makes any rational sense, but since we’re physically living beings, reason and ethics must sometimes go out of the window when it comes to our basic well-being and life.
What religion seems to do, as we’ve noticed before, is create a delusionary state of ‘scarcity of resources’, where ‘spiritual’ welfare then replaces physical welfare. It’s an ingenious trick that humanity has created for itself, to overcome the limitations and horrors of the world. It’s this trick, for example, that drives capitalism to unsustainable levels, but it also drives people to create works of art.
When a society provides sufficient human needs, then religion declines, but does not disappear. When the world is thrown into turmoil and crisis, like it is now in history, religion will actually begin to rise, whether it’s traditional religions or authoritarian state religions.
If there is any failure in the Enlightenment project, it is that it underestimates the insatiable desires that lies within the unconscious mind, which thirsts for spiritual welfare. Simply creating equality in a society is not enough to make humans content, they thirst for spiritual welfare. Atheists are not immune to it, in fact they’re dangerously unaware of this effect working in their own minds, as their own will to power begins to undermine their rational and egalitarian aims.
The only solution, as I see it, is to channel human ‘spiritual welfare’ in a positive way, which is compatible both with reason and ethics.
Pingback: Slavery in the Sacred Texts of Christians and Jews « Choice in Dying
@JT: I predicted this morning before I turned my computer on that about this time in the debate that someone would introduce the ‘almost all climate scientists’ meme. If you’re seriously interested in defending AGW, this is not a good strategy, and a little searching on Google will tell you why. And as my quote from Jo Nova should have made clear, most sceptics don’t deny that CO2 emissions are ‘driving’ climate change; they just question the extent to which it occurs, and the alleged presence of amplifying feedback loops which have never been demonstrated to exist.
From the perspective of someone who has been both an atheist and an AGW sceptic for quite a long time, many of the arguments raised against AGW scepticism are eerily similar to the arguments put forward against atheism by religious apologists. There’s the Argument from Vilification — “Oh, those wicked deniers!”, the Argument from Ignorance — ‘All sceptics believe in a giant global conspiracy’, the Argument from Numbers — ’97% of climate scientists…!’ ‘But there’s a consensus!’ and many others. I’m intrigued by the way so many people can spot the flaws in these when they’re put forward by men in black coats, but suddenly lose that capability if the coats are white.
If AGW scepticism is a ‘conspiracy theory’ then so is atheism, and for the same reason; it questions the basis for a collective faith which goes well beyond the evidence.
PS: For a response to some Potholer videos, written by someone who knows a great deal more about science than I do, see here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/11/monckton-responds-to-potholer54/
Admittedly I have no idea what a potholer is, but … Monckton knows the science? Excuse me while I fall off my chair laughing hysterically. That is one the same level as going to WL Craig for the science on cosmology.
Corio, you say:
This does not make sense, despite your attempt to explain it. Just because the same kinds of arguments can be made does not show that there is any parallel between the two cases. Practically anything can be supported or opposed using poor arguments and logical fallacies. Religion is a conspiracy theory. Climate science is a science. It either shows the results of observations, or it doesn’t. There is a fairly neat video, showing temperature anomalies and their distribution since the beginning of the industrial revolution (set at 1833) until 2009 at the following address:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/oct/20/global-warming-study-climate-sceptics
Click on the video and read the article. You may still be sceptical, but you certainly should not be basing yourself on the opinions of a non-scientist such as Viscount Mockton of Brenchley. He doesn’t know his science, and this claim should not be made for him. Watts seems, on the other hand, to have some knowledge of the science, but the idea fixe that the temperature data sets are skewed because of siting seems to be poorly evidenced. If the temperature anomaly study done at Berkeley, displayed in the video in the Guardian (above link), is reliable — and it seems hard to say why one would consider it so — then the question of anthropogenic warming seems to be settled. What, corio, is your reason for considering otherwise?
@corio37
Many of the arguments raised against AGW are eerily reminiscent of arguments trotted out against evolution by creationists and IDiots.
@mouthbreather
That would be a very long line consisting of every poor, emotionally scarred for life, proselytised, in the wrong place at the wrong time, victim that you ever gave a ride to.
On the other hand, have you considered selling tickets ?
Corio37, have you watched Potholer’s videos? Well? And by the way, are you a climate scientist?
You say: ” most sceptics don’t deny that CO2 emissions are ‘driving’ climate change; they just question the extent to which it occurs, and the alleged presence of amplifying feedback loops which have never been demonstrated to exist.”
Can you give me the name and cite the papers of the climate scientists who do not accept that “amplifying feedback loops have never been demonstarted to exist”?
And please, I don’t care what Lord Monckton thinks or what some weatherman says, I want to know which climate scientists are saying this and where they’ve published their studies. And yes, if you can show me a relevant peer reviewed study, then I will read it.
sorry, I meant show me the climate scientists who do not believe that there are not and have never been climate feedback loops. Please cite their papers. I find it hard to believe that any climate scientist would say such a thing when so many papers have been written showing the existence of climate feedback loops throughout the earth’s history. If you’d like me to cite some studies, then I’ll be happy to do so.
Not yet but I don’t rule out assisted suicide as an option when the time comes.
Death is coming sooner or later Steve, I know that’s something we can both agree on. Being dead doesn’t hold the terrors for me it once did, when I thought this life was all there was and I needed to make the most of it. And arranging for my life to be cut short by a few days or weeks to avoid a lot of pain and fear seems OK to me if my purpose has been served.
The tragedy is when it’s ended before the person’s had a chance to discover that life goes on after the earthly death.
It’s not hard to discover it btw, all it takes is a little calm thought, reflecting on where you, the you I’m talking to now, not your brain, might have come from, whether the source of life might be eternal. And if it is, how it’s possible for it to end.
I’m sure we’ll meet again Steve. All the best in the meantime.
Eric, is this the study you mean?
“Muller’s study concluded that the earth’s temperature had increased by 1.6 degrees Fahrenheit in the last two hundred-plus years. This conclusion was well-reported. Less well reported is the fact that Muller was and continued to be skeptical about the role of human activities as a cause of this increase. Furthermore, Muller noted that even if this warming is caused by human activity, there is virtually nothing the U.S. can do to abate its effects, given the growing carbon emissions produced by the expanding economies of India and China.
A major point missing from much of the coverage of Muller’s report is dissent from a member of Muller’s own study team, Professor Judith Curry, who heads the Department Of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Institute of Technology. Curry believes the publicity surrounding the Muller study has mischaracterized its results by saying that this study should end skepticism about global warming.”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/16/the-myth-of-settled-science/
When your own co-author disagrees with your inferences, that doesn’t say much for the quality of your research.
And to continue the analogy with arguments used against atheists, I would put the ‘Oh, it’s been warming since — ‘ whenever argument alongside ‘Stalin was an atheist!’ AGW sceptics don’t deny that there have been periods of global warming — and cooling. To assume they do is to display incredible ignorance of the whole topic.
But look at the last fifteen years of Muller’s chart — that last half-centimetre or so at the end. During that time atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have been increasing faster than at any other point in history. Do you see any indication of that in the chart? THAT’s the issue.
@Jason, isn’t this a bit like asking an atheist to ‘Prove God doesn’t exist!’? The default assumption in science — the null hypothesis — is always that there is NO connection, NO effect, and the onus is on the researcher to demonstrate with a high statistical likelihood that there is. Other researchers may have done this for other feedback loops, but I’m not aware of anyone doing it for the alleged amplification of CO2 effects by ‘greenhouse gases’. If you have access to such a paper I’d like to see it.
But — an important caveat — it should be an _empirical_ paper using _empirical_ data, not the results spun off from some carefully tweaked model. Remember what Von Neumann said about models: “With four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk.”
…and just to complete the set: @Eric — “you certainly should not be basing yourself on the opinions of a non-scientist such as Viscount Mockton of Brenchley. He doesn’t know his science, and this claim should not be made for him.”
This is the Courtier’s Reply, surely? “Richard Dawkins doesn’t have a degree in Theology, so he’s in no position to criticise religion.” If you know from your own experience that Monckton is wrong, then by all means make it public: but if you’re simply repeating an evaluation that you’ve taken from someone else, then the question is merely who to trust.
I’m not attempting to change anyone’s mind here — anybody who is genuinely interested in the issues can start by reading the posts at Watts Up With That for a week and then expanding outwards from there — but I do want to make it quite clear that a claim like
“People don’t … reject global warming because they’ve thought about the issues carefully.”
is as vacuous as the claim that
“People are atheists because they haven’t searched hard enough for God in their hearts.”
Both reveal only the claimant’s profound failure to understand the issues.
corio37, I’m sill waiting for a citiation from a climate scientist who has published a paper disputing the existence of measurable positive feedback loops. Do you have anything yet? All of the feedback factors are well understood and have been measured. The solubility of CO2 in water, the reflectivity of ice compared to water, the amount of CO2 and methane released from melted permafrost soil, all of this can be calculated by direct measurement. These feedback factors show up very clearly in the climate records and even the geological records.
So, yes, positive feedback has been very ably demonstrated. This is well accepted by climate scientists and you can find papers demonstrating it here:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v443/n7107/abs/nature05040.html
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2001/2000GL012015.shtml
http://climatechange.pbworks.com/f/Positive+feedback+between+global+warming+and+CO2+-+Scheffer+Cox+2005.pdf
http://www.lmd.jussieu.fr/~jldufres/publi/2002/Dufresne.Friedlingstein.ea-grl-2002.pdf
And there are plenty more, ably demonstrating the reality of positive feedback. Now it is up to you to justify your belief that it does not exist or has not been demonstrated by citing a source.
I think the study Corio37 wants to see is one where scientists put two earths into a test tube and increase CO2 in one and not the other. Is that the study that would finally convince you, Corio?
Corio, How much stock do you have in fossil fuels?
I’m actually with Corio37 on this one. Climate science is far more complicated than evolutionary theory, and if people don’t fully understand how climate change works, they ought to reserve judgement, rather than appeal to authority.
We would have the option of “reserving judgement” if this were a purely philosophical wrangle.
The actual situation is that we are conducting a reckless experiment on the Earth: let’s see what happens if we convert a huge amount of reduced carbon, formed by bio-geological processes over the course of millions of years, into CO2, over the course of two centuries. There is no a priori reason to believe that this is a safe thing to do; and investigation has revealed many interrelated reasons to believe that it is not at all safe.
Thank you dysangelist. That was going to be my response to Egbert, as soon as I saw his comment come in via email. It is perfectly sensible to question the results of climate science, but it is not so sensible to act as though climate science is wrong, just in case it is not. And the consensus, though not universal, is telling. The fact that oil magnates, like Koch, support climate change denial, is also telling.
Egbert, reserving judgement is one thing, but talking through your hat, as corio37 has done, is another thing entirely. Is it really that much trouble to read a few papers about feedback factors in climate change before declaring that feedback loops have never been shown to exist? Saying that something which has been directly measured does not exist is not what I’d call “reserving judgement.”
Jason, you are right. Your note crossed with mine, as I must have been writing at the same time, and the screen didn’t refresh until I posted mine, and I thank you for pointing out that there are studies that show feedback loops involving CO2. (That’s actually obviously wrong. I must have jumped from my email to answering Egbert, and didn’t take note of your comment. Sorry about that.)
Jason, I don’t deny the existence of positive or negative feedback loops, in fact they’re most obviously an essential factor in the complexity and chaotic nature of climate.
Ah, the Precautionary Principle: I thought that would make an appearance before long. “It might be very bad to release lots of CO2, so let’s not do it.” Is there a parallel apologist argument? Yes, as it happens: “Religious belief gives us our morals; if we lose it we will all go on a killing spree.” So let’s all be religious, just in case. Or is it Pascal’s Wager?
But the argument totally ignores the _consequences_ of stopping or seriously reducing our release of CO2. In other words, no industry, no power, no light, no fuel to run agriculture and grow food, no petrol, no roads… an end to civilization. Is that not also a ‘bad’ consequence — except for those who hate people? Should we not think twice, or three times, before we pull the switch on the process that power the Internet, cars, computers, offices, planes, telephones? Not to mention condemning billions of people in the developing world to lives that will never get materially better.
It’s extraordinarily naive, once again, to play up the negative consequences of alternative A and totally ignore the negative consequences of alternative B. Releasing CO2 MIGHT possibly have some deleterious long-term effects. Stopping or limiting the release of CO2 WILL unquestionably entail a major setback for the future of industrialised civilisation on this planet, and all those billions of people who depend upon it for food, power and shelter.
Who’s going to pull that lever?
@Jason — I really didn’t want to get into details of individual papers, but since you insist:
Paper 1: Seems to be about methane in the Pleistocene age. What does that have to do with CO2 in the modern age?
Paper 2: “Here, using climate and carbon three‐dimensional models…” Enough said.
Paper 3: “Here, we combine information derived from reconstruction of past changes with a simple well accepted greenhouse effect model … Again, enough said.
Paper 4: “We use an ocean-atmosphere general circulation model…”
Remember what I said about models? Who’s the one with poor reading comprehension, you or me?
@Michael: “Corio, How much stock do you have in fossil fuels?”
A fair bit, actually, because they make money, which usually indicates they’re doing something useful. I did have investments in an Ethical fund, a conservation company and a geothermal energy company, but the first lost money and the other two went broke.
Do you remember back when atheists were accused of being in the pay of the wicked Comintern?
@”I think the study Corio37 wants to see is one where scientists put two earths into a test tube and increase CO2 in one and not the other. Is that the study that would finally convince you, Corio?”
But we can do that to some extent by looking at historical data.
Roman period — Earth gets hotter, no anthropogenic CO2. Earth cools off again — no drop in CO2.
Medieval period — Earth gets hotter, no anthropogenic CO2. Earth cools off again — no drop in CO2.
1900 to 1930 — Earth gets hotter with no significant rise in anthropogenic CO2.
1930 to 1970 — CO2 levels start to rise slightly. Earth gets cooler.
1970 to 1998 — CO2 levels rise significantly and Earth gets hotter.
1998 to 2012 — CO2 levels going gangbusters. Earth temperature remains stable.
It’s a bit like cherry-picking passages from the Bible, isn’t it? You choose the bit you want and ignore the rest.
Corio, given our unrealistic level of consuming non-renewable resources, in what way would reducing the use of fossil fuels have the terrible consequences you suggest? Indeed, if we do not begin conserving these and many other resources we are quickly using up future generations’ chances of having tolerable conditions of life, especially when we factor in the increasing population levels which are already arguably unsustainable. Not only would managing the earth’s resources more wisely, and perhaps actually learning how to create enconomies that do not depend on unending growth, be wise, whatever the truth about global warming, but it might just happen that we will produce the conditions for a more humane civilisation that does not forget its heirs.
Digging for historical periods where CO2 change seems to be unrelated to climate change and then holding it up as a trump card, are we? You’ve embarrassed yourself and you don’t even know it. You do understand that CO2 levels are not the only factor in climate variation on earth, right? You’ve really shown your elementary understanding of climate science with your last post. Climate change over the past couple of thousands of years cannot be related to CO2 levels because CO2 levels were stable over that period; this is not a puzzle that climate scientists are scratching their heads over, it’s easily understood. Climate change over that period is related to insolation (the sun) and it’s been written about ad nauseum in the scientific literature. You might have to try getting your information from somewhere other than internet blogs, my friend. I’m still waiting for a citation by the way. While you’re digging around trying to find a climate scientist friend who’s working for Exxon, here’s a very informative video which should get you up to speed on the causes of climate change throughout history. You should know this already, but it looks like I’m going to have to give you an alementary education in climate science. So, you see, Corio, I’m not ignoring the rest or cherry picking the data, it’s just that I know that there are other factors which drive climate change. Watch and learn:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5hs4KVeiAU&feature=relmfu
Where is all of the carbon from the burning of fossil fuels going? If it is not affecting climate, then there must be a sink, what is it? It can’t be forests because we are cutting them down. Conservation of matter is hard to ignore.
Michael Fugate, if you’re addressing me, I think we’re on the same side. To be clearer I should have said that CO2 levels have been stable in the past couple millennia NOT INCLUDING the past two hundred years or so since we’ve been pumping CO2 into the air and de-stabilizing the CO2 levels. So when Corio points to historical periods from the Roman Empire and Medieval Europe and says, hey, the climate got hotter even though there was no anthropogenic CO2, he’s showing he doesn’t understand the things he’s getting off of his favorite AGW Internet sites (which they also either don’t understand or are just plain lying about), and hasn’t bothered to actually read any of the scientific literature. Corio should know that there are other factors which can and have driven climate change throughout Earth’s history.
It’s a shame that the comments have gone the way of climate change, distracting from possibly the best article Eric has written so far.
I want to raise the question: Have we really progressed ethically? I think we all want to believe that along with scientific knowledge and understanding, that our modern western societies are better, more moral, and so on, but it’s really worth asking the question and thinking about it. John Gray would most probably answer ‘No’ in his usual pessimistic way, but does he have a point?
It may be that slavery, racism, sexism, homophobia, anti-intellectualism, antisemitism, repression, war and all the points raised in the article may on the surface appear to be diminishing, but I’m not so sure they have. I think our more evil side is not gone but repressed or redirected in other ways.
Egbert, the answer appears to be yes, we have progressed ethically. Steven Pinker has written a gigantic tome dealing with this very question: The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined.
@Eric — a) What resource do you think is actually in danger of running out, and why? I understand that the recent switch to shale gas has extended the resource life of our fossil fuels by about 250 years, and incidentally freed us from reliance on despotic theocrats in the Middle East.
And b) Why do you think this has anything to do with global warming? If we ARE facing a resource crisis then surely the first and most important thing to do is recognise the real problem, not manufacture an imaginary one for the sake of getting people on side.
There is no ‘WE’ who are wickedly squandering fossil fuels: there are seven billion individuals dealing with the problems of keeping warm, being fed, finding work, educating their children and make a contribution. Finding ways they can do that more efficiently is progress. Hitting them with the AGW Guilty Stick is not.
This is just Pascal’s Wager again: “The consequences of not believing X and being wrong are REALLY BAD, so we should all believe X, regardless of the evidence.” But what about the consequences of believing X and being wrong?
@Michael — it’s going into the atmosphere, isn’t it? The only question is, is it going to do any harm there, or just sit there harmlessly until it goes down again — as it’s done many times before?
@Jason — This sounds like an Argument from Miracles to me. “Sure, we know that today miracles don’t happen! That’s no reason to think that they didn’t occur in the past!” Since we know that at least three periods of global warmth occurred in the past that weren’t caused by increased CO2 levels, why should we assume that this one is? It’s not as if you’ve demonstrated WHY the previous warming happened. Since we don’t know why it got warmer then, why assume we know the reason this time? And again, where is the empirical, laboratory-based, demonstration of your feedback loop?
@JT: if it’s all lies then it’s probably a good thing I’m not understanding it, isn’t it? Do you actually have a point?
@Jason — Your video link is largely irrelevant, as far as I can see: it spends most of the time talking about the Ordovician and Paleozoic periods and totally ignores the much more recent Roman and medieval warming stretches — not to mention the period between 1900 and 1930, where temperatures showed a similar rise — from a lower base — as they did between 1970 and 1998. And, of course, nobody ever suggested that aerosols might be implicated in temperature until it became necessary to cobble up a quick ad hoc explanation as to why the major climate models were all wrong, all the time.
It’s incredibly patronising, by the way, to maintain that after five years of studying and reading about AGW I can suddenly be converted in eleven minutes because a man with an nice English accent patiently explains to me why he’s right and I’m wrong. If that’s your opinion of AGW sceptics, then you have a lot to learn. You’re thinking like this guy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FwREz324Ko
Obviously Pinker writes optimistically, cherry picking his data, and if we ignore the horror of two world wars and the mass deaths of communism in the soviet era and communism in the Asian and south American continent, then I’m sure we can all somehow live with the idea that we’ve progressed ethically, but I’m just a bit sceptical. Hence, since it’s fundamental to our ethical project, it is at least important to ask ourselves the question, and think deeply about it. If we’re not prepared to face difficult challenging views, then I don’t see as we’re any different to the delusionary theocrats.
Corio (#78). As to resources — oil, for one, which is used in practically everything produced in quantity nowadays, rare earths, helium (which is being used profligately). As to reasons for getting people onside. I think the consensus on climate science and anthropogenic global warming is more likely than dissenting positions to be correct, so that is a good reason to conserve especially fossil fuels, and to make some effort to control population growth, as well as to endeavour to develop economic models for reduced population and controlled resource use. If it is not correct — as I think it likely is — then all these things will benefit the future of the biosphere generally, and can be commended on its own.
However, I do think that Egbert is right, and that this digression is irrelevant to the main points made in the original post.
Egbert, it may be true that Pinker is over-optimistic, but he does account pretty well for the anomalies — and they are — of twentieth century violence and genocide. To take one example, in the wars of religion in the 16-17th centuries, the population of Germany was reduced (I’m not sure I’ve got this completely right, but it’s not far wrong) by an amazing 50% or so, whereas WW I and WW II nowhere approach this proportion.
Eric, I know you support Pinker’s thesis, because I think you must. I can’t see how you could possibly not. Herein is the problem, and the problem I think also for the entire atheist movement and the human rights project that most of the West is embarking on. It’s a fundamental belief that we are progressing to the entire project and our attitude to it and to those who oppose it.
I’m trying to throw off that belief, and question it, and see where it leads.
Corio, what I do understand, patronizing or not, is that you have absolutely no idea what the hell you’re talking about when it comes to climate science. If this is the state of your knowledge after five years of study then you’re even worse off than I thought. By the way, that nice man with a British accent is Peter Hadfield, who holds a geology degree and worked as a science journalist for 16 years at New Scientist magazine. He knows what he’s talking about and, in case you didn’t notice, lists citations for everything he says in his videos. So don’t take his word for it, read the papers yourself. Surely in your five years of diligent study of climate science, you’ve learned how to read a scientific paper. And, no, you don’t get to keep mentioning temperature rises in the Roman era or the medieval period and pretend you’ve defeated the scientific concensus. We KNOW that CO2 is not the only driver of climate; how many times do I have to repeat it! Please tell me you understand that much. Also, if you think that aerosols are an ad hoc explanation engineered by scientists in some sort of global conspiracy, then you’re going to have to provide citations from climate scientists which support that position (and you accused me of cherry picking data!?!). Again, I’m still waiting for you to provide sources for some of your other assertions, but we both know that isn’t going to happen. Just like a creationist, your strategy seems to be to change the subject, and, when you don’t like what the science is saying, just claim that it’s an ad hoc conspiratorial ploy by scientists. You’ve had a couple of days now to find a citation from a paper which disputes the existence of feedback loops, surely you can do better than to keep mention long debunked AGW myths from Anthony Watts’ site.