I have heard it said there is a good Darwinian reason for religion. It binds people together with a system of common beliefs; it facilitates the drawing up and enforcement of societal rules. Society becomes more cohesive, more successful. Without such glue society is quarrelsome, fractured - less fit. That the basis of the religion is an illusion is of no consequence. It requires only that people believe or say they believe.
In the absence of such shared beliefs would the pyramids have been built or the Crusades fought? You see, the results of shared beliefs can be "good" or "bad". But shared beliefs enable a community to come together to get things done.
Religion no longer works for most of us. We know why the sun rises, why it rains or doesn’t rain. We no longer need a God to make these things happen. And no more can our worldly rulers use the threat of God’s wrath to galvanise us, rally us in pursuit of a common goal.
War no longer works either. For war to bind a society the enemy must be distant, not understood, frightening: demonisable. But there’s nobody left on earth like that - the world is just too small. The great god of Materialism has served western society well for a century or more but some begin to suspect His feet are of clay.
Imagine the effect a meteorite, forecast to strike the Earth in ten years time, would have in drawing mankind together. Petty squabbles set aside as we joined with common purpose to save the planet. But no such unifying cosmic threat is known. So on the human race squabbles.
Then along comes Global Warming. A frightening, unknowable, demonisable enemy. An enemy of all mankind, an enemy all nations can unite in fighting. Prior disputes relegated as we join together to meet the new threat. A High Priesthood is created, one to which mere secular rulers pay homage. The world hangs on the seers’ every pronouncement. We seek guidance - to be told what to believe, to be told what to do.
There are heretics of course - there have always been heretics. But burning a few at the stake encourages most to conform. Heretics serve a useful purpose.
Does it matter if the new religion is an illusion? It depends what is done in its name. Using less oil to build and power a given standard of living is not a bad thing. Crusading against the poor building CO2-emitting but life-saving power stations is a bad thing.
Rational argument never defeated a religion – it won’t defeat this one. The new religion is here to stay - until the world cools.
Good men will always do good things. Bad men will always do bad things. But for good men to do bad things requires religion. So forget arguing the “science” – it can no more be proven one way or the other than the existence of God. Get on the inside and influence what is done in the name of this new religion: resist its hijacking by eco fascists, help ensure it is used to better the lot of all mankind.
War no longer works either. For war to bind a society the enemy must be distant, not understood, frightening: demonisable. But there’s nobody left on earth like that - the world is just too small. .
You are obviously not an historian. All wars apart from those of the late 20c have been between nations with an intimate knowldege of each other. Modern warfare allows the enemy to be very distant infact generally invosible to the person doing the killing. this si one of the less helpful side effects of moden tech.
Just for fun can you name a single conflict prior to the worlds attempt to irrdicate communism (for world you should read USA)where the 2 sides have been distant or not known each other well??
Rob, fair point but let us not forget that in earlier times even 100 miles was a long way and the ordinary person's understanding of people just across a border would not have been as well informed as we take for granted today. All that assisted the key thrust of that sentence: that the leaders of one group of combatants could persuade their people that the enemy were in some way demons. Recently saw an interview with an American soldier in Iraq. As I recall his broad thrust was: we believed the Iraqis were evil, but when you get to know them they're just like us. (I.E. nice guys, presumably!)
Today the layman's lack of understanding of the complex science lays him open to persuasion - rightly or wrongly - that Global Warming is the great demon.
Originally posted by Torchwood99: ...cmmon ape man you can do better than that... aren't you supposed to be nearly as intelligent as a human being...?
interesting post... the original one, not the ape's
It's all a matter of perspective. If one views the OP as interesting, then one is likely to view me as only being nearly as intelligent as a human being. However if one has the intelligence to see the OP as a steaming pile of gibberish, one will understand the irony of my chosen nom de plume.
Originally posted by Mike RR: ...Good men will always do good things. Bad men will always do bad things. But for good men to do bad things requires religion. So forget arguing the “science” – it can no more be proven one way or the other than the existence of God. Get on the inside and influence what is done in the name of this new religion: resist its hijacking by eco fascists, help ensure it is used to better the lot of all mankind.
Absolutely spot on, my thoughts exactly! A very lucid and reasoned post. Pity more aren't like this.
We need less carbon offsetting, bio-fuel production and wind turbines which are all "quick-fix" panic measures designed to perpetuate our current profligate ways while paying lipservice to greenery, and more long term measures such as grants for home insulation and investment in other energy saving technologies which would be a Good Thing (TM) regardless of one's views on AGW.
What is the point of having your electricity generated by a bird-mashing windmill if you fritter it away leaving the telly on standby or sticking eight pretty little 30watt recessed spotlights in your kitchen ceiling when one 15watt energy saving bulb will do the same job!
I think it is a mistake to use a word like "fascist" here with its connotations of anti-semitism. How about "eco-chauvanist".
From WikiP. "Chauvinism is extreme and unreasoning partisanship on behalf of a group to which one belongs, especially when the partisanship includes malice and hatred towards a rival group."
Pretty well sums up the political and journalistic "priests" of AGW. The scientists are merely pawns in this conflict - shoved up to the front line to take the flak.
At least with AGW the "religion" in time will be proved either right or wrong. If world tempertures continue to stabilise (as they have done since 1998) or actually cool, then the AGW priesthood will melt away and be forgotten. If the world continues to heat up - expect a lot more misinformed comment and bad policy decisions.
You claim that conventional GW theory is just a religion. Why? Because it identifies a threat to humanity -- and calls upon people to rally together to oppose that threat. In this way, you argue, GW theory fulfils the social function of a religion - bringing people together, in a common cause.
Therefore, you suggest, it clearly IS a religion; hence, it's scientific basis must be illusory.
One could argue, on these grounds, that all kinds of supposedly objectively-based campaigns for the "common good" are religious -- and therefore, fallacious. The campaign to abolish slavery; anti-fascism; the Tsunami appeal; Amnesty International's campaigns against torture; Comic Relief; Make Povery History... All of these things bring people together for a common cause. Does it follow that they are founded on delusions? Must we conclude that they are illusory and dangerous?
Inded, your argument could be made against ANY point of view which seeks to influence society. Let me give you an alternative hypothesis, for example.
[ Please note: what follows is *satire*, not a serious claim! ]
Many Skeptics perceive AGW science -- and more generally, environmentalism -- to be a massive threat to humanity. There just couldn't be any truth in such dreadful claims... the idea of having to modifying our lifestyles a little, in the way these freaks demand, is too horrible to contemplate! It must all be a wicked "Swindle"; a confidence trick, cynically engineered by evil "eco-facists". Unless we all PULL TOGETHER to resist this ghastly threat, dire and terrifying consequences will follow... Economies will be ruined and the poor, most of all, will be cruelly oppressed (and that's who libertarian anti-environmentalists care most about, honest). This evil AGW-movement must therefore be resisted at all costs.
The last thing we can afford to do is *consider* the possibility that the climate scientists and eco-fascists might be RIGHT... that would be apostasy.
A High-Priesthood emerges of courageous Skeptics with academic qualifications (albeit few in climate science); many of them honoured veterans of previous cults, with such inspiring articles of faith as: "tobacco doesn't cause cancer"; "DDT doesn't accumulate in the food chain"; "SO2 emissions don't cause acid rain" and "logging companies don't damage rainforests" etc. As in the past, a host of stalwart philanthropic organisations spring to the aid of our Heroes. This time it's the turn of the fossil fuel industry to prove its faith; and wisely, in order to circumvent Liberal bigotry and prejudice, discreetly channels its completely selfless support via a vast Spiritual Brotherhood of "independent think tanks" and "not-for profit" advocacy groups.
In this way, the Gospel starts to spread. From thousands of syndicated op-ed articles and right-wing radio talk shows -- and the LORD knows how many generously funded Skeptical blogs and websites -- the WORD is ceaselessly broadcast to the masses. In these countless avenues of unrestricted free speech, our tiny band of Heroes manage to obtain more more air-time and column inches than any individual mainstream climate scientist could hope to get in a lifetime... and yet, the Brave Apostles of Skepticism profess to be Martyrs; oppressed, silenced and excluded from the "liberal" media. And Miracle of Miracles... a lot of people actually believe it!
Of course, there are those amongst the masses who respond only with laughter, scorn and derision -- but a great many are recruited to the Cause. Newly converted skeptics are devotedly in their attention to the words and writings of the Saints -- which they accept without question -- even when these luminaries contradict themselves and each other, as they frequently do; but that's Devotion for you. They are equally devoted in their pious avoidance of mainstream scientific arguments... especially the wicked, heretical tracts published online by those who respond directly to Skeptical claims with rational argument.
Rational argument will never defeat the Skeptical faith. Warming, and its consequences, eventually may... Along with the continued failure of solar activity and other alleged drivers to rise along with it. But don't hold your breath. Other, even wilder and less plausible theories will doubtless emerge, to keep the Cause going. No doubt, many die-hard, devoted Skeptics will until the icecaps have melted and their feet are getting seriously wet...
quote:
So forget arguing the "science"– it can no more be proven one way or the other than the existence of God.
A perfect illustration of my point - spoken like a true believer in the Skeptical creed.
On the contrary, the most vital thing we must do is continue to debate the science -- and just try to be openminded about it, on both sides. The consequences of being wrong, either way, are to serious to give up on science now.
* Free-thinking does not just mean choosing to believe whatever makes you feel good. There's no thought at all in that. *
At least with AGW the "religion" in time will be proved either right or wrong. If world tempertures continue to stabilise (as they have done since 1998) or actually cool, then the AGW priesthood will melt away and be forgotten.
There are many deities my friend. When a particular god/godess falls into disfavour another will rise to to take their place. When the temperatures cool Poseidon will start to complain that the oceans are becoming to acidic. But there will still be only one devil. Guess who?
Originally posted by Lucibee: Is science the new religion then?
I don't think it is any more. I think you could argue that it was from the enlightenment up to about 1950 (or some time about 1945 to 1960) but now the new religion is more "anti-science". I think WWII and the atom bomb pretty much did for science.
That's pretty weird really. We seem to forget that without science, we wouldn't have our iPods, mobile phones, DVD players, Herceptin, air travel, internet, etc etc etc...
Originally posted by TheLastMan: At least with AGW the "religion" in time will be proved either right or wrong. If world tempertures continue to stabilise (as they have done since 1998) or actually cool, then the AGW priesthood will melt away and be forgotten. If the world continues to heat up - expect a lot more misinformed comment and bad policy decisions.
Thanks, LastMan. What a PEFECT illustration of the religious zeal of the devoted AGW-denier.
You're quite right; if world temperatures steadily DROP while CO2 levels continue to rise then (unless there's an obvious explanation, like a supervolcano for instance -- but that's highly unlikely), climate scientists will be sure realise they've got it badly wrong. Why? Because they're scientists.
On the other hand, if it continues to heat up, contrary to skeptical expectations... With no change in solar activity or any other natural forcing factor to explain this unprecedented... will AGW Skeptics admit they might have got it wrong?
Not in your case, it seems. You'll still remain true to your Faith, that everyone who believes in AGW is "misinformed"... and that emission-reduction policies are the road to Hell.
* Free-thinking does not just mean choosing to believe whatever makes you feel good. There's no thought at all in that. *
The idea that CO2 alone is causing the warming we see was quite a simplistic idea in the mid 80's and I was never conviced, hey it was only a few years after we were told a new ice age was coming. Our climate is subject to 1500 year warming and cooling trends caused by the seeding effects of cosmic rays on clouds. The extra CO2 will have a small warming effect, but it not enough to alter the 1500 year cycle. The earths climate is much more comlex than our primative understanding. Expect a lot of pain from the IPCC over the next 10 years as the argument starts to run against them. As for the AGW lobby here, with your "we know better than you attitude", well your wrong cos on this issue I KNOW BETTER THAN YOU AND HAVE READ MANY PAPERS ON THE CLIMATE OVER THE PAST 30 YEARS". Can't say I was impressed by the quality of most of them, but as I said the science is primative.
One final thing before I go (do I here cheers) is that I am as anti AGW as the next person and I am also rabidly anti capitalist, however I am not a luddite.
You must despair Billy Bumbly at all your anti-AGWers who think pro-AGW science is some form of anti-capitalist conspiracy.
It isn't just the IPCC. It is all the leading scientific institutions who see compelling evidence of AGW. But if you are arrogant enough, and your obviously are, that you're right regardless and everybody else is wrong, then please carry on and CAPITALISE!
It is undeniable that the climate has warmed significantly since the mid-17th century "when records first began" as we are so often told: the mid-17th century was the start of what is known as "the little ice age". Never mentioned by the supporters of the argument that global warming is a mostly man-made phenomenon is the fact that in the middle ages. England was warm enough to have a significant wine-making industry and parts of Greenland now frozen supported agricultural settlements - we are not yet as warm as they were then! Read http://www.grisda.org/origins/10051.htm for some details. Another pointer to the possibility that global warming may be due mainly, if not entirely to natural causes including solar influences is the discovery of evidence of global warming ocurring on Mars. If solar influences are indeed the most significant, the prediction is that the climate will continue to warm till about 2050 and then will commence cooling again. Reducing our use of the diminishing natural resources can only be good for mankind - and as these run out, you can bet your bottom dollar that the companies that today make ther profit from selling us say oil will be in the forefront of research into alternatives: you don't think they'll stand by and watch their profits crumble into dust, do you? Those of us who question the extent to which human activities contribute to glabal warming are commonly accused of "being in denial" or even more evilly, "being in the pay of the oil industry". Remember when next you read of a conference of global warming experts that most of them would lose their jobs and reputation if it were to be proven that global warming was mostly or entirely due to naural causes and could not be reversed by any action we could take.
Well this thread doesn't seem to have a very 'scientific' content (it seems more theological), so I expect that for most purposes it's an 'open content' thread to do with 'belief' (and that is all 'relative' to your point of view).
The absence of definition in AGW may well evoke the apparent emotion of a 'religious belief', but if the definition just isn't there yet, how can one assume that it is either a 'religion' or an - as yet - 'improperly defined science' (how many times have 'you lot' taken a 'multimeter' reading at 'less than half scale deflection' of the meter [more-so on a digital multimeter] and relied on the result of that reading as fact). If the definition isn't there, you can't rely on it. However, the reading does offer some 'insight' into what's going on and offers a datum (of sorts).
If 'full' definition isn't there yet, perhaps we should keep our sights on 'wider horizons' for climate change other than CO2 for the time being. We know that CO2 'follows temperature increase' (as best we can define), so this is probably not the 'cause' for recent increases in average global temperature (but what is? [I think 'your' views are valid in this thread] ).
My view is that we should take more interest in the oxygen depletion within the ozone layer and the air that we breath!
There are at least 3 clear groups in this fight, two of which are 100% sure of something, not based on science.
1) "Alarmists" wish for return to a simpler life, and AGW is a good reason to make that happen, even if it has to be exaggerated, and also to help get funding for NGOs, or sell papers or movies.
They 100% knew AGW was happening, long before most scientists. Sometimes they write about the disappearance of Arctic penguins before 2100AD. Arctic penguins? These can get pretty passionate and call others names.
Some actually seem to want AGW to be real.
2) "Denialists" know with 100% certainty that reducing the growth rate of fossil fuels would be bad, or doing anything that needs government involvement, or that anything said by the UN (IPCC) or Al Gore cannot be right, and as a result know that: - GW isn't real - or if it is, it's natural, not AGW - or if it is AGW, we must just adapt.
These like to be called skeptics, but have no resemblance to classical skeptics. They call everyone else alarmists.
They definitely don't want AGW to be real, but more so, not to do anything about it.
3) "Rational skeptics" are most scientists, and anyone else who seriously weighs evidence and changes their mind accordingly. Good scientists do their best to disprove their own theories...
Of course, over the last 20 years, their position has moved a lot closer to that of the alarmists, except that they think AGW is "very likely" or more so, but they wish it were otherwise.
In normal 2-way fights (between an irrational belief and a scientific one, on a scientific topic), many normally-skeptical people quickly decide which is irrational, and move to the scientific opinion. Such people are peculiarly vulnerable to getting irritated by alarmist exaggerations, and bouncing over to denialism, thinking that is a rational scientific position, not realizing this is an unusual 3-way fight. [I know firsthand, it took me a while to sort that out. It should be easier now, as some nagging discrepancies (satellites, etc) have gotten fixed, and we have more data than in 2001.)
Of course, the hardcore denialism industry plays to many non-science motivations to get people to disbelieve the science and act as echo chambers in blogs, letters-to-editor, etc.
They're pretty effective at branding quite sensible scientists as alarmists, i.e., merging 1) and 3). They're good at propagating simple-sounding questions that sound like critical flaws, even when the answers that refute them have been known for decades. All very clever, and in some cases, similar to tactics used in fighting recognition of smoking/cancer link, involving some of the same people.
It is especially fascinating to see organizations funded by fossil fuel companies to obfuscate science, accuse many real scientists of making a lot of money off AGW hysteria. This works well on people who don't actually know scientists, don't know their motivations or how most of them get paid.
Originally posted by John_M: "Alarmists" wish for return to a simpler life.
Good post John_M, to further one strand:
If you genuinely wish for a return to a simpler life, because you believe that so called "progress" is leading us all up the road to hell (good title for a song) how would you go about it, given 6 billion people on the planet, other than to be alarmist? Would a belief system based on reason rather than blind faith work?
re: return to a simpler life & so-called progress:
This is probably getting fairly far away from AGW, but since this thread is about belief systems anyway...
There are probably two plausible stable states for humanity 2,000 years from now, assuming no nuclear wars / major plagues causing complete collapse.
LOW-TECH return to a much lower-tech lifestyle, which implies that the percentage of farm population in developed countries rises back to old levels, probably 80%. Go back to a pre-Industrial revolution, 1700s lifestyle, saving what's possible from modern life, like knowledge of germs, but probably not CAT-scanners, modern drugs, computers, iPods, airplanes, cars, tractors. Maybe we can keep radios, which would be nice, because life on widely-spread isolated farms can get pretty boring.
If civilization collapses before it achieves HIGH TECH, I doubt it ever recovers, because the easy sources of cheap energy will have mostly been consumed, and it takes a good technology base to build solar cells.
HIGH-TECH Use the one-time bounty of fossil fuels to build technology good enough to support technic civilization no longer dependent on them. This likely includes a lot of solar power, probably nuclear, and a lot of genetic engineering [to make cellulosic ethanol or equivalent work well].
It needs a noticable presence in space, i.e., good enough to divert the next dinosaur-killer, which is guaranteed to come sooner or later, hopefully much later.
Hope that we get through the 21st century, somehow, and that the usual effects of urbanization bring down the birthrates gently. Hope that medical science keeps us ahead in the arms race with viruses. Hope that we can take action to slow AGW enough to keep the temperature and sea-level rises manageable, and that we don't run out of water and topsoil too fast. Hope that we can pass through the current state into a more sustainable, but still high-tech one.
This isn't impossible: in computers, we went through a stage of using huge, expensive vacuum-tube systems that consumed incredible resources for the amount of computation, and we don't do that any more, but it's hard to see how we get to transistorized systems and modern chips without them. For decades, each generation of computers has been needed to design the next generation, so there's a bootstrapping effect, and modern technology is incredibly more efficient, but if civilization collapsed, it might be very difficult to recreate. ========= I have no problem with people considering some parts of modern life not to be real progress. I worry about people imagining that we easily selectively return to an idyllic past that didn't really exist, while magically keeping just the good technologies, because there are lot of interdependencies.
For instance,some people rhapsodize about the attractions of the rural farm life, which after all, in the US once was lived by 80% of people, now down to 1-2%. Very few of the rhapsodizers grew up on farms.
"Urban farming" is a fine thing to do, but it's not the same. Most people would not enjoy real farming, especially if they had to go back to 1950s technologies, or especially further back to 1700s. It's possible (the Amish do it pretty well), but I don't think that lifestyle is for everyone. Among other things, Google: farming dangerous; when I was a kid I knew farmers with missing fingers.
Growing enough food to feed a population large enough to sustain modern technology is not easy, and growing that food depends on modern technology. In the USA, the "land-grant universities" of the late 1800s often got started to do agricultural research and outreach.
Some people are really against GM foods, and reasonable people would always want to take care. Some do not realize that we eat almost nothing beyond wild fish and game that is actually natural, given millennia of constant breeding efforts, or faster recent efforts. Modern Durum wheat (pasta) was derived via gamma radiation and chemical treatments to create mutations, which is akin to repeatedly smashing cars together in the hope that one of the crashes will produce a new truck. So, for some, that's OK, but actually designing new variations is not...
In many cases, if we want to feed people on less farmland, with less pesticides, less herbicides, less energy input, and adapt plants quickly enough to deal with AGW, GM work will be necessary. A good reference is: "Mendel in the Kitchen: A Scientist's View of Genetically Modified Food" Also, it is well worth looking up Norman Borlaug's views.
I'd be happy if the population on the planet were 3B or maybe less, but I don't know of a pleasant short-term way to get there from here, although at least the estimates have been dropping about the peak population this century.
Anyway, one can rationally wish to avoid some elements of "progress", but one must be very careful to understand the tangled interconnections of various technologies and science, and which if these are likely to disappear.
It would be *nice* to think of a future in which most people go off-grid, back to the land, raise crops with no fertilizer and pesticides, and 1700s-style farm machinery ... and talk to their friends on cellphones, watch satellite TV, have modern medical care, and browse the Web in their copious free time ... but I can't figure out how to get there in the real world, and having grown up on small farm, really don't need to do it again.
