Feral children deprived of language develop their own forms of communication and it may be that societies deprived of religion develop their own belief systems. Religion is at its core a means of explaining the world and it becomes absurdly easy for science to slip into the habits of religion.
To break down religion to its essence is to say that there is a creative force which has given us life and that the proper way to live is to be in harmony with this creative force. Sinfulness consists of acts which disrupt the life-giving activity of the creative force creating a disharmony which manifests itself in destructive events around us. These destructive events may build to an apocalyptic crescendo that will separate the faithful from the infidels and transform our way of life to a purely harmonious one.
While conventional religion has been on the decline in the modern world, there is a devoutly held belief system which encompasses all these qualities. It is a faith propounded from newstands and newscasts, its proclamations of doom and grace are all around us. It is the green faith.
When all supernatural and unseen entities are banished from the pseudo-rational mind, only one force remains as the source of all life. Earth. Or Gaia, the mother of all life, whose eponymous hypothesis postulated that the planet was a single organism. In the absence of all deities, the planet itself became the deity. Its natural harmony is the way and those who live artificial lives are the sinners.
Harmony with the planet's creative force is the mark of good people. Those striving to live natural lives. The jet setting nomads who recognize no border or nationality, whose trust fund investments are as global as their enthusiasm about the brotherhood of man. On the other is the farmer who struggles to wrest the natural world to his own ends, the builder who is always creating new structures and products.
Righteousness is measured by the size of one's "carbon footprint", a vow of technological poverty, usually sworn by the well-off on behalf of the badly off who unlike them are required to live by it. The ideal is to live as harmoniously with the mother goddess as possible, either through deprivation or complex schemes for juggling resources or carbon credits. These acts of outward piety serve as sacrifices by the faithful to the planet.
The mother goddess is in pain, we are told, crying out because we are harming her, raising temperatures, flooding islands and bringing storms. If we do not relent, she will destroy us. It is up to the faithful who have the special knowledge and who are attuned to her plight, to save mankind from the apocalypse that we have brought on ourselves with our sinful ways.
The EPA in the United States acts as the religious police, protecting the mother-goddess from the blasphemous abuses of the infidels. It is above the law and evidence because it is a religious body and not subject to such secular concerns. But its minions are only the enforcers of a vast international community of faith which is convinced that the doom of mankind is at hand and spends every minute calculating the day when the oceans will rise up and sweep man off the earth for his sins against the planet.
Environmental scientists have become inquisitioners, searching out heresy, denouncing it and destroying the reputations and academic positions of the heretics. The media and the entertainment industry have wholly dedicated themselves to the propagation of the faith, their doomsday scenarios showing the apocalyptic end play side by side with their mockery and attacks on competing religions, at least those which have not incorporated the green faith into their doctrines.
World leaders are often among the first to adopt a new faith, and the leaders of the modern world are much more likely to kneel at the green altar than they are to hold conventional religious beliefs. The green faith provides them with a revolutionary role as the agents of change, impoverishing their own people, while lining their pockets and those of their friends. It is their kind of religion.
International covenants subscribing to the doctrines of this new faith have already been signed, binding each nation to the ranks of the green. Enforcement bodies have been empowered to protect the planet from the scourge of technology and educational programs have been embedded in every school in the modern world to inculcate children with the tenets of the faith and their responsibilities to the mother goddess.
It is a misnomer to say that the modern world is atheistic. It does have atheists, but they are not the majority anywhere. For the most part everyone believes in something, even if it's only in the redeeming power of carbon credits and recycling. In a unified ecosystem that makes us brother to the whale and child of the ape, a harmonious environment which we moderns have disrupted with factories, jet planes and nuclear reactors.
The idealization of the environment is not a new phenomenon, it is among the most ancient of faiths. When thunderstorms struck, many of the ancients believed that the sky was angry at them, and we in our skyscrapers notice a warm month and eagerly point out to one another that our sins have made the planet grow hotter. The Romans would have laughed at us, the Greeks would have hooted, but the barbarian would have understood exactly what we were talking about. Like the pseudo-sophisticates he would not have needed any more evidence than a proclamation by a wise man with sufficient juju.
Without knowing it, without realizing it, our societies have become barbaric in mores and in mindset. Modern American and European elites congratulate themselves on their superiority to their 19th century ancestors, when in reality that are their intellectual and moral inferiors, sitting on a throne of technology and military accomplishments built for them by the ancestors they dismiss as backward.
People have a basic need to believe things. They need to believe that they came from somewhere and that their lives have purpose. They need to believe that there is a higher force, a struggle between good and evil, in which they can play a part. Under the glass and steel veneer of the environmental debate is this basic preoccupation, the worship of the self through the trees, the sky and the earth.
The earth is tangible in a way that the older beings that man believed in are not. It is the touchstone of all pagan faiths because it is physically present. And that physical presence can then be cloaked in all sorts of mummery as a rock hurtling through space becomes the mother goddess of all life. When all other faiths have been dismissed by the high priests of the altimeter, it is the primitive source that they return to.
But of course science is a wholly different thing from religion. This we all know. Science, we are told, is based on facts, while religion is based on faith. But every religion at its peak has insisted that it was the proven truth. Its esoteric proofs were incomprehensible to the laity, but they were there. And only a fool or a lunatic would disbelieve them. Intelligent people knew that the truth was the truth. As intelligent people know today that it is absolutely ridiculous not to believe the thing that some of the experts tell them they should believe.
The difference between the two rests in the ability to challenge a consensus based on proof, rather than in finding proof to support an existing consensus. Any intelligent person can do the latter, it is why debates on any given subject, no matter how trivial, can continue endlessly. It is not intelligence that sets the scientist apart, but integrity. And the green faith has repeatedly demonstrated how little integrity it has and how willing it is to put its beliefs ahead of the science.
This is not a new phenomenon, in or out of science. Human beings need to believe things and the scientific method is a hedge against that weakness. But the only true defense against it is character, a commitment to the truth apart from any other beliefs. But how can one ask people to set aside their belief in the doom of mankind, the billions of dollars invested in preventing that doom and the moral transformation of society that can be achieved by leveraging that doom.
The Global Warming debate asks researchers to choose between their science and their religion, their pocketbook and their reputation. It is a miracle that there are any who have not fallen along with the procession to the green altar. It is hard to blame those who have.
A society in the twilight of its faith must seek out a moral crisis to test itself against. The only crisis that its elites have found is the old crisis of wealth, they have measured their wealth against their goddess and found themselves wanting. That this has made them more eager to rob us and less eager to live in the woods shows that they are hypocrites, but how could they not be. Having betrayed the truth for their faith, they then betray their faith for money. The wealth of the West is its crime and its salvation. Its green priests offer atonement for wealth by soliciting contributions of wealth.
If there is nothing else in which to trust, there is always the green faith, the green man who dies and is reborn again, the destroyer whose ravages open the way for new growth and new life. This is the Khidr, the Islamic green man who kills and destroys, but his purpose is secretly benevolent.
The Muslim nomadic migrations complete the objective of the green faith to ravage modern civilization and tear it down to make way for a more organic way of life. Rather than red and green fascism, there is only the green and green fascism, Hazrat Khiḍr, the green man of the East and his murderous hordes, meeting up with the green man of the West, the modern ruler who has decided to play Khidr and bring down his own civilization.
When we have nothing else to trust in, all that remains is the green, the natural renewal of the world, the primitive cycles of the seasons and the degeneracy of man into a savage who is at one with the mother goddess of the world.
While conventional religion has been on the decline in the modern world, there is a devoutly held belief system which encompasses all these qualities. It is a faith propounded from newstands and newscasts, its proclamations of doom and grace are all around us. It is the green faith.
When all supernatural and unseen entities are banished from the pseudo-rational mind, only one force remains as the source of all life. Earth. Or Gaia, the mother of all life, whose eponymous hypothesis postulated that the planet was a single organism. In the absence of all deities, the planet itself became the deity. Its natural harmony is the way and those who live artificial lives are the sinners.
Harmony with the planet's creative force is the mark of good people. Those striving to live natural lives. The jet setting nomads who recognize no border or nationality, whose trust fund investments are as global as their enthusiasm about the brotherhood of man. On the other is the farmer who struggles to wrest the natural world to his own ends, the builder who is always creating new structures and products.
Righteousness is measured by the size of one's "carbon footprint", a vow of technological poverty, usually sworn by the well-off on behalf of the badly off who unlike them are required to live by it. The ideal is to live as harmoniously with the mother goddess as possible, either through deprivation or complex schemes for juggling resources or carbon credits. These acts of outward piety serve as sacrifices by the faithful to the planet.
The mother goddess is in pain, we are told, crying out because we are harming her, raising temperatures, flooding islands and bringing storms. If we do not relent, she will destroy us. It is up to the faithful who have the special knowledge and who are attuned to her plight, to save mankind from the apocalypse that we have brought on ourselves with our sinful ways.
The EPA in the United States acts as the religious police, protecting the mother-goddess from the blasphemous abuses of the infidels. It is above the law and evidence because it is a religious body and not subject to such secular concerns. But its minions are only the enforcers of a vast international community of faith which is convinced that the doom of mankind is at hand and spends every minute calculating the day when the oceans will rise up and sweep man off the earth for his sins against the planet.
Environmental scientists have become inquisitioners, searching out heresy, denouncing it and destroying the reputations and academic positions of the heretics. The media and the entertainment industry have wholly dedicated themselves to the propagation of the faith, their doomsday scenarios showing the apocalyptic end play side by side with their mockery and attacks on competing religions, at least those which have not incorporated the green faith into their doctrines.
World leaders are often among the first to adopt a new faith, and the leaders of the modern world are much more likely to kneel at the green altar than they are to hold conventional religious beliefs. The green faith provides them with a revolutionary role as the agents of change, impoverishing their own people, while lining their pockets and those of their friends. It is their kind of religion.International covenants subscribing to the doctrines of this new faith have already been signed, binding each nation to the ranks of the green. Enforcement bodies have been empowered to protect the planet from the scourge of technology and educational programs have been embedded in every school in the modern world to inculcate children with the tenets of the faith and their responsibilities to the mother goddess.
It is a misnomer to say that the modern world is atheistic. It does have atheists, but they are not the majority anywhere. For the most part everyone believes in something, even if it's only in the redeeming power of carbon credits and recycling. In a unified ecosystem that makes us brother to the whale and child of the ape, a harmonious environment which we moderns have disrupted with factories, jet planes and nuclear reactors.
The idealization of the environment is not a new phenomenon, it is among the most ancient of faiths. When thunderstorms struck, many of the ancients believed that the sky was angry at them, and we in our skyscrapers notice a warm month and eagerly point out to one another that our sins have made the planet grow hotter. The Romans would have laughed at us, the Greeks would have hooted, but the barbarian would have understood exactly what we were talking about. Like the pseudo-sophisticates he would not have needed any more evidence than a proclamation by a wise man with sufficient juju.
Without knowing it, without realizing it, our societies have become barbaric in mores and in mindset. Modern American and European elites congratulate themselves on their superiority to their 19th century ancestors, when in reality that are their intellectual and moral inferiors, sitting on a throne of technology and military accomplishments built for them by the ancestors they dismiss as backward.
People have a basic need to believe things. They need to believe that they came from somewhere and that their lives have purpose. They need to believe that there is a higher force, a struggle between good and evil, in which they can play a part. Under the glass and steel veneer of the environmental debate is this basic preoccupation, the worship of the self through the trees, the sky and the earth.
The earth is tangible in a way that the older beings that man believed in are not. It is the touchstone of all pagan faiths because it is physically present. And that physical presence can then be cloaked in all sorts of mummery as a rock hurtling through space becomes the mother goddess of all life. When all other faiths have been dismissed by the high priests of the altimeter, it is the primitive source that they return to.
But of course science is a wholly different thing from religion. This we all know. Science, we are told, is based on facts, while religion is based on faith. But every religion at its peak has insisted that it was the proven truth. Its esoteric proofs were incomprehensible to the laity, but they were there. And only a fool or a lunatic would disbelieve them. Intelligent people knew that the truth was the truth. As intelligent people know today that it is absolutely ridiculous not to believe the thing that some of the experts tell them they should believe.
The difference between the two rests in the ability to challenge a consensus based on proof, rather than in finding proof to support an existing consensus. Any intelligent person can do the latter, it is why debates on any given subject, no matter how trivial, can continue endlessly. It is not intelligence that sets the scientist apart, but integrity. And the green faith has repeatedly demonstrated how little integrity it has and how willing it is to put its beliefs ahead of the science.
This is not a new phenomenon, in or out of science. Human beings need to believe things and the scientific method is a hedge against that weakness. But the only true defense against it is character, a commitment to the truth apart from any other beliefs. But how can one ask people to set aside their belief in the doom of mankind, the billions of dollars invested in preventing that doom and the moral transformation of society that can be achieved by leveraging that doom.
The Global Warming debate asks researchers to choose between their science and their religion, their pocketbook and their reputation. It is a miracle that there are any who have not fallen along with the procession to the green altar. It is hard to blame those who have.
A society in the twilight of its faith must seek out a moral crisis to test itself against. The only crisis that its elites have found is the old crisis of wealth, they have measured their wealth against their goddess and found themselves wanting. That this has made them more eager to rob us and less eager to live in the woods shows that they are hypocrites, but how could they not be. Having betrayed the truth for their faith, they then betray their faith for money. The wealth of the West is its crime and its salvation. Its green priests offer atonement for wealth by soliciting contributions of wealth.
The Muslim nomadic migrations complete the objective of the green faith to ravage modern civilization and tear it down to make way for a more organic way of life. Rather than red and green fascism, there is only the green and green fascism, Hazrat Khiḍr, the green man of the East and his murderous hordes, meeting up with the green man of the West, the modern ruler who has decided to play Khidr and bring down his own civilization.
When we have nothing else to trust in, all that remains is the green, the natural renewal of the world, the primitive cycles of the seasons and the degeneracy of man into a savage who is at one with the mother goddess of the world.
Comments
I always found it to be fascinating when people will say, "Mother Earth." What they are really afraid to say is, "G-d."
ReplyDeleteKind of ironic that they stand there holding signs that say, be kind to Mother Earth and respect Mother Earth, yet the very thing that is "Mother Earth" (G-d) they leave out of the picture and make "Mother Earth" (the green movement) their god. Just what in the world do they think "Mother Earth is?
It is interesting how the Jewish people is always an obstacle to the utopian visions of various anti-human movements over the ages, with Israel constantly creating and inventing stuff that the saves the world and benefits humanity, while the green movement itself has decided to force everyone to live impoverished lives of artificial austerity / rationing / subsistence before "becoming one with Gaia"…
ReplyDeleteThat is so true Leah. Environmentalists are unable or unwilling to recognize the Creator (G-d) from the creation (earth).
ReplyDeleteHow ironic:(
ReplyDeleteThese nature lovers showed precious little understanding or sympathy when Buffalonians grieved the loss of thousands of trees October 13, 2006 in a freak snow storm.
They blamed global warming and people as the cause of the destruction of the trees, not our lake effect storms.
And you'd think with all the power out for weeks they'd bring in some solar generators.
Nope. They were more than happy to let us freeze.
That's their religion.
Its unbelievable how the arabs do nothing but steal. The khidr story is a clear ripoff of Eliyahu and Rav Yehoshua ben Levi.
ReplyDeleteThe only difference is that the psycopath made it far more bloody and demented.
It isn't a need to believe, but the fact that belief is inescapable. The "non believer" believes that our logic, math, and basic physical "laws" are applicable everywhere and at all times. Since neither condition can be proved belief is all that remains...
ReplyDeleteI invite you to see my 2008 essay, "Environmentalist religion explained," in which I explain how "environmentalism is in fact a perfect 21st century remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths."
ReplyDeletethis as a confusing, ridiculous article...were you on drugs? anytime you attack those who show concern for the health of this planet you have sinned...the sole reason we are here is to take care of the planet and its creatures...we were given kingship and how you exercise it is your judgement...we were thrown out of the garden of eden and thrust into this one with a sentence of death...why? because we are destroyers of other life..we are here to prove a point...that we will destroy the earth...what this article is, at its core is a mass of unrelenting cruelty mixed with arrogance...nobody should care? lets all trash the earth....and you give too much credit to the scientist...science is a two edged sword and it is science that has us on the edge of the destruction...articles like this, coming from a revered figure like Daniel cause people to question their faith and if you cause others to sin you will not be allowed to repent..
ReplyDeletethe big bang theory...we banged into a system where the sun is 93 million miles away, reaches 40 million degrees hot and yet it gets here around 72 degrees and little flowers sprout from the ground? I call that intelligent design...what is evolution? G-d answering the prayers of HIS creatures...you need wings HE will supply them...HE knows the yearnings of HIS creations...it would be best for your reputation to take this mixed up article off your site...
ReplyDeleteyou call the scientist a person of integrity? yet the peoples love of the earth something sordid? the builders of bombs? makers of ever more destructive devices? Henry Ford a man of integrity? that he was antisemitic was a prophecy the car is a curse to the Jews and is enriching their enemies and giving them the means to destroy them... and it has been my experience that what is bad for the Jews is bad for the world...
ReplyDeletewhat was Adam's first task...to name the animals...every child should learn the name of every flower, every tree, every living creature...we need to develop closer connections to the earth and its creatures...to life! yes a utopia! neighborhoods where not one scrap of litter is found, where birds have houses built for them, where squirrels are seen not smashed on roadways but happily playing among the trees..where a ready supply of food is given hem from compassionate human hands...where their health and happiness is our CHIEF CONCERN...Then diseases will disappear...pestilence will not be visited upon us....where wars will cease and man will join hand in hand to compete not with bombs but who can build the most compassionate, beautiful neighborhoods...where the biggest flock of birds is a sign of real integrity...where we train the camera not on the hollywood whores but on the gardens and its insect life...by curing their ills we learn to cure ours...where we don't exterminate but accommodate...G-d is a moral G-d and how we use the science not to just stuff our gullets and lock ourselves on the couch in front of the boob tube in self congratulation on how we have made the world our playground... we are losing our ability to relate to nature and science is the cause...introductions in our garden (for that is what we are living in, a garden) of foreign inventions that should not only benefit us but those who share it with us...any invention should judged by how it can benefit the garden...for you believers in this stupid article (and it is stupid, lacking in the writer's usual clarity and a sign from G-d that it is on the wrong road) who gives a heck about he plight of nature! you have television, computers, music, to fill your days..disconnected from the world...enjoy your insanity!
ReplyDeletethis sight is a source of joy to me but the joy comes from the author..the comments from its readers are often arrogant and narcissistic...trying to go one up on Daniel is not the right thing to do...unless he offends your sensibilities...make sure your additions in agreement make a extremely valid point..otherwise they come off as arrogant and an overreach
ReplyDeleteNo one is saying that we should trash the earth. The point is that the earth exists for the sake of man, not man for the sake of the earth.
ReplyDeleteDominion over the Earth doesn't mean we can ignore its physicality with impunity. We DO have to be careful with the finite "environment". I can't for the life of me understand why conservatives, no less than liberals, turn climate science into a political line in the sand.
ReplyDeletesir
ReplyDeleteyou say earth was made for man...I'm saying the same thing it but in a different way..it was meant to test us and to make us more noble...to use our power head of he food chain and as images of G-d to save as best we can the other forms of life...to subdue nature is not to exploit it but to subdue sickness and death of the flowers, trees, etc....to dress and keep the earth was our original description...and since there was no death this was an analogy for heaven (everlasting life) and how to attain it...by focusing our powers to removing death as much as possible...HIS plan for us was to be his gardeners...and if you think that is demeaning you miss the great fascination of different forms of life...by FOCUSING our time and powers given to us to compassionately keeping everything alive and healthy we are redeemed...Moses was not allowed to enter the holy land (an another analogy of heaven and how to reach it) not because he tapped the rock twice but because once the water flowed he didn't have the people water the animals first...the judgement is: you spent your time keeping lessors alive so you will be kept alive in heaven,.. an eye for an eye...your description of earth being for man's benefit is selfish and it is this kind of attitude that has driven animals from their homes, caused numerous species to become extinct....I'm taking exceptional issue with you, a man whose intelligence I fear, because this issue is the one that separates those who have been accepted by G-d and those who have been rejected...If you want numerous Torah examples, people chosen or rejected by G-d I will be glad to state them...it is this kind of selfishness, man as deserving above all, that is destroying us..
it pains me to see fellow Jews who say that person cares more about animals than humans...on the contrary it is because he will stoop to helping lessors that he can be trusted to help the powerless old lady, or be the voice of the orphan...
ReplyDeletePost a Comment