Tonight at Duke University there will be a panel discussion titled “Climate Change Not a Leap of Faith.” Among the event hosts is the group Young Evangelicals for Climate Action, an offshoot of the Evangelical Environmental Network.
They and the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, the Nicholas School of the Environment, and the Kenan Institute for Ethics are bringing in the Nicholas Institute’s Amy Pickle, the Nicholas School’s Megan Mullin, the Kenan Institute’s David Toole, and Katharine Hayhoe, an associate professor of political science and director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University, to discuss why Christians should care about climate change.
That’s a fine idea in principle, but that title—“Climate Change Not a Leap of Faith”—got me wondering: Is that meant to present “climate change” as somehow in contrast with religious faith in general, or maybe Christian faith in particular?
Nineteenth-century Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, among the earliest Existentialists, famously taught that Christian commitment is a “leap of faith,” embracing Christian teachings without and even contrary to evidence.
Although that understanding of the Christian faith was antithetical to the main body of Christian teaching for the previous eighteen centuries, it caught on, and today many who call themselves evangelicals understand their Christian faith that way. They embrace it by Kierkegaard’s “leap of faith,” sometimes even calling it a “blind leap of faith.”
Such a message would have shocked the Apostle John, who wrote that John the Baptist came to bear witness [which denoted testimony in a trial to establish fact] to Jesus (John 1:6–7) and that “Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:30–31).
It would have shocked the Apostle Peter, who urged Christians to “regard Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you” (1 Peter 3:15).
And it would have shocked Luke, who began his Gospel, “Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught” (Luke 1:1–4). Likewise, he began his second volume, the Book of Acts, “In the first book, O Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach, until the day when he was taken up, after he had given commands through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen. To them he presented himself alive after his suffering by many proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God” (Acts 1:1–3).
What lies behind that choice of title for tonight’s panel discussion? Was it, as I asked above, to present belief in climate change as reasoned and evidence-based, in contrast with the “blind leap of faith” of Christianity? Indeed, do those who devised that title know that the word faith, as used in the Bible, denotes not an emotional but an intellectual response: assenting (not just speaking with the lips but believing, honestly, with the mind [or heart—the Bible uses the terms interchangeably]) to the truth of a statement or doctrine?
I suppose we may never know.
But this much we do know. The panel’s organizers ensured that those who attend will hear only one side of this subject, though it is a subject characterized by enormous scientific, economic, political, and ethical controversy among bona fide experts in all four fields.
All four panelists clearly believe in dangerous, manmade global warming and the imperative of seeking to mitigate it by reducing carbon dioxide emissions by reducing fossil fuel use—although doing so would slow or stop economic development in much of the world, trapping billions in poverty and condemning them to short and disease-ridden lives.
The only climate scientist among them—Dr. Hayhoe—has proven unwilling to dialogue with other evangelical climate scientists who disagree with her.
When in 2013 she led a group of 200 evangelical scientists (only five of whom were climate scientists) in issuing an open letter urging Congress to take action on climate change, two Senior Fellows of the Cornwall Alliance, Dr. Roy W. Spencer, Principal Research Scientist in climatology in the University of Alabama’s School of Earth and Atmospheric Science and winner of NASA’s Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal for global temperature monitoring work with satellites, and Dr. David Legates, professor of hydroclimatology, precipitation and climate change, and computational methods in the College of Earth, Ocean, & Environment at the University of Delaware, concluded their critical response:
… we challenge them, or other evangelicals of their choice, to a formal public debate—with a scientist, an economist, and a theologian on each side—at an evangelical college of their choice. Up for debate would be the magnitude, causes, and consequences of recent and foreseeable global warming and whether fighting it by reducing CO2 emissions would cause more good than harm to the poor.
To date neither Dr. Hayhoe nor any other evangelical who agrees with her position has ever responded to this challenge—which still stands.
Might belief in dangerous manmade global warming be more like Kierkegaard’s “leap of faith” than skepticism? Why might one think so?
- The increase in the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide, which climate alarmists blame for rising global average temperature, is a smooth upward curve, while the rise in temperature over the last century and a half, and over the last four decades, has been intermittent, with increases, decreases, and plateaus.
- The best analyses indicate that global temperature changes occur before changes in carbon dioxide concentration—opposite the sequence we would observe if carbon dioxide were the primary driver of the temperature changes.
- The computer climate models that are the sole basis for predictions of global temperature stretching into coming centuries simulate, on average, two to three times the warming actually observed over the relevant period.
- 95% of them simulate more warming than observed, indicating that the errors are not random but driven by some kind of bias (whether honest mistake or not).
- None simulated the complete absence of statistically significant warming from early 1997 to late 2015.
So, maybe, pace the panel discussion’s title, belief in “climate change” (shorthand for dangerous manmade warming that must be mitigated even at the cost of trillions of dollars and potentially trapping billions in poverty) really is a leap of faith.
(A version of this article appeared April 5, 2016, in The Stream.)
Featured image “Leap of Faith” courtesy of Javier Morales, Flickr Creative Commons.
Tim says
Loneliness, alienation, and the disintegration of basic human relationships always go hand-in-hand with selfishness. Even consuming vast amounts of the world’s goods does nothing to make up for the gnawing emptiness when human warmth is removed. The only escape from this ever-increasing cycle of selfishness and consumption is to enter into a brand new society as a brand new person. Here’s how: http://twelvetribes.org/articles/earth-final-century
E. Calvin Beisner says
Tim, the Cornwall Alliance would warmly embrace some things in the Twelve Tribes statement while disagreeing, to very degrees, with other things.
Here are a few of the things we’d embrace:
* “Loneliness, alienation, and the disintegration of basic human relationships always go hand-in-hand with selfishness. Even consuming vast amounts of the world’s goods does nothing to make up for the gnawing emptiness when human warmth is removed.”
* “Since the beginning of time, Creation’s voice has spoken to man. When the air was clean and you could drink water from the streams, Creation’s voice spoke of the Creator and His bountiful intentions toward mankind. It spoke of His invisible nature which is seen through what He made for us: the eternal sun, the crisp silver moon, countless twinkling stars, majestic sunrises, fresh flowing streams, graceful birds in flight, the miracle of life itself… His handiwork. Even today Creation proclaims this same message to every creature under heaven, great and small alike. It tells of the Creator’s care for everything — from the farthest galaxy to the soil that He carefully designed so we could grow plants that contain just the right nutrients to sustain life and prevent disease.
The voice of Creation is the outward witness or evidence that there is a Creator. This voice agrees with the inner witness or conscience of man.”
* “The truth about the Creator is evident, revealed in the heart of every man and every woman.
If a human being ignores this inner voice, he is without excuse. Denying God happens when someone suppresses the truth in the innermost recesses of his heart. Men do this by the choices they make in life every day. They can obey what they know, what Creation and their conscience tell them, or they can suppress what they know — the truth of Creation and God’s voice within, sinking instead into the gutter of being ruled by self-interest.
This is the root of mankind’s problems. When a person stops listening to God’s voice in his heart, he starts to fall further and further from his Creator.”
And there is more.
But there are also parts with which we disagree, such as:
* “This voice agrees with the inner witness or conscience of man. It knows what is right and what is wrong — intuitively, instinctively, without being taught.” Whereas the Bible affirms that the fundamental laws of God (e.g., the Ten Commandments, the Two Great Commandments) are written into the heart of every man (Romans 2:14-15), it also teaches that sin has effaced those laws so that people often misunderstand what they require. In the face of that truth what is needed is not intuition but the careful reasoning that this article tends to denigrate. For instance, does “You shall not murder” prohibit driving a car, or raising livestock, or hiking in the wilderness–each of which carries the risk of accidental injury to oneself or others? The Bible distinguishes murder from negligent homicide from accidental cause of death, and intuition won’t show in a given instance of someone’s death which of those contributed, only careful reasoning will.
* “the ecosystems that have so delicately held the earth together are rapidly breaking down. Her resources are being sapped and used up, vast areas of her surface are being drained of life, she is reeling on the edge of destruction.” This is an empirical claim, and empirical claims are not to be judged intuitively, they must be judged empirically–by doing the hard work of empirical observation, of counting and measuring. And when we do that hard work, we find that this claim is right about some things in some places in some times and wrong about other things in other places at other times, and badly exaggerated at least in its conclusion that the earth “is reeling on the edge of destruction.” Rising prices are a signal of falling supply relative to demand, and the long-term price trend for all extractive resources (mineral, plant, and animal) is downward, implying that they are becoming less scarce, not more. Why? Because people not only consume but also produce resources, and on average they produce more resources than they consume. This isn’t intuitively obvious; indeed, I freely confess it’s counterintuitive. But it’s what the empirical evidence shows over time. (See my book PROSPECTS FOR GROWTH: A BIBLICAL VIEW OF POPULATION, RESOURCES, AND THE FUTURE [1990; out of print] and my monograph WHAT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT ENVIRONMENTAL TASK FACING AMERICAN CHRISTIANS TODAY? [available in Cornwall Alliance’s online shop] for discussion.) Very briefly summarized: What we learn from economic and environmental history is that as societies transition from subsistence agriculture to early industrialization air and water and solid waste pollution grow, but the growth in food, clothing, shelter, and other basic needs production grows more than enough to counteract the risks from that pollution, which is reflected in the fact that death rates, at all ages, decline during that same time. But soon these societies reach the point where they can afford to adopt better industrial technologies, and the pollution emission rates peak and decline, and soon the pollution ambient concentrations peak and decline, too, leaving the people more prosperous, healthy, and long-lived than before, and their environment actually cleaner and safer.
I could go on, but that’s not something to do in a simple comment here. Perhaps sometime I’ll have the time to write an extended critique of the statement. I’ll finish here by pointing out that when Isaiah, whom the statement quotes, says “The earth is polluted by its inhabitants” (24:5-6), the pollution in mind is not chemical runoff from farms, or toxic waste from power plants, but breaking of “the everlasting covenant”: Israel’s unfaithfulness to God through idolatry and spiritual adultery with pagan peoples who worshiped false gods. This is not to say that there’s nothing wrong with toxic chemical pollution. It is to say that we must use Scripture with care–more care, considerably, than the Twelve Tribes document shows.