Recently Rev. Mitchell Hescox, CEO of the Evangelical Environmental Network, wrote an email to a pastor, who forwarded it to us. It's a prime example of the fallacious (and worse) discourse climate alarmists often use. Here's what Hescox wrote: I pray you will reconsider your stance on climate change. It is apparent, you have been mislead by evil spirits. Climate change science was first published in 1892, the National Academy of Science first told President Johnson about the serious impacts … [Read more...]
Caring for Creation: A Book of Good Intentions but Poor Science
As an evangelical Christian, I believe we should be good stewards of God’s planet. We should strive to reduce pollution to protect human health and the natural environment. We should explore new alternative energy sources, always seeking to maximize benefits and minimize harms. We should prioritize providing electricity for the 1.2 billion people who don’t have it—and consequently suffer high rates of disease and premature death. For these and many other reasons I applaud Mitch Hescox and … [Read more...]
Evangelicals, Katharine Hayhoe, and Climate Change
Dr. Katharine Hayhoe is an evangelical scientist who desires the wellbeing of human society. She crunches data and helps people quantify the impacts of climate change. Sadly, her communication to the church has been anything but helpful. Dr. Hayhoe says, "The data tells us the planet is warming; the science is clear that humans are responsible; the impacts we're seeing today are already serious; and our future is in our hands." But is it? Does the church have to take her at her word because … [Read more...]
Pope Francis and Climate Politics
Reuters reports, “Pope Francis urged national leaders on Monday to implement global environmental agreements without delay, a message that looked to be squarely aimed at U.S. President-elect Donald Trump. “Addressing a group of scientists that included theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, the pope gave his strongest speech on the environment since the election of Trump, who has threatened to pull out of the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change. ‘The ‘distraction’ or delay in … [Read more...]
Rescuing Science from Itself: How to Restore Rationality to an Increasingly Irrational Endeavor
“You can give respectability to mythology if you couch your myth in sufficiently academic language.” —Dr. R.C. Sproul Who in twenty-first century America would say that “science … our one source of objective knowledge, is in deep trouble” because “much of [the] supposed knowledge” it brings us “is turning out to be contestable, unreliable, unusable, or flat-out wrong”? Obviously an anti-intellectual, benighted holdover from the Dark Ages. Right? Wrong. It’s Dr. Daniel Sarewitz, … [Read more...]
How Theology Can, and Should, Contribute to Scientific and Public Discourse about Anthropogenic Global Warming
A paper presented to the Round Table on Theology, Climate Change, and Politics, University of Western Ontario, May 29, 2012 Paleoanthropologist and philosopher Loren Eiseley (1907–1977), who though religious in the tradition of American Transcendentalists Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau was certainly no orthodox Christian theist, on reflecting on the kind of soil in which science could flourish, wrote, “In one of those strange permutations of which history yields … [Read more...]
Interfaith Climate Change Statement—An Exercise in Absurdity?
In preparation for the signing of the Paris climate treaty Friday (Earth Day), 16 religious organizations presented an "Interfaith Climate Change Statement" to the United Nations in New York today. The 724-word statement urges heads of state to sign and ratify (Do they know the difference? In the U.S., the "head of state" can only propose, not ratify, a treaty. Without Senate ratification, President Obama's signature won't bind the United States.) the Paris climate treaty, claiming "Humanity … [Read more...]
The Theologization of Global Warming Among American Evangelicals: Who Says Religion and Science Can’t Mix?
[Note: This essay was written in the summer of 2010 at the request of Dr. Patrick Michaels, intended for a book he was editing. His publisher declined to include it in the book because of its religious content. It was never published elsewhere until now. We hope it remains a helpful survey of the history of the debate over global warming among evangelicals up to that time.—ECB, March 11, 2016] Introduction In the last half decade there has been a blossoming of public concern about global … [Read more...]
Thorns and Briers, or Peaceful Habitation?
A common theme of environmentalist thought—the Green vision of the ideal world—is of a small human population whose effect on earth’s ecosystems doesn’t differ significantly from that of other species. The stark contrast between that vision, with its particular understanding of what it means to be human, and the Biblical vision is apparent from the beginning of the Bible, where, having made Adam and Eve (unlike all other living things, earthly or heavenly) in His image, “God blessed them. And … [Read more...]
The Haunt of Jackals
Various passages of the Bible set forth the complete elimination of human habitation in a land as the epitome of God’s judgment. I have long found it remarkable that much of the environmental movement sees as ideal what Scripture depicts as hideous. One place that does so is Isaiah 34, in which God through the Prophet Isaiah foretells, in sometimes apocalyptic poetic language, His judgment on Edom and the other pagan nations that oppressed Israel and Judah: 1“Draw near, O nations, to hear, and … [Read more...]
