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This may send a shiver down the spines of our handkerchief-waving friends caught up in the emotion-based hurricane of global warming.
Have you noticed how striking are the similarities between the evangelicals in the global warming movement and the Original Evangelicals in fundamental Christianity?
Neither group can understand why it is regarded as an oddity, a museum piece, something quirky inherited from your old maid aunt.
This does not mean that either army of zealots is wrong, just that their soldiers have a much stronger proclivity for sophistry than for sophistication.
The true believers in both movements are mystified that the whole world doesn’t share their enlightened views when the partisan evidence, by golly, Murgatroyd, is so darned overwhelming.
There Is a Difference
An important, and mature, distinction is that the religious evangelicals realize their commitment is based on faith while the secular evangelicals, suffering from excessive chutzpah, mistakenly label their faith as mathematical proof.
Truth-in-advertising, not to mention creative labeling, driven by a full tank of zeal that never seems to diminish, is their favorite, and loudest, sin.
My colleague Frederik Sisa is frequently and
properly praised for his calm deliberation and reflective thinking on a broad array of topics requiring immense concentration. We could debate more evenly if only I possessed such admirable qualities.
May I Have Evidence, Please?
In last Monday’s essay (“Letter to Global Warming Skeptics”), Mr. Sisa wrote, “I don’t understand why the scientific consensus is unpersuasive to you.”
My evangelical friends adopt the identical awed stance: “We don’t understand why proofs for God and the Christian faith, as clearly set down in our Bible, are unpersuasive to you.”
Consensus? Proof? Boys, boys, you will have to speak with greater specificity, and this often is where reasoning climbs into the backseat and passion seizes control of the debate.
Here Doggie, Here Cause
Some evangelicals are genetically disposed passionistas, ever in search of a cause. When they find one, especially a cause that is as broad and utterly undefinable as the width of the sky, hey, baby, they are in the saddle for life.
This is a cause-shlepper’s dream. Nobody can ever prove him wrong. Nor can anyone prove him right. But, hey, what’s a detail when it keeps a fine fellow like Al Gore employed as a spokesman for global warming, unless the last fad, global cooling, the rage of the ‘70s, makes an unexpected return?
What makes these evangelical bedfellows so fascinating is that each side belittles the other as an intellectually soft, robotic, anti-thinking.
Religious evangelicals commonly are dismissive of scientific claims that problemize their faith in their God and their religion.
Chest-pounding secular evangelicals deride religious faith as a respectable formula for life on the grounds that it defies scientific calculation — as if their flavor of faith can.
One Plus One Is Not Four or Even Five
A body of thinking that supports your favorite theory does not constitute a consensus that, first, there is global warming, and secondly, that it is humanly caused and controlled. There may be global warming, there may not. It may be humanly caused, and it may not.
But please do not call a body of thinking “consensus.” Surely you remember corruption of the language, pointedly inaccurate labeling to align with your new beliefs, got you into trouble in the first place.
