https://www.bc.edu/bc-web/centers/boisi-center/events/archive/spring-2015/religion-and-the-roots-of-climate-change-denial.html

https://youtu.be/ulmpK7X5kiY


https://theconversation.com/faith-and-politics-mix-to-drive-evangelical-christians-climate-change-denial-143145


U.S. Christians, especially evangelical Christians, identify as environmentalists at very low rates compared to the general population. According to a Pew Research Center poll from May 2020, while 62% of religiously unaffiliated U.S. adults agree that the Earth is warming primarily due to human action, only 35% of U.S. Protestants do – including just 24% of white evangelical Protestants.

Politically powerful Christian interest groups publicly dispute the climate science consensus. A coalition of major evangelical groups, including Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council, launched a movement opposing what they describe as “the false worldview” of environmentalism, which supposedly is “striving to put America, and the world, under its destructive control.”

Studies show that belief in miracles and an afterlife is associated with lower estimates of the risks posed by climate change. This raises the question: Does religion itself predispose people against climate science?

White American evangelicals trend very strongly toward political conservatism. They also exhibit the strongest correlation, among any faith group, between religiosity and either climate science denial or a general anti-science bias.

Meanwhile, African-American Protestants, who are theologically aligned with evangelical Protestants but politically aligned with progressives, show some of the highest levels of climate concern.

North America is the only high-income region where people who follow a religion are substantially more likely to say they favor their religious teachings over science when disagreements arise. This finding is driven mainly by politically conservative U.S. religious denominations – including conservative Catholics.

A major new study looking at data from 60 countries showed that, while religiosity in the U.S. is correlated with more negative attitudes about science, you don’t see this kind of association in many other countries. Elsewhere, religiosity is sometimes even correlated with disproportionately positive attitudes about science.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/09/2023 07:08AM by anybody.

Religions were born from an attempt to explain things that seemed to be inexplainable. For example: why does the sun appear to rise in the east and set in the west? Ra takes it across the sky in his canoe. Scientific discovery has often been resisted (or worse) by religious leaders (Galileo certainly comes to mind). There is a common mindset that faith in things that can’t be proven is morally superior to knowledge of things that can be proven.

This has been a problem for as long as there has been science, but I really don’t know why in the 21st century, it’s seems to be worse in the USA than in much of the world.

CrispingPin Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Religions were born from an attempt to explain
> things that seemed to be inexplainable. For
> example: why does the sun appear to rise in the
> east and set in the west? Ra takes it across the
> sky in his canoe. Scientific discovery has often
> been resisted (or worse) by religious leaders
> (Galileo certainly comes to mind). There is a
> common mindset that faith in things that can’t
> be proven is morally superior to knowledge of
> things that can be proven.
>
> This has been a problem for as long as there has
> been science, but I really don’t know why in the
> 21st century, it’s seems to be worse in the USA
> than in much of the world.

Recognizing environmentalism and climate change means that not only do you have to recognize that the two exist but that you have to be willing to change some of your family's traditions (like how much driving you do in a gas-guzzling, fume-delivering automobile). White evangelical U.S. Christians believe that if they acknowledge environmentalism and climate change, they will also have to acknowledge that 1) some of their own traditions are causing the problem; 2) they will have to perform tasks differently than they have in the past; and 3) human beings do have the power to destroy the planet on which we live (their theology says they don't).

As to why this is unique to U.S. evangelicals, my answers are 1) it actually isn't--some fundamentalist Muslims and Jews are also skeptical of environmentalist concerns and climate change, though their countries have thus been more affected by climate change than we in the U.S.; and 2) in Europe, where there is less religious skepticism, fundamentalist religions have never really taken hold as they have here in the U.S. (in fact, if memory serves, there is a lot less religious belief in western European countries than there is in the U.S.).

  
  
  

Fundies have been anti-science at least since Darwin, and the case can be made that it goes back to Newton (the earth must be at least millions of years old) and Galileo and Copernicus.

And then there is the tribal element - if “they” are for it, then we, by definition, have to be against it, noses, faces and spite notwithstanding.

I've sometimes thought that water will need to be lapping at people's doorsteps in order for them to pay attention to climate change. We just had the hottest day on record for the entire planet, and exactly how much attention was paid to that?

Speaking as an educator, I think this is an area where the public schools can play a strong role. If certain segments of our society are wont to make complaints about public school educators, let's give them something to complain about. Environmentalism and climate change is as good a place for us to take a stand as any. Let's raise and educate future environmentalists.

As many of you saw on a prior thread, the UMC Methodists are undergoing a painful schism. I do know that the UMC church is very much involved with awareness about climate change.

To be fair, I think the climate lobbyists have brought a lot of their credibility problems on themselves. Jim Hansen and his acolytes have been claiming since the 1980s that if we don't do X within the next 5 (or sometimes 10) years, the window of opportunity will close and we will be doomed.

Well, there have been a lot of ten year periods since 1980, so either we are doomed, or the claims were BS.I think it is a little of both.

Then there is the redoubtable Bill McKibben, he of 350.org, favorite talking head on climate issues at the NYTimes. He created 350.org in 2008 when somebody ran a software climate model that modeled increasing CO2 levels, and the model went "non-linear" at 350 PPM of CO2.

Nonlinear response is a real thing. Car brakes are normally linear. You press the pedal lightly, you lose down a little. You press hard, you slow down quickly. The brake output is proportional to the pedal pressure. That is a linear response.

If you hit wet black ice, the brakes are suddenly extremely nonlinear. Pressure on the brake pedal has little or no response. That's a case where the input stops working. There are also cases where very little input causes the system to wildly overreact. You've probably all heard auditorium sound systems that screamed painfully loud sound because of audio feedback.

The software model basically predicted that the climate would do something like audio feedback of the level of CO2 went past 350 PPM.

The problem is, climate models, especially new ones, are not that accurate. We have no idea if all the variables that would affect a nonlinear response are accounted for, or if they are accurately modeled. The way you find out how accurate they are is to check the actual climate and see how closely the model predicted it.

Long story short, Bill McKibben had no idea whether the climate would "go nonlinear" at 350 PPM, of 500 PPM, or 280 PPM, or if it would go nonlinear at all. The best you can say about that model is that it is an educated guess.

And if the climate really does go nonlinear above 350 PPM, then we are all well and truly screwed, because it is now above 400 PPM and nobody alive today will see the CO2 level fall below 400 PPM for the rest of their lives, no matter how well we cut back on carbon emissions. .

You only get to claim the sky is falling so many times before people start tuning you out. Whenever I hear Bill McKibben in particular opine on the climate I tend to roll my eyes, and a large thought-balloon forms over my head with the caption "STFU, you're not helping."

Actually climate change is a sign of end times. They believe in it. They just believe Jesus fixes it after he makes the world really hot.

You didn't think that one out, did you ?