Christopher Pearson: Ruled by earthly concern
Those most inclined to assertions of guilt are usually those with the least to
reproach themselves about writes *Christopher Pearson*
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(http://theaustralian.news.com.au report)
25 November 2006
LAST Saturday's column was devoted to eco-fundamentalism, the new deep-green
religion. It may have come as a surprise to some readers who had imagined
themselves sceptical agnostics or atheists to learn that they were in the grip
of an essentially religious enthusiasm. Some have written in to deny it and
others have wondered whether I may have been carried away by a metaphor or
trying to taint the greenhouse hypothesis by associating it with superstition.
To answer the last point first, I'm not remotely anti-religious and use the term
fundamentalism in a diagnostic rather than a dismissive way. There is a vast
gulf fixed between the sceptical, rational approach and a religio-magical view
of the world.
Those most inclined to assertions of guilt are usually those with the least to
reproach themselves about writes *Christopher Pearson*
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(http://theaustralian.news.com.au report)
25 November 2006
LAST Saturday's column was devoted to eco-fundamentalism, the new deep-green
religion. It may have come as a surprise to some readers who had imagined
themselves sceptical agnostics or atheists to learn that they were in the grip
of an essentially religious enthusiasm. Some have written in to deny it and
others have wondered whether I may have been carried away by a metaphor or
trying to taint the greenhouse hypothesis by associating it with superstition.
To answer the last point first, I'm not remotely anti-religious and use the term
fundamentalism in a diagnostic rather than a dismissive way. There is a vast
gulf fixed between the sceptical, rational approach and a religio-magical view
of the world.
The crucial distinction is that scientific propositions have to be falsifiable,
to be capable of being proved wrong. Religious conceptions of what is true come
from one or other form of higher authority (gods, prophets, the zeitgeist) and
have to be accepted at face value, without question. They are, by definition,
unfalsifiable.
The conviction that greenhouse gas-induced global warming is about to endanger
mankind's survival is an article of faith rather than an assertion of science.
The parallels with previous apocalyptic movements are readily apparent in Norman
Cohn's classic, The Pursuit of the Millennium. That the greenhouse
scaremongering is endorsed by so many people with science degrees says more
about the state of contemporary scholarship than anything else. For, as Nigel
Lawson so powerfully reminds us, the science is not settled and it is dishonest
to pretend otherwise. Not only is it dishonest; it's also a betrayal of the
West's tradition of reason and tolerance and a retreat into irrationality and
dogmatic thinking.
How is it that people with no conscious sense of religious convictions should
find themselves enthralled by unexamined and, prima facie, outlandish beliefs?
It happens quite easily over time if most of your friends and family take what
they see on television or learn at school for granted. Anyone beguiled by
ingratiating invitations to help save the planet has a primary responsibility to
reinforce the fear that, in one way or other, it's at risk.
Lawson says: "It is not difficult to understand the appeal of the conventional
climate change wisdom. Throughout the ages something deep in man's psyche has
made him receptive to apocalyptic warnings: 'The end of the world is nigh.'
Almost all of us are imbued with a sense of guilt and a sense of sin, and it is
so much less uncomfortable to divert our attention away from our individual sins
and causes of guilt, arising from how we have treated our neighbours, and to
sublimate it in collective guilt and collective sin."
There is a further refinement of bad faith that is worth mentioning here. Those
most inclined to assertions of collective guilt and sin are usually those with
the least to reproach themselves about. So they can enjoy the catharsis of
self-denuciation and the inner certainty of being relatively blameless.
Lawson points out the role of weather in religious meta-narratives from the
flood onwards. "In primitive societies it was customary for extreme weather
events to be explained as punishment from the gods for the sins of the people,
and there is no shortage of examples of this theme in the Bible either,
particularly but not exclusively in the Old Testament. The main change is that
the new priests are scientists (well rewarded with research grants for their
pains) rather than the clerics of the established religions, and the new
religion is eco-fundamentalism. But it is a distinction without much of a
difference. And the old religions have not been slow to make common cause."
How, you may be wondering, could the old religions and Christianity in
particular, make common cause with a pagan apocalyptic cult? Are they not
completely antithetical? Where even 30 years ago the answer to that question
might have been a resounding affirmative, Australian Christianity has undergone
a sea change. Readers looking for a timely account of matters should get
themselves a copy of Michael Gilchrist's Lost! Australia's Catholics Today
(Freedom Publishing). It is especially instructive about the process by which
fashionable add-ons such as socialism, environmentalism and feminism have come
to colonise Catholicism's religious orders and eventually the church at large.
Gilchrist's analysis is also sufficiently broad-brush so that it can be applied
pretty much across the board to the other denominations.
Considering the same phenomena, I'm inclined to an explanation that is rather
more radical than Gilchrist's. Where he sees mostly bewilderment and educational
or leadership failures, I see an explicit collapse of faith. There has been a
problem, at least since the Enlightenment, of ostensibly Christian priests and
teachers who - with varying degrees of furtiveness - shared a gnosis, a hidden
understanding. Their secret conviction was that Christianity wasn't ultimately
true and that the best that could be done was to turn it into an engine of
political change, redistribution of wealth and even revolution.
The theological modernists the Vatican tried to suppress at the turn of the 19th
century went underground until the 1950s. The de-mythologisers in the Protestant
churches were far freer to pursue the modernist project, especially in the
groves of academe. It wasn't until the "God is dead" ructions in the '60s that
it became suddenly clear how many senior theologians in all the churches no
longer believed in the resurrection but still thought themselves entitled to
their benefices and to speak in the name of the church on anything that took
their fancy.
Apart from those Catholic and Anglican bishops who decline to affirm the Nicene
Creed when asked, I have no way of knowing which of them are wolves in sheep's
clothing. The charitable thing to do is to assume the best. Perhaps the
conversion of so many of them to eco-fundamentalism betokens nothing more than
theological lapses, scientific ignorance, susceptibility to pagan superstition
or the zeitgeist and perhaps the frailties of age.
It is in these terms, rather than bad faith, that we ought to view last year's
position paper on climate change on behalf of the Catholic bishops. It was
endorsed by archbishops John Bathersby and Adrian Doyle and bishops Christopher
Toohey, Christopher Saunders, Eugene Hurley and Patrick Power. It began with a
false assertion: "Rapid climate change as the result of human activity is now
recognised by the global scientific community as a reality." It concluded that
the least the federal Government could do was to sign the Kyoto Protocol.
Had the bishops considered Australia's national interest and the relative equity
of Kyoto's allocated emissions targets? Had they pondered the possibility that
Kyoto may have capriciously or corruptly favoured some classes of nations at the
expense of others? Had they reflected on the almost entirely symbolic character
of signing up in the face of general non-compliance? We can safely conclude that
in each case the answer was in the negative and that they were carried away by
posture politics.
More recently Bathersby told a Brisbane Walk Against Warming rally: "I don't
think we can be Christian unless we are ecologically converted." In terms of
sheer fatuity and presumption, it was on par with the former Anglican primate
Peter Carnley announcing that he didn't think it was possible to be a Christian
and a conservative.
The Anglican communion has no shortage of eco-fundamentalists, but the most
egregious is the Bishop of Canberra and Goulburn, George Browning. The bishop,
who was obliged to resign his see over a sexual affair but was in short order
forgiven by a broad-minded diocese where matters of that kind are nowadays
deemed not so serious, is, if anything, even more sanctimonious than he was
before his lapse became public.
In early November he wrote to John Howard and Kim Beazley, telling them that
"Australians could not morally vote at next year's federal election for a party
that did not have a comprehensive policy on climate change. This is the most
serious issue facing global humanity ... We desperately need leaders who can act
on this imperative with courage, vision and passion ... We now know that what we
are doing is harming the Earth; our living is tilting the balance against life
with catastrophic and immediate consequences. We have no mandate to ruin what
does not belong to us and our actions are nothing short of apocalyptic."
If this is how the bishops talk in public forums, just imagine how much twaddle
the average family in the pew must have to endure from younger and less educated
clergy.
