Showing posts with label Environmentalism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Environmentalism. Show all posts

Sunday, February 09, 2020

Adventures in atheism

As much of the intelligentsia become increasingly anti-Christian, we see the outworking of atheism in its increasingly brutal, vicious consequences.


The Ahuman Manifesto
Activism for the End of the Anthropocene
By: Patricia MacCormack

About The Ahuman Manifesto
We are in the midst of a growing ecological crisis. Developing technologies and cultural interventions are throwing the status of “human” into question. 

It is against this context that Patricia McCormack delivers her expert justification for the “ahuman”. An alternative to “posthuman” thought, the term paves the way for thinking that doesn't dissolve into nihilism and despair, but actively embraces issues like human extinction, vegan abolition, atheist occultism, death studies, a refusal of identity politics, deep ecology, and the apocalypse as an optimistic beginning.

In order to suggest vitalistic, perhaps even optimistic, ways to negotiate some of the difficulties in thinking and acting in the world, this book explores five key contemporary themes:
· Identity
· Spirituality
· Art
· Death
· The apocalypse

Collapsing activism, artistic practice and affirmative ethics, while introducing some radical contemporary ideas and addressing specifically modern phenomena like death cults, intersectional identity politics and capitalist enslavement of human and nonhuman organisms to the point of 'zombiedom', The Ahuman Manifesto navigates the ways in which we must compose the human differently, specifically beyond nihilism and post- and trans-humanism and outside human privilege. This is so that we can actively think and live viscerally, with connectivity (actual not virtual), and with passion and grace, toward a new world.

Reviews
“Patricia MacCormack goes relentessly beyond ”just” deconstructing anthropocentrism and dismantling multispecies extinction caused by human dominance in the Anthropocene. The manifesto is not only theorizing, but com/passionately calling for direct abolitionist action for the other at the expense of the (human) self. Trembling with joyful energy and critically affirmative insights, this manifesto encourages us to engage in ahuman arts&activist practices, inspired by queer feminist (secular) spirituality), and death activism.” –  Nina Lykke, Professor of Gender Studies, Linköping University, Sweden

“This beautiful book is both a passionate, insightful meditation on the world we actually live in, and a radical call to action. Is it even possible for us to stop being human, to let multiple beings flourish without reducing them to means for our own selfish ends? Reading this book, thinking with it and about it, and responding openly to it, is absolutely essential.” –  Steven Shaviro, DeRoy Professor of English, Wayne State University, USA

“This book is a delightful provocation and invitation: to imagine a world without humans and to think of what we can do to get there. It is an urgent call for action. A joyful, lucid, fiercely intelligent call to readers to hope and work for a future not for themselves, but for the thriving of all nonhuman life. Engaging with this book will be a transformative experience. One cannot see the world or oneself in the same way after reading it.” –  Christine Daigle, Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Posthumanism Research Institute, Brock University, Canada

“Patricia MacCormack's splendid refusal to nuance her intent in The Ahuman Manifesto will both intrigue and infuriate. As a vegan abolitionist/extinctionist, she provides an unrelenting and exacting take down of the violent self-interest of the human species, and offers a call to ethical action best described as eating the Anthropocene.” –  Margrit Shildrick, Guest Professor of Gender and Knowledge Production, Stockholm University, Sweden

Wednesday, October 30, 2019

Prophetic climate crisis

On the one hand, the Apocalypse envisions cataclysmic natural disasters. On the other hand, environmentalists warn that we're on the brink of cataclysmic natural disasters. 

In principle, the worst-case scenario of the green lobby is generally consistent with a premil reading of Revelation. Ironically, a premil could agree with environmentalists that we're facing an unprecedented "climate crisis," but one that's inevitable. Premils could incorporate that into their eschatology, but by the same token, say countermeasures are futile at this point. We've passed the point of no return. We are  watching end-time prophecy pick up speed as it gathers to the culmination. 

I suppose they could also say that the totalitarian impulse of environmentalists to seize control of the world economy sets the stage for the Antichrist. 

Now I'm an amil, but I take sardonic delectation in watching rabidly secular environmentalists unwittingly recite a script from Revelation. Mass extinction scenarios consistent with premil eschatology. And I'm open to the possibility that the premil reading might be vindicated by future developments. As a rule, prophecy is best understood in retrospect. So only time will tell. 

Mind you, the earth has undergone many warming and cooling cycles. And I think the plot of Revelation is generally recursive rather than progressive, although the final chapters break the cycle. But in some cases it's best to keep our interpretation options open, even if we have a default position. 

Wednesday, September 25, 2019

Global warming hysteria

https://www.prageru.com/video/climate-change-what-do-scientists-say/

Stolen dreams

You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. And yet I'm one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction…The eyes of all future generations are upon you. And if you choose to fail us, I say: We will never forgive you.


So we're facing mass extinction, yet nonexistent future generations will never forgive my indolent generation.

Her childhood was squandered on activism. 

Wednesday, September 18, 2019

Botanical auricular confession

I'm waiting for Pope Francis to write this into the catechism:







Monday, September 02, 2019

"Record" hurricanes

Global warming alarmists point to "record" hurricanes to demonstrate the reality and existential danger of global warming. A few observations:

i) We've only had the technology to clock hurricane speeds for what–a few decades? But haven't hurricanes been occuring since the last Ice age ended, about 12,000 years ago? Likewise, how far back do our records extend regarding the frequency and severity of Atlantic hurricanes? Our chronological sample is hardly representative.

ii) Suppose global warming is real, but a natural cyclical variation, like ice ages?

iii) Suppose the environmentalists were right and we ignored them at our peril. Now it's too late. We're doomed!

They will try to blame us, but even if they were right-or especially if they were right–they are to blame because they burned their credibility by resorting to hyperbolic warnings, manipulating and destroying data. Perhaps they think the threat is so great that it justified their mendacity: the noble lie. If so, the tactic backfired. If you use deception to make your case, and your deception is exposed, then you lose credibility. Like crying wolf, people tune you out so that even when it turns out to be true, no one believes you because your reputation as a liar preceded you. 

Saturday, June 08, 2019

High-water mark


I'm no expert, but it seems to me that there's an objective, straightforward way to verify or falsify global warming. If true, global warming causes rising sea levels due to melting ice caps. Now there are countless structures in coastal towns and cities that have a high-water mark. The ocean at high tide stains the structure at that level. It's like a photograph of how high the the water rises at high tide. In addition, there are countless historical photos floating around which show the high-water mark in, say, the 19C. Presumably we only need a few clear-cut examples comparing the high-water mark in the 19C to the high-water mark in the 21C to establish if sea levels are, in fact, rising, or rising at an alarming rate. 

Sunday, April 21, 2019

Birth strikers

From antinatalism, through feminism and "white privilege"  to transgenderism, it's morbidly fascinating to see atheists adopt a suicidal, self-hating ideology:

https://nationalpost.com/news/world/no-children-please-were-birth-strikers-new-growing-trend-against-starting-a-family-gives

Friday, March 29, 2019

Evangelical Jainism

This has been kicking around for 4 years already:


Signatories include Albert Mohler, Russell Moore, Richard Land, Daniel Akin, and Bill Hybels (because nothing says moral authority like Bill Hybels). Here's a sample:

We resolve to rule and treat all animals as living valued creatures, deserving of compassion, because they ultimately belong to God, because He has created them, declared them good, given them the breath of life, covenanted with them, and entrusted them to our responsible rule. So while animals have been given into our hand and for food this does not mean we can treat them as objects or act cruelly towards them.


i) Does that include termites, cockroaches, deer ticks, head lice, fire ants, tape worms, bot flies, Tsetse flies, and mosquitos? 

ii) What about rats? 

iii) What about venomous snakes in residential areas? Or reticulating pythons in residential areas?

iv) What about dangerous predators in residential areas, viz. wolves, cougars, crocodiles, grizzly bears? 

v) God didn't say every species is good. Gen 1 refers to the natural kinds that God created in the beginning. 

vi) What about all the animals God destroys in natural disasters and mass extinctions? 

The Every Living Thing site links to a video in which vegan open theist Gregory Boyd waxes sentimental about animal rights. 

It has a girl who pats herself on the back because she volunteers at an animal shelter. What about volunteering to visit shut-ins, nursing homes, and hospices, full of lonely or dying people? What about abandoned street kids around the world, some of them quite young. Or child trafficking? 

The video has a guy making the demonstrably false statement that "in treating animals more respectfully we will treat people more respectfully." To the contrary, lots of folks treat their pets much better than they treat strangers. Consider all the polls in which many respondents say that given a choice between saving their dog and saving a stranger, they'd save the dog. On the one hand we have laws against animal cruelty while, on the other hand, there's abortion, infanticide, and voluntary and involuntary euthanasia for the elderly, depressed, and developmentally disabled.  

Thursday, March 14, 2019

The ethics of having kids in a warming world




Monday, March 04, 2019

Animal pain and penal substitution


Ironically, this is where the extremes of theistic evolution and young-earth creationism meet. On the one hand, Arminian theologian Randal Rauser is a theistic evolutionist. So I assume he's alluding to the problem of evil in reference to animal suffering. That's a faddish issue in theodicy. 

On the other hand, young-earth creationists attribute nature red in tooth and claw to the Fall. So they have a parallel position regarding the problem of animal suffering. 

As I've explained on more than one occasion, I don't think animal suffering (such as it is), should be included in the problem of evil. I don't think it poses a serious challenge to Christian theology. 

And in general, I don't think the subhuman natural order requires restoration or "healing". It's working pretty much the way it was originally designed to work. It's mainly a problem when humans are endangered by nature. 

It's preposterous to complain that penal substitution is defective because it fails to "heal" the non-human creation. That reflects a chic Green environmentalist outlook foreign to the theology of Scripture. But as a "progressive Christian," biblical revelation was never Rauser's lodestar. He's in his own little world of make-believe. 

Sunday, September 16, 2018

The noble lie

In this post I'll outline how I approach the global warming controversy. 

1. Appeal is made to "scientific consensus". That's an argument from authority. The argument from authority can be valid or invalid depending on the assumptions. Appeal to scientific consensus in general is fallacious inasmuch as most scientists lack expertise in climatology and atmospheric sciences. 

2. Apropos (1), appeal is made to expert opinion. That, too, is an argument from authority, but a more respectable version. It's often rational to defer to expert opinion. 

Sometimes we defer to expert opinion, not because that's an epistemic virtue, but because it's a practical necessity. There are situations in which deference to expert opinion is a forced option.

3. There are, however, other situations in which we have the luxury of suspending judgment. Just as it's often rational to defer to public opinion, there are other situations in which it's rational to withhold judgment. If I'm unqualified to render an informed judgment on a particular issue, suspending judgment is sometimes the most responsible course of action. Taking drastic actions can be reckless and harmful. 

4. Apropos (3), it isn't a binary choice. It is, for instance, possible to be a global warming skeptic rather than a global warming "denier". And there can be good reasons for skepticism (see below).

5. Proponents of global warming will say the fact that most folks aren't qualified to have an informed opinion on global warming is precisely why they should defer to expert opinion. And, all things being equal, deference to expert opinion is often rational. 

However, the argument from authority crucially depends on trust. It presumes that the experts are acting in good faith. That their stated positions are uncoerced. That their position isn't skewed by an ulterior agenda. 

Unfortunately, there's abundant evidence that "climate science" is heavily politicized. Evidence that scientific dissent is blacklisted. Data is manipulated. Scientific counterevidence is suppressed or destroyed. 

It's no secret that global warming zealotry is the spearhead of an underlying philosophy. Environmentalism is an ideology. A worldview. A secular religion. Environmentalism is hostile to human exceptionalism and anthropocentrism. 

This is a moral crusade. Environmental ethics. "Environmental justice".  

Environmentalists are convinced that "sustainability initiatives" are a good idea even if global warming is bogus. For them, global warming alarmism is a noble lie. Even if the threat is widely exaggerated, that's justified by a larger principle. Global warming alarmism is a means to an end. 

That destroys the prima facie deference to expert opinion. Once we realize that the experts aren't offering disinterested information, it becomes rational to suspend judgment. 

The flip side of expert opinion is the ability to do a snow job on the non-specialist. Because the non-specialist is unqualified to evaluate the evidence, experts can abuse their authority to deceive the public with a blizzard of factoids. 

6. Ironically, the global warming establishment is antithetical to scientific inquiry. Carl Sagan made the optimistic claim that science is self-correcting. However, once the party line gets enacted into law, as official policy, climate science ceases to be a self-correcting process (if it ever was). At that point, scientific scrutiny is criminalized. 

7. The reputed threat of looming environmental catastrophe is not the only threat we need to consider or guard against. Another looming threat is the clear and present danger of totalitarianism. Consider how, under the Obama administration, the EPA abused its mandate. Consider how, during the Obama era, attorneys general were poised to prosecute global warming critics. Consider how the climate science establishment is an arm of the UN (IPCC). Consider how Google censors politically incorrect searches, which makes it increasingly impossible for the general public to fact-check global warming and other political orthodoxies of the liberal establishment. 

In our own time, totalitarianism, whether secular or Islamic, poses a far greater threat to the quality of life than global warming. Totalitarianism, whether secular or Islamic, poses a far more verifiable threat to the quality of life than global warming. 

Because I'm not qualified to make an informed judgment on global warming, I'm a global warming skeptic. I withhold judgment.

Given a choice between the hypothetical threat of global warming and the existential threat of totalitarianism, I prioritize opposition to totalitarianism. And not coincidentally, global warming zealots are totalitarians. 

Friday, June 02, 2017

Paris accords

Several issues on the Paris accords:

i) Trump can't "withdraw" from the Paris accords since that treaty wasn't ratified in the first place. Obama never had the legal authority to unilaterally commit the USA to a treaty which wasn't ratified. 

Democrats have developed a bad habit of circumventing the Constitutional process. When they lack popular support to get a law passed, they simply ascribe the force of law to something that lacks legal authority. In this instance, they want the benefits of a treaty without ratification.

This isn't just a technicality. Ratification by the people's elected representatives is a way of making public policy more accountable to…the public! 

So this is yet another example of liberal totalitarianism. Cultural elites believe they are wiser than the general public, and so they feel justified in subverting the democratic process to get their way. 

On the substantive issue:

ii) Global warming "science" is highly politicized. Many environmentalists regard humans as a blight on the planet. They reject human exceptionalism. They subscribe to antinatalism. 

They use global warming as pretext to leverage their green policies. They think green policies are a good idea even if global warming didn't pose a threat. So, for them, this is the noble lie. 

In addition, Democrats like intrusive, expansive gov't. They can never have too much social control. Green policies give them another excuse to socially engineer the lives of the proletariat, to achieve their utopian goals. 

iii) That isn't conspiracy mongering on my part. To the contrary, we've seen them cooking the books. For instance:








iv) Here's a more balanced take on "climate change"