Global Warming Proponents are like… Creationists? Really?

Posted by Anthony on November 29, 2008

I was reading this news article from the Sydney Morning Herald entitled “Beware the Church of Climate Alarm” and found myself inspired to blog on it when I read from page two of the article:

Plimer says creationists and climate alarmists are quite similar in that “we’re dealing with dogma and people who, when challenged, become quite vicious and irrational”.

Human-caused climate change is being “promoted with religious zeal … there are fundamentalist organisations which will do anything to silence critics. They have their holy books, their prophet [is] Al Gore. And they are promoting a story which is frightening us witless [using] guilt [and urging] penance.”

I don’t know who this Plimer guy is so can’t speak to the man’s experience dealing with creationists who, ‘when challenged, become vicious and irrational.’  I have yet to meet a vicious creationist and of course, ‘irrational’ is in the eye of the beholder to some degree- if the litmus test for rationality is one’s view on evolutionary theory then that amounts to nothing more than circular reasoning ie, that is what is irrational.

Ironically, Plimer sees similarities between global warming proponents and creationists, when he really should see similarities between global warming proponents and evolutionists. The creationist example is wholly inapt even on his own terms- by his view, creationism is based on ‘holy books’ but global warming, we are told, is backed by hard, irrefutable science.   In other words, ‘global warming’ is being defended by his own ilk, not by fruity creationists.

And I would be willing to say that global warming probably is backed by ‘hard, irrefutable science’ … when by ’science’ we mean the bastardized and philosophically driven ‘methodology’ that passes as science today in contrast to true science which actually relies on empirical demonstration.

In short, Plimer is merely seeing in climatology the same kind of ’science’ at work in evolutionary theory.  This then is the irony:  even the self-professed skeptics aren’t skeptical of everything.

Moreover, isn’t there some kind of moral to be drawn here?  In so many cases evolution is advanced on the grounds that ’so many scientists believe it’ and this is identical to the case often made for global warming:  ‘How can so many scientists be wrong?’  And yet according to Plimer, they are wrong.  Surely if so many scientists can be wrong regarding global warming, perhaps they might be wrong about evolutionary theory? Read the rest of the entry… »

Equivocation on the word natural by atheists and philosophical naturalists

Posted by Anthony on June 20, 2008

Has anyone else noticed this?

As a case in point- in part because atheists have accused me of ‘inventing’ atheistic positions- consider this entry on my blog and the comments that follow.  But to be clear, I run across this phenomena all the time as I read and debate theism or ‘intelligent design.’

Let me illustrate what I mean by the real world quest for the origins for life.  Scientists are working like mad to recreate life from scratch.  It is requiring all their technology, all of their accumulated knowledge, and all of their expertise.  There have been some ’successes’ which are extremely rudimentary and light years from really duplicating life as we observe it in the real world out of non-life.  But let’s say that they do finally succeed!  After fifty years of intense research and development, they produce something that is worthy of the declaration “We have created life!”

It is hailed as a breakthrough of the scientific method and evolutionists and philosophical naturalists everywhere applaud! For, it has now been demonstrated that life could arise from purely naturalistic processes after all!  But there is a hitch.

The Christians, religionists, Intelligent Design theorists, etc, will point out that in fact they proved the opposite:  that purely naturalistic processes cannot produce life, but rather it required all of the efforts of the smartest human agents in the world over a period of decades.

The secular humanist does not see it that way.  For, by a quick twist in the mind, the skeptic is able to argue that in fact it was the result of ‘purely naturalistic processes’ because, of course, humans are a part of nature.

Now, this sort of intellectual gymnastics only occurs in the context of religious matters or anything that might possibly justify the inference that there is a God.  For we quickly see simply by going to our cupboards that the word ‘natural’ appears often on our food goods. You’ll see a statement like “All Natural!” or “No artificial ingredients!” Read the rest of the entry… »