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During an interview in the halls of the SBC, two of our seminary professors agreed that one reason for the aggressive stance of atheists in a couple of recent books has to do with the failure of one of their key doctrines. Both men pointed out that as many as half of our country’s citizens still don’t buy the basic tenets of Darwinism. In response, atheism gets increasingly shrill in pointing out the stupidity of religious people?hoping that volume and vitriol will accomplish what complete ownership of the academic establishment has not.
In demeanor, the Darwinist mafia is related to the global warming cult. Look at a couple of examples. When a state climatologist in the state of Washington disputed sloppy reporting of the thinning of the Cascade Mountains snow pack he was fired for embarrassing his boss, and for breaking with climate change dogma. So much for scientific precision. NASA administrator Michael Griffin angered some scientists when he said in an interview that global warming might not be “a problem we should wrestle with.” Just that. He didn’t deny climate change, just expressed doubt that we could do much about it. He was driven to apologize for stating this opinion, for getting involved in the whole debate really. Does anyone think he would have had to apologize for saying that climate change is the most important issue of our day?
The SBC, meeting in San Antonio, expressed a high degree of agnosticism toward the contemporary doctrine of global climate change. Our explanation of the resolution noted divergence in the scientific evidence and the predictable negative impact on the world’s poor if the world was to devote billions of dollars to maybe lowering the average temperature of the earth by a degree or two over the next hundred years.
True believers consider our viewpoint quaint, the ignorant say that we are abandoning our stewardship of creation as well as the commands of Jesus to be kind to the poor. What we said was very careful, though?perhaps too subtle for our knee-jerk detractors.
The resolution says, for example, that Southern Baptists should “proceed cautiously in the human-induced global warming debate in light of conflicting scientific research.” The apparent reason for this caution is in the next “resolved,” that actions taken based on maximum temperature goals “could lead to major economic hardships on a worldwide scale.”
All this is surrounded by acknowledgement that global temperature averages are changing and that some communities could be vulnerable to the negative effects of this. The resolution calls for action to help such communities. The resolution notes more than once our responsibility to be good stewards of the earth’s resources.
What’s so strange about that? I think it’s this; we’re exercising measured skepticism related to environmentalist dogma and they’re afraid that some will hear us. Foundations, university chairs, government jobs, and even industries have been built on the certainty that selected scientists know what will happen next, what causes it, and what people other than themselves should do in response. You’d best believe that these folks have a lot to lose if millions of Americans don’t sufficiently agree with them.
Southern Baptists don’t necessarily need to weigh in on every issue that makes the front page of Newsweek. This issue is one on which many religious people and organizations have felt compelled by peer pressure to take sides, though. The Bible says that we should care for God’s earth (not worship it) and this means that we should take seriously the impact of our actions on our environment. It is appropriate that we speak on this subject, however cautiously. The stance of our Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, echoed by this year’s resolution, has hit the right note of concern without overreaction.
There is a high degree of probability that many Americans will have to back peddle, re-spin really, their statements on global climate change in a decade or two. That’s what happened when the 1970s prediction of a new ice age became obviously absurd. If Southern Baptists keep the primary things in sight amidst the increasing noise and clutter, as we are currently doing, we will have less to recant than will our neighbors.
