Global Warming and the Bible?

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Man's conquest of Nature, if the dreams of some scientific planners are realized, means the rule of a few hundreds of men over billions upon billions of men. There neither is nor can be any simple increase of power on Man's side. Each new power won by man is a power over man as well....
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For the power of Man to make himself what he pleases means, as we have seen, the power of some men to make other men what they please. In all ages, no doubt, nurture and instruction have, in some sense, attempted to exercise this power. But the situation to which we must look forward will be novel in two respects. In the first place, the power will be enormously increased. Hitherto the plans of educationalists have achieved very little of what they attempted and indeed, when we read them — how Plato would have every infant "a bastard nursed in a bureau", and Elyot would have the boy see no men before the age of seven and, after that, no women, and how Locke wants children to have leaky shoes and no turn for poetry — we may well thank the beneficent obstinacy of real mothers, real nurses, and (above all) real children for preserving the human race in such sanity as it still possesses. But the man-moulders of the new age will be armed with the powers of an omnicompetent state and an irresistible scientific technique: we shall get at last a race of conditioners who really can cut out all posterity in what shape they please.

To many, no doubt, this process is simply the gradual discovery that the real world is different from what we expected, and the old opposition to Galileo or to body-snatchers' is simply obscurantism. But that is not the whole story. It is not the greatest of modern scientists who feel most sure that the object, stripped of its qualitative properties and reduced to mere quantity, is wholly real. Little scientists, and little unscientific followers of science, may think so. The great minds know very well that the object, so treated, is an artificial abstraction, that something of its reality has been lost.

From this point of view the conquest of Nature appears in a new light. We reduce things to mere Nature in order that we may 'conquer' them. We are always conquering Nature, because 'Nature' is the name for what we have, to some extent, conquered. The price of conquest is to treat a thing as mere Nature. Every conquest over Nature increases her domain.

I have described as a 'magician's bargain' that process whereby man surrenders object after object, and finally himself, to Nature in return for power. And I meant what I said. The fact that the scientist has succeeded where the magician failed has put such a wide contrast between them in popular thought that the real story of the birth of Science is misunderstood. You will even find people who write about the sixteenth century as if Magic were a medieval survival and Science the new thing that came in to sweep it away. Those who have studied the period know better. There was very little magic in the Middle Ages: the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are the high noon of magic. The serious magical endeavour and the serious scientific endeavour are twins: one was sickly and died, the other strong and throve. But they were twins. They were born of the same impulse. I allow that some (certainly not all) of the early scientists were actuated by a pure love of knowledge. But if we consider the temper of that age as a whole we can discern the impulse of which I speak.

There is something which unites magic and applied science while separating both from the wisdom of earlier ages. For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men: the solution is a technique; and both, in the practice of this technique, are ready to do things hitherto regarded as disgusting and impious — such as digging up and mutilating the dead.
― C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man

I can't speak for everyone commenting, to surmise their motives. The chief impulse behind my comments above are for the spiritual freedom and general wellbeing of believers--folks who face the real dangers of a false domination of their bodies (and all their material strength) and their spirits by modern shamans and their political investors.

There is a constant catechism being taught into the cultural atmosphere, where Christians also breathe along with their unbelieving neighbors, preaching a specific fear: personal guilt and responsibility for sins against the whole world, and the duty of the one Society's members to "call out" the greatest sinners and approve the judgment mete for them.

So far from being properly compared to the Galileoean persecution, my copious Scripture references and bits of commentary are intended to provide Christians with the sheer, overwhelming weight of the Bible's repeated and specific address of the very question: "Who controls the world-wide weather patterns and the increase or decrease of dryness, wetness, cold, and heat?" Is there any hint whatsoever in divine revelation that man by doing, or failing to do, has an impact on these? What sort of anthropology (and theology) undergirds the notion that he does?

The physical curiosity of heliocentricism vs. geocentricisism is a matter of observational correction. Anthropogenic global warming theory--now extended to account for every conceivable weather shift as a form of ultimate causation--is more accurately connected (in my non-professional reader's judgment) to alchemy, phrenology, and other scientific fads; and (in my professional theological and pastoral judgment) to the older ancient terrors of having angered the rain gods, who must now be propitiated.

"You have sinned against the planet; but we--those gifted few who know how to shake the rattles, and reduce your emissions--only require something of sufficient value surrendered by you to atone. Trust us to solve (honestly, just manage, it'll take a while, taxes will increase) this scary problem. Only we can handle it, so pray, pay, and obey alway."

Dissent by many highly qualified climate scientists has, and continues to be, weaponized against them. Their conclusions--though backed by as rigorous technique, data collection, care in observation, and analytical precision as any side can mount--are treated like heresy. It is, I argue, the DENIERS and SKEPTICS of the regnant Climate-change Orthodoxy who are actually in the position Galileo once found himself.

But that just goes to show how far the judgments and conclusions of those making observations can shift, and how they sway from more true, to less so; and from less true to more so; constantly. Those folk should be arguing in their ivory tower, not getting on the airwaves to browbeat a gullible public into lockstep support for one side.

There is timelessness to how believers are directed--as much now in the 21st century as in ancient times--by revelation unto the True Cause of their environment. Don't fear them, brothers and sisters, nor their gods. Say in your heart, "Let us now fear the Lord our God, that giveth rain, both the former and the latter, in his season."
 
I certainly agree that we should reject any conception of weather or climate that undermines God's sovereignty, but let's not forget that God's sovereignty over second causes means that we can affirm both God's sovereignty and man's limited agency in meteorological outcomes without contradiction.
 
One does not need to reject climate change. Around here, people say, there used to be more snow. Now there's hardly anything all winter. People report the same sort of thing in other places too.

What must be rejected is the notion that this comes as a result of human activity. There is no science to suggest that, and in fact the science indicates quite the opposite. You have probably heard that the earth's temperature was on the rise even before all these greenhouse gases made their appearance. Those scientist and politicians who push these carbon taxes and things have been entirely dishonest with the data.

Climate change is likely real enough. It has happened many times in history. What is fake is that it's somehow our fault.
 
I believe global warming is a legitimate concern, though not the apocalypse some claim, and I believe that those who are using scripture to claim global warming is impossible are abusing scripture in much the same way as our forefathers did in their condemnations of heliocentrism. If it may be the secret will of God to bring famine or floods by such means to punish man for his iniquity, why should we deny that such is possible? Our Puritan forefathers saw the war of the three kingdoms as God's righteous judgment on their kingdoms for their hardness of heart and fasted, and our nations are far more ungodly than they were, so with our scientists telling us that the climate is becoming more hazardous, perhaps we should be willing to fast too, rather than imagining that it is impossible that God would judge the nations before his final judgment and give them an opportunity to repent and receive mercy.
If God is using the weather to punish or warn man for his sin (which He has done in OT times, so very easy to conceive of today), the answer is not to raise taxes and burn less coal: the answer is to repent of our sins and cry to God. These global warming nuts do not have God as their Father, and thus they're afraid of the wrong thing.
 
No reference to Scripture is needed to establish that 'global warming' is a hoax.

Even the proponents of the theory, having gotten caught more than once manipulating data, have switched to 'climate change' to cover their bases on the downside as well as the upside.

That is interesting. I have often wondered what happened to the term 'global warming'. All of the media shouters now rant about 'climate change'. Who is in charge of this 'scientific' debate anyway?

global warming: a gradual increase in the overall temperature of the earth's atmosphere generally attributed to the greenhouse effect caused by increased levels of carbon dioxide, chlorofluorocarbons, and other pollutants.

climate change: a change in global or regional climate patterns, in particular a change apparent from the mid to late 20th century onwards and attributed largely to the increased levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide produced by the use of fossil fuels.

So, any changes in climate patterns are attributed to fossil fuels? How are changes in climate patterns prior to the mid 20th century explained?

I really don't know. I am not trying to draw anyone into an argument.
 
Global warming is a globalist (sorry, bad pun) plot to take away American freedoms. Most of the polluting countries are China and developing countries in Africa and Asia.
 
Taken me a month to find this on a dodgy USB stick. Maybe not 100% kosher but a good conversation starter. smokeybearsign.jpg
 
Attached please find (I hope -- I'm new at this) a letter to Contra_Mundum.
 

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Attached please find (I hope -- I'm new at this) a letter to Contra_Mundum.
I'm not disagreeing that man is responsible for proper stewardship. Nor, that he is incapable of doing LOCAL damage to the environment. But all mankind together has not a tiny fraction of the influential energy toward this planet that the sun has. It is God's sun (Ps.148:3), and it praises its Maker. They are his clouds, and they do his bidding. The weather is something ENTIRELY out of man's puny controls.
Thank you CW for your contribution. It might have been long for a post (danger of TL/DR) but it was a helpful addition to the thread, in my opinion.
 
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