Southern Baptists Come Around on Climate Change
If you’re a regular reader of this site or a victim of my occasional tirades, you know I’m no fan of organized religion. So, you can only imagine my surprise this morning when I read an article about some Southern Baptist leaders coming around on climate change. The AP piece, by Rachell Zoll, states that the Southern Baptist denomination (which at 16.3 million members is the largest Protestant group in the U.S.) said they had been “too timid” on environmental issues in the past and had a biblical duty to stop global warming. I suppose if religion gives you motivation to do something that makes sense scientifically I shouldn’t raise a stink, but we all know that ends do not always justify means.
My favorite part of the article is the passage by Zoll that reads:
The signers of “A Southern Baptist Declaration on the Environment and Climate Change” acknowledge that not all Christians accepted the science behind global warming. However, the leaders said that current evidence of global warming was “substantial” and that the threat was too grave to wait for perfect knowledge about whether, or how much, people contribute to the trend.
The logical is wonderful, but frightening in how much more solid reason it is laced with than anything the Bush administration said on the topic for years. I suppose the lesson here is that all dogmas evoke groupthink. This article references a very oppressive branch of Christianity and a very retard Republican administration as evidence – go figure – but the general lesson applies as much to liberalism and secular humanism. If the Southern Baptists can come around on something scientific, then we can all make an effort to open our minds to new (or old) ideas that actually make sense. I’m not saying if you don’t believe in something stupid that you should now, but instead that each one of us should revisit something we’ve hesitantly rejected or accepted.
Citing pop culture isn’t my traditional method of making a point but writing this post made me think of a quote by Tommy Lee Jones in the movie, Men in Black. He and Will Smith are sitting on a park bench when Jones says, “A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it. Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you’ll know tomorrow.”
I learn things every day that others have known for a long time, and the worst possible way to maintain this perpetual education is to rely on very old books whose lessons are racist, sexist, ignorant and contrary to the evolution of society.