Classical Values :: A double standard for superstitious crackpottery?

July 05, 2010

A double standard for superstitious crackpottery?

I realize that this is an old issue, but still, I have a lingering question.

By what standard are Pat Robertson's pronouncements (that the Haitian earthquake was God's punishment for Haitian voodoo) ridiculous, while sanctimonious scoldings by environmentalists are seen as valued insights into the human condition?

Seriously, check these ravings out:

...The British tabloid the Daily Mail, which has published dramatic photos of the volcanic eruption and invited readers to behold "the terrifying cauldron of lava and lightning that has brought chaos to our airports," celebrated the fact that even a relatively "modest rumbling" in the underworld is "enough to throw a gigantic spanner into the works of modern life." The volcano "reminds us that nature is the boss," said one Scottish writer, and also shows how deluded mankind must be to believe he is "sophisticated and clever enough to master nature."

A Guardian writer thinks the volcanic ash has unwittingly provided humanity with a real-world vision of the low-carbon, flight-free, clear-sky future that we must allegedly move towards. "Greens should celebrate this timely reminder of what the world might look like when the oil runs out," he said. Radio and TV shows have featured endless interviews with people saying how delighted they are to be able to look into the sky without seeing or hearing a plane. An economics correspondent for the BBC also says the volcano has given us a "glimpse of a post-carbon morning."

(Via Glenn Reynolds, who calls it "GAIA'S REVENGE.")

I can't help notice that the same elements are present in the environmentalists' scoldings that have irritated me for years about the radical fundamentalists' scoldings:

Things are beyond our control.

Time is running out.

Unless and until we repent of our evil ways, we will be punished.

Now, I am not so arrogant as to discount entirely the possibility that either (or even both) of the "'mentalists" who make these pronouncements may be right. However it strikes me both Pat Robertson and the environmentalists are being superstitious.

And while I know it may sound intolerant to call Pat Robertson superstitious, I'm sorry, but that's precisely what I think he is. A superstitious crackpot.

However, that hardly ends the comparison between his kind of superstition and the environmentalist variety. There is something about superstitious beliefs of Pat Robertson and company that, bad as they are, I find more tolerable.

Sorry, but I find superstition in the name of religion easier on my nerves than superstition in the name of science.

posted by Eric on 07.05.10 at 11:37 PM

TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://classicalvalues.com/cgi-bin/pings.cgi/9804

Comments

Which has made me wonder for a while whether there's something in people that needs a religion.

Global Worming is really just a fundamentalist and intolerant branch of Christianity complete with saints, prophets, a different god and legions of demons where anyone who disagrees is not merely wrong, but evil. It seems to me to be a lot like the Catholic Church circa 600-1400AD.
Considering that many of the proponents are westerners who've eschewed religion, they were most like raised Christian.

Any attempt to question the orthodoxy is met with hostility, heretics are evil and no pronouncement from the hierarchy is too bizarre to be taken as the....gospel truth, they even have plenary indulgences (carbon credits).

Veeshir · July 6, 2010 12:41 PM

I tend to agree with the first quote, that much of nature is beyond our control. Therein lies the hypocrisy of anthropogenic global warming; if you truly believe that much of nature is beyond our control, you can't make a case for controlling "global warming."

T · July 6, 2010 01:16 PM

The need to worship is rather fundamental to human beings. Those who do not have a religion find other things to worship: nature; sex; abstract ideas. Nien Cheng's Life and Death in Shanghai points out that many of the Red Guards who did so much of the damage during the Cultural Revolution kept using Chinese words and phrases that had a deeply religious significance, but in a Maoist context. Mao was "the Great Helmsmen," for example, a traditional term for God in Chinese.

I would point out that Hitler's rewriting of the pre-World War I phrase "One people, one nation, one God" as "One people, one nation, one leader," is this same sort of replacement of worshipping God with worshipping a leader. (The pre-war slogan emphasized that in spite of Germany's relatively recent unification, they were all Germans, in one nation, and whether Catholic, Protestant, or Jewish, all worshipped one God.)

Clayton E. Cramer · July 7, 2010 04:06 PM

Pretty soon atheists will be advocating religion as a better alternative to these crackpot replacement alternatives.

I say this not as an atheist (for I am not), but as someone who used to think atheists who advocated religion were condescending hypocrites.

Eric Scheie · July 7, 2010 04:28 PM