John Tierney recognizes Gaianism (but doesn't call it that)

John Tierney writes that environmentalism is the new religion that’s replacing Christianity. Well, he sort of writes that (hat tip Razib):

What would the product of such a transformation [of traditional religions] look like? One possibility that occurs to me is a version of environmentalism, but with better music and with rituals that are more elegant than sorting garbage. A Church of Green could provide some of the same moral lessons and communal values as traditional religions, and I suspect it’s no coincidence that green fervor is especially prevalent in European countries where traditional religion is on the decline.

To restate what I’ve previously written in many other posts:

(1) Religion is a human instinct. It’s one of many types of illogical thinking which, in our past or even the present, instills some kind of survival advantage.

(2) The “facts” upon which Christianity and Judaism (and probably other religions I’m less familiar with) are based have been disproved by science and rational investigation. Thus it’s hard for smart people to believe in these religions.

(3) Thus the religious instinct is turning to the new grass roots religion of Gaianism. Like Christianity, this new religion is also based on “facts” which seem bogus (such as global warming), but which are harder to scientifically disprove.

Comments

[OneSTDV]

"The “facts” upon which Christianity and Judaism (and probably other religions I’m less familiar with) are based have been disproved by science and rational investigation. Thus it’s hard for smart people to believe in these religions. "

So what the hell happened to Larry Auster? A smart guy born Jewish somehow ends up a fundamentalist Christian!??!

[Heyward]

Have you looked at the polar ice caps lately? How are you still denying climate change?

[Kevin K]

"Have you looked at the polar ice caps lately? How are you still denying climate change?"

In case this is not a joke, few people are qualified to analyze the dynamics of polar regions and the instrumentation for understanding them in a meaningful way hasn't been around that long. The arctic ice reached a minimum during the summer of 2007, but has recovered to 2005 levels since then. The antarctic has receded in some places but has grown in others and is sort of an anomalous region in any case.

The better number to look for is the total heat content that includes the entire atmosphere and as much of the ocean we can measure. The poles alone won't tell you much.

[Camel-case rOb]

10 Global Warming Myths:

(Polar ice is melting is on there.)

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,25402980-5007146,00.html

"As for the Arctic, wrong again. The Arctic ice cap shrank badly two summers ago after years of steady decline, but has since largely recovered. Satellite data from NASA's Marshall Space Flight Centre this week shows the Arctic hasn't had this much April ice for at least seven years. Norway's Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Centre says the ice is now within the standard deviation range for 1979 to 2007."

[Park Slope Pubby]

I'm smart (Stanford grad), and I'm a traditional Christian. My husband is smart (Wesleyan grad), and he goes to church every week too. We have many smart people in our church, including somebody w/ a PH D in math from NYU, several professors, a senior partnerw/ Skadden Arps, etc.

Get over your anti-religious prejudice. I would almost bet that amongst white people at least, the smarter people are more likely to be church-goers.

[thecraken]

Religions generally confer an advantage upon groups that adopt them because they can distill the anarchy of life and nature into doctrine and law. They provide people with the necessary illusion that there is a point to life, and, still further, that they can understand that point and construct their lives around it. This strengthens the cohesive force and will to life of the group, giving it a competitive advantage vis-à-vis non-religious groups and those groups with less effective religions. Within the group highly competent conformity tends to be the path to the top.

No religion can be disproved. The reason intelligent people tend to doubt them is that they cannot be proved. There is a difference.

It is an interesting and highly unfortunate parallel that climate change theory (for either side) also cannot be proved. Of course, this is due to the nature of the science in question, which is enormously complex: there are too many unknown and estimated variables ever to generate a certain conclusion about the future of the earth’s climate. However, estimates of the probabilities involved are both possible and needful. Since we are not dealing with a certainty, but the risks are high, the risk of catastrophe here warrants a fairly expensive insurance policy in the form of emissions mitigation measures.

[Chris]

I'm not sure if having more difficult-to-falsify statements is necessarily something that will make a religion more successful, even for smart people. For many believers, it seems that evidence that contradicts what they believe in strengthens their devotion. People are tribal about their beliefs, and having tribal knowledge is one way of demonstrating their belonging/loyalty. If a piece of knowledge can be induced from observations of the world, anyone could figure it out; as a shibboleth, it's not very valuable. But, if it makes no sense, you owe your knowledge of it to membership in your tribe, and therefore it's powerful. The fervency with which environmentalists "know" that the world is warming reminds me so much of the Christians who "know" that the earth is 6000 years old. Both demand stunning leaps of logic / hubris; it's just socially acceptable among the smart set to believe one set of myths and not another, but they seem just as likely to fall into groupthink as others. They may just be better at justifying it.