Religion of the elites: Deism to unitarian universalism to Gaiaism

For at least the last three hundred years, the elites in the West haven't shared the same beliefs in Christianity as the masses.

Deism was the predominate religion of the elites at the time of the American Revolution. Deism is the belief that there is a single God who created everything, but that He doesn’t get involved in the world He created. The major religions, including Christianity, were not the result of any Godly intervention, but are only correct insofar as the people who developed the religion figured out the existence of a single God and other philosophical truths.

The first line of the Declaration of Indepenedence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness,” was inspired by Deism and not Christianity.

It seems to me that Deism was a convenient way for the elites to not believe in any religion but avoid the stigma of being branded as atheists.

Deism has completely disappeared as a major belief, and has been replaced by unitarian universalism. There’s an actual church calling itself Unitarian Universalism, but I use lowercase letters to indicate that the concepts behind unitarian universalism predate the formation of that particular organization in 1961, and most people who believe in unitarian universalism don’t actually attend a church with that name on the door—they either don’t attend church at all, or they attend the services of some other sect, not necessarily a Christian sect.

Unlike Deists who believe that God doesn’t intervene in the world, unitarian universalists believe that the major religions of the world are inspired by God and therefore they are all good and one can get closer to God by following the beliefs of any religion.

Ghandi was the most famous unitarian universalist. He said, “I believe in the fundamental Truth of all great religions of the world. And I believe that if only we could, all of us, read the scriptures of the different Faiths from the stand-point of the followers of those faiths, we should find that they were at the bottom, all one and were all helpful to one another.”

To quote Ghandi again, Jesus is considered “one of the greatest teachers, humanity has ever had.” But he is not the Son of God, just one who was inspired by God to teach the true message. It’s not necessary to believe in Jesus in order to go to Heaven. Unitarian universalists, if they believe in an afterlife, believe that everyone can go to heaven, and that there is no hell.

The people who say that “Islam is a religion of peace” are speaking from a unitarian universalist perspective. The unitarian universalist confidently believes that God inspired Islam, and God’s message is peace, therefore Muslims who think they need to kill people don’t truly understand their religion. This is one reason why unitarian universalism is worse than Deism, because the Deist would believe that Islam is created entirely by men with no divine intervention, and they simply got it all wrong.

The elites are now moving from unitarian universalism to Gaiaism. Gaiaism is both post-Christian and pre-Christian, because people worshipped nature before the invention of monotheism. In Gaiaism, God is replaced by the planet, Mother Nature, or the mysterious life force which binds together all living things and forms one harmonious whole greater than any individual.

While Christianity and other major religions have the golden rule, that you should do unto others as you would have others do unto you, Gaians extend this rule to apply to animals and even plants.

Gaians believe that we should leave the Earth the way we found it. “Sustainable” is word frequently used in the environmental movements and is inspired by Gaiaism.

Gaians have developed the mythology of global warming to support their religion. Flooding the atmosphere with carbon dioxide is an example of how mankind is living inharmoniously with nature by changing the planet. The catastrophic consequences of global warming will be mankind’s punishment for sinning against the planet. The movement to change the name from “global warming” to “climate change” is consistent with the Gaian belief than man shouldn’t change the planet. This is the reason why nuclear power is frowned upon as a solution to global warming. Digging up uranium from the planet, converting it to a much more dangerous form, and burying it, is anathema to the Gaian beliefs about not messing with the planet. What Gaians really want is for mankind to return to a less technological lifestyle which doesn’t alter the planet.

Comments

[Underachiever]

It looks like New Zealand might have its own climategate:

http://briefingroom.typepad.com/the_briefing_room/2009/11/breaking-nzs-niwa-accused-of-cru-style-temperature-faking.html

[Abe]

Half -

How about a new thread about Sarah Palin? Today she received the by far the biggest boost to her political career since being named a VP candidate.

It was revealed today that Huckabee freed a criminal that went on to murder four Tacoma police officers. This news mortally wounds Huck's chances of running against Palin in the republican primaries.

The presidential nomination is now now hers

[HS: He's like a Republican Michael Dukakis.]

[Scoop]

You understate the staying power of deism, which is the de facto religion of many libertarians and other non-Christian conservative elites. It's also the half religion of most agnostics. In other words, they think that if there is a God, He hasn't come down to earth and created any of the major or minor religions.

[Michael Anissimov]

Nice post. Here's a short one of mine called "Dismiss Gaianism".

[Meng Bomin]

You're correct insofar as religion is a very pragmatic tool for organizing groups to achieve a set of goals otherwise unattainable through individual and/or disorganized action and there are certain patterns of organization that are shared by both the environmentalist movement and world religions.

However, I have to say that on the balance, this post is an inaccurate portrayal of reality. The environmentalist movement is far from monolithic. It's made up of many factions that have differing focuses and differing opinions on each of those areas.

Your distorted view of this topic is betrayed by your comments on environmentalist views toward nuclear power. Environmentalists who are concerned primarily about climate change tend to be pro-nuclear, whereas environmentalists (mostly of an older generation) who concentrate on radioactive fallout tend to be anti-nuclear. Grouping those two factions together would be like criticizing evangelical Christians for the doctrine of papal infallibility.

I also have to say that I've found most of your arguments with regard to this topic to be arguments of process rather than arguments of substance. You are not a researcher who has the training to assess the full range of evidence involved in climate science, so it makes sense that you would concentrate on an area

I also think that you are being disingenuous by using the mystical attitudes of some in the environmentalist movement as representative of all views. For instance:

>>Flooding the atmosphere with carbon dioxide is an example of how mankind is living inharmoniously with nature by changing the planet.

This is the view of many environmentalists, but not all environmentalists structure their thinking in mystical ways. One could simply point out that human actions, especially when practiced on a broad scale, have potential to make unprecedented changes to local ecosystems and perhaps the whole biosphere, and that this rises in part of our over 6 billion world population and our unprecedented level of development and our economic structure.

Since most organisms have evolved in the presence of stimuli that are of a different pattern than some human activities, the unprecedented nature of those activities could conceivably lead to massive changes in the behavior of ecosystems, which in turn could have significant consequences on us, mostly in the negative direction. Thus prudence should be advocated. This would be an example of a non-mystical environmentalist view.

The enthusiasm with which you've pursued the CRU hack story and the structure of your argument leads me to believe that you oppose this type of prudence...at least when applied to carbon dioxide emissions. On the other hand, you advocate a similar sort of prudence with regard to our national demographics.

In summation, this is a process argument and one made on a shaky factual basis. That leads me to believe that the purpose is to massage your confirmation biases and those of people with similar opinions rather than to convince others outside of your viewpoint that you are indeed correct.

If you were really serious about this topic, you would approach it in a much more rigorous manner than the cheerleading and facile arguments you've made so far. Now, I know blogging is not really a proper medium for rigorous analysis, and I don't read this blog for rigorous analysis, so I wouldn't expect a rigorous review of this topic here, but it is nice to read arguments that are plausible or at least semi-plausible and this post fails to meet that bar.

[Kevin K]

Because West Virginia, PA (both coal states) and NV (where the Yucca Mountain Repository is supposed to be built) are swing states, I blame presidential politics for the lack of support for nuclear power as much as anything.

[ColdHardRationalist]

I am not sure you made it obvious that you can not believe in god and still be a faithful member of the Unitarian Universalist Church, as indicated by the church's statistics of how its congregation identifies. Not that it matters too much, just noting.

* Humanist – 54%
* Agnostic – 33%
* Earth-centered – 31%
* Atheist – 18%
* Buddhist – 16.5%
* Christian – 13.1%
* Pagan – 13.1%

[HS: Just because someone calls himself an atheist doesn't mean that he doesn't have irrational religious beliefs. Many people who call themselves atheist actually subscribe to either Gaiaism or unitarian universalism both with small "u." This was not a post about the Unitarian Universalist Church, as most people who subscribe to those beliefs don't actually attend a church with that name.]

[robert61]

Meng Bomin, you make some good points; there is more to environmentalism than HS's caricature. However, I agree with HS that there is a powerful current in contemporary life that corresponds to what he is calling Gaiaism. It recasts original sin as a human environmental/social wickedness which - unlike Christian original sin - can be conquered by human action. HS overgeneralizes his case, but the effort to identify and name this current is worthwhile. In my experience, most carriers of the meme consider themselves rationalists and have no framework for understanding their core belief.

[Dave]

Every religion has a figurehead, a leader. Who's the leader of the Gaiasts? Al Gore? Ted Kaczynski?

[Waste of Pixels]

Posted by: Meng Bomin | November 30, 2009 at 04:58 PM

Good Gaia, what a long, stupid comment. Tell ya what dummy. Get rid of your website and stop commenting. You'll save energy! Better for the planet.

[Stopped Clock]

I have had a low opinion of Huckabee ever since he was on a radio program and indicated that he believed that Canada's national Parliament building was made out of ice.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bCyy7q_ylc

[John Standos]

I think you overestimate the percentage of Deists in the ranks of the elite. Of the 55 Founding Fathers, only 3 were not Christians.

[Joshua Holmes]

It's g-a-n-d-h-i. The 'h' is after the 'd' to show that the 'd' is aspirated.

***“Sustainable” is word frequently used in the environmental movements and is inspired by Gaiaism.***

Inspired or appropriated? Remember, sustainability is a concept about using resources in such a way as to not run out of them, not out of Earth worship, but to avoid future calamities to human civilization. The goal is to find patterns of human civilization which can, more or less, be continued forever. The goal is a better human civilization for humans, not for an Earth deity.

Like monotheism and Christianity, sustainability may be a part of Earth reverence, but probably wasn't invented by it.

[David Alexander]

*West Virginia, PA (both coal states)*

We could always liquefy the coal and convert it into diesel fuel.

[James Watson, we all want to be you.]

James Lovelock, the guy who created the gaia hypothesis, supports nuclear power.

http://www.ecolo.org/lovelock/

[James Watson, we all want to be you.]

Also methane is consider greenhouse gas. Thats why enviromentalists are parnoid with cow farts.
Seriously, I'am not lying.

[Lawrence Auster]

You wrote:

"Deism was the predominate religion of the elites at the time of the American Revolution."

This is ignorant nonsense. How about learning something about American history, instead of mouthing atheist propaganda?

[No Mames Buey]

Half Sigma, you always talk about "future time orientation" as a sign of personal intelligence.

The scientific evidence for climate change is very strong. However, far stronger is the scientific evidence for Peak Natural Resources. I wish activists such as Al Gore would instead focus on the overconsumption as Natural Resources; this is likely to be the major economic challenge of the 21st Century. Natural resources are the relative bottleneck to economic growth, compared to relatively more plentiful financial capital, & the even more plantiful labor supply.

Some Native American groups traditionally had a policy of considering the impact of their actions on thier 6th generation of descendants. This type of thinking is almost nonexistant by US elites of any party, & by conservatives & libertatarians of any status (elite or non-elite).

Petroleum was created geologically over the scale of 100s of Millions of years. However, the strong scientific evidence for Peak Oil shows that humans have used a substantial fraction of it in 300 years, on an exponentially increasing basis. This usage will only keep increasing as the middle class in BRIC-type countries is expanding.

Humanity has to eventually, whether done over 30 years or 200 years, have to convert to the majority of the energy output coming from renewable resources such as wind or solar. In other words, use CURRENT SUSTAINABLE resources, not ANCIENT LIMITED resources such as petroleum. We can start the long process, or we can screw our descendants & pass the buck.

Not taking this seriously, is per HS's own slogans, showing "low intelligence" due to "low future time orientation".

Keep in mind that resources such as petroleum, coal, uranium, have important uses other than energy. Petroleum is needed for manufacturing plastics, & might be a key input for future not-invented yet manufacturing processes. By lazily overconsuming a big fraction of petroluem today, we are saying "f you" to our descendants in the year 2030, 2100, or 3000. The real inflation-adjusted value of a barrel of oil for high-tech manufacturing in 2100 or 3000 could be 100X+ the amount needed to power a 2009 car for a few miles.

I would sincerely HS like to address my comment on Peak Natural Resources. Instead, I expect HS to continue his head-in-the-sand, anti-science, low intelligence, low future time oriented, ad hominem attacks on "Gaia religionists".

[tehag]

"While Christianity and other major religions have the golden rule, that you should do unto others as you would have others do unto you, Gaians extend this rule to apply to animals and even plants."

Are you sure? I would have thought Gaians dropped the Golden Rule for humans, similar to the Nazi treatment of Jews, and the Communist treatement of kulaks and capitalist roaders. I've had a few discussions with friends who have urged me to buy a Prius (while themselves, fans of Al Gore, drive an SUV and sports car) pointing out that Gaians refer to the human race as AIDS, cancer, etc., similarly to the way Jews, kulaks, and the like were compared to vermin and diseases.

[RFN]

I have to second Mr. Auster's comment regarding the religious make up of the founding fathers. There were far more Christians. Your comment, in an other wise very good post, was just factually wrong. This isn't LGF, DailyKos or some other goofy site, so a screw up of that magnitude is kind of a big deal.

As a Christian, your factually incorrect statement doesn't offend me, either. If the religious make up of the founding fathers was mostly Hindu, Bhuddist or Zoroastrian, that would have been fantastic in my opinion, but still of no concern. The founding fathers weren't creating a church, but rather a new world. Their politics, regardless of religion, was brilliant.

[KingM]

Unitarianism != Universalism. I think you are talking largely about universalism, not unitarianism above.

[HS: Well technically, unitarianism is just belief in Christianity but without the trinity concept, but it's generally tied in with universalism which is the idea that all religions share a universal truth about God.]

[Twain]

Thomas Edison said "Religion is all Bunk".

[not too late]

"What Gaians really want is for mankind to return to a less technological lifestyle which doesn’t alter the planet."

Great, I suggest they donate their entire net worth to me. In exchange, I will provide a one way ticket to Mogadishu so they can get back to the natural human condition.

[The Rambling Taoist]

Gaiaism is merely a retooling of Taoism and Taoism predates Christianity by several thousand years!

[michael vassar]

This is your best post in years (your best ever is the Career Tracks sequence).

It even seems like you are embracing real science, finally, and admitting that while the predicted consequences of global warming are likely to be nonsense anthropogenic global warming the phenomenon is real.

Funny that the elites have become more superstitious with time. Have the masses become less-so?

[The Monster from Polaris]

"Digging up uranium from the planet, converting it to a much more dangerous form, and burying it, is anathema to the Gaian beliefs about not messing with the planet"

and apparently they don't even realize that in the long run nuclear power converts uranium to something *less dangerous*, namely fission products that will mostly decay to stable nuclides in a few thousand years instead of remaining radioactive for billions of years like uranium. (True, the short half-lives of fission products make them much more radioactive in the short run, but aren't the Gaians supposed to have a strong future time orientation?)