Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

The Earth: Not our mother, not our sister, not a living thing, but our treasure trove, our observatory, our library, our spaceship and our home

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Five quick questions:

(1) What is your favorite metaphor for our Earth? Is your favorite metaphor an animate one (e.g. the Earth is our mother / our sister / a super-organism), or an inanimate one (e.g. the Earth is our home / a jewel / our spaceship / our way-station)?

(2) In the course of an average day, what percentage of your waking hours do you spend thinking about the following: (a) God; (b) issues that invoke abstract ideas, such as philosophical and moral questions (whether speculative or practical), mathematics, the sciences and the arts; (c) yourself; (d) people you love; (e) other people; (f) animals (including your pets) and other living things; (g) the global environment as a whole (Gaia, for some)?

(3) Imagine that the construction of a highway linking a small town to a large city is planned to go through an area where an endangered species (say, a community of frogs) lives, and there is no commercially viable alternative route. You are a politician with the power to veto the project. How do you decide on the right thing to do? Do you attempt to weigh the interests of the people involved against those of the frogs, or do you make a decision based on an appeal to some universal moral principle? Would you use a different decision procedure if the endangered animals were mammals instead of frogs?

(4) How worried are you about environmental problems in the world today? Do you believe we can solve each and every one of them? Or do you believe that the environmental problems confronting the human race may destroy it very soon, and will inevitably destroy it at some future date?

(5) Do you believe we were put here for a purpose on this Earth?

As we’ll see, there are strong correlations between the answers people give to these questions, and for a very good reason.

I intend to show that Intelligent Design has significant implications for how we view the world. In this post, I’m going to talk about the world in a very literal sense: I mean our Earth. I’m also going to discuss two environmental problems that concern many scientists today: global warming and ocean acidification.

Intelligent Design-friendly metaphors for thinking about the Earth

In 2004, Jay Richards and Guillermo Gonzalez wrote a book, The Privileged Planet, in which they argued that the Earth was designed for life and also designed for scientific discovery. A recurring theme of their book is that the finely-tuned conditions that make the Earth hospitable for life also make it well-suited for viewing, analyzing and understanding the universe. Since “life” includes intelligent life, and since intelligent beings have a natural desire to know about the world around them, it follows that there is an inextricable link between the Earth’s habitability and its suitability as a place for making scientific measurements (measurability). These ideas suggest a number of useful metaphors for thinking about the Earth. Here are just a few:

Treasure trove / treasure map. If the Earth is designed for intelligent life, then we would surely expect it to contain clues that point to the existence and attributes of its Designer. The Earth’s stability over time, coupled with its ability to recover from past catastrophes, points to a Designer Who is by and large life-friendly, human-friendly and science-friendly. (I’m not trying to minimize the problem of natural evil here; all I’m saying is that the mere fact that living things, and subsequently human beings, emerged at all, and somehow managed to remain in existence, is an utterly amazing state of affairs, which we have no right to take for granted.) If we think of the Earth as a gigantic treasure trove, designed for inquisitive human minds, and if we suppose that its Designer is an omniscient Being, we would expect that somewhere on this planet, we should be able to locate vital information about contemporary human problems, which only an omniscient Designer could have foreseen. The genome would be a logical place to look. (It is even possible that the Designer may have left human beings with some sort of treasure map or set of instructions somewhere on Earth, telling us where to look for the different kinds of information we need to solve our problems. This is pure speculation on my part, of course.)

Observatory. The Earth is in a very privileged location for observing the universe. For instance, our location away from the center of the Milky Way and in the flat plane of its disk makes the Earth an excellent vantage point for observing the stars. According to the authors of The Privileged Planet, the reason why Earth is such an ideal place for making observations is that its Designer wants human beings to exercise their intelligence, and learn as much as they can about the beautiful universe which He created. One of the things that we have learned is that the universe had a beginning; another thing we have learned is that the constants of Nature are very finely tuned.

Library. The Earth contains a detailed record of the past. In that respect, it resembles a library. To take one example from The Privileged Planet, the moon stabilizes the Earth’s orbit, which consistently preserves the deep snow deposits in the Earth’s polar regions, giving us a valuable window on the past. Ice cores can tell us about the Earth’s temperature in times past, as well as the composition of its atmosphere, and the strength of its magnetic field. They even tell us about the length of the sunspot cycle, through variations in the concentrations of beryllium-10. It is reasonable to suppose that the Earth was intentionally designed to store all this information about the past, because the intelligent beings who now inhabit the Earth would one day need this information in order to solve their environmental and technological problems. Scientists need to construct models incorporating past events, in order to test competing hypotheses about future events. An Intelligent Designer, having foreseen this need on our part, should have left sufficient information for them to do this, in the geological record.

Jewel. The earth is undoubtedly a thing of beauty, as the Blue Marble photo above illustrates. Exactly what makes it beautiful? We might say that it is unique; but then, the ugliest thing in the world is unique too. Or we might fabricate a pseudo-scientific “Just-So” story that we like the colors blue and green because we’ve looked at blue skies and green grass all our lives; but then, repeated exposure to a stimulus usually results in desensitization. If we are truthful with ourselves, the only adequate answer to the question of what makes the Earth beautiful is that it really is a work of art, created by a Great Artist who had a much better eye for beauty than we do.

Spaceship. The Earth is the vehicle which we live on, as we orbit the Sun, which orbits the center of the Milky Way. Moreover, Richards and Gonzalez make a strong case that the Earth is a planet that’s finely tuned for supporting life, and in particular, for allowing intelligent life to thrive. The Earth, then, really is a giant spaceship. But if the Earth is a spaceship, then who made it? Obviously not us – the Earth was here long before we were. Aliens, maybe? Well, who made their spaceship? Or maybe the Universe itself is in some way intelligent, and capable of designing our Earth? But if the Universe created our Earth, how do we explain recent scientific discoveries indicating that the cosmos itself is finely tuned for life as a whole?

Home. The Earth is not just the place where we live; it’s also the planet to which we are naturally adapted. As far as we know, no other planet in the cosmos is hospitable to human life; so apart from Earth, there really is no other place that we could call our home, or even our second home. And while there are planets where some kinds of organisms can survive (bacteria can survive on Mars), we have yet to find any where it can thrive. Even Mars would require a massive degree of terra-forming, in order to make it a truly life-friendly planet. Now, the fact that the Earth is our home can be understood in a way that does not explicitly mention a Designer: we could say that human beings have biological ends which can only be realized in a terrestrial environment. But this explanation fails to address the deeper question of what makes finality of any kind possible (be it intrinsic or extrinsic finality). Living things, and even the workings of inanimate Nature, cannot be adequately described using norm-free, non-teleological terminology. Norms, however, can only be created by an Intelligence. If we and other living things are naturally fitted to living on Earth, it can only be because Someone intended us to be here.

Way-station. For many religiously minded people, Earth is but a temporary dwelling place; Heaven is our true home. The meaning of the way-station metaphor is that we should not grow too attached to our earthly abode; according to the Bible, it will one day be completely obliterated (2 Peter 3:10-12; Revelation 20:11, 21:1). However, the Bible also speaks of a new heavens and a new earth, and it tells us that people will live on the new one.

How does Intelligent Design affect the way we respond to environmental problems?

Someone who believes (as many Intelligent Design proponents do) that the Author of Nature is a supremely good Personal Being will also believe that this Being intended humans to know and love their Maker. In other words, Intelligent Design proponents would tend to expect that the world we live in is a well-designed, resilient planet, where we don’t need to spend an inordinate amount of time worrying about environmental crises. A God who made the world in such a way that the only creatures who were capable of knowing Him didn’t even have time to think about Him because they were too busy making sure that their activities didn’t destroy His fragile world, would be a pretty inept God.

As an aside, I find it very curious that when discussing the question of origins, opponents of Intelligent Design insist that the world, if it had a Designer, should have been designed so as to be capable of generating new life-forms, from microbe to man, without the need for continual intervention by God. Yet these same people also argue that the world is too fragile to withstand the impact of seven billion human beings enjoying an affluent lifestyle, all by itself! My intuitions are precisely the other way round: it seems obvious to me that designing a world that can withstand the impact of seven billion people raising the atmospheric concentration of CO2 from its “natural” level of 0.03% to a level of 0.08% by the year 2100 should be a far easier engineering task than designing a world which is capable of generating ten million species of living things, including Homo sapiens, all by itself, from nothing more than a bunch of simple organic chemicals!

How, then, should Intelligent Design proponents who believe in a personal God respond to environmental crises? If our government tells us that there is an urgent environmental crisis that we need to fight, which imperils the very future of humanity itself, and that it will require a great deal of time, money and effort to combat this crisis, our first reaction should be one of deep suspicion. We’re probably being conned. After all, we know beyond reasonable doubt that there is a God, and God wouldn’t make the world like that. If there are any genuine environmental crises, we would expect them to be problems where the correct course of action is clear, and which can be attended to in a quick, no-nonsense fashion, and at an affordable cost, which doesn’t interfere with our duties to other human beings.

A case study: global warming vs. ozone depletion

The way in which humanity successfully managed the ozone hole crisis back in the 1980s contrasts dramatically with the way in which our scientists and politicians are mismanaging the global warming in the twenty-first century. I’d like to highlight four key differences.

First, concerted international action to stop ozone depletion was not taken until scientists had established beyond reasonable doubt that human activities were responsible. It is true that a few countries, including the United States, Canada, Sweden, Denmark, and Norway, moved to eliminate the use of CFCs in aerosol spray cans after the United States National Academy of Sciences released a report in 1976, which concluded that the ozone depletion hypothesis was strongly supported by the scientific evidence available. However, the European Community did not follow suit – and subsequent research, summarized by the National Academy in reports issued between 1979 and 1984, appeared to show that earlier estimates of global ozone loss had been too large. What galvanized the international community into action was the discovery of the ozone hole in 1985. The hole was much larger than anyone had expected. Susan Solomon, an atmospheric chemist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), proposed that chemical reactions on polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs) in the cold Antarctic stratosphere caused a massive increase in the amount of chlorine present in active, ozone-destroying forms. This hypothesis was decisively confirmed, first by laboratory measurements and subsequently by direct measurements, from the ground and from high-altitude airplanes, of very high concentrations of chlorine monoxide (ClO) in the Antarctic stratosphere. Alternative hypotheses, which had attributed the ozone hole to variations in solar UV radiation or to changes in atmospheric circulation patterns, were also tested and shown to be untenable.

By contrast, the scientific establishment has failed to properly investigate the various explanations put forward for the climate change we have experienced in recent years. While anthropogenic global warming remains a plausible hypothesis, many alternative hypotheses have been sidelined. In the words of NASA climatologist Dr. Roy Spencer:

What the big-government funded climate science community has come up with is a plausible hypothesis which is being passed off as a proven explanation.

Science advances primarily by searching for new and better explanations (hypotheses) for how nature works. Unfortunately, this basic task of science has been abandoned when it comes to explaining climate change.

About the only alternative explanation they have mostly ruled out is an increase in the total output of the sun.

The possibility that small changes in ocean circulation have caused clouds to let in more sunlight is just one of many alternative explanations which are being ignored.

Not only have natural, internal climate cycles been ignored as a potential explanation, some researchers have done their best to revise climate history to do away with events such as the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age. This is how the ‘hockey stick’ controversy got started.

If you can get rid of all evidence for natural climate change in Earth’s history, you can make it look like no climate changes happened until humans (and cows) came on the scene.

The second major difference between global warming and ozone depletion is that the technological action required to stop ozone hole depletion was well-defined and agreed on by scientists, whereas the technological solution to man-made global warming is not. In 1987, representatives from 43 nations signed the Montreal Protocol, agreeing to phase out production of CFCs, halons, and related compounds, and by 1996, CFCs and halons had been phased out entirely (aside from a very small amount marked for certain “essential” uses, such as asthma inhalers). The solution appears to be working: the 2010 report of the United Nations Environment Program found that global ozone and ozone in the Arctic and Antarctic regions is no longer decreasing. Since peaking in 1994, the Effective Equivalent Chlorine (EECl) level in the atmosphere had dropped about 10% by 2008. However, a detectable (and statistically significant) recovery of the Antarctic ozone layer will not occur until around 2024, and complete recovery is not expected to occur until the year 2050 or later.

What about global warming? Certainly, there is widespread agreement that we need to stop emitting carbon dioxide and methane, but what are we supposed to replace them with? Sadly, scientists and politicians are still bickering about this question. The most sensible solution, in my opinion, would be to build liquid fluoride thorium reactors (LFTRs) (see also here and here). Switching from uranium to thorium as our primary nuclear fuel could lead to cheaper, safer and more sustainable nuclear power. (Please see here for an explanation of why solar and wind energy do not stack up in comparison.) Thorium is far more abundant than uranium, and much more energy-dense. A tonne of thorium produces as much energy as 200 tonnes of uranium, or 3,500,000 tonnes of coal. A fistful would light up London for a week. The volume of waste is also very low. LFTRs could power Australia (population: 22 million), while producing only 48 tonnes (12 bathtubs) of recyclable by-product per year. Furthermore, meltdown in a liquid fluoride thorium reactor is impossible, and it uses 100 times less fuel than a conventional nuclear reactor. In addition, it is virtually impossible to convert the waste products generated by thorium into plutonium – and they remain dangerous only for hundreds of years, rather than hundreds of thousands. A further advantage of LFTRs is that they can be produced in factories. Most importantly, LFTRs would enable the conversion of coal and natural gas powered plants, cutting their carbon emissions by 99%.

Sad to say, the political will to implement this kind of solution appears to be lacking, at least in Western countries. Popular prejudice against nuclear energy dies hard, thanks to movies like The China Syndrome, and people are nervous about sudden change. However, if man-made global warming is real, rapid change is the only realistic option we have.

The third major difference between fighting ozone depletion and fighting man-made global warming is that of cost. From 1987 to 1997, the world spent approximately US$235 billion in total to contain ozone depletion. The cumulative total for “north to south” transfers (from developed to developing countries) was relatively modest, of the order of US$2 billion. However, a recent review by D. R. Ahuja and J. Srinivarsan, entitled Why controlling climate change is more difficult than stopping stratospheric ozone depletion (Current Science, Vol. 97, No. 11, 10 December 2009) concludes that “the climate problem is at least a hundred times more expensive problem to tackle than the stratospheric ozone depletion and north–south transfers could be a thousand times greater” (emphasis mine – VJT). According to the best current estimates, fighting global warming will cost about 1 to 2% of global GDP each year – i.e. somewhere between $600 billion and $1.2 trillion, at present-day prices – for the next several decades. (Note: I regret to say that I have yet to encounter any detailed estimates for how much it would cost worldwide to convert to liquid fluoride thorium reactors [LFTRs] – VJT.) And if we want to reduce annual CO2 emissions to zero, as many scientists say we must, the cost rises to 5% of GDP per year, for the U.S. alone. That’s $700 billion per year at current prices – for the next 30 years. This news, coming at a time when bankruptcy for the United States is a “mathematical certainty” if it keeps on spending at current levels, makes practical action highly infeasible. The problem is compounded by the fact that the world’s number two economy, China, shows no inclination to spend vast sums on fighting global warming. At the same time, we are also told that the cost of doing nothing about global warming will be a staggering 5 to 20% of global GDP, in perpetuity. If the experts are right, the cost of fighting man-made global warming is prohibitive – and yet, we are told, we must, or the problem will get worse. I have to say this sounds like emotional blackmail. The “high priests of science” are holding a gun to our heads. “Do as we say or humanity will be doomed.” Putting people into a state of fear is a counter-productive strategy, however: people seldom make rational decisions when they are in fear for their lives. And if scientists put our politicians into a state of panic, we can be absolutely sure that they’ll choose the wrong course of action to avert the crisis.

I might add that the “regret minimization” argument for fighting global warming now, is only valid if we have ruled out the most plausible alternative hypotheses to man-made global warming. If we haven’t, then shelling out 5% of GDP for the next 30 years is likely to prove a colossal waste of money.

A fourth and final difference between the ozone depletion problem and man-made global warming is that fighting ozone depletion was commercially viable, which is why the halocarbon industry shifted its position and started supporting a protocol to limit CFC production. A key factor in the decision by the chemical industry to support the Montreal Protocol in 1987 was that it set up a worldwide schedule for phasing out CFCs, which were no longer protected by patents, providing companies with an equal opportunity to market new, more profitable compounds. By contrast, combating global warming appears to be an uphill commercial battle: companies are happy to co-operate, but only if they receive massive government subsidies.

As Professor Fred Singer, a leading critic of man-made global warming, reports in an article (November 6, 2010) entitled The Green Bubble is about to Burst:

Nothing has been learned from European disastrous experiences, it seems. As Bjorn Lomborg (a firm believer in AGW) reports, Germany led the world in putting up solar panels, funded by 47 billion euros in subsidies. The lasting legacy is a massive debt and lots of inefficient solar technology sitting on rooftops throughout a fairly cloudy country, delivering a trivial 0.1% of its total energy supply. Denmark’s wind industry is almost completely dependent on taxpayer subsidies, and Danes pay the highest electricity rates of any industrialized nation. Spain has finally discontinued its solar subsidies as too costly; as Prof. Gabriel Calzada reports, the program actually caused a net loss of jobs.

Having successfully exploited domestic subsidies, Europeans are now looking at the United States as the new “land of opportunity.” A recent example (described in the Wall Street Journal of Oct. 26, 2010) is the world’s largest solar-thermal power plant, on 7,000 acres of Federal land in the desert of southern California. The $6-billion project is a venture by two German companies, and it may be eligible for a cash subsidy of nearly one billion dollars in taxpayer money…

In addition to direct subsidies, the companies are seeking federal loan guarantees and, no doubt, an array of benefits from the State of California. (Emphases mine – VJT.)

So how should an Intelligent Design theorist respond, when confronted with claims that we need to do something, now, about man-made global warming? With extreme skepticism, I would suggest. Politically and economically, the problem of how to effectively combat global warming still belongs in the “too hard” basket: it’s practically insoluble. It could only be accomplished if the entire planet gave it paramount attention for the next 50 years. It would have to dominate our thinking as no other issue ever has, before now. And that’s precisely why any believer in a personal God should be leery of the claims of the global warming crusade. God would not have designed a world for intelligent beings, with insoluble environmental problems. Nor would He have designed a world with problems that could only be solved by ditching our democracy and allowing ourselves to be ruled by a scientific / bureaucratic elite.

Case study: ocean acidification

Even if we manage to defuse the problem of global warming, the bureaucrats have another manufactured crisis in store for us: ocean acidification. In an article (The Times, Opinion, November 4, 2010) entitled Who’s afraid of acid in the ocean? Not me, Matt Ridley, a former science correspondent for The Economist and author of the recent best-seller The Rational Optimist, explains what’s going on:

As opinion polls reveal that global warming is losing traction on the public imagination, environmental pressure groups have been cranking the engine on this ‘other carbon dioxide problem’. ‘Time is running out’ wrote two activists in Scientific American in August, ‘to limit acidification before it irreparably harms the food chain on which the world’s oceans – and people – depend.’…

Start with a few facts. The oceans are not acid but alkaline, with an average pH of about 8.15 (0-7 being acid, 7-14 being alkaline)… The dissolution of carbon dioxide in the oceans may lower the pH slightly to about 7.9 or 7.8 by the end of the century at the worst – still alkaline…

…[This change in pH] is still well within the bounds of normal variation over space and time: the pH of the water intake at the Monterey aquarium varies by almost twice as much as this every month. The difference between the pH of the seas off Hawaii and Alaska is greater than this.

…[S]tudy after study keeps finding that far from depressing growth rates of marine organisms, high but realistic levels of carbon dioxide either do not affect them or increase them…

Studies of oyster sperm, cuttlefish eggs, juvenile sea stars, coral polyps and krill all point to the same conclusion: damage only occurs when carbon dioxide levels reach ludicrous levels, not expected for many centuries. A new study of plankton concluded: ‘Thus, both of the investigated coastal plankton communities were unaffected by twenty-first century expected changes in pH and free CO2.’

When I voiced some of these doubts in my book The Rational Optimist, I was accused of cherry-picking studies. All right, so let’s take a look at a ‘meta-analysis’, that is to say a comprehensive paper summarising all relevant studies. Iris Hendriks and Carlos Duarte of the Spanish Council for Scientific Research found that in 372 studies of 44 different marine species ‘there was no significant mean effect’ from lower pH. They concluded that the world’s marine biota are ‘more resistant to ocean acidification than suggested by pessimistic predictions’ and that ocean acidification ‘may not be the widespread problem conjured into the 21st century.’

In his article, Matt Ridley also cites evidence of vested interest groups beefing up the problem of ocean acidification. He also provides documentation for the studies he mentioned in his article, in the Comments section.

A rational person, surveying the evidence, would conclude that the problem of ocean acidification has been greatly exaggerated. It does not warrant public alarm, let alone drastic measures by the world’s governments, and we, the public, should not allow it to be rammed down our throats as the next Big Thing To Worry About.

To the Intelligent Design theorist, Ridley’s article provides confirmation of the belief, shared by many in the ID movement, that the Earth was designed with human needs in mind. Accordingly, we should expect it to be fairly resilient to human activities. The increase in the concentration of CO2 into the Earth’s atmosphere over the past 200 years was an inevitable consequence of the world’s population rising from one billion to seven billion. Scientists like James Lovelock think it should never have risen above the one billion mark – but if it hadn’t, how much of our technology would we still have, and how comfortable would our lives be? Big, lifestyle-changing ideas, such as electricity, the automobile, television, the computer and the Internet, require a certain “critical mass” of scientific and engineering minds to generate them. That can’t happen in a world with low population density.

Popular animate metaphors for thinking about the Earth

At the present time, the prevailing metaphor for the Earth in intellectual circles is that of an extended, self-regulating Super-organism, while among environmentalists, the image of Mother Earth is predominant. The two images are quite compatible, because they’re both animate, and James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis ties them together very neatly. We continually encounter these images on a daily basis, in conversation, on TV, on the Internet and on billboard posters. The motto of the eco-activist group Earth First says it all: In Defense of Mother Earth.

In everyday discourse, you may hear people portray Mother Earth as benign and bountiful, or as cold and uncaring, or as angry and vengeful, depending on their personal spiritual beliefs, and/or the ethical or political point they are trying to convey. But common to all these portrayals is the unstated premise that Mother Earth is powerful and that people are puny. She doesn’t need us; we need her. The ethical consequences of such an outlook should be immediately apparent. Individual people are, at best, nothing more than cells in the body of Mother Earth; and at worst, malignant carcinomas which Mother Earth is perfectly entitled to eradicate, using all the natural means at her disposal. And it is pointless to argue the question of whether she has the right to eradicate us – after all, who can fight her? What is most revolting about this ethic, however, is not its personification of a ball of rock cloaked in a thin layer of vegetation, but its subordination of every human endeavor to a single over-riding end: the good of Gaia, or the long-term sustainability of the biosphere. The goodness of any human project, however noble, is now provisional: only if it is compatible with the long-term sustainability of the biosphere can it be given the ethical green light. For instance, if the world currently has too many people for Mother Earth to support, then a real human mother’s act of having a baby suddenly becomes a crime. And if a technological revolution which will save the lives of billions generates pollution on an unsustainable level, then that too is a crime. However, the Gaia ethic is both sociologically naïve and intellectually incoherent.

“Sustainability” is an attractive-sounding concept, but what it overlooks on the sociological level is that the only constant about our society is change. As a species, we are incapable of standing still, even if we want to. And even when we change, we are simply unable to keep changing in the same way indefinitely. Due to the inherently dynamic nature of human society, no trend can last forever; hence it is a fallacy to extrapolate a trend into the long-term future and cry doom. I can remember reading Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb when I was 10 or 11, and being impressed at the time by Ehrlich’s argument that if the then-current rate of world population growth (2% p.a.) were to continue, there would be no standing room on Earth by the year 2600. But of course the population didn’t continue to grow that way, and it now looks as if it will start to decline after peaking at 9 billion, around 2070. If I had known a little history, I might not have been so credulous. Predictions of disaster based on extrapolations are not new, as this interesting article on the great horse manure crisis of 1894 illustrates. Writing in the Times of London in 1894, one writer estimated that in 50 years, every street in London would be buried under nine feet of manure. Of course, the great horse manure crisis of 1894 vanished when millions of horses were replaced by motor vehicles.

The intellectual incoherence of the “Mother Earth” ethic consists in the fact that although local ecosystems – and by extension, the biosphere as a whole – can (in some sense) be said to flourish, to benefit and to be harmed, the flourishing of these systems is derivative upon that of the individuals whose interactions comprise them. “Gaia” only thrives if individual trees do. Here, the flourishing of “Gaia” is derivative upon that of trees: it is the fact that trees have a biological “good of their own” which enables us to meaningfully talk of actions which promote tree growth as being “good for the planet.” Since ecosystems do not do any extra ethical “work” in this case, bio-centric individualism (the view that all – and only – individual organisms have moral standing or intrinsic value) is the only intellectually defensible way of articulating the “Earth First” view.

Why “Mother Earth” is ethically poisonous and inherently elitist and undemocratic

Now, I don’t deny for a moment that all living organisms – even the humble bacterium – do indeed possess intrinsic value. The ethical question that then confronts us is: what are we supposed to do when our interests clash with those of other organisms? Perhaps more to the point, politically speaking, is this question: who decides what’s right and what’s wrong for us?

How do believers in “Mother Earth” decide what’s ethically permissible? The Earth never tells us that there are too many people for it to support, of course; scientists do that. I am thinking especially of ecologists, but at any given time, scientists from other disciplines might be roped in as well, to speak on behalf of Mother Earth: oceanographers, climatologists, and biologists of various stripes. These might be irreverently called the “high priests” of Gaia. No doubt they sincerely believe that they are doing something good and noble; but what they are in fact doing is ethically perverted: they are teaching our children that people don’t matter, in and of themselves, and that the Earth is what matters most. According to the new ethic, only in relation to the Earth we live on can our human endeavors be morally assessed, because without Mother Earth, none of them would come to fruition. A human endeavor can only be called good if it’s earth-friendly.

The divisive nature of this ethic should be immediately apparent. The high priests of Gaia, the politicians who side with them, and the “enlightened” members of the public who follow their prescriptions are on one side; the “ignorant” masses who harm Gaia with their profligate lifestyles and the poor who “breed like rabbits” are on the other. An “Earth First” ideology inevitably pits people against people, and creates an elite. We get meritocratic “rule by the best,” instead of democracy.

Do you think I’m making this up? I’m not. I’m deadly serious. I got it straight from the horse’s mouth. Here is what scientist James Lovelock, author of the ground-breaking book, Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth, says on the problem of climate change in a recent interview (“James Lovelock: Humans are too stupid to prevent climate change” in The Guardian, 29 March 2010):

I don’t think we’re yet evolved to the point where we’re clever enough to handle a complex a situation as climate change,” said Lovelock in his first in-depth interview since the theft of the UEA emails last November. “The inertia of humans is so huge that you can’t really do anything meaningful.”

One of the main obstructions to meaningful action is “modern democracy”, he added. “Even the best democracies agree that when a major war approaches, democracy must be put on hold for the time being. I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while.

The image of Mother Earth sounds reassuring, but in reality it is ethically topsy-turvy and spiritually idolatrous: human well-being is subordinated to that of an entity (Earth) which cannot even be said to have a “good of its own”, except in a purely derivative sense. The Earth is not a living thing. “Gaia” only thrives if individual organisms do.

Why “Sister Earth” is no better than “Mother Earth.”

Surprisingly, though, many religious believers have imbibed some of this new “eco-friendly” spirituality. Much of the “softer” New Age literature is written by clerics. In this literature, Gaia does not reign supreme; the Earth can never be deified. Yet neither is she entirely dethroned. Instead of being our Mother, she is now our sister. To take a relatively innocuous example, Sister Earth: Ecology, Creation, and the Spirit, a collection of meditations by the late Dom Helder Camara, a Brazilian priest and archbishop, tells us that that God chose humans to be co-creators, “to complete the creation and to help nature express its full potential.” All very well and good, but what the good archbishop failed to realize is that if Nature is our sister, then she is also our equal. That means she has veto power over our endeavors, if her interests are significantly harmed. And who decides which way the balance tips? Once again, the “high priests” of Sister Earth. For it is they who shape our moral judgments – and those of our children – with their ethical pronouncements, and it is we who allow ourselves and our children to be shaped by the opinions they express in their books. In effect, then, “Sister Earth” spirituality is just Mother Earth-lite.

A parable: the highway and the frogs

The problem, then, is that if the interests of the Earth itself – or of the various species of organisms that dwell upon it – are ranked equal to our own, then we get ethical gridlock. Paralysis sets in: the construction of a highway linking a small town to a large city can be stopped by government officials if the only commercially viable route for the highway happens to go through a habitat where an endangered species (say, a community of frogs) lives. What started as an elitist meritocracy, dominated by the “high priests” of Gaia, has now given way to a bloated bureaucracy, producing a blizzard of papers and studies, in which the pros and cons of the highway are debated. To make matters worse, politicians from both parties are compelled to read these papers and take positions on them, in order to appear well-informed. Ordinary citizens watching the televised debates between politician A and politician B may feel cowed by the formidable intellectual prowess of the speakers on both sides, but they correctly intuit that something is amiss, morally speaking. This kind of intellectual talkfest can’t be the best way to decide what kinds of human endeavors should be permitted, and what kinds should be outlawed.

What’s wrong with bureaucrats making ethical decisions about the environment?

Why not? Firstly, the detachment and impersonalism of the humans-versus-frogs debate is deeply offensive. We are talking as if we were visiting Martians, or mini-deities, impassively weighing up the interests of species A and species B – even though one of the species is ourselves! That’s ridiculous. We’re not gods, and we shouldn’t pretend to be. We have a personal stake in this, and we shouldn’t attempt to reason as if we didn’t.

Second, we’re not just any old species, either. Humans are special. To explain why, I’d like to cite a short passage from (atheist) Jason Rosenhouse’s online article, Coyne lays an egg, in which he criticizes the snideness and ridicule of Professor Jerry Coyne’s review of Professor Michael Behe’s book, The Edge of Evolution. At one point Rosenhouse cites a remark made by Coyne in his review:

So what scientific reason can there be for singling out just one species as the Designer’s goal?

and answers Coyne’s question with a ready reply that an Intelligent Design proponent might make:

There is only one species with the intelligence to contemplate a relationship with God. That’s why we might single out just one species.

Bravo, Professor Rosenhouse! I couldn’t have put it better myself.

The intelligence that makes humans capable of contemplating a relationship with God also makes them capable of following rules. This ability forms the basis for moral behavior. Thus when a scientist of the stature of James Lovelock, despairing of our future, asserts (interview with the Daily Mail, 22 March 2008) that “It would be hubris to think humans as they are now are God’s chosen race,” he fails to realize the self-refuting nature of his assertion. How many species on Earth are capable of changing their behavior, in order to avert a long-term future threat? How many species on Earth are being asked to do something about global warming? Only one – Homo sapiens. And how many species on Earth are capable of changing their behavior for a reason – as opposed to an incentive, like bananas? How many species are capable of justifying their actions by an appeal to reason? Only one – Homo sapiens.

Incidentally, the fact that chimps, dolphins and a few other animals are capable of recognizing their bodies in mirrors doesn’t prove that they have any concept of their own body, let alone a concept of themselves as agents. I’d be far more impressed if they could recognize themselves in a portrait, and even more impressed if they sat for one.

Likewise, the tool-making feats of Betty the crow look impressive, but we cannot ask her: “Why did you make it that way?” as she is incapable of justifying her actions, as a rational agent should be able to do. The same goes for the extremely clever New Caledonian crows who are able to use three tools in succession to get some food (BBC news report, 20 April 2010, by science reporter Rebecca Morelle). Let us imagine an older crow teaching a younger crow how to use a tool. And now try to imagine the following dialogue:

Older crow: Don’t bend it that way. Bend it this way.
Younger crow: Why?
Older crow: Because if you bend it this way, it can pick up a piece of meat, but if you bend it that way, it can’t.

The dialogue contains only simple little words, but the problem should be immediately apparent. The meaning of words like “if,” “why,” “but,” “can” and “can’t,” cannot be conveyed to someone who does not understand them, through bodily gestures alone. Until we have grounds for saying that crows possess a language at this level of abstraction, we should react skeptically to claims that they can reason.

The very act of comparing the interests of a species whose members are intellectually capable of asking themselves what they should and shouldn’t do, and what Being (if any) they should worship, with the interests of a species whose members are incapable of asking themselves these questions, is a moral absurdity. It’s worse than comparing apples and oranges; at least they’re both fruits. It’s more like comparing cubes and squares. Humans have dimensions to their existence that frogs do not. Our intelligence is what gives us those added dimensions. Like it or lump it, we are special, and our interests simply cannot be “weighed against” those of frogs.

This brings me to my third reason why Joe and Jane Citizen are right to distrust the bureaucrats: Joe and Jane Citizen still retain the intuition that goodness is personal. We realize our fullest potential as moral agents when we are loving, helping, or working in partnership with, other people. The more time we can spend on inter-personal moral endeavors, the more we realize our human potential. By contrast, impersonal moral endeavors, in which we have to deal with things instead of people, or in which we have to deal with people on an impersonal level (e.g. by making decisions based on cost-benefit analyses which are carried out over aggregates of people, instead of individuals we know), are morally hazardous: they constitute a drain on our precious moral energy, and they tend to make us forget about our personal relationships. We should therefore spend as little time as possible engaging in impersonal activities, and as much of our time as we can engaging in personal ones. Above all, we need to set aside time to communicate with the God Who made us, and with Whom we all have a personal relationship. Anything that distracts us from that is bad.

I repeat: goodness is personal.

Whatever happened to Goodness?

This is a truth we have lost sight of during the past four decades. Two parallel trends have contributed to this loss of vision: we’ve “de-personalized” virtue, and we’ve “de-charitized” it.

Depersonalization set in when we started ridiculing as “small-minded” the kind of person who strove to be good in their personal dealings (e.g. a good spouse, a good parent, a good friend and a good worker) but who never attempted to question, let alone overcome, institutionalized forms of injustice, or unjust social structures. At the same time, we exalted the great humanitarian who dedicated their life to changing the world, but who may have had serious personal failings as a human being (e.g. by being a cold distant father, or an unfaithful husband). The point I want to make here is that a small-minded person may be morally blinkered, but still fundamentally good, as a human being; while someone whose “moral blinkers” have been removed does not thereby become a good person. Such a person is able to do good in ways that the small-minded person could never imagine, but may in fact be a deeply flawed, and even an evil individual.

De-charitization was the result of exalting “thin” virtues over “thick” ones. There was a time when a good person was defined as a loving spouse, a loving parent, a generous friend, a trustworthy person at work, and (time permitting) someone dedicated to serving their community as a volunteer. Love, generosity, trustworthiness and service are “thick” virtues. Nowadays, however, we tend to think of a good person as someone who is fair in their dealings with others (e.g. someone who does their share of housework and parenting), someone who is tolerant of other people’s beliefs and lifestyle choices (especially those of their children, friends and workmates), and someone who strives to avoid harming others as a result of their personal lifestyle choices (e.g. people in developing countries, or other sentient creatures). Now, fairness, tolerance and harm avoidance are all very well and good, and I don’t wish to belittle them. But they are “thin” virtues, which pale in comparison with love, or charity in the broadest sense of the word. If people are forced to spend too much time focusing on the thin virtues, they will have no time to think about the thick ones.

Why am I harping on these points? Because during the past twenty years in particular, the average citizen has been forced to spend an inordinate amount of time paying attention to things that don’t matter much, in the moral scheme of things: for instance, buying fair trade goods, buying cruelty-free cosmetics, garbage sorting, recycling, and reducing CO2 emissions by buying a hybrid car or an LED. Many of these things should be done: alternatives to animal testing should be found for shampoos and cosmetics; and alternatives for landfill sites should be found, to prevent needless destruction of trees. But doing these things is not what makes us good people. Goodness lies elsewhere: it is found pre-eminently in the domain of personal relationships. If governments decide, then, that we need to sort garbage or reduce CO2 emissions, they should strive to minimize the amount of time that we spend thinking about these things, so we can get on with what really matters most in their moral lives: being a good spouse, parent, friend, worker and community volunteer. Insofar as governments force people to spend a significant amount of their time attending to, or worrying about, the little things in life, they are doing the community a huge disservice. And schools that teach children not to hurt other living things, and not to criticize others’ lifestyle choices, while failing to inculcate virtues like charity, fidelity, patience, generosity, reliability and service, are producing a morally lop-sided generation of people.

I haven’t mentioned the greatest hazard that obsessing about the “little things” in life poses: it reduces the time we spend relating to our Creator. We don’t have time to sit down and think about Gauguin’s big three questions: “Where did we come from? Who are we? Where are we going?” We don’t have time to pursue Truth with the moral energy that such a quest merits; we don’t have time to hear the “still, small voice of God,” and we certainly don’t have time to pray.

Back to the frogs

Moral significance attaches to any being with a good of its own – including a frog. But in the paradigmatic sense, moral significance attaches to persons, who are capable of knowing that they have a good of their own, which they should pursue as agents – in other words, beings who are capable of having the concept of a norm, and choosing to follow it. (The term “capable” of course includes human beings, such as embryos, fetuses and newborn babies, who are as yet too immature to possess such knowledge or to exercise their moral agency, but who are nevertheless in control of the natural process whereby they acquire such knowledge and learn to exercise their agency.) Other living things do matter, but in a progressively weaker sense of the word “matter,” as we go from sentient animals to non-sentient animals to plants and microbes.

Does that give us carte blanche to ride roughshod over frogs, as we criss-cross the land with highways? Certainly not. What it does mean is that any sane and sensible ethic should start out from a “People First” premise. Highways save lives, over the long run. To take just one instance: think of how many seriously ill people they enable to get to hospital more quickly. (Highways are also associated with deaths caused by car crashes; but the failing here is generally not that of the highways themselves, but of the careless drivers who misuse them.) Highways also enable people get to work more quickly, and as a result, they spend less time on getting from A to B and more time on inherently valuable activities like doing creative work at the office, and spending more time with their families at home. Highways are job-creators too. If a highway can’t be swiftly and sensibly re-routed to avoid a community of frogs belonging to an endangered species, then it should still be built: it would be morally wicked to let frogs’ interests take precedence over people’s interests. However, since frogs have a well-being of their own, we should try to relocate the frogs, if we can do so without putting on hold any current projects that are vital for saving human lives.

If the frogs were endangered mammals instead, we would also try to minimize any physical discomfort that the animals might experience in relocating. But it would still be wrong to subordinate human welfare to that of the animals, when deciding whether to go ahead with such an important human project. People have to come first, in such cases.

The aim of this essay was to show that Intelligent Design theorists have a very different “take” on a suite of environmental issues, ranging from global warming to highway construction to the way we think about the Earth itself, simply because we believe that the Earth was made for human beings (especially) and also for other living things to inhabit.

Comments
Quite ID Thank you for your post. Regarding anthropogenic global warming, I am not a denialist but a skeptic. The hypothesis might well be true (as Dr. Roy Spencer himself admits). However, I have yet to see alternative explanations ruled out for the warming that has been observed to date. But if, as you say, anthropogenic global warming is occurring, then we should waste no time trying to fight it intelligently, with the solution most likely to work, rather than the one that Greens, politicians or bureaucrats happen to favor. In my post, I highlighted liquid fluoride thorium reactors (LFTRs) as the best means of combating global warming - see here and here and here. The technology isn't what worries me about fighting global warming; it's the bureaucratic stupidity factor. Let's hope that the powers that be abandon their fixation with windmills, and do something that will really work.vjtorley
November 22, 2010
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Dr. Torley, Thank you for your reply. To clarify, I do not believe anthropogenic global warming will cause the extinction of humanity. I do think that, unaddressed, it will cause global catastrophe of a considerable scale. Of course, this will affect different populations differently. Let's say global warming reduces world population by 20%. Should we not try to forestall that if we can? What does it mean to love our neighbor if not this? I am less sanguine than you about the effects of capitalism on the environment or on people's lives. The industrial revolution and similar developments both exploitative and progressive. All this distracts from my original point. The science on warming is ongoing, but the basic facts are clear: global warming is happening, people are contributing mightily to it, and it's going to be seriously bad. Even if this were not true, global warming has nothing to do with ID. My position is and remains that ID does itself no favors by allying with forms of denialism (including climate change denial). ID does not deny anything: it affirms design.QuiteID
November 22, 2010
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Bruce David On the subject of chemicals and heavy metals, you might like to have a look at this primer on the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) by Bruce Yandle, Maya Vijayaraghavan, and Madhusudan Bhattarai (PERC Research Study 02-1, May 2002). The authors make a strong case that for some kinds of pollution, including certain kinds of heavy metal pollution, as a poor country's development process picks up, economic growth helps to undo the damage done in earlier years, when a certain level of per capita income is reached. The authors write:
If economic growth is good for the environment, policies that stimulate growth (trade liberalization, economic restructuring and price reform) ought to be good for the environment. However, income growth without institutional reform is not likely to be enough. As we have shown, the improvement of the environment with income growth is not automatic but depends on policies and institutions. GDP growth creates the conditions for environmental improvement by raising the demand for improved environmental quality and makes the resources available for supplying it. Whether environmental quality improvements materializes or not, when and how, depends critically on government policies, social institutions and the completeness and functioning of markets. It is for this reason, among others, that Arrow et al. (1995) emphasize the importance of getting the institutions right in rich and poor countries. Along these lines, Torras and Boyce (1998) argue and show empirically that, all else equal, when ordinary people have political power, civil rights as well as economic rights, air and water quality improves in richer and poorer countries. Better policies, such as the removal of distorting subsidies, and the introduction of more secure property rights over resources, and the imposition of pollution taxes to connect actions taken to prices paid will flatten the underlying EKC and perhaps achieve an earlier turning point. Because market forces will ultimately determine the price of environmental quality, policies that allow market forces to operate are expected to be unambiguously positive. The search for meaningful environmental protection is a search for ways to enhance property rights and markets. (Emphases mine - VJT.)
You might also like to have a look at this article: The China Syndrome and the Environmental Kuznets Curve at http://www.aei.org/outlook/23617 , by Steven Hayward, of the American Enterprise Institute.vjtorley
November 22, 2010
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To continue, I can envision some alternatives to the doomsday scenario outlined above, but none of them are pleasant. For example, it might be that the destruction of topsoil currently being visited upon our arable land by unsustainable farming techniques coupled with over harvesting will trigger a world wide crisis in the food supply before the accumulation of persistent substances kills everything. This could possibly lead to an economic crisis so severe that it results in a dramatic and sustained curtailment of manufacturing, thus avoiding total planetary death. The bottom line is, "pay me now, or pay me later". In the long run, the consequences of not making the necessary sacrifices now will be sacrifices much more severe down the road. But of course, God might not let it happen.Bruce David
November 22, 2010
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To Bornagain77: You said, "wonderful plan,,, good luck implementing it ,,, How bout we put a stop to all wars while we are at it?" I'm under no illusions that this will be easy. What will be required is nothing less than a global shift in consciousness. First people have to wake up to the seriousness of the problem, and then we have to start making decisions on a time frame longer than the next quarter. We have to decide whether the quality of our children and grandchildren's lives (and indeed whether they will live at all) is more important than having as much as we can accumulate as cheaply as possible right now. These are the facts: 1. Huge amounts of persistent chemicals and heavy metals are being produced every year. 2. Because they are persistent, and because of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, whatever is produced, both product and waste, will eventually make its way into the biosphere. 3. Because they are persistent, they will accumulate in living things as long as they continue to be produced. 4. We don't know the effects on living systems of most of these substances alone or in combination. 5. We don't know what levels of concentration living organisms can tolerate of most of these substances alone or in combination. 6. We do know that beyond some level of concentration, these substances are lethal to all living things. (Again, if you doubt this, just look at the chemical wastelands that have been produced by unrestrained dumping around some chemical plants.) The consequences of these facts should be obvious--we are headed on a course which will end in the destruction of life on earth, including ourselves. Under such conditions, it is not terribly relevant how God wants us to live. We won't be here.Bruce David
November 22, 2010
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Muramasa You write:
I generally consider the clothes I am wearing to need washing.
I don't, or I wouldn't be wearing them. And what if I've only just put them on?vjtorley
November 21, 2010
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Quite ID Thank you for your post. You profess to believe that God is good, so I'll take you at your word. However, you have no time for the notion that, as you put it, "because God is good, everything that happens in the natural environment is no big deal." You comment: "Try telling that to the earthquake victims in Haiti, or China, or Chile, or the tsunami victims in Indonesia." First, you are confusing a local problem with a global one. One might still believe that God is good if He allows some people to die as a result of some catastrophe. However, a global catastrophe that wiped out humanity itself (or everyone except for one individual), would certainly falsify the proposition that God is good. For what meaningful sense would still attach to the proposition, after a catastrophe like that? Let me illustrate with an anecdote. Back in the early 1940s, while my Grade 12 physics teacher was still at school, one of his teachers told him that if a nuclear explosion ever occurred, it would set off a chain reaction that would detonate the entire globe. Of course, he was wrong. But the point I am making is that a humanity-loving omniscient God would have foreseen the possibility of a Kim Jong Il, and would have designed the world so that it could never explode. Second, I don't maintain that all environmental problems are easily soluble. What I do maintain is that if personal relationships are an essential part of our telos as human beings, it must be possible for human beings in general to live their lives in a fashion that allows them to meet their obligations to each other and their Creator. That means that on a global scale, environmental problems must be at least manageable. A world where we had our plate piled high with unmanageable environmental problems would be a world in which we would be too busy to live human lives, in which we could adequately fulfil our duties to each other - and hence a world in which we would be incapable of behaving morally. A good God would not design a world like that. Third, the assumption I am making, that every problem confronting humanity as a whole is a soluble one, while not entailed by ID, is certainly very ID-friendly, and also very science-friendly. I would also like to add that many of the pioneers of the Scientific Revolution, such as Kepler, Newton and Boyle, made similar assumptions in the course of their scientific research. I have already drawn attention to the happy coincidence between the Earth's habitability and its suitability, as a location in the Milky Way, for making scientific measurements. I assume that you agree with me that this is not a coincidence but a designed outcome. I find it puzzling, then, that you doubt that the Earth itself is designed to be able to withstand the impact human activities, particularly when they are not even malevolent ones! You write that "if there's an important theological principle here, it's not the goodness of God (which we both will vouch for) but the depravity of man." But how did our CO2 levels get to be so high, in the first place? Humans chose to continue multiplying in the 19th and 20th centuries, when infant mortality started to decline, and they chose build factories and automobiles. Was this a case of human depravity? Should the Industrial Revolution never have happened? I think not. Finally, you argue that "[i]nterpreting scientific data based on how you think God will act is a Terrible Idea." Agreed, it is. But we should not give up the basic assumption that global human problems are soluble and manageable until proof is forthcoming. Giving up the ghost and allowing yourself to be cowed by bureaucrats into living in a world where you are only allowed to have one child, where meat is totally off the menu (I don't eat meat, by the way, but that's my choice), where you can only own an electric car, and where you can never travel overseas - even to visit your family - because of airplanes' excessive GHG emissions, is craven and cowardly. Yet if we consistently followed the advice of the Green movement, this is the lifestyle we'd all have to lead. We should resist such eco-tyranny.vjtorley
November 21, 2010
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Not a non-sequitur. The response states "but at least (if my household is well-run), I can say, “Well, all the clothes and dishes are clean now.”". I generally consider the clothes I am wearing to need washing. Therefore, unless I do my laundry naked, "all the clothes" cannot be clean. Pedantic to be sure, but the devil is in the details, no?Muramasa
November 21, 2010
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"You must do your laundry naked, then." non-sequiturUpright BiPed
November 21, 2010
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You must do your laundry naked, then.Muramasa
November 21, 2010
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Dr. Torley, When you write that "climate problems, and all other environmental problems, are soluble without too much fuss," you are on the verge of saying that because God is good, everything that happens in the natural environment is no big deal. Try telling that to the earthquake victims in Haiti, or China, or Chile, or the tsunami victims in Indonesia. Interpreting scientific data based on how you think God will act is a Terrible Idea. Besides, if there's an important theological principle here, it's not the goodness of God (which we both will vouch for) but the depravity of man. Maybe you think such depravity has a limit, but I haven't seen it. I believe that Dr. Roy Spencer is a Christian and a supporter of ID. I am glad, but he is still in a small minority among climate scientists, including those who are Christians.QuiteID
November 21, 2010
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Quite ID Scientific opinion about Frank's article seems to be rather polarized, but at least one climatologist agrees with Frank - NASA climatologist Dr. Roy Spencer. See http://www.takeonit.com/expert/835.aspx Alarm bells went off for me when I read polemical comments by Schmidt such as "naive beyond belief." Whatever mistakes Frank has or hasn't made, they're hardly likely to be naive ones. As for tying ID to the issue of climate change: I haven't attempted to do this. What I have argued is that "[s]omeone who believes (as many Intelligent Design proponents do) that the Author of Nature is a supremely good Personal Being" will tend to believe that climate problems, and all other environmental problems, are soluble without too much fuss, because the proper end of human existence is to develop personal relationships with others - especially our Creator and those near and dear to us. A world in constant crisis would leave us no time to do that. It would demand continual attention and it would monopolize our consciousness. We couldn't live a properly human life in such a world. Also, living in such a world would destroy democracy, as we would be at the whim of an informed elite constantly telling us how we had to live and how much tax we had to pay in order to solve Mother Earth's problems. The potential for abuse is obvious. An ID proponent could believe in a world designed by a malevolent, indifferent or inept being. In that case the climate crisis would come as no surprise. But if one believes in a supremely good and powerful Designer, as many ID proponents do, it would.vjtorley
November 21, 2010
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Muramasa (#43) Sorry, but your laundry and dish-washing analogies don't hold. There may be more clothes or dishes to wash in the future, but at least (if my household is well-run), I can say, "Well, all the clothes and dishes are clean now." No such situation obtains with the Earth. It will never be pollution-free or in perfect equilibrium, environmentally.vjtorley
November 21, 2010
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Bruce David,,, wonderful plan,,, good luck implementing it ,,, How bout we put a stop to all wars while we are at it? :) ,,, Yet Bruce no matter how peaceful and 'clean' we are, Something tells me that man is not going to be completely in sync with 'how God intended us' to live in this world until Christ returns,,, which according to the following fact, should not be to far down the road: The Precisely Fulfilled Prophecy Of Israel Becoming A Nation In 1948 - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4041241/ ,, and Bruce this is interesting to think about,,, just how do you imagine God should have us live in harmony with nature? Will we forfeit all creativity and industrious??? Will we walk around naked,, leaving zero 'carbon footprint'?bornagain77
November 21, 2010
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Should we also attempt to stop all of the oil that naturally seeps into the ocean year round?Phaedros
November 21, 2010
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Dr. Torley, You said, "There’s no way we can take all of the chemicals we’ve put into the atmosphere, out of the atmosphere." Well, I agree. And the problem is not just those in the atmosphere, it is also those that are accumulating in the water, the soil, and indeed in all living things, including ourselves. My point is that we should begin a program designed to eventually eliminate the production of virtually all persistent substances, replacing them with ones that degrade naturally or that the biosphere can deal with. It may in fact be too late. It may be that what is already in the pipeline, making its way into the biosphere by virtue of the Second Law is enough to overwhelm the ecosystem which is our planet, but my position is that it is irresponsible not to make the attempt. You also said, "For my part, I believe in caring about the Earth, but I believe in living a human life first." To this I would respond that the two are inextricably intertwined. Our very survival as a species is utterly dependent on a healthy biosphere. In spite of all our technology, our food supply and very much else that contributes to our lives comes from living things, and there are no substitutes. If the earth dies, we die. Secondly, even if we could somehow manage to survive on a dead planet through some as yet undiscovered technology, what kind of a human life would that be? What would be the quality of life without the breathtaking beauty of this incredible world that we inhabit (given to us by God, I might add)?Bruce David
November 21, 2010
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Dr. Torley, Frank is not a climate scientist. You might want to look at this article and the responses to Frank in the comments: "Frank confuses the error in an absolute value with the error in a trend. It is equivalent to assuming that if a clock is off by about a minute today, that tomorrow it will be off by two minutes, and in a year off by 365 minutes. In reality, the errors over a long time are completely unconnected with the offset today." ID should have nothing to do with denialism, climate change or other. ID is a positive programme affirming design, not a rejection of science. I talked about this in response to a post about Einstein, but the post seems to have disappeared.QuiteID
November 21, 2010
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"The task you propose is a task that by definition could never be finished. No matter how much you worry, no matter what precautions you take, there’s always another one you could take to make the world even safer." Using that logic, I should stop doing laundry or washing dishes because there will always be more to do.Muramasa
November 21, 2010
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Bruce David, Thank you for your post. I have to say that the course of action you advocate sounds like an impossible quest to me. There's no way we can take all of the chemicals we've put into the atmosphere, out of the atmosphere. It's too late. And in case you're inclined to think that reducing the concentrations of these chemicals will reduce the risk, I have some bad news for you. It ain't necessarily so. You might like to have a look at this article: A Climate of Belief by Patrick Frank, In The Skeptic, vol. 14 no. 1. Patrick Frank is a Ph.D. chemist with more than 50 peer-reviewed articles. Here's an excerpt:
The limits of resolution of the GCMs [general circulation models] - their pixel size - is huge compared to what they are trying to project. In each new projection year of a century-scale calculation, the growing uncertainty in the climate impact of clouds alone makes the view of a GCM become progressively fuzzier... It is well-known among climatologists that large swaths of the physics in GCMs are not well understood. Where the uncertainty is significant GCMs have "parameters," which are best judgments for how certain climate processes work. General Circulation Models have dozens of parameters and possibly a million variables, and all of them have some sort of error or uncertainty... So the bottom line is this: When it comes to future climate, no one knows what they're talking about. No one. Not the IPCC nor its scientists, not the US National Academy of Sciences, not the NRDC or National Geographic, not the US Congressional House leadership, not me, not you, and certainly not Mr. Albert Gore. Earth's climate is warming and no one knows exactly why.
Frank also warns that cutting CO2 won't necessarily cut the risk of warming. Here's another fact to consider. The task you propose is a task that by definition could never be finished. No matter how much you worry, no matter what precautions you take, there's always another one you could take to make the world even safer. If you kept thinking like that, you'd have no time for human interactions with people around you, let alone prayer. And that's why I object to eco-fascism. Thinking about the Earth tends to monopolize your time, once you make its concerns paramount, or once you think that you and you alone can save it. Ecosystems can collapse suddenly, but the Earth isn't just an ecosystem. The Earth has a web of feedbacks and controls that we are still beginning to understand. Dr. Roy Spencer's Website on global warming explains these well. For my part, I believe in caring about the Earth, but I believe in living a human life first. I'm not going to let Nature (or Gaia) make me ashamed of doing that.vjtorley
November 20, 2010
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To vjt: You said, "But if we’re putting 'millions of tons of over 100K different man-made persistent substances into the earth every year,' as you say, then it’s not going to be possible to compute the long-term effects of all of them. We don’t have the computing resources available to do that." This is absolutely true, and compounded by the fact that we would have to consider the possible effects of any or all of these acting in combination with each other. Not only do we not have the computing power, we don't posses the requisite scientific knowledge either. But there is another fact that raises my level of concern even more, and that is that when ecosystems die, they don't just slowly get weaker, they cope as long as they can, and then they suddenly collapse. The earth as a whole is an ecosystem. When it reaches the point of collapse, there will be absolutely nothing we will be able to do about it, since the toxic substances will have spread throughout all living things and there will be no way to remove them. To me, the only responsible action that we as a species can take (responsible to our children and their children) is to re-invent our technology, and to do this as fast as we can. This would mean reducing our use of persistent man-made and toxic mined substances to an absolute minimum, replacing them in our manufactured goods with biodegradable materials. We also need to stop all actions that physically reduce the worlds living systems. Would this involve material sacrifices on our part? Almost certainly. Would we need to put in place mechanisms to redistribute wealth so that millions of people would not have to live (or die) in abject poverty? Probably. But what are the alternatives? Allow the earth's ecosystems to die and us with them, or hope that we understand God correctly and that He won't let it happen. Personally, I would take action.Bruce David
November 20, 2010
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Muramasa Thanks for your question. I was referring to a perfect total eclipse, where the sun appears to move exactly behind the moon, with the view of the moon seeming to perfectly overlap the sun. It's this kind of eclipse that has yielded important scientific discoveries. To understand why you would not see a perfect solar eclipse from the moon, you might like to have a look at this page: http://nrich.maths.org/6683vjtorley
November 20, 2010
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vjtorley: Is there a reason that a total eclipse would not be visible from the Moon?Muramasa
November 19, 2010
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Ilion (#33) Thank you for your comment. The point I wanted to make is that the question of whether God is a rational individual or Person (or in Christian theology, an indivisible Trinity of Persons) is logically distinct from the question of whether God is the sort of Being with Whom it is possible to have a personal relationship, because He cares about each and every human being (and not just the human species). Rather confusingly, modern English applies the term "personal God" to both of the meanings listed above, which is why people tend to get them mixed up. Your example of the human father didn't quite hit the nail on the head. A father who disowns his children is still a father who is capable of having a personal relationship with them, as he is capable of knowing and loving them as individuals. But from the mere fact that God is a rational individual, one cannot logically deduce that He is capable of knowing and loving each of us human beings, as individuals. That was what I wanted to say.vjtorley
November 19, 2010
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Prof. FX Gumby Thank you for your very thoughtful post (#23). You ask:
What is the ID evidence or theoretical argument for the special position of the human species in creation?
The best evidence, to my knowledge, relates to the fact that habitability correlates with measurability, as documented by Jay Richards and Guillermo Gonzalez in their book, The Privileged Planet (see http://www.amazon.com/Privileged-Planet-Cosmos-Designed-Discovery/dp/0895260654 ). In other words, not only does the Earth have special properties as a planet which make it uniquely suited to life, but it also has properties which make it uniquely suited to making scientific observations, without which we would never have been able to figure out our place in the cosmos. These observations have also greatly strengthened the case for God's existence. A striking example relates to solar eclipses. The Earth is the only place in the solar system where it is possible to witness a total solar eclipse. (One of Saturn's moons, Prometheus, comes close, but it's shaped like a potato and results in eclipses that last less than a second). What's more, even on Earth, it will only be possible to witness perfect solar eclipses for the relatively near term future, as the moon's distance from the Earth gradually changes over the course of time. Total eclipses are possible because the sun is 400 times larger than the moon, but it's also 400 times further away than the moon. It's this coincidence that creates a perfect match. "What's so important about solar eclipses?" you may ask. The answer is that eclipses resulted in scientific discoveries that wouldn't have been possible elsewhere, on planets where eclipses don't happen. Perfect solar eclipses have helped us learn about the nature of stars. Using spectroscopes, astronomers learned how the sun's color spectrum is produced, and that data later helped them interpret the spectra of distant stars. Second, a perfect solar eclipse in 1919 helped teams of astronomers confirm that gravity bends light, which was a central prediction of Einstein's general theory of relativity. That test was only possible during a total eclipse. Third, perfect eclipses provided a historical record that has enabled astronomers to calculate changes in the Earth's orbit over the past several thousand years, and to put ancient calendars on our modern calendar systems. Human beings also live in a part of the galaxy which is ideal for observing stars. In particular, we live in a very good neighborhood for detecting cosmic background radiation, which provided vital evidence for the Big Bang. I could go on, but I think you get the picture. The Earth is not just a very life-friendly planet, it is also a very science-friendly planet. This is a striking and wholly unexpected fact. Habitability and measurability coincide on our planet, leading people who believe in God to suspect that the Earth was created not just for life, but as a place where scientific knowledge could be acquired and amassed - knowledge that points to the existence of a Creator. In other words, God put us in a world where His existence could be reasonably inferred. Humans are the only animals with science. Turnips don't use telescopes - or at least, they weren't using them the last time I looked :) I think it is reasonable to conclude that the Earth was designed for Homo sapiens in particular. I hope that answers your question.vjtorley
November 19, 2010
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Ilion:If human beings are *simply* collections (or sets, in mathematical terms) of cells with certain genomic characteristics, then I guess we must conclude that no human persons exist. WAM, that is what you got from my comment? Sigh. The punchline was that there is a unimaginably huge number of bacteria in a human body (and the whole world, AAF) and may people are just walking, talking food carts for the wee buggies.San Antonio Rose
November 19, 2010
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San Antonio Rose:My science teacher told us that there are more bacteria cells in the human body than human cells. So maybe we are just living in a bacteria centered creation. LOL” If human beings are *simply* collections (or sets, in mathematical terms) of cells with certain genomic characteristics, then I guess we must conclude that no human persons exist. For, after all, those sets of cells are never the same from instant to instant, as cells divide and/or die. Nor, for that matter, is any individual cell -- including the bacteria cells -- the same from instant to instant. One wonders: is it even meaningful to speak of “an individual cell”?Ilion
November 19, 2010
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VJTorley:Ilíon, Personal God” could mean two things. It could mean a God who possesses personal attributes (i.e. is a rational individual). Or it could mean a God who cares about each and every person He created." No, it means (and can mean) only the first. Consider two men who have sired children. The first cares intimately for the being and well-being of his each of his children. The second doesn’t even so much as acknowledge that he has sired any children at all. Is it not nonsensical to say of the first man “he is a personal father” and of the second “he is an impersonal father”? They are both persons, equally; their personhood is a different matter from their siring of children and from their performance of the obligations of fatherhood.Ilion
November 19, 2010
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Beautiful poem allanius. Gumby I should also like to point out that this 'chasm' between the finite world of the space-time of General Relativity, and the 'infinite' world of quantum mechanics, lends strong support to the Christian contention for the necessity of each person to accept Christ in order to enjoy a 'complete' eternal life with God. It seems very likely that without a person accepting Christ, and His redemptive work, into their heart that their soul could very well be left as 'an island unto itself' from what is revealed by General Relativity: ,,,This following site, through a fairly exhaustive examination of the General Relativity equations themselves, acknowledges the insufficiency of General Relativity to account for the 'completeness' of 4D space-time within the sphere of the CMBR from different points of observation in the universe. The Cauchy Problem In General Relativity - Igor Rodnianski Excerpt: 2.2 Large Data Problem In General Relativity - While the result of Choquet-Bruhat and its subsequent refinements guarantee the existence and uniqueness of a (maximal) Cauchy development, they provide no information about its geodesic completeness and thus, in the language of partial differential equations, constitutes a local existence. ,,, More generally, there are a number of conditions that will guarantee the space-time will be geodesically incomplete.,,, In the language of partial differential equations this means an impossibility of a large data global existence result for all initial data in General Relativity. http://www.icm2006.org/proceedings/Vol_III/contents/ICM_Vol_3_22.pdfbornagain77
November 19, 2010
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Stephen: If the universe shows evidence of having been designed for life—and if life exists as a hierarchy such that elements nourish plants, which in turn, nourish animals, which in turn, nourish humans—that fact alone points to a human centered creation. My science teacher told us that there are more bacteria cells in the human body than human cells. So maybe we are just living in a bacteria centered creation. LOLSan Antonio Rose
November 19, 2010
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O worlds capacious, O bright light of morn, Lift up thy heads! for Turnip thou was born. What dexterous hands in long-forgotten time, Weaving the celestial garment sublime, Stooped to tune thee in thy fine array And turned thy ancient night to day? What gracious artist, with golden threads, Wove thee skillfully in Turnip beds? For lo, the harvest feast is nigh When noble Turkey stoops to die, Our gold-rimmed plates to furnish with his breast, Dressed up with stuffing, peas and all the rest. What would poor turkey without Turnip be? Just plain white meat, devoid of dignity. Let us then praise the skillful hands That placed the baleful tuber in our lands, Craftily designed to draw from soil The tart sweetness that justifies their toil. O Turnip! Rolled up with stars divine into a ball, Thou art the crowning dividend of fall. For thee let us remember to give thanks, And shun the indigestion caused by cranks.allanius
November 19, 2010
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