timeimmortal

Grace and I took her sister to see Pixar’s latest last night, and I have to say, O Reader: if you haven’t gone and seen it, go and see it. For my money, it’s probably the best Pixar film yet, and I wonder if it would be all that hyperbolic to say that it will hold that top spot in my mind for a goodly while. It’s rare enough to find a movie that is genuinely uplifting at a spiritual level, especially in the sci-fi/action genre of film (BSG often fits the bill, although it is a TV series rather than a motion picture), but Wall-E delivers that and more.

Don’t be fooled into thinking this is a kid’s movie, either; WALL-E is age-independent. Because the characters are primarily robots (humans appear as well, but only in a supporting role), there is little in the way of dialogue — most of the comedy is physical/scenario-driven in nature, and will appeal equally to the young and the old (in fact, I suspect adults may enjoy it more than kids, in the same way that Looney Tunes are way more funny to me now than they ever were when I was ten).

It would also make for one heck of a date movie; I don’t think I let go of Grace’s hand for more than five minutes in total during the entire length of the movie. Not only is WALL-E a well-executed sci-fi story with equal parts comedy and well-paced action sequences, it is also a very romantic movie, and the budding relationship that emerges between EVE and WALL-E is amazing for its depth, the sweetness that characterizes it, its innocence, and how very real it feels, right down to how WALL-E makes a point of proudly showing EVE just some of the many trinkets “he” has collected in his 700 years of garbage compaction. Gents, I think (hope!) we can all recognize that little ritual?

(I remember showing Grace some of the many things — model planes, Lego constructs, books — I had collected when first we met.)

Finally, don’t but into the manufactured controversy that this is basically just with a cute face. Yes, it does depict a spoiled and desolate Earth, and yes, there is an environmental message at its core. But it ultimately is, I think, a message about stewardship of the Earth (c.f. Genesis 1:28-31), about the need for humanity to use (not abuse) Nature and the many resources of the world, and to make effective and responsible use of the technology at hand…in such a way that both humanity and Nature benefit. The message in WALL-E’s narrative is very much in favour of human development and the individual spirit, and praises the virtues of “get your hands dirty”-style hard work.

Now, after the jump, we’ll get into greater detail. If you don’t want spoilers, O Reader, do skip this next part.
Read the rest of this entry »

Count Roland writes in some commentary with regards to this article about global warming, climate change, and CO2’s negligible effect on changes in the average global temperature.

Well, CO2 may not be as big a force as once thought.

However, I remember seeing at least a hypothesis that human activity has stopped the next ice age for another reason, and a reason with much more powerful greenhouse gases involved. The increased methane production from thousands of years of domesticated animals and from rice and other water/organic material intensive farming, not to mention systematic transformation of forest into farmland has had a much greater impact - in slowing a temperature drop over the past several thousand years. If I remember correctly, the hypothesis tracked global temperatures (from ice cores and others) and indicators of caqrbon, methane, sunlight and found that sunlight and temperature and the rest tracked together and should have us living on ice right now if not for human activity.

We may be alive only because of human global warming (aside from God’s grace). But, the big ball of fusing hydrogen and things like galactic and atmospheric dust [does] have a much bigger impact (witness the ‘year without summer’ after a rather large volcanic eruption in the 1800’s) than our cars. Now, we should, perhaps, limit our comsumption of materials for other stewardship related reasons such as sustainability…

I distinctly remember a radio show some years ago, in which David Suzuki was giving an interview in regard to methane production from agriculture in North America. His assertion rather matched Roland’s assertion, that human livestock farming and its attendant methane production (let’s face it, O Reader — cows are quite flatulent) was causing a rise in the average global temperature. The interview was going along quite well, until one caller phoned in with a question about North America before humanity’s major emergence there. We don’t know exactly how large the buffalo herds were, but even during the first few decades of European colonization, what figures we have on those populations suggest that there were more buffalo in North America back then than there are cattle in North America today. And buffalo, this caller reminded Dr. Suzuki, are both much larger and much more flatulent than cattle. And yet we observe, in the historic temperature record, that temperatures fluctuated quite a lot between those years and the modern era.

The caller was quite particular on that point, and David Suzuki had to beat a hasty retreat from the points he’d been making, conceding that yes, there were many more buffalo back then than there are cattle today, and that yes, there would have been a lot more methane produced by those much larger herds.

In one sense, I do agree with Roland about methane production — it is a stronger contributor to global warming than CO2 is. At the same time, it’s still not a strong contributor — the major culprit is water vapour. And there is very little that humanity can do to limit or control vapour levels in the atmosphere, anymore than we could do anything to stop the rain when it comes. I also do agree with Roland that there, but for the grace of God, humanity goes. I even agree that, for reasons of stewardship, humanity should be careful in its use of resources for any number of reasons; we ought not to be wasteful, we ought not to be gluttonous, and we ought to care for the world that God has given to us. We ought to care for each other, furthermore, by limiting to all reasonable extents the quantity of truly harmful pollutants that we put into the atmosphere; sulfur dioxide, for example.

At the same time, I continue to doubt that humanity makes a meaningful contribution to global warming; we’re fairly insignificant as regards biomass to begin with, and most of the emissions from our industrial processes, even the ones that are harmful to us to breathe, are not major contributors to the atmosphere’s ability to retain heat. Even our production of water vapour is, as I understand it, rather insignificant next to the naturally occurring vapour from the planet’s water cycle. This is equally true as regards methane; there was a time in history where the animals of the Earth, roaming freely, produced vastly increased amounts of methane as compared to what we see produced by livestock today — during those centuries, the Earth’s temperature fluctuated quite a lot, at times rising well above the point at which the global average temperature is at today, and at times dipping well below same.

For an explanation of those cycles, I still look to the Sun.

I’ve always been fascinated by atheism, or rather by secularism in general. Not in a “sign me up” sense of the word, but in the sense of regarding them as a curiousity of sorts. I can understand that person could believe that there is no God, no spiritual dimension to our existence, but what I cannot understand — what fascinates me — is the smug self-assurance, the 100% conviction of empirical correctness, the arrogant dismissal of those who do believe in something supernatural as under-educated and ignorant, or delusional, or in need of an emotional crutch. I’m not saying that believers aren’t 100% convinced of the correctness of their position — many are. But I am saying that what fascinates me about atheism as a belief system is that it arrogantly dismisses every other belief system as a child’s fairy tale, a coping mechanism, at the same time refusing to acknowledge its own nature.

Because what is atheism, and indeed what is secularism, if not a belief system unto itself, one that worships as deity such things as the individual person, or government, or science?

I was visiting Meta Religion, another of those websites devoted to promoting understanding between all the varied and often eclectic faith systems of the world. Unlike Religious Tolerance.org, however, I found that some of the articles on Meta Religion were somewhat meaningful. In particular, I was impressed by their inclusion of articles by Ian Barbour, one of the leading proponents of dialogue between faith and science today.

However, Meta Religion showed many of the same biases that Religious Tolerance.org shares with the modern atheist/secularist. If you bother to browse all the non-Christian faith descriptions on the website, you’ll find links to transcriptions of their holy texts, analysis of their beliefs, and a generally open-minded view of even the more bizarre belief systems in the world. But if you flip over to the Christian faith description, you’ll find something else. The analysis, the transcribed holy books, and even some lesser-known books (Gospel of Thomas, the Dead Sea Scrolls, etc.) can still be found, but also included is a section of “anti-Christian” articles.

When I saw that, I immediately clicked back to the description of Islam, and then to that of Buddhism, then of Judaism, and then randomly through other belief systems from there. In no other place, for no other religion, did I find articles of refutation and harsh criticism. In no other place did I find links to articles proclaiming that religion evolved as a comforting response to stress. In no other place did I find links to atheist literature. In no other place did I find links to the holy texts of other religions and discussions of the ‘parallels’ that exist. In no other place did I find links to lists of Biblical ‘contradictions’.

And that got me thinking.

In years of debating in web forums, in years of discussions with friends who are atheist, or at least secular humanist ‘agnostics’ (which is different from atheism…how?), it has become clear to me that the average atheist does not reject all concepts of God, despite claiming to. Instead, the rejection is almost exclusively that of the Christian God, and it seems to me that the majority of an argumentative atheist’s energies are directed into refuting Christian beliefs almost exclusively. Which I find interesting, to say the least — for a group that prides itself on its ability for logical and rational analysis, atheists seem only too willing to conflate all religions into Christianity, or a distorted perception thereof.

And at the core of it, the arguments aren’t even that well thought-out. Take my one friend’s quick criticism of the Bible: that it was written by a bunch of old men. Well, granted that most of the authors were male. Were they senior citizens at the time it was written? Some of them probably were older, but others were probably quite young. We really can’t say with any certainty — not that this minor factual error seems to be an obstacle to my friend’s hasty condemnation.

Take the other favourite condemnation of Religion, Christianity in particular: that religion is an evolved response to external emotional/psychological stress and worry, that it is a coping mechanism to deal especially with the problem of death. As an argument, this might have some merit, but there is a converse argument that has equal merit that most secularists are unwilling to discuss. Is it not possible that, as the pinnacle of evolution on Earth that humanity seems to be, we have evolved in such a way that our minds and hearts, our psycholgical and emotional selves, are ‘tuned in’ to God in a way that no other animal can enjoy? Is it not possible that God has used the process of evolution to create at last a being that He is able, in a small but powerful way, to actually communicate with? Is it not possible that an understanding of God, an ability to perceive the works of and perceive the call of purpose from God, is the ultimate outcome of neurological evolution? Perhaps the believers are not the ignoramuses after all, but the more evolved among us after all. Jesus taught that the meek shall inherit the Earth — perhaps this is the victory of the simple, the mundane, over the intellectual secular elite.

At this point, those of you of the atheist/secular persuasion are probably scoffing, and you’d be right to challenge me to produce evidence of such an evolution, or evidence of God more preferably, and of course I cannot provide either. I am, first, a man of faith, and though I believe that God is real and that He sent His only son Jesus to die for my sins, I will be the first to tell you that I cannot prove to you that any of that is true. I have personally experienced the touch of God, and in my own life my faith has made many positive changes and differences, and helped me to hold on to things long after anyone else would have been inclined to let go. But this is anecdotal, and nothing you would, or should, believe as empirical evidence.

But if, o reader, you think that my lack of evidence for God is proof that there is no God, think again. The scientific method dictates differently. A lack of evidence does not correspond to a disproof. It only means you haven’t yet found the evidence — you haven’t looked under the right rock. If you want to prove there is no God, you cannot point to a lack of proof on my part, but must instead produce proof of your own (cognizant, I would hope, of the fact that it is harder to prove a negation) to show that there is no God. Otherwise, any atheist/secularist statement you make falls on my ears as a statement not of fact, but as a statement of faith.

Atheists/secularists will tell you that they do not believe in God, but that in and of itself is not an atheistic statement. A Wiccan might easily make the same claim, but nobody would accuse a Wiccan of not believing in something supernatural. Likewise, a Hindu might make the claim, for Hindu is not a monotheistic religion…but nobody would accuse a Hindu of not believing in other gods.

No, an atheist instead believes there is no God. And it is a belief, because like me they can present no empirical evidence to support their claim. In many respects, it is more than just a belief or a faith — it is a religion. Ever visit an atheist website, or tripped over a militant atheist in a web-forum? There is not just a belief there — there is a vested interest in proselytization there. And a strong anti-Christian focus. If you asked me if I’d ever met an atheist who was openly critical of Allah, I would have to answer you “no”.

I realize that throughout its history, the Church has caused a number of problems, and been involved in some despicable practices. But if you think about it, that’s all in the Bible. We as humans are not perfect — we screw up from time to time. That’s what sin is. Usually it’s greed, or lust, or a desire for power and control, that has led Church officials and members into scandal and worse. Where I think many people make a great logical error is equating that with an evil underpinning of the religion itself. But ultimately, that’s not what it’s about. Yes, religious people make mistakes and commit sins. That means that (surprise!) religions are composed of people with the same human flaws and weaknesses that afflict the non-religious! It categorically does not mean that the religion itself is flawed, or evil, or sinful.

So if you’re an atheist, be consistent — denounce all religions with equal fervor. Or denounce none — just do as you ask Christians to do and keep your beliefs to yourself.

And to Meta Religions, I would just like to express my disappointment. Again, be consistent — if you’re going to publish denunciations of religion alongside the links to pro-Christian articles and transcriptions of our holy texts, please also publish those denunciations alongside the analysis of other religions. Or better still, put them in an Atheism section of the site.