Just a note on an essay from George Mason University’s History News Network blog, on the symmetry between organized religion and environmentalism (or at least the catastrophic kind getting the headlines at the moment):
- Both are highly moralistic and use the language and strategies of “sinfulness.” This also involves an implied and often explicit claim to have monopolized the moral high ground.
- Both involve the idea that one must sacrifice now for some undetermined future reward. This makes the Lent connection very logical.
- Both have historically been very quick to label and condemn as “heretics” those who disagree with them.
- Both have a tendency toward irrationalism and mysticism, e.g. the Gaia strand of environmentalism.
Of course this has been noted before by Michael Crichton:
Today, one of the most powerful religions in the Western World is environmentalism. Environmentalism seems to be the religion of choice for urban atheists. Why do I say it’s a religion? Well, just look at the beliefs. If you look carefully, you see that environmentalism is in fact a perfect 21st century remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths.
There’s an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature, there’s a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a result of our actions there is a judgment day coming for us all. We are all energy sinners, doomed to die, unless we seek salvation, which is now called sustainability. Sustainability is salvation in the church of the environment. Just as organic food is its communion, that pesticide-free wafer that the right people with the right beliefs, imbibe.
Eden, the fall of man, the loss of grace, the coming doomsday—these are deeply held mythic structures. They are profoundly conservative beliefs. They may even be hard-wired in the brain, for all I know. I certainly don’t want to talk anybody out of them, as I don’t want to talk anybody out of a belief that Jesus Christ is the son of God who rose from the dead. But the reason I don’t want to talk anybody out of these beliefs is that I know that I can’t talk anybody out of them. These are not facts that can be argued. These are issues of faith.
And so it is, sadly, with environmentalism. Increasingly it seems facts aren’t necessary, because the tenets of environmentalism are all about belief. It’s about whether you are going to be a sinner, or saved. Whether you are going to be one of the people on the side of salvation, or on the side of doom. Whether you are going to be one of us, or one of them. [my emphasis]
I recommend both essays.
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