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Our Canadian campus, transplanted here to the sands of the Middle East, would not think of making a big deal out of Christmas. That would be a cultural imposition. But Earth Day? Forget about it. A week’s festivities, the campus festooned accordingly, a free screening of “An Inconvenient Truth,” among other movies, activities, quizzes, contests, and a live lecture by David Suzuki, shipped in ‘specially from Canada at great expense in CO2 emissions.
I could not attend the talk, exactly—it was SRO, and I had to watch it by closed circuit from an adjoining room.
What struck me most forcefully was the extreme conservatism of Suzuki’s position. He spoke only of stopping things, of preventing things, or protesting things. When he spoke of the “sacred elements,” he meant, not the elements in the periodic table, but the ancient Greek elements earth, air, fire, and water; and his god is Gaea. He is advocating, in effect, a return to pre-Christian paganism, turning the intellectual clock back 2,000 years. He felt, speaking of the Newfoundland seal hunt, that five hundred years was much too short a time to have established a traditional culture. And, most strikingly, the clarion call on which he ended his speech was “I want to preserve a world with all the richness and opportunities it had for our grandparents.”
Let’s see; Suzuki was born in 1936. Allowing thirty years to a generation, his grandparents would have been born in 1876 or thereabouts; and would have come to maturity in the last years of the 19th century.
A world of richness and opportunity? Opportunity to die of tuberculosis, or smallpox, or scarlet fever, or to be crippled by polio, I’d say. In 1900, world GDP per person was $680 US. In Canada, it was $2,758. Try to live on that. Today, it’s $6,500; $34,273 for Canada. In Qatar, the average life expectancy would have been about 35. Most Canadian homes in 1900 lacked electricity and running water.
That’s rich.
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2 comments:
This post sure ties in with our previous debate re science and religion. Have you ever stopped to ask yourself why right wingers are so in favor of pollution? I mean, even if there was no global warming (which there definitely is) would it not benefit us to ebb the toxicosis of our planet?
It's like right wingers are saying, "Great! First those scientits cure umpteen diseases and now they're going to save the planet? Not on my watch--saving the planet is God's domain!"
In reality, God's a constant no show. Why? Because he doesn't exist!
All anyone who wants to know the truth about global warming has to do is understand the word "correlation," as in the correlation between pollution and the warming of the planet proves that what's happening now is unlike any other climatic change in the planet's know history.
Because of Steve's excellent lawyering ability to nitpick small details in a way that obscures the validity of the big picture, I feel a sumation of my arguments is in order.
1) There is an overwhelming abundance of historical evidence that proves man made god, not the other way around. Study, for example, how a Jewish man from Nazareth, someone who never set foot in Italy, became a Roman Icon and you will see for yourself. This is but one example of man taking previous myth and spinning it anew to suit his own purpose.
2) There is an overwhelming abundance of scientific evidence that proves gods are mythical. Nobody can believe in something they don't know about. The only way people know about god is through various bibles and those who pontificate from them. Meanwhile, science has proven these sources of epistemology are loaded with erroneous content. I.e the sun was definitely not made before the earth, archeologists have proven Exodus did not happen, and so on and on.
3) God by definition is omnipotent. However, as I have proven with one of my own original arguments, there's no way omnipotence can fulfill the criteria of infinity (i.e it's impossible to know everything).
4) All arguments that supposedly prove god existence assume the antecedent of his existence in the first place. Through sneaky evocation, god is equated to beauty, love, cause and effect, perfection and so on. However, god is not love (love is a human emotion), god is not perfection (there's no such thing because knowledge is infinite), god is not the "alpha and omega" (gravity and matter exist just fine without Him, there is no demostrable beginning or end to matter or energy).
5) All churches practice terrorism to brainwash people into believing fiction is fact. In Christianity, for example, children are exposed to horrific images of a man nailed to a cross, they are taught that a little cannibalism is good for them, they are threatened with eternal burning if they do not believe what they are preached. On the other hand, they are given the false promise of a heaven if they are obedient.
6) Churches hijack human traits to justify their self-riteousness. Ironically, this leads to war and terrorism as believers lose their humainty with the delusion they are functiong from a higher power. The truth is that Human beings have evolved to care for one another. If you consider how our race survived before religion was invented, it becomes obvious that cooperation and caring must have been a mainstay. Moreover, when ever-changing matter in an infinite universe is considered, it becomes apparent that death is not the end of existence, rebirth is inevitable. Thus, the church has hijacked our eternal existence with their dogma of heaven and hell.
There was a time when the Greeks believed Homer's works were literal history. Some how they evolved to see the truth. I implore you to consider the facts. Delusions and superstions are cancers of humanity. The sooner we unite as a single human force, undivided by religious sects, the sooner we will thrive in an unprecedented era of peace and discovery.
Yours in world peace,
Jeff Harmsen
Sorry, I misspoke re the sun. The sun was definitely created before the Earth, contrary to what it says in Genesis.
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