Another Denier Wakes up and smells the coffee,,

Boy and you wonder why your threads get sidetracked.

 

Hey, I was defending you against the folks who think that a Christian cannot be an environmentalist. Maybe I should keep quiet the next time I think we have a common ground.

 

I agree.

It may be that Christianity's track record of environmental stupidity and atrocites is so prolific only based on time and size, but that seems a meagre defense.

 

What I was trying to say, although spiderman seems not to want my support on this, is that even though Christianity, with its "dominion" dogma, serves as an excuse to rape the planet, Christians are a diverse bunch, and some among them take the "stewardship" line more to heart than the "dominion" line, and are environmentalists as a result.

People should be careful of taring all Christians with the same brush. Just because some of them use their religion to trash the planet, does not mean that all of them agree. In fact, put ten Christians from different sects into a room together, and they're likely to murder each other over fine points of dogma. I once watched as a Catholic and a Pentacostalist got into a fist fight over the question of whether salvation was by works or by grace.

As long as spiderman advocates caring for the Earth, switching to alternative fuels, etc., you should not accuse him of being anti-environmental just because his religion is often used to justify anti-environmental policies.

There, I did it again. I apologize for standing up for you, spiderman.

BTW, I have Christian friends who are deeply environmentalist and who dispute the theology that justifies poor stewardship of the Earth.

 

I don't accuse s-man of anything except blind ideology, and therein lies the rub. Just as libertarianism carried to its ideological extreme allows a fraction of its believers to act out destructively, so does Christianity. Put another way, one steward does not make up for one dominionist, and the religious argument that both are equally right is unacceptable.

 

Umm... atheism doesn't have a great track record of environmental stewardship either, i.e. the USSR, the PRC, Eastern Europe.

PS: I don't believe you can blame religion or unreligion for environmental issues. It's more a question of short-term self-interest vs long-term species-preservation.

 

You tell em spiderman!!! :cheer2: you rock.
Remember Jesus say "In the world you will have trouble but take courage for I have conquered the world" and be humble servent when lecturing these blasphers. :deadhorse:

the ucla and all of the groups trying to take God out of the country will fail at the gate of afterworld created by the Almighty. Somebody earlier in this thred said I have log in my eye and that kind of speech aganst somebody like me who is right wit the Lord won't set well thank you very much.

I pray for you tonite spiderman after reading you words of defense brother. I cannot belive I have to mingle wit the people her. I jus want something with good gas milage for my daugther until we vote out teh comunists. :usa2:

 

My father went to the UCLA. Every time they played the USC (San Diego) he would watch the games and cheer for UCLA. I found the whole thing quite boring: Bunch of guys kicking, throwing, and running around with a little ball. My dad actually liked college football more than pro football, because he said the mistakes the college players made, made the games more interesting. It was all a big yawn for me. But as near as I could tell, the UCLA was not trying to take the god out of anything. It was considered, at least back then, to be a decent school with a good football team.

I wonder if Spiderman realizes that Jocko is making fun of him.

 

You can't strictly blame the Eastern Block environmental mess on atheism or communism. It was because of businesses with poor to no environmental regulation. The businesses just happened to be state owned.

The same could happen in the West with a total lack of regulation.

 

God is being taken out of the country because he isn't a citizen and doesn't have passport. His son's name is Jesus, he's Mexican, doncha think?

 

It makes as much sense to blame atheists for destroying the environment in the Eastern Block as it does blaming Christians for destroying the environment in the rest of the world. Or Muslims or Hindus.

 

I disagree. There is more than a casual link between a religion's belief that a god created the world and everything in it and therefore it doesn't require care or management by humans other than to subdue and tame it for their use. There is also the fact that some people look forward to Armageddon and figure that god will just fix the planet after we screw it up and any godly people left will be whisked away to a beautiful place beside god. This is especially scary when a person with that belief structure is in a place of power. Think Ronald Reagan here.

Thankfully there are many Christian organizations that do believe in environmental stewardship (and environmental justice). E.O. Wilson, the famous Harvard University myrmecologist, first brought this cooperative effort between Christians and Environmentalist to my attention in his 2002 book titled "The Future of Life". In his new book "The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth", he expands on this seemingly unlikely alliance between science and religion. Conversely here is a video framing this debate nicely with interviews with E.O Wilson and a southern Baptist minister who uses Genesis (where most of disagreements originate from) to argue his point about humanity first and environment second.

One need look no further than the efforts of Patriarch Bartholomew I to see that religion and environmentalism can coexist and create synergy.

 

The bible tells people to be stewards of the environment. Christians who destroy it do this in spite of the bible, not because of it.

 

The Bible is interpreted to say whatever the sect interpreting it wants it to say.

 

Depends on what part of the bible we are talking about and who is interpreting it. The definition of stewardship varies from sect to sect. As a land manager and part of my organization's stewardship team, my definition of "stewardship" differs from some biblical interpretations. Especially those contained in Genesis.

 

I suppose a pure nihilist could say this of any written word at all. I think the bible is far less open to interpretation than many think. Most of it isn't riddles.

 

If it isn't open to interpretation then I am scared of some passages contained in that book. To be fair I am mainly concerned with the Old Testament and the books Genesis, Deuteronomy, and Leviticus. But since the whole thing has been edited so many times I guess the whole book is just one big interpretation of something else someone else wrote.

I need to stop reading Karen Armstrong and Richard Dawkins. lol