Screw The Earth
The Earth - when it rocks!
Sunday was Earth Day, and in honor of the occasion, I’d like to say that as far as I’m concerned the Earth can go to hell.
The Earth — for those of you who may have fallen behind on your reading — is a piece of rock trapped in a slow death spiral into a cauldron of exploding plasma which, for lack of a better word, we’ll call the sun. Because that’s its name. There is exactly one interesting or worthwhile thing about this hunk of doomed space debris, and that is: it happens to maintain the conditions necessary for supporting life. (The odds against this would be ridiculously impossible, by the way, if there were no God — so impossible that scientists have been forced to invent all kinds of silly multi-universe scenarios solely for the purpose of convincing themselves that there is no God. But that’s their problem, and neither here nor there.)
So the earth supports life. Whoopee. And there is exactly one interesting or worthwhile thing about life — only one — and that is the mind of man.
“Holy cannoli, Klavan on the Culture,” you may be saying to yourself, or even out loud — because, let’s face it, you’re kind of an odd person — I mean, just look at you. Anyway, “Holy cannoli or even moley,” you may be saying, “how can you say the mind of man is the only interesting or worthwhile thing about life? What about the beauty of the running gazelle? The nobility of the flying eagle? The awesome awesomeness of the spacious skies above the amber waves running to the purple mountains above the fruited plains? And how about those glazed donuts with the yellow creme inside? I love those!”
First of all, stop talking so much, this is my blog. And b, there is no beauty, no nobility, no awesome awesomeness — not even the taste of a glazed donut — outside the human mind. The science is not yet settled, but reality itself may be in part a production of the human mind as there are some aspects of the world that don’t seem to resolve themselves until we observe them. But in any case, the gazelle would be fleet for nothing, the eagle would be a winged eating machine, the skies and the waves and the mountains would be dreams without the dreamer if man were not here to know them.
brilliant!
It is a losing strategy to damn the ecologists just because the Left has made off with what was originally a sensible conservative strategy. I wrote about one such attempt here: http://clarespark.com/2011/04/14/darwin-and-the-climate-change-debate-the-greens-have-it/. Klavan is barking up the wrong tree. The supply-side economists, including Hayek and the Friedmans, all agreed that pollution was a bad thing and should be regulated.
Yes, there are Red Greens. Defeat them, and save the earth. We are interdependent whether some conservatives like it or not.
Milton Friedman pointed out that getting rid of pollution is a luxury for wealthy people. (Poor Americans probably qualify as rich people.) The idea is to have resonable rules, and not let it get out of hand or get fanatical (as in Global Warming). After all, property rights mean the guy in the next lot can’t pollute yours unresonably, and “reasonable” requires laws.
Reagan actually implemented a sort of Carbon Credits, but for real pollution (particulates), not CO2.
Klavan isn’t disagreeing. But people first, and people mean a robust economy. If avoiding pollution means we can’t afford medical research, we have a problem.
yeah, people first.
the world exists for people.
Not the other way around.
Klavan didn’t say pollution was good and didn’t say it shouldn’t be regulated. But the key concept is common-sense conservtion — waste not, want not — rather than “environmentalism,” a false religion whose real goal is control.
Yeah and funny too. Klavan tempts me to covetousness when I consider how smart and how witty he is. One thing however, it is really the mind of God that we ought to be celebrating for we have been made in His image, with that remarkable mind of ours, just so that we might have something of a commensurate fellowship with Him. Maybe we should have a God day but wait, belated Happy Passover/Easter.
Yes Brilliant!!!!
Science AND religion, side-by-side, making the case in a blog for the Anthropic Principle. (And this: Energy is all there is; no more or less — see Einstein’s famous equation). And, really, doesn’t the Universe begin with your birth and end with your death? But clearly, life goes on after you die — or does it? Since this premise is unfalsifiable (after all, you’ll be dead), it must not be scientific or true. Don’t you just love logic?
It is important to maintain religion, otherwise what would all those leeches and charlatans, do? Oh, yea, sell us communism.
Jesus has no use for charlatans, except to bring them to repentance.
Even “good” people need repentance toward God. If you don’t believe the Holy Bible, you do not understand the purpose of earth and people. Go to “Unleavened Bread Ministries” click Revelations and Teachings then click “Science Proves the Bible,” and “The Holy Bible Wholly True” (discovery of Dr. Ivan Panin a former aetheist, scientist & mathematician who became a Christian as a result of what he found. Moreover, he applied the same tests to all other so-called “holy books” and found they had no inspiration, i.e. were only human in origin.)
The Bible teaches we are custodians of the earth. We MAY be able to come up with more God-given resources to make this planet liveable, but it will still be a hell on earth, while we teach our kids in school that there is no God-that they came from a bit of slime: they will grow up to act like a bit of slime. While we teach them in ‘sex ed.’ that ‘behaving responsibly’, means carrying around a packet of condoms in case the “urge hits’ and “Hey! you can do it with your own gender!” The message being that love and commitment do not matter they are for old fogeys. They can get pregnant over and over and have the foetus cut up in the womb, sucked out and thrown in the garbage-as often as ‘necessary’and they don’t need to tell their parents, by law. ‘Isn’t that wonderful!’ They are fed hopelessness and indulgence and we worry about the EARTH being polluted?! Hello? People walking the streets are polluted, confused,disoriented and separated from the Life that is in God. They do not know that Jesus is God in flesh, that He took on flesh to die for our sins, to satisfy His own holy demands for justice, so we can all be forgiven and accepted into a relationship with Him, if we choose to believe this good news and turn to Him. Nope: they go to a Convenience Store to buy the latest religion. There is nothing convenient about owning up to being a sinner by nature,(an educated sinner nonetheless), in need of a ‘heart-transplant” from God. Nothing convenient about facing up to being totally at the mercy of a holy God. He only reveals Himself to those who believe the Good News and repent. (I am a former aetheist and Christian-hater.) All I know is that we cannot “pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps”-we are so smart with technology and ecology etc-but none of us has the ability to pull himself out of their own quagmire of guilt and unbelief. If you guys can-then you did not need Jesus to die for you (though God says you did.)
We may have a nice fish pond-but all the fish are diseased and dying.
Great stuff! (except that whole earth can go to hell, I wouldn’t want that since I live there )
But the earth will inevitably go to hell despite anything the econazies have to say or do about it. The key is to extend the life of our species by leaving, moving into space and to other star systems, before that inevitable end. Of course such a view requires that we be able to look beyond our own lifetimes and even the lifetimes of our children and their children and so on. A thing that some are evidently unable to do, more’s the pity.
In that context it should beome clear that efforts to “fix” short term climate and weather variability by limiting our technological civilization are nothing short of ridiculous. If you wish to say that our technology is responsible for climate change then you must necessarily explain all climate change prior to the appearance of that technology or admit that you have little or no understanding of the planet’s history. And remember, the general trend of planetary climate has been cooling. From the near molten environments in which life seems to have begun it’s evolution here to the quarter billion year old ‘Iceball Earth’ there has been constant climatological change, much of it far more radical that either the most recent ice ages or warming spells of the most recent tens of thousands of years.
We and our civilization are a nearly insignificant part of the planetary panorama in which our brief existence has come about. The idea of earth worship, in the sense that we must conserve rather than use it’s resources for our benefit, is guaranteed to prevent our escape from the planet’s fate assuming that it does not bring about our voluntary extinction first.
Why do the enviro-wackos worship the earth? Is is because they deny the existence of God? Because the God of the Bible, gave man dominion over the birds of skies and beasts in the fields, plus all that plant and mineral matter.
Naw, its because they have a relentless drive to control you and your private property. You can’t exercise your property rights because everywhere you turn, there is various forms of government telling you, you can’t. Its the most perfect scam of all because they want you to feel guilty about everything. Guilty about driving a SUV, having a big house, or using too much TP. Think about it. Endless busybodies, endless prodding and poking, pushing, and shoving. Then they take your choices away. Where are going to get your incandescent light bulbs. Contraband snuck in from Mexico on the backs of the illegals?
You forgot to mention their ultimate goal of controlling the “people pollution” problem (see abortion). There are just too many of us, you know, using up precious resources, destroying Mother Earth — and blocking their views of West Coast sunsets.
Right, Robert!
Just as Communism–wherever it sprouts its ugly head–must, out of necessity (or so it claims), mass-murder some 10s of millions of its own citizenry because it must CONTROL the amount of food available. There is absolutely no real point of such behavior, unless the murder is intentional.
There really IS no such thing as “over-population,” because all we need do is “GROW, BABY, GROW.” Grow more crops and livestock, to feed more people. But, the Left only wants to limit crop growth and livestock, to control the price of same. That’s their favorite word: “Control.” Control everything. It’s very limiting and negative.
But God tells us, in Genesis 1:28, to “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” God made everything just so He could make US! Then, He GAVE everything TO us, to use and consume. He did all this out of His LOVE for us. So, we should not worry, for He will continue to provide.
The more reasonable ones don’t worship the earth. They think of it the same way a scuba diver thinks of his air tank. Better take care of it, make sure it’s functioning correctly, treat it with care – otherwise, you could die. It’s a practical matter. Unfortunately, when you’ve got several billion scuba divers depending on the same tank, there’s bound to be disagreements on the best way to maintain it. Those of a romantic turn of mind think the tank needs to be personified, revered, worshiped. Nevertheless, it’s just a tank.
The problem with environmentalists is, they think the whole world looks like their immediate surroundings. And most of them live in cities, rarely getting out to the rest of the world beyond the urban environment. I know, I was one. Actually a dues paying member of the Sierra Club. But that was when I lived in the Southern California megalopolis. Every year, I made my pilgrimage to Seqouia or Kings Canyon National Park to commune with nature. And made trips to the local mountains and decried the despoiled nature: graffitti on rocks, cars at every turnout, lots of people on the trails with me. Now, I live in a forest. There are literally thousands of square miles of land in my immediate vicinity with no evidence of man other than logging roads and the patchwork of land that has been cleared of trees.
Cities take up a small percentage of the world’s landscape. But to the city dweller, that is what the whole world looks like, so they think every tree needs to be protected, every undeveloped space left that way. Environmentalism, short-sightedness and tunnelvision are your name.
That’s very true.
However,the more reasonable ones don’t run the environmental movement.
They are kind of like “moderate Muslims”; they don’t run the show, and they dont’ speak out against those who do.
If you haven’t read “Merchants of Despair” yet, put it on your reading list!
great article- been wondering the same thing about environmentalists for years!
You might enjoy Robert Zubrin’s analysis of the Global Warming panic, which I will paraphrase.
First, it looks as though the biosphere is a STABLE, self-correcting system. Now, consider the following facts: plants love carbon dioxide, while humans (and other animals) love oxygen. Plants consume carbon dioxide and emit oxygen. People consume oxygen and emit carbon dioxide.
Now, let’s grant everything the Warmists say: excess carbon dioxide is causing the world to get warmer is the main thing. So carbon dioxide builds up and the biosphere becomes warmer. As a result, evaporation from the oceans and lakes increases, leading to increased rainfall.
So now we are looking at a lot of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, plus increased rainfall. This is a plant’s definition of heaven. So plant cover will increase rapidly, and the plants will gratefully consume all the carbon dioxide we have made, plus a bit more. In the end, plants may keep on trying to consume “too much” carbon dioxide, but they will have to stop eventually. The biosphere may cool down a bit, but eventually it will stabilize.
To sum up: we have absolutely nothing to worry about, except people who cannot follow the argument just outlined.
Yep, but those people have a short attention span. You have to go something like: CO2 is plantfood! EPA hates plants!
Didn’t we all learn this in second grade?
Where were the stupid green wackos that day?
If this was not true, how would life ever have had the chance to even establish itself, with temperatures just shooting way up and way down, perhaps thousands of degrees? After all, every straight line graph heads eventually towards infinity!
They’re just stupid, nasty, busybodies; something mankind has never been short of. And now they have many, many adherents who are being paid handsomely to abuse us, all for a “good cause”.
It’s called tyranny.
Love it! I used to be an enviromentalist back in the 70s and 80s, but no longer. Rather than clean up and maintain our house, it has become a political movement with an anti-human agenda. Very refreshing to call it as it should be.
Agreed. I graduated with a degree in forestry in ’78. Back then, it was still called “conservation” and the whole idea was to conserve natural resources and protect beautiful places in order to improve our quality of life, not make it inaccessible.
When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,
what is mankind that you are mindful of them,
human beings that you care for them?
You have made them a little lower than the angels
and crowned them with glory and honor.
You made them rulers over the works of your hands;
you put everything under their feet:
all flocks and herds,
and the animals of the wild,
the birds in the sky,
and the fish in the sea,
all that swim the paths of the seas.
Once again I chuckle, I marvel, then I chuckle some more and wonder how life was bearable before your cultural commentary!
This sounds silly, but the Dreamworks children’s program “Penguins of Madagascar” showed two special Earth Day episodes this week. The second was cute. The first was a not-too-heavily-veiled take-off on the global warming issue. “Skeptics” were portrayed as wrong, with no identifiable grounds for doubting other than being stubborn, unreasonable, and selfish,. “Believers” were shown as correct, reasonable, in the majority, with thousands of pages of scientific data on their side.
Of course, the penguins’ cartoon climate catastrophe was much simpler than our own. Their solution was cheap, funny, and didn’t involve massive economic and political changes, unlike the ones proposed by environmentalists in the real world.
Klavan: “there is no beauty, no nobility, no awesome awesomeness — not even the taste of a glazed donut — outside the human mind.”
Then you contradicted yourself.
Because if no awesomeness exists outside the human mind, then it implies that humans invented God rather than the reverse.
The princple that everything comes from the human mind was central to Ayn Rand’s theory. But she was an atheist.
God–not Man–is the fountainhead of awesomeness.
There was beauty in the world on the day God created the plants and animals, even before He created Adam. Even if He had chosen not to create Adam and Eve at all.
We humans can muck things up quite a bit. We stockpiled enough nuclear warheads to turn the entire Earth into a graveyard.
The Earth as a ball of rock will survive just fine.
It’s the long-term future of the human species that has always been in question.
You’ve got Ayn Rand backwards. She even called her philosophy Objectivism to stress that there is a real world out there independent of the human mind.
Exactly. And she distinguished Objectivism from two alternative views she regarded as false: Intricism, which is the idea that concepts are “out there” in nature; and Subjectivism, which is the idea that concepts are arbitrary creations of the human mind. In her view, a concept such as “beauty” is a creation of a human mind *based on its perception of an external reality*.
In any case, I love Klavan’s proposal to rename Earth Day “Mind of Man Day.” And I know Ayn Rand would approve, because she loved human achievement and hated environmentalism.
“We stockpiled enough nuclear warheads to turn the entire Earth into a graveyard.”
And once we saw what they could do to people, we never used them again.
Time. Give them time
Mohammed DREAMED of the day when his minions had such a thing as nukes.
His “minions” have nukes but I doubt Mohammad dreamed of the day. Look up Pakistan and you’ll find they already have nukes.
Look, I’m negative on Islam far more than your average guy (being knowledgeable about it), but let’s not turn to counterfactual situations. Mohammed never dreamed of nukes and was a scientific ignoramus, and the Muslims in Pakistan are in control of nukes.
BTW, my creds on this are that Dean Esmay banned me from his blog for criticizing Islam.
Let me rephrase. If Mohammed could have envisioned such a weapon, he would have embraced it and used it. No, of course he couldn’t imagine such a thing, such were the limits of his mind in so many ways.
Yes, I’m acutely aware that Pakistan has had them for a long time. I held a top secret security clearance for many years while active duty military. Not that it was a secret, but that I had familiarity with some things about the subject that most people don’t.
My word choice was intended to imply that Mohammed’s wildest dreams, with nukes in the hands of madmen may ultimately be attempted. But I have evaluated this notion for some time. If they are successful in launching one at Israel, the ensuing melee and repercussions would be devastating for the islamic world in general and Iran specifically. Whereas the US is accused of “wanton, willful and desirable destruction” on Japan by the utopian-minded left-wingers, Iran would show what such attitudes really look like.
Imagine if Hitler or Tojo actually had nukes. But then, there’s the fallout issue where occupation of nuked ground is really not tenable. The mohammedians have a very sacred piece of ground in Jerusalem too so it’s unlikely they’d nuke that region.
The best thing that Iran can do is threaten everyone else with destruction, and not care about the return fire, or pretend to not care.
In any case, They’re certifiable.
That generation is dying, Bugs. You can’t guarantee that a generation that has never seen nuclear weapons used in anger, nor spoken to the one that has, will continue to have a healthy fear of nuclear war.
“It’s the long-term future of the human species that has always been in question.”
And exactly HOW is this congruent with those environmentalists who believe that “the earth” would be better off if we weren’t here?
As numerous people have pointed out in numerous discussions, We can begin to take them seriously about this when they take the first step.
Klavan, clearly I think, meant there is no awesomeness without someone there to judge it as awesome.
And do not go arguing God (if you believe in God) could judge it as awesome, because we would be part of His judgment doing what he made us capable of doing. And don’t _make up_ the argument that it is God testing us. Maybe the test is how brilliantly we can turn this ball of stuff into fantastic resources for fusion power and inter-planetary travel or more, to support unlimited numbers of non-murderous human beings.
No. Klavan is all tired of all things being awesome. He also objects to even the use of an adjective as a noun, such as awesomeness as if it were actually a thing. Awesome is incomplete as an adjective, since its meaning is held completely within each mind and is not therefore communicable. Awesomeness is completely ephemeral and cannot be a thing at all. Klavan’s awesomeness is awesome, eh? Thanks, Andrew, for the levity on the lack of any real meaning connected to the Earth Day celebration. Earth Day is a nice April day for those who have been completely immersed in the official religion of our government.
I think earth day should be moved to April 1.
Descartes theorized that man’s concept of God was proof of God’s existence since the concept of divinity could only have a divine origin. Only God could place the concept of God in the mind of man.
Great post, BTW. There’s something in what you say. I deny the anthopic principle, but I don’t deny that the human mind is capable of keeping our species alive AND not destroying all the other species. Environmentalist anger can be a spur to innovation. However, it takes hope and belief in humanity’s special gifts to come up with lasting solutions. That means not just shaming us but encouraging us do what we do best – invent, improve, advance. This is a positive attitude, the opposite of the “ban everything human” position of most environmentalists.
Bugs,
I agree. The enviro-whackos deny the good of human civilization because it is an imperfect system. The erroneous assumption is that, on the other hand, nature IS perfect if we would just leave it alone; and this from people who claim to believe in evolution, natural selection and genetic mutation. the simple fact is these people have watched too much Disney. Bambi, Thumper, Sebastian and Nemo do NOT think as human beings think. “Animals are [NOT] people, too!”
Nature is perfect. Like Klavan says, we’re the ones who make judgements about nature – we’re the ones who give nature meaning. Without us, it has none. It’s just there, and flawless, because only humans know what a “flaw” is.
Nature is perfect. Malaria is perfect. Bubonic, polio, and brain-eating amoebas are perfect. Fleas, ticks, mosquitos, and botflies are perfect. Wolves, tigers, and grizzly bears are perfect. Just leave them alone and…they’ll eat us. This fact seems to be lost on many enviros.
We are today in a situation that millions of our ancestors must have longed for: Nature has as much to fear from us as we do from her. It’s a situation that will take some delicate handling. I don’t think it will necessarily end in catastrophe – human or environmental.
If nature is perfect, why would you seek to stop its progression?
The green luddites want all the species alive today to be here forever. That’s not how nature works. It smacks more of wacko religions like the Amish. On what day, exactly, do we want to freeze everything? How do you know that’s the right day? What if by so doing, we have stalled creation and evolution at its worst, unsustainable, point?
It’s all hubris: the fact that you know better than Nature (or God).
Hubris and self-centered stupidity!
By the way, aren’t we part of nature, too.
A little humility is in order, not an easy thing when everyone thinks they are God’s own gift to reason, even when they can’t add 2 and 2, and reliably get 4.
True. One point on which Genesis and Darwin agree: we belong here. People who think we don’t are kind of sick in the head.
I like to pour used motor oil on my lawn, and I usually pour benzine into a local stream.
How nice, an enviromentalist returning oil to the earth.
Stop by La Brea CA, home of the Page Museum and the famous tar pits. Poor oil on the ground there and noone even notices.
Actually, that’s the La Brea Tar Pits, in Los Angeles, CA. (Incidentally, brea is Spanish for “tar”, if you translate the name of the place, it’s “The The Tar Tar Pits”.) Not to be confused with the city of Brea, CA, in Orange County, not far from Disneyland.
The La Brea Tar Pits and the Page Museum (www.tarpits.org) are well worth a visit, with a huge collection of Pleistocene fossils. The biggest tar pit is out front, but little ones pop up all the time in the lawn and in the parking lot. So when you visit, watch your step.
“(The odds against this would be ridiculously impossible, by the way, if there were no God — so impossible that scientists have been forced to invent all kinds of silly multi-universe scenarios solely for the purpose of convincing themselves that there is no God. But that’s their problem, and neither here nor there.)”
You have a very shallow grasp on math, empirical probablity, and physics. The known odds that the earth can support life are 100%, just like the known odds of a royal flush are 100% after it happens. You just need to deal enough hands to get the royal flush to happen. Since there are more stars in the universe than grains of sand on earth that is quite a few deals from the deck. Theories about the multiverse are NOT ad hoc justificiations for figuring out universal constants. They are intepretations of our quantum universe, which is quantum at all levels. The multiverse theory does NOT reduce the odds of our existence in this universe, nor does it reduce the odds that this universe exists. You are perhaps confused with some other theory. The multiverse theory only deals with what happens during a quantum event (is there only one real outcome or many that cause a splitting).
BTW, there is no Christain, Muslim, or Jewish god and you can arrive at that truth via simple logic. That’s been known for millenia. Catch up with the news.
“…and you can arrive at the truth by simple logic.”
Yeah, that’s why the truth was discovered millenia ago and nobody, not even logicians and scientists, ever argues about it anymore. Thanks for bringing us up to date.
There is a new class of ignorants born every year. That our schools are unable to teach simple fact and reason is one reason why I homeschool.
Not unable, Don.
Unwilling.
“There is a new class of ignorants born every year.”
You claiming to be born with a priori knowledge?
“That our schools are unable to teach simple fact and reason is one reason why I homeschool.”
Hope you send them to some else to learn how to use punctuation, because I think you meant that to be part of the prior sentence.
I think it’s more likely you want to home school to keep your children in the state they were born, ignorant. Don’t worry, they don’t teach children to apply logic and reason to religion in school. That’s something they find out about either by themselves or on the internet.
Someone
Learn to properly quote other people and perhaps you will not be so prone to error. It was “that truth” not “the truth” and your misquote makes a big difference. The phrase “the truth” doesn’t even have a referant. “The truth” could refer to anything and nothing.
Try quoting me correctly next time. The quote marks are supposed to mean something. It was “that” and the “the”. I was thinking in particular of the original self-contradictory definitions of the deities of these religions, and not some non-Christian Deist or Spinosian definition generated over a millenia later.
Brian,
My response to that type of logic is ‘well yes, Odin created the world from the dead body of Ymir the Frost Giant.’, and my evidence that this is true is that the world is here.
And maybe (hahahahha, okay, I’m done laughing) the Multiverse theory was not pushed because it gave some sort of defense against the Anthropic Principle and the Rare Earth Principle, but I’m not buying a used car from anyone who says so.
You’ve got the Anthropomorphic Principle backwards. It is a counter-argument to the “must be god because it’s so improbable” argument. Your last sentence was so ambiguous it’s hard to tell what you are trying to communicate. Care to rephrase?
That’s “anthropic” not “anthropomorphic.” See above.
Physicist and mathematician Freeman Dyson: “Atoms are weird stuff, behaving like active agents rather than inert substances. They make unpredictable choices between alternative possibilities according to the laws of quantum mechanics. It appears that mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is inherent in every atom. The universe is also weird, with its laws of nature that make it hospitable to the growth of mind. I do not make any clear distinction between mind and God. God is what mind becomes when it has passed beyond the scale of our comprehension.”
Astronomer and mathematician Fred Hoyle: “A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature.”
Astronomer Allan Sandage: “It was my science that drove me to the conclusion that the world is much more complicated than can be explained by science. It was only through the supernatural that I can understand the mystery of existence.”
“God does not play dice with the universe”
Einstein
However, the uncertainty principle is a big player in quantum physics and explains a great deal.
Science…perhaps at its very fundamental aspect is the attempt by man to “know the mind of God”. Thus, through experimentation, drawing conclusions, challenging them, re-examining and being, above all, self-critical man can elevate himself to a higher level of understanding.
But every century there comes along those who insist that “man knows all there is to know” and destroys the very foundation upon which the pursuit of science was founded. As brilliant as they were, Newton, Einstein and others have been wrong about certain things. Newton was ignorant about the speed of light. Einstein dismissed the notion of black holes, even though the math proved they should exist. He also didn’t like the idea of dark matter but so far, research is pointing in that direction. But unlike the global warming nincompoops, most astronomical physicists only assert certain hypotheses. They know there’s something that makes galaxies spin faster than their visible matter should suggest, and they explore other possibilities. But I’ve seldom heard one state that God has nothing to do with it.
Only if you redefine “universe” to mean “mind of god”, but then you get something that isn’t Christianity at all. The universe isn’t equivalent to god in the Christian religion. They posit that god created the universe not equivalent to it.
Physicist and mathematician Freeman Dyson: “Atoms are weird stuff, behaving like active agents rather than inert substances. They make unpredictable choices between alternative possibilities according to the laws of quantum mechanics. It appears that mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is inherent in every atom. The universe is also weird, with its laws of nature that make it hospitable to the growth of mind. I do not make any clear distinction between mind and God. God is what mind becomes when it has passed beyond the scale of our comprehension.”
Dyson equivocates on the word “choice” [I'll throw him a bone for incorrectly refering to quantum wave functions as "atoms" to dumb things down for his readers]. The equivocation destroys his line of argument. Human choice is goal directed, and quantum wave “collapse” is random. Calling random noise “the mind” is grasping at straws to say the least. Exactly how many other universes has Dyson experienced in order to come to the conclusion that the universe is “weird”? The answer is “one” I suspect unless he claims to be an extra-universal being. Of course he never defines “weird” because he’s not really expressing anything but confusion. His last few sentences are pure nonsense, and the last is laughable. Since we do NOT at this point comprehend the human mind his last sentence boils down to the claim that we are all gods. We have become gods because we have passed beyong the scale of our own comprehension.
He’s speaking in gobbledygook.
“Astronomer and mathematician Fred Hoyle: ‘A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature.’”
Yeah, well Hoyle is considered a crackpot outside his narrow field of expertise. He’s even got a fallacy named after him, “Hoyle’s Fallacy”.
“Astronomer Allan Sandage: ‘It was my science that drove me to the conclusion that the world is much more complicated than can be explained by science. It was only through the supernatural that I can understand the mystery of existence.’”
How can he know how far science can progress. He can’t, so his first sentence is his own hubris.
I looked up the original article this sentence is imbedded in and the things he is referring to as “more complicated than can be explained” have been explained. His entire article is just a “the god of the gaps” argument, and like all such arguments with time it looks ridiculous because the examples become explained. He asks what are inappropriate questions that commit category errors, and others that have obvious answers as if their are deep truths. For those questions he asks for which no one has an answer he makes the claim of the last sentence you quote, which is utter nonsense. If you don’t know the answer, then you don’t know it, and “the supernatural” will NOT provide any true understanding.
From that same article he asks, “Why do all electrons have the same charge and mass?” which is a quite silly question. If they didn’t all have the same properties for which we classify them together then we would classify them apart. It’s like asking why all circles are round. If you have a high school level understanding of physics and chemistry you would also be aware that there are other things, like oxygen atoms for which the question, “Why do all oxygen atoms have the same mass” would be wrong. They are classified together because of properties of their electron shells, not their mass. The reason all electrons have the same charge is because that is how we have defined “electron”. What he means to ask perhaps is, “Why are some things similar?” which of course sounds far less profound.
The answer to the question, BTW, is that if nothing was similar then an algoritm evolution could not proceed, and we wouldn’t exist to ask the question.
Most of that article is a straw man argument about what other scientists do believe in the first place.
I believe you mentioned the word “crackpot”.
Where is the Body of Jesus Christ?
Unless I’m mistaken, I’ve heard said it’s in a small wafer.
This is only believed by certain individuals if it is blessed by a Catholic priest (or one of the few other sects that believe such nonsense).
Seated at the right hand of the Father. Don’t worry, He’ll be back.
Marvelous!
Kinda like George Carlin:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjmtSkl53h4
Definitely NSFW.
If only enviro wackos would take the way out they suggest for the rest of us. Not breathe anymore. Hold it for 10 minutes is all I ask. Since they supposedly think they are in the majority, that will currently cut the world population in half. How bout that, almost a solution and they did not have to involve the rest of us in their insanity. It is not like they threatened to blow people up if we did not follow their insanity. Oh wait, that whole 10-10 thing.
Maybe one of the enviro wackos can come on this article and suggest pouring oil or benzine. Nah, that would be like psycho or something.
To me, the real irony is that the environmentalists, who profess such concern for our planet, have little interest in the various space programs that are trying to develop the technology to take us to OTHER planets, which would surely take much of the pressure off the Earth.
Someone who sincerely believes that men are endangering the Earth should be hugely enthusiastic about the idea of exporting surplus people to other planets to reduce the stress on this one. They should champion the development of the technology that will get us to other planets. They should want us to learn how to “terraform” so that we can make habitable planets out of those which are too hot or cold or have atmospheres we can’t breathe.
But environmentalists DON’T support space travel and the development of the technology needed to enable it. They seem to believe that there is only one planet that can sustain life and that no other suitable planets can be found or manufactured. They put all their eggs in this one basket, the Earth, and don’t allow for other baskets.
I find this incredibly short-sighted and exactly the opposite of “visionary”.
[em]To me, the real irony is that the environmentalists, who profess such concern for our planet, have little interest in the various space programs that are trying to develop the technology to take us to OTHER planets, which would surely take much of the pressure off the Earth. [/em]
It’s worse than that, Henry. I’ve read more than a few environmentalists who are against the colonization of space because they view human beings as an illness to be controlled.
One of the things that unites all the various brands of leftist (environmentalist, feminist, communist, etc.) is self-loathing. And that makes perfect sense to me because I loathe them as well.
Now I realize a good portion of this article is tongue-in-cheek and that the devil lies in the phase “reasonably clean,” but even if you subscribe to there being no “awesomeness” to the world without the mind of man to see it, and if you ignore that the gazelle runs in order to preserve its own life or that the young of animals play, it is manifest–as I suspect the writer would agree–that the awe of nature is a right our offspring have to experience.
And to declare the finality of our understanding of the universe because we haven’t yet figured out the end game is truely one of the boldest predictions I’ve heard of late. Especially when you consider the relentless chipping away of the exclusive realm of God that has passed since the Enlightenment.
The impenetrable reveals itself; whether through the grace of God we see, or the eyes of God we are.
Esoteric Much!
Earth First! (We’ll exploit the rest of the planets later)
Q: “If a Tree Falls in the Forrest, and there is no one there to hear it, Does it make a sound?”
A: “In as much as the Sun does not rotate around the Earth, yes it makes a sound.”
More Important Questions…
Q: “If a Tree Falls in the Forrest, and CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, NyT, WaPo, and MSNBC don’t report it, Does it make a sound?”
Q: “If a Man Speaks in the Forrest, and there is no Woman there to tell him he’s wrong, Does he make a sound?”
Q: “If a Man Speaks in the Forrest, and there is no Woman there to tell him he’s wrong, Does he make a sound?”
I once heard that expressed slightly differently: “If a man speaks in the forest and no woman is there, is he still WRONG?”
I asked that once, rhetorically, at a small party and all the woman shouted “YEs!” in unison
Screw you guys. I’m going sailing.
Mr. K,
It’s great to see in print what I’ve been saying for years. Let’s carry that to yet another level. As you note, the earth is esentially a bunch of natural resources. Our job is to do something with them. This lesson is even biblical.
The New Testament parable is brought to mind (Matt 25:14-29) where three servants are given a sum of money by their master. The two who take that resource, use it, grow it and return more to their master than given to them are praised; more is then given to those servants. The servant who, so in fear of the master, buries the money and returns only what had been given to him is chastized for wasting the resource and it is taken away.
We, too, have taken oil and timber, and minerals and more and used them to build an industrial world, greater than the sum of its parts. This industrial world, although imperfect, has done more to eradicate disease, poverty and human hardship in 150 years than the aggregate total of all civilizations before it. This is what extreme environmentalism would negate.
As you point out, our job is to build with what we’ve been given. Perhaps the last line from the parable above is worth quoting here:
“For to everyone who has, more will be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who does not have, even what he has will be taken away.”
We should remember that the next time some blinkered liberal insists that “Jesus was a progressive.”
And don’t you DARE pick up any paper or trash off of a street or out of a park for Earth Day. Why? Because those are union jobs and if you mess with union jobs you’ll get killed, or at least beat up. How do I know that? Because I live in New Jersey, that’s why.
Andrew, your article reminds me very strongly of this clip from Babylon 5:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVbnRbTi5XA
It makes your point in about a minute.
Loved this piece, emailed to many on my list.
Ooooh!!! The Great High Preist Gore of Gaia is gonna send you to Ghenna for uttering such utter blasphemy. Avert the eyes! Avert the eyes!
No! It’s even worse!
She’s gonna send him to New Jersey!
YES, Mark!
Send him to New Jersey to be beat up by union members for picking up trash! Oh, and let’s not forget: The union members will be PAID for beating him up–but only so long as they are ‘on the clock;’ cuzz once the clock strikes 4 pm, they’re OUTA THERE! LOL!
An excellent article, as usual. This one reads as if you were high when you were writing it, which makes it even more amusing!
LOL. I never write high. I’m just LIKE this, dude.
But in this particular instance, even more so. A truly inspired piece!
Yes, Yes, Yes,
Andrew can I come to the forest with you. I be happy to play a part in your love scene!
“The odds against this would be ridiculously impossible, by the way, if there were no God ”
You know I enjoy much of Andrew Klavan’s commentary but why does he need to bring religion into it? Especially when he mocks, and rightly so, the religious like attitudes many environmentalists hold.
The anthropic principle is an interesting theory but at this point we don’t know enough to have any idea whether it is true. Although we we’re complying quite a bit of information that leads thoughtful people to think that it’s a weak argument.
1. More and more earth like planets are being found.
2. Dark energy “appears” to be pushing space time apart at an accelerating rate.
3. Related to #2- the earth could have been “created” much sooner in the life of the universe; by billions of years, giving mankind much more time. Why so late?
4. We don’t have any other universe to compares the one we live in to. Thus one can’t set a probability on the existence the one we find ourselves in.
5. Lastly, since life requires a certain environment to develop it doesn’t seem
illogical or strange that we would find ourselves in one that possesses this environment.
People much more knowledgeable than I have made better arguments. You might want to take a look at them before using the Anthropic Principle in an argument.
It think it’s reasonable to believe that humans can and will use technology to keep our environment functioning. There’s no need for apocryphal writings- these will only create knee jerk actions.
God and religion are two different things. God kept things pretty simple – and man mucked it up. He even came up with a simple solution to clear up the muck and man mucked it up even further.
For all the universes hugeness, it’s still an expanding soap bubble and God exists outside of it. Just think of Him as the greatest scientist, physicist, botenist, biologist and every other ist you can think of. It’s good because it’s not the first one He’s done – and won’t be the last.
StupendousMan,
God is not “religion,” that He was made by man. Religion is all man-made; each with it’s own beliefs, god(s), and rules, according to the man who founded it.
God, Himself, however, is the Source of all things and Created all things out of His Love for US. He is not a “man,” that He can lie, cheat, steal, covet, violate, murder, etc.; for it is Man who is flawed because of Man’s choices.
God created evil so Man could 1) Discern Good from evil, and 2) Choose Good over evil. It is not God’s fault that man’s nature tends toward evil, for man is a selfish being. So, any man who chooses Good over evil must deny his own selfish nature for the sake of being Good. Sadly, many don’t, for they choose to deny the existence of God.
Tell that to the people who make their living from the gulf.
http://www.news.com.au/world/concerns-over-mutant-fish-after-the-bp-oil-spill-in-the-gulf-of-mexico/story-e6frfkyi-1226332728023
Of course, Klavan, like most religious zealots, lives on earth simply as a mean to an end—going to heaven. So, it’s just a transitory stage of relatively little importance.
Don’t give us that faux concern for the working class. How many BP employees “make their living from the Gulf?” What’s the difference between drilling for oil in the Gulf and taking fish and other natural resources from the Gulf? The fishermen of Nova Scotia might have some insight. They used to make their living off the Grand Banks. Now, not so much – and it wasn’t leaky oil wells that did them in.
“What’s the difference between drilling for oil in the Gulf and taking fish and other natural resources from the Gulf? ”
The difference is that fish reproduce more rapidly than we fish for them, so there is a relatively steady supply of fish. Oil, however, takes millions of years to be made beneath the Earth’s surface, so we are using it up A LOT faster than it can be regenerated.
My mind thinks Andrew has written an excellent article. tadcf, if what you say is true – that Klavan lives on earth simply as a means to an end-going to heaven – then why would he wait? Why doesn’t he just go ahead and commit suicide? For that matter, why would any of us wait? Why don’t we all just go ahead and end it all now?
Perhaps there’s more to ‘a transitory stage of relatively little importance’ than you would have us believe. If life is simply ‘a transitory stage of relatively little importance’, then why are any of us here? Shouldn’t we find purpose in the ‘transitory stage’ while we’re here for a relatively short time? And shouldn’t that purpose be higher and more important than any of us as mortal individuals?
The Earth has gone through every conceivable climate change but, stragely enough, environmentalists think they know which climate Earth likes best. If anything changes, then “We’ve made the Earth sad and/or angry.” And what is that optimum climate? “Why, the one that was in place when I was born, of course!”
Take, for instance, deserts. If an area becomes a desert, that’s horrible and WE did it! (And the Earth is sad.) But it’s OK for the Sahara to be a desert, because it’s always been a desert to the environmentalists. That part of the Earth used to have lush greenery, so was the Earth “saddened” when it changed to a desert? “Um… well, we don’t think about that. We just say that the Earth gets sad by all the stuff we do now.”
By saying “The Earth must remain as it was on the day that I was born,” environmentalists are, in a way, following your mind-of-man theory… just in their own warped, controlling, despotic way.
Bravo!
Interesting column. I disagree with your assertion that God is a necessary factor in explaining the existence of the marvelous and awe-inspiring diversity of life. In fact, we don’t know (scientifically) whether or not there is any God, let alone which variety of God would most closely resemble or imply objective reality.
In the absence of that knowledge, it’s a violation of the principle of Ockham’s Razor for us to assume an unnecessary and additional construct in order to explain the diversity we admire. Unnecessary elements in any theory are especially unwelcome when they are ascribed with unproven magical and supernatural powers.
We marvel at the gazelle’s graceful abilities only because that species evolved and adapted over time to the conditions required of it to survive. Without the ability to outrun (almost all the time) lions, hyenas, jackals, and (merely most of the time) cheetahs, there would be no gazelles. Without larger grazing animals, there would be no large preditors, because they would tend to starve to death before they could procreate.
Biological evolution is an arms race, and that’s the most appropriate framework in which to appreciate the web of life, of which humans are clearly a part.
Sidebar: William of Ockham was himself an Franciscan Friar as well as a scientist who clearly believed in the existence of God.
We marvel at the gazelle’s graceful abilities only because we have evolved a brain with the weird ability to react with pleasure to visual stimuli other than food, gender signals, and happy babies. There’s no survival value in marveling at the grace and beauty of dinner-on-the-hoof. There’s definitely no survival value in admiring the cheetah’s pretty spots. So why do we do it?
Warning: more talk about evolution ahead: I don’t wish to give offense, only to speak my own mind. Please skip ahead now if that kind of thing doesn’t sit well with you.
In my mind, I don’t think it requires (a) God to explain human appreciation of beauty and art and grace. We humans have evolved the ability to think abstractly, to speak, to write, and many other higher functions, which of course helped us to become the most effective predators the world has ever known. I don’t know this as a fact, but I suspect the ability to appreciate beautiful things is a former side effect of being able to do some of that higher thinking, and which now allows us to cope with something no other species but domestic dogs and cats enjoy, leisure time.
Anyway, happy hunting!
and don’t eat any dogs!
No problemo. God or evolution – I don’t know. Either God gave us dominion over the beasts OR we evolved until we had dominion over the beasts. End result is the same.
I agree that appreciation of beauty might be a side effect of something else. I just wonder what.
Seems like our ability to anthropomorphize things in nature, even inanimate objects, might be due to some kind of bleed-over of our social instincts. We have physical recognition and theory of mind that tell us other human beings are “like us” – maybe we apply it to non-human things, too. Maybe we even apply it to the universe in general and come up with God. I wonder if lower animals do the same thing. Maybe my cat thinks I’m just a big, funny looking cat.
All speculation, of course, but it’s interesting to think about.
My wife loves it when I tell her that I admire her beauty because of “a former side effect of being able to do some… higher thinking, and which now allows [me] to cope with… leisure time.”
I realize that you were speculating but come on! There’s a tension we have to submit to in order to function in reality.
Sometimes depression can be explained because of a simple lack of sunlight. Sometimes depression is due to emotional neglect suffered as a child. If I can’t chemically prove the later, it doesn’t mean the situation is not real.
Love is real. Are there chemicals reactions involved in the feeling of love? For sure. Is that ALL love is? Definitely not.
Tell your wife that your animal brain finds her just as beautiful as your higher brain does! That should put you in good stead.
Where are the pea soups of London? Well, after the Great Smog of 1952 killed thousands, the British government passed the Clean Air Act of 1956.
Kinda missed the point there Sparkey, didn’t you?
If Americans look back at our history, since Richard Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency, it is clear that our heavy smoke stack industries have vanished, with their good jobs. Had the EPA been invented earlier, we could not have dug the Panama canal, or laid a rail road across the continent. We would still be attending a century of meetings on their Environmental Impact studies. We could not have won two world wars, our battle ships and air craft carriers would still be waiting on their construction permits (if the Bismark, the Nazis and Tojo accommodated us).
Environmentalists fall into several unreal, unsurvivable categories. Most are technically ignorant people who care, but do not have a clue what technical risks and benefits mean. They just care, and believe Al Gore. There is another culture, who live high, he is one, based on secret EPA knowledge. EPA funds scientists who issue findings, and reports, but not the data and calculations upon which the final documents rest. These are private papers, publicly funded. The reports are peer reviewed by like minded people, not opponents. Opposing scientists often seek, but rarely obtain, the data and calculations, particularly the source codes. This is where the climate change disaster is stuck. Then there are others who simply hate American technological capitalism; they view our imperfect society as intrinsically evil, and demand that it either change, or fail. By law, no EPA employee may consider cost effectiveness, and by culture they do not wish to.
The earth will spin long after the United States of America has ceased to exist. The dirt will remain; our society may not. America is evolving into a dictatorship, centrally controlled by unelected power seekers, and gate keepers, who wear green. It is not sustainable.
There are solutions, but not the way we are technically gerrymandered.
“William of Ockham was himself an Franciscan Friar as well as a scientist who clearly believed in the existence of God.”
So I think it’s safe to say that William of Ockham would NOT have considered the concept of God “. . . an unnecessary and additional construct in order to explain the diversity we admire.”
Yes. Logic is a bitch that bites hard.
Do you feel better now?
I have the shovel and the honey. When do we begin?
We won’t be living in the Alpha Centauri system any time soon. It will take a few generations to travel there, and there isn’t a planet there like Earth. It is not likely that man will ever zip across the Milky Way in realty the way Kirk, Spock and company zipped across it on television. Going to other solar systems is a multi-generational endeavor now, and probably always.
And a century ago it took days to cross the oceans in steamships. And a century before that it took months in sailing ships. The stars probably will remain many lifetimes away only if the enviros and luddites win and keep us humans stuck here on Planet Dirt.
None of the advancements from sailing the seas for months to jetting across them in hours have defied the laws of physics. Interstellar travel isn’t going to be done in a timely manner.
The truth is that we don’t know how long it will take to get out to the stars. It could indeed take generations before we get there. But it could come much sooner than that.
The vast majority of all predictions are simply wrong, even when that prediction is made by someone with a lot of knowledge about something in the immediate future. Predicting something with precision that may not happen for decades or centuries is virutally impossible.
No one knew when we would first go to the moon, even though it had been the subject of dreams for millenia. By the same token, we don’t know when all the research to travel to the stars will be complete. It may take decades or even centuries.
Then again, it could happen much sooner than that. A few years ago, I read that scientists had successfully “transported” a single electron, along the lines of the Star Trek transporters. One moment the electron was _here_, the next moment, the same electron was _there_ and it hadn’t been observed anywhere between _here_ and _there_. I think it had something to do with quantum entanglement but I could be mistaken; I’m not a scientist and don’t pretend to understand quantum mechanics. At the time, scientists were quick to caution people that they had to do a lot more research before they could transport even an atom, let alone a person or a larger object, but they are clearly making a start. For all we know, some clever scientist could figure out a way to transport any object we like later this week. Is it likely a breakthrough will come that soon? Probably not. But it IS possible.
All I know is that we improve the odds if we actually do the research. It’s hard to find a solution if no one is looking for one.
Gliese 581 c is a habitable planet that is relatively close to Earth: about 20.3 lightyears. That means is takes like 20.3 years for light to travel from this planet to our own. Considering the fact that nothing with mass (like a spaceship full of people) can move faster than light, it would be physically impossible for humans to travel there in less than 20.3 years, and that’s assuming that we have developed spacecrafts that move very close to the speed of light. First we’d have to explore the planet, form plans for how to colonize it, start sending supplies, build the same kind of infrastructure that we have here so humans can live comfortably, and countless other steps before we can start sending large populations to live there, and that’s all with it taking at least 20.3 years to travel to and from the planet. Unless you know a way to break proven laws of Physics, I suggest you consider a different solution to our rapid consumption of resources.
Bravo Zulu!
Now I can burn some hyrocarbons in my Harley and enjoy some wind therapy without any feelings of guilt.
Screw the Earth? Does that mean you think Mother Earth is the ultimate MILF?
Klavan is the posterboy for the kind of knee-jerk, regressive nonsense that passes as thoughtful opinion in the land of the wingnuts and PJ is the perfect venue guaranteed to be the kind of crowd that will slobber on que like so many Pavlov’s dogs.
I know this is asking too much, Mr. Klavan, but the people that you long to bury up to their necks and watch as ants eat their eyes out or the ones that brought you a smog-free LA, etc, etc, that you point out as examples of how the mind of man would deal with all those annoying problems. And, to bring you that solution, they had to fight battles over and over with clueless retards like you.
So, which mind of man are you for?
Ok, as I said, that’s probably asking too much for your narrow little mind to grasp.
Obi:
1. Lighten up.
2. Star Wars screen names are for weirdoes.
Agim Star Wars screen names are as you say for wierdos, nerds, geeks and immature , naive, gullible man children who are usually, as is exemplified by Obi, Left wing moonbats too.
QUESTION: Why do conservatives often say that liberals have no sense of humor?
ANSWER: Because liberals have no sense of humor.
It’s “on cue,” not “on que.” I thought you lefty punks were the ones with the superior eduction; you keep telling yourselves that. ‘Course, we on the right have long known that you’re a bunch of brainwashed idiots.
There you go again Obi confusing POLLUTION, a BAD thing, with CO2 a GOOD thing. But this is the left wing moonbats ploy all the time create a STRAWMAN then attack it. Logic and Left Wing Green NAZI moonbattery are mutually exclusive.
As the sign once said,
“EarthFirst! We’ll strip mine the planets later.
We’ll do it with the least destruction of natural things we love, if it is done under a laissez-faire market in which people (in groups?) who love tigers or dolphins buy up and completely own sufficient habitat.
If a tungsten mining company needs a natural piece of land, the naturists can a) use its right of ownership to block the company b) lease portions of the land for a percentage of the company’s profits, or c) sell the land and use the money to buy a better area.
Environmentalism is a billion dollar industry. They can afford to do the above, but the environment itself is not what they are most serious about. They are best satisfied when they can see & control the most productive & happy human beings shackled. The are a collaboration of power-mongers and envy-ridden misanthropes. Russia had “radishes”, who appeared communist red on the outside but were white on the inside, secretly wanting freedom and independence. Environmentalists are “watermelons|, green on the outside, but pink communists on the inside.
Earth would be much more pleasant if we completely covered it over in cement. There is something to be said for streamlining and never stumbling over roots or into rivers.
If we could polish it and make it shiny that would be even better.
The Humano-Centric ecology (Mantric) is Mother Nature’s greatest achievement. Any species that can find an ecological niche in the Mantric, as thousands of species have, is guaranteed to survive as long as it does.
You are my new favorite!
Isn’t the quote, “Where are the Snowden’s of yesteryear?”
“If I wanted America to fail”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=CZ-4gnNz0vc
“Sun” is a proper noun and should be capitalized.
The Earth evolved us humans, so we are ipso facto adapted thereto.
Now we’ll adapt our environment to ourselves. That is nature’s wish.
To oppose that is to be anti-evolutionary.
In the end, we will end. There is a time limit on our solar system and the clock is ticking. If we don’t figure out how to find and populate somewhere else we are all finished anyway.. yes that is a long way off and house keeping is required to get that far. I have freedom from religion. The pagan religion of “mother earth” has been around for centuries. I do not subscribe. My carbon footprint (haha) will be as large as I can get it. If you want to live like a refugee in a cave, you are free to do so, however, do not ask me to do so while you are still flying around in ultra gas guzzlers..
In the end, we will end. There is a time limit on our solar system and the clock is ticking. If we don’t figure out how to find and populate somewhere else we are all finished anyway.. yes that is a long way off and house keeping is required to get that far.
Unfortunately, the end of the world could come a lot sooner than the collapse of our Sun. One scenario that has attracted considerable concern in recent years is the possibility of an asteroid hitting the Earth and causing massive devastation. That could happen almost any time. I’ve seen several articles about near misses in just the past few years.
As long as we have “all our eggs in one basket” – just one planet – we are vulnerable to having everything we’ve ever done destroyed. That’s another great reason to make a more determined effort to get out into space and learn how to live there (and on whatever planets we find, hospitable or not.)
Ok, Andrew, not reading.
You do realize that your article will be very deliberately described as if it were no more than its title, assuming it draws any comment at all from the MSM? And they won’t bother to read it any further, or cite it.
But I think George Carlin might have agreed with you.
Very well put, Mr. Klaven. As a former leftie, I totally bought the environmental movement to save the planet.
The first crack in my Progressive shell came when George Carlin, also a leftie, refused to buy into the argument that mankind had anything to do with ruining the planet by simply saying that at the end of the day, man will be thrown off the planet “just like a bad case of fleas.”
Earth, like God, has much more power and much less arrogance.
You and George get it. In the grand scheme of things, we are pissants. Mother Nature will kill us long before we kill her.
I’m just not getting all this “Earth Day” nonsense. Founded and promoted by radical Communist hippies, with enabling from Progressive Congressmen –it was established on April 22, 1970… in commemoration of the 100th birthday of Communist Bolshevik revolutionary, Vladimir Lenin. To be fair… I will say that the Bolsheviks did recycle on an epic scale…millions of living human beings into compost on behalf of Mother Earth, so perhaps their choice of Lenin’s 100th was fitting indeed. The composting of human beings became quite popular among Communists. Lenin’s successor, Joseph Stalin outdid Lenin by tens of millions. Then their movement begot such great leaders as Adolph Hitler (National Socialist), Mao Tse Tung, Ho Chi Minh, Pol Pot, and scores of great African “environmentalists”… I mean these guys were special to Mother Earth– reducing the carbon footprint, replenishing the soil… Wow! What heroes many choose to worship and support! No, I’m just not getting this “Earth Day” nonsense.
FWIW:
Ira Einhorn, murderer and charlatan, was instrumental in founding Earth Day:
http://www.hawaiifreepress.com/main/ArticlesMain/tabid/56/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/2023/Ira-Einhorn-Earth-Days-Dirty-Secret.aspx
So many of these modern “celebrations” have depraved ancestry — Earth Day is no different.
a great mentor of mine once commented that the only purpose for 85% of people is to produce carbon dioxide for the plants. Only disagreement I have on it, is I think the percentage is higher.
Finally someone that gets it. You realise the reason the Y2K bug was a fizzer was that 22million Aussies were sitting around the barbecue saying “she’ll be right mate” don’t you?
-itus with Mother Nature.
By all that mankind thinks it knows of science, bumblebees should not be able to fly. Yet, they manage to ruin an uncountable number of picnics every summer.
To me, this suggests that it sometimes pays to not listen to the scientists.
Heard this once:
A hundred fifty years ago, a scientist was asked if he believed in God…”Of course not, I’m a scientist” he replied.
Today, you ask a scientist if he believes in God, and based on the inter-connectedness (perfection, if you will) continuing to be unraveled in advanced quantum physics, his answer has become, “Of course I do, I’m a scientist”.
I celebrated earth day by randomly amputating various and sundry green things. It was good!
“There is no MAN made Climate Change, there never has been any MAN made Climate Change, there never will be any MAN made Climate Change : – Lord Monckton.
CO2 is not a pollutant it is a vital FOOD for plants. More plants more food for men and animals less plants less food, ergo Green NAZI’s are ANTI LIFE.
I cannot understand how a lifelong outdoorsman states “screw the earth,” use it for human benefit only. Does he not respect the wild lands he hikes and fishes in? Or would it be okay to install a few chemical factories and leaky oil pipelines through his area? No? But it’s okay to put these things all over everywhere else? Hypothetical question — after we’ve polluted ourselves to extinction (think – continuing oil spills, nuclear accidents,smog/air pollution, deforestation, dwindling fresh water supplies), would the earth still belong to us? Would the earth be a “human posession” if not a single one of us strolled its surface?
Here is a hysterical ninny.
^^Here is a meaningless sentence. Don’t call me names like a child. Refute me if you have anything worthy to say!
If your type had their way, there wouldn’t be any humans left on earth. All the “destroyers” of Mother Earth would be executed for crimes against nature. The handful of survivors would commit mass suicide out of their guilt for what mankind had done to the planet.
Well struck, Andrew!
I celebrate Earth Day every year with a Tire BonFire. This year we included a couch burning.
Earth Day was started by a Leftist Demonkrat, Nelson Gaylord, to celebrate Lenin’s birthday on 22 April. Has nothing to do with saving the Earth!
Pantalones, I think yours are full.
I seem to be unaware of all the proposals out there to build chemical factories in wild lands where people hike and fish.
Have you ever been to ANWR? It’s a frozen tundra. Have you ever seen the Alaska pipeline in winter? The elk herds follow it because it gives off heat, melts the snow underneath and provides easier walking and grazing for them.
The closest most environmentalists get to the “wilderness” is driving over a flower bed in their Prius.
I ask you this – what makes the lands you hike upon better than other lands which you don’t hike upon? Because YOU use them?
I use chemical factories as vague example of ways to pollute an environment. As far as oil pipelines – did you not hear about the Exxon oil spill that severely polluted the Yellowstone River in Montana last year? I’m sure people who used to fish in the area are no longer fishing. Don’t trust that the irrisponsible policies of big oil won’t pollute your lands of treasure *cough* *cough* Gulf Oil Spil *cough* *cough* Oh, you don’t live there? Doesn’t matter then?
Haha – so just because the elk favor the warm pipeline in the winter means the entire ecosystem is okay with it, too? Love your logic there.
Screw the earth — which is OUR home?? Which our vitality depends on? This is like anarchy on a planetary basis.
Sir, the simple fact is that life causes “pollution” as the term is defined. If you can honestly claim that you never drive a car, use appliances or flip a light switch and that your bathroom and kitchen cabinets contain no soap, deodorants, cleaning products or chemicals of any kind, then you have room to rant. Otherwise, you are a hypocrite.
If you do drive, use electricity and household chemicals, then the reality is that these things need to be produced somewhere. And no, we would not want to place an oil refinery in the middle of Yosemite, but it has to go somewhere if you are going to be able to fill your gas tank next week. Get real.
Thank goodness that every person does not think as you and the author of the article do, for we owe it to people who DIDN’T SAY SCREW IT for our national parks, clean beaches, healthy waterways, old growth forests, etc..
You can be damn sure that if people hadn’t fought to protect the lands they find dear and to regulate detrimental aspects of our society on the environment, this planet would be a speckled mess of human byproduct far worse than its current condition.
Yes – I admit to being apart of the problem. Society bred me this way. If you want to know my opinion, heh getting it anyways, I think our species has a dreadful end in its future whether it be from environment/resource depletion, nuclear winter, plague, random astronomical occurrence (the theories are endless), or what have you. But while we are here and well, it is important to lessen our damage as much as possible for current and future generations to flourish.
Even though the “lessening of the damaging” is pale at best, the future vitality of our species’ habitat is in the hands of people who care and in the dumpster of those that don’t.
Please reread previous comment 40-50 times.
Thanks.
The Mind of Man Day. Now THAT is something that I can get behind.
Klavan skirts the edge of something that I’ve realized for awhile. Leaving aside those that have an anti-capitalist agenda, environmentalists are arrogant. They think that man matters to the earth. What they can’t grasp is that 99% of all species that ever existed are now extinct and that, one day, we’ll join that august list. And there’s not a goddam thing they or anyone else can do about it.
Man is the only animal that can contemplate his own death and I believe that religions are a response to help cope with that fact. And it scares the hell out of him. So he invents these grand schemes, like global warming or Shintoism and all the other isms, to cope with that unacceptable fact. But, in the end, there is no escaping the fact of our individual death or our specie’s death. Get over it.
Well, to put all of this in perspective, there are really only 2 kinds of people on this planet.
1) The wise; and
2) The fool.
Ecclesiastes 10:2-3 (NIV) says, “The heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of the fool to the left. Even as he walks along the road, the fool lacks sense and shows everyone how stupid he is.”
Even more enligtening is Ecclesiastes 10:12-14, “Words from a wise man’s mouth are gracious, but a fool is consumed by his own lips. At the beginning his words are folly; at the end they are wicked madness–and the fool multiplies words.”
RUSSIA HIRES EXXON MOBIL TO GET OIL OBAMA DOESN’T WANT
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/04/24/russia-hires-exxon-mobil-to-procure-oil-obama-doesnt-want?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
Readers: GO LOOK AT MY COMMENT UNDER NUMBER “2″ – THERE IS SOMETHING IN IT FOR YOU.
Hi Andrew,
I’m 14 years old and I love your writing and videos – I think I’ve seen all of them. For my 8th grade english paper, I have to choose a book that I have read recently and then write a review. I’m supposed to include the author’s heritage and beliefs and how it affects the book. Unfortunately, my teacher won’t let me use Wikipedia as a resource, so could you reply to this comment or send an email and let me know that your entry in Wikipedia is accurate? Then I’ll claim I got the information directly from you. I’m using “The Final Hour” for my assignment. Thanks for everything, including this site. Preston Becker, Minneapolis, MN.
Preston,
We have a saying in the Information Technology Industry: GIYF (Google Is Your Friend).
In other words, you can find all kinds of information about almost any subject you can imagine by using Google (or any other decent search engine). Just go to that search engine and type in what you want to know, then press the button that starts the search. In your case, you probably want to use “Andrew Klavan biography” (with or without the quotes). I just tried that in Google and found many hundreds articles, most of which did NOT come from Wikipedia. Have a look through those and I’ll bet you find out exactly what you want without having to wait for Andrew to send you a personal email. He’s a busy guy and may not be able to reply before your assignment is due.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZ-4gnNz0vc
An environmentalist is a guy that has his home in the woods and does everything that is necessary to prevent you from even walking in “his” woods let alone allowing you to build your home there.
Frankly, I find this article a little appalling. I have no problem with using our resources to make life better for humans, but not if it makes life worse for the rest of the creatures on Earth, and especially not if we are using our resources so much that one day is will become a burden rather than a convenience. Stating that we should just ignore the harm we are doing to the Earth as long as we can still use it’s resources is just stupid, because, unlike what Klavan seems to think, we can’t just imagine more energy into existence or invent new sources that don’t exist.
Also, I want to clarify that the theory of the Multiverse is not about the probability of life existing on a given planet, as Klavan implied. It is the theory that each time a decision is made in there are multiple possible outcomes and there are many universes resulting from those different outcomes. I’m not an expert on the topic, so if you want a more in depth explanation, Google is your friend.
Environmentalists don’t hate humans, they just realize that we’re stuck here (unless we develop spacecrafts that can transport billions of people to habitable planets hundreds of lightyears away, which is not in the near future) so maybe we shouldn’t drain the Earth now so life will continue to be enjoyable.
Andrew, there’s something wrong with me.
When I was reading this, I couldn’t help imagining you say it aloud in your own voice.
I am seeking medical attention now, but otherwise it was a good piece and plenty funny.