Pragmatic Enviromentalism
25/June/2008 09:24 Filed in: Weekly Column
Volume 10, Issue 25
PDF copy
Stupendous change, both natural and in the form of man’s desire to rip off others, continue to produce their effects throughout the world. The worldview of Biblical Creation at Wonder Springs however is quite stable. Truly if there were someway to increase capital investment other than through funny money leverage, we would be quite bullish on the potential applications of Biblical Creation not only in the church, but also in the world generally.
As all this spin, clanging bells, and whistles of man attempting to save himself from his own debauchery continue to exacerbate serious problems, making them much more serious than they need to be, there is a unique opportunity to provide positive change based upon a reality that has continued successfully from the beginning of time.
Last week the No Spin Report said that church leadership has caused many of these world problems. Simply because these people have adopted a form of Christianity that really is not Biblical Christianity at all, but a gospel pretty much based upon worldly pragmatism. Hence, the power of God in changing people’s lives has departed. Contrary to the modern wisdom, “if it feels good and it works” is not a paradigm for true church growth.
To remind all, Biblical Christianity is truly based upon an imputed foreign righteousness of Jesus Christ, which saves all who call upon Him through faith in His propitiatory death and resurrection as legal justification for a new life. This true Christian gospel is based upon a death to the old sinful self and a new birth into an adoption as a child of God.
Any other renditions called the gospel by Christians are really false gospels more fitting with other worldly religions. As these false gospels flourish and reproduce the church continues to lose influence in the world, because it truthfully cannot be distinguished from all the other so-called paths to God. This brings us to the point of this week’s look at pragmatic environmentalism.
Just because much if not most of the current environmental movement thinks it is based upon some deep (religious) truth doesn’t make it so. It may have worked in the past when there was no stress of a true changing environment, but that doesn’t mean any or all of the paradigms are based upon any sense of absolute truth. Contrary to popular opinion, absolute truth does exist in the world and it is the standard and natural law by which creation operates. You transgress natural law at your peril.
We have written about natural law pretty much for the whole period of this ministry. For over the last year we have done quite a bit of in depth reporting on energy in general, and oil specifically. Now all of a sudden with gasoline over $4 a gallon, the news media and certain pundits have discovered that the United States does not have and energy policy and the American public is being ripped off by oil companies and speculators. Double Duh?
What is also beginning to be understood is that monetary policy of a weak dollar has exacerbated the problem. We can add on to that, a Federal Government that has been out to lunch for a few decades, and environmental imperialism which propagates turning the United States into a park and polluting the rest of the world in our quest to produce and buy more stuff.
For some reason people out there in the real world are beginning to get really upset.
So the solution now proposed seems to be drill now, everywhere. Develop and energy policy we haven’t been able to do in our history, even a bad energy policy, not to mention a good energy policy. Then develop all sorts of alternative fuels, build nuclear power plants, drill in ANWR, develop clean coal, increase vehicle fuel standards, develop hydrogen, biofuels, the list goes on and on.
That is not a recipe for and energy policy, that is a recipe for chaos and bankruptcy. Luckily, at least at the present, the Federal government leaders still don’t understand the true nature of the problem. That includes the two presidential candidates.
Here is a bit of news you might find as shocking. The United States of America, the most powerful nation in the history of the universe, does not have and infrastructure that is capable of doing anything to alleviate the problems and no political will to develop the consensus required to do anything but bicker, argue, and point fingers at others.
Why is that? Because we now have a state religion in the United States. This religion does not reside in a church, a mosque, or synagogue, it resides in our educational system, our legal regulations, and judicial procedures. The religion is that of pragmatic environmentalism.
The general covenants of this religion is that if we turn the whole country outside urban areas into a vast greenbelt and blue ocean, we in someway will evolve into some higher life form, free of any constraints that have limited human potential throughout history. That history can stretch back thousands to millions of years, that is your choice, but that potential salvation is only a small evolutionary leap away. All we need is a little more faith and likewise enlightened governmental leadership.
Does this religion have any basis in natural reality of the creation or nature they worship? Absolutely not, but just as in today’s evangelical Christianity, reality isn’t a requirement for pragmatism to work. What is really important is the perception - that it is working that is required. Furthermore, there is an equally powerful paradigm that limits debate. All other thoughts and individuals who don’t have these beliefs are not just wrong, they are evolutionarily primitive and inferior, unenlightened, and essentially expendable.
We could choose any of the unenlightened mantras of energy development as an example, but for now let us use nuclear power, the great environmental fear of most Americans. True the United States attempt at nuclear power was an absolute disaster. But just as with other schemes of mankind, many calamities are caused by bad design and application rather than theory.
The United States chose to build huge nuclear power plants, designed one at a time, by huge engineering and design firms. In contrast the small, standardized designs in our naval vessels have worked flawlessly for over half a century.
Interestingly France, which gets much of its total energy and most of its electricity from nuclear energy, uses a United States Westinghouse design that is the standard for its industry. However, there are a few big differences in the French program that has never been part of a US program.
First of all, the French don’t have a “nuclear waste” issue to the extent that it is perceived in America, because the French stock their excess nuclear components and monitor them for a potential future application. American’s bury their nuclear waste like just any other garbage.
Is that just semantics? Perhaps, but the more socialistic French have a government infrastructure where the terms stock and monitor have a somewhat higher expected standard of compliance than a similar waste burying program in the United States. Americans generally don’t trust their government at any level. Some people believe if their form of government comes into, or is in power for a long enough period, government will work, but currently government doesn’t work properly.
Finally, the United States is basically run by lawyers. In France, scientists and engineers have a much higher political and economic status than in America. Therefore, in France people have a tendency to trust their technocrats. In America, we sue the bastards.
This is where the current energy crisis in America will quickly come into conflict with pragmatic environmentalism. While the United States should have been developing a comprehensive energy plan, instead we chose to protect our magnificent natural beauty from any and all development. Now to alter that park is going to take much more than a will to drill now. We are going to have to change a lot of laws.
Those changes, if they occur at all, will be challenged. There doesn’t really need to be any valid reason to challenge that change, but rest assured they will be challenged and those challenges will have to work their way through the judicial system. Furthermore, pretty much a sympathetic judge anywhere can issue an injunction on some grounds and bring all operations to a standstill, right, wrong, or just because.
Then, if and when, the project is allowed to continue, we still will need an environmental impact statement weighing more than one person can safely carry under current OSHA regulations. Furthermore, no one will ever read it. While based on some types of evidence, that evidence is not checked to be true or even verifiable, and all this will take 5 - 10 years to create and hold hearings before a decision can be rendered, provided that is not litigated also.
So is pragmatic environmentalism the state religion of the United States? You will have to decide that for yourself. However, just as French have their nuclear energy program, many of the more socialist countries of Europe and even Canada embrace a much more diverse range of environmental solutions to solve the country’s problems.
In the United States, regulations are not so much geared to results but to process. No governmental bureaucrat wants to be sued, so they write regulations to limit litigation rather than prescribe results. That makes the lawyers the priests of the state religion. Since most members of Congress and at all levels of government are lawyers, they know for the most part just how far they can go to satisfy the letter of the law without upholding its intent either for themselves or their political base.
So what is needed in the United States is a Reformation of the church and a Reformation of government. Both essentially must be acts of God, because neither leadership is going to give up their power and monetary base willingly.
Interestingly, western civilization in the form we now live, can be traced to the Protestant Reformation and Martin Luther as an example of an early reformer. It is said that the Reformation ended with the conclusion of The 30 Years War in 1648.
Conditions in the United States today perhaps are more similar to that time 500 years ago, than anytime in the history of western civilization. A very pragmatic Roman Catholic Church and priesthood out of touch with their parishes brought about that upheaval. The same can be said about pragmatic environmentalism and it’s priests in all offices of government and enterprise today.
That Reformation was definitely a move of God, changing the whole culture of the world not just the Christian church. Today those changes still affect civilization in diverse ways. Those Reformation principals will again be the model of what will emerge from this chaos. Now we can read about what took place and perhaps shorten both the duration, and also the total devastation.
Worshipers of pragmatic environmentalism will dismiss this concept as being primitive and not in keeping with their evolutionary vision of human development. That, I am sure, are thoughts quite similar to those entertained by Pope Leo X in Rome and John Tetzel, his seller of indulgences in Germany in 1517.
Romans 1:16-32
For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, "The righteous shall live by faith."
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.
For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.
And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God’s decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.
PDF copy
Stupendous change, both natural and in the form of man’s desire to rip off others, continue to produce their effects throughout the world. The worldview of Biblical Creation at Wonder Springs however is quite stable. Truly if there were someway to increase capital investment other than through funny money leverage, we would be quite bullish on the potential applications of Biblical Creation not only in the church, but also in the world generally.
As all this spin, clanging bells, and whistles of man attempting to save himself from his own debauchery continue to exacerbate serious problems, making them much more serious than they need to be, there is a unique opportunity to provide positive change based upon a reality that has continued successfully from the beginning of time.
Last week the No Spin Report said that church leadership has caused many of these world problems. Simply because these people have adopted a form of Christianity that really is not Biblical Christianity at all, but a gospel pretty much based upon worldly pragmatism. Hence, the power of God in changing people’s lives has departed. Contrary to the modern wisdom, “if it feels good and it works” is not a paradigm for true church growth.
To remind all, Biblical Christianity is truly based upon an imputed foreign righteousness of Jesus Christ, which saves all who call upon Him through faith in His propitiatory death and resurrection as legal justification for a new life. This true Christian gospel is based upon a death to the old sinful self and a new birth into an adoption as a child of God.
Any other renditions called the gospel by Christians are really false gospels more fitting with other worldly religions. As these false gospels flourish and reproduce the church continues to lose influence in the world, because it truthfully cannot be distinguished from all the other so-called paths to God. This brings us to the point of this week’s look at pragmatic environmentalism.
Just because much if not most of the current environmental movement thinks it is based upon some deep (religious) truth doesn’t make it so. It may have worked in the past when there was no stress of a true changing environment, but that doesn’t mean any or all of the paradigms are based upon any sense of absolute truth. Contrary to popular opinion, absolute truth does exist in the world and it is the standard and natural law by which creation operates. You transgress natural law at your peril.
We have written about natural law pretty much for the whole period of this ministry. For over the last year we have done quite a bit of in depth reporting on energy in general, and oil specifically. Now all of a sudden with gasoline over $4 a gallon, the news media and certain pundits have discovered that the United States does not have and energy policy and the American public is being ripped off by oil companies and speculators. Double Duh?
What is also beginning to be understood is that monetary policy of a weak dollar has exacerbated the problem. We can add on to that, a Federal Government that has been out to lunch for a few decades, and environmental imperialism which propagates turning the United States into a park and polluting the rest of the world in our quest to produce and buy more stuff.
For some reason people out there in the real world are beginning to get really upset.
So the solution now proposed seems to be drill now, everywhere. Develop and energy policy we haven’t been able to do in our history, even a bad energy policy, not to mention a good energy policy. Then develop all sorts of alternative fuels, build nuclear power plants, drill in ANWR, develop clean coal, increase vehicle fuel standards, develop hydrogen, biofuels, the list goes on and on.
That is not a recipe for and energy policy, that is a recipe for chaos and bankruptcy. Luckily, at least at the present, the Federal government leaders still don’t understand the true nature of the problem. That includes the two presidential candidates.
Here is a bit of news you might find as shocking. The United States of America, the most powerful nation in the history of the universe, does not have and infrastructure that is capable of doing anything to alleviate the problems and no political will to develop the consensus required to do anything but bicker, argue, and point fingers at others.
Why is that? Because we now have a state religion in the United States. This religion does not reside in a church, a mosque, or synagogue, it resides in our educational system, our legal regulations, and judicial procedures. The religion is that of pragmatic environmentalism.
The general covenants of this religion is that if we turn the whole country outside urban areas into a vast greenbelt and blue ocean, we in someway will evolve into some higher life form, free of any constraints that have limited human potential throughout history. That history can stretch back thousands to millions of years, that is your choice, but that potential salvation is only a small evolutionary leap away. All we need is a little more faith and likewise enlightened governmental leadership.
Does this religion have any basis in natural reality of the creation or nature they worship? Absolutely not, but just as in today’s evangelical Christianity, reality isn’t a requirement for pragmatism to work. What is really important is the perception - that it is working that is required. Furthermore, there is an equally powerful paradigm that limits debate. All other thoughts and individuals who don’t have these beliefs are not just wrong, they are evolutionarily primitive and inferior, unenlightened, and essentially expendable.
We could choose any of the unenlightened mantras of energy development as an example, but for now let us use nuclear power, the great environmental fear of most Americans. True the United States attempt at nuclear power was an absolute disaster. But just as with other schemes of mankind, many calamities are caused by bad design and application rather than theory.
The United States chose to build huge nuclear power plants, designed one at a time, by huge engineering and design firms. In contrast the small, standardized designs in our naval vessels have worked flawlessly for over half a century.
Interestingly France, which gets much of its total energy and most of its electricity from nuclear energy, uses a United States Westinghouse design that is the standard for its industry. However, there are a few big differences in the French program that has never been part of a US program.
First of all, the French don’t have a “nuclear waste” issue to the extent that it is perceived in America, because the French stock their excess nuclear components and monitor them for a potential future application. American’s bury their nuclear waste like just any other garbage.
Is that just semantics? Perhaps, but the more socialistic French have a government infrastructure where the terms stock and monitor have a somewhat higher expected standard of compliance than a similar waste burying program in the United States. Americans generally don’t trust their government at any level. Some people believe if their form of government comes into, or is in power for a long enough period, government will work, but currently government doesn’t work properly.
Finally, the United States is basically run by lawyers. In France, scientists and engineers have a much higher political and economic status than in America. Therefore, in France people have a tendency to trust their technocrats. In America, we sue the bastards.
This is where the current energy crisis in America will quickly come into conflict with pragmatic environmentalism. While the United States should have been developing a comprehensive energy plan, instead we chose to protect our magnificent natural beauty from any and all development. Now to alter that park is going to take much more than a will to drill now. We are going to have to change a lot of laws.
Those changes, if they occur at all, will be challenged. There doesn’t really need to be any valid reason to challenge that change, but rest assured they will be challenged and those challenges will have to work their way through the judicial system. Furthermore, pretty much a sympathetic judge anywhere can issue an injunction on some grounds and bring all operations to a standstill, right, wrong, or just because.
Then, if and when, the project is allowed to continue, we still will need an environmental impact statement weighing more than one person can safely carry under current OSHA regulations. Furthermore, no one will ever read it. While based on some types of evidence, that evidence is not checked to be true or even verifiable, and all this will take 5 - 10 years to create and hold hearings before a decision can be rendered, provided that is not litigated also.
So is pragmatic environmentalism the state religion of the United States? You will have to decide that for yourself. However, just as French have their nuclear energy program, many of the more socialist countries of Europe and even Canada embrace a much more diverse range of environmental solutions to solve the country’s problems.
In the United States, regulations are not so much geared to results but to process. No governmental bureaucrat wants to be sued, so they write regulations to limit litigation rather than prescribe results. That makes the lawyers the priests of the state religion. Since most members of Congress and at all levels of government are lawyers, they know for the most part just how far they can go to satisfy the letter of the law without upholding its intent either for themselves or their political base.
So what is needed in the United States is a Reformation of the church and a Reformation of government. Both essentially must be acts of God, because neither leadership is going to give up their power and monetary base willingly.
Interestingly, western civilization in the form we now live, can be traced to the Protestant Reformation and Martin Luther as an example of an early reformer. It is said that the Reformation ended with the conclusion of The 30 Years War in 1648.
Conditions in the United States today perhaps are more similar to that time 500 years ago, than anytime in the history of western civilization. A very pragmatic Roman Catholic Church and priesthood out of touch with their parishes brought about that upheaval. The same can be said about pragmatic environmentalism and it’s priests in all offices of government and enterprise today.
That Reformation was definitely a move of God, changing the whole culture of the world not just the Christian church. Today those changes still affect civilization in diverse ways. Those Reformation principals will again be the model of what will emerge from this chaos. Now we can read about what took place and perhaps shorten both the duration, and also the total devastation.
Worshipers of pragmatic environmentalism will dismiss this concept as being primitive and not in keeping with their evolutionary vision of human development. That, I am sure, are thoughts quite similar to those entertained by Pope Leo X in Rome and John Tetzel, his seller of indulgences in Germany in 1517.
Romans 1:16-32
For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, "The righteous shall live by faith."
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.
For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.
And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God’s decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.