Faith Versus Fact : Why Science and Religion Are Incompatible (9780698195516) (39 page)

If you've had your animal “put to sleep,” then you know the process is humane and painless. And now science has ways to allow humans to end their lives painlessly as well: an overdose of pentobarbital works effectively, and is used in European countries, like Switzerland, that permit assisted dying. Who would prohibit a terminal patient, suffering from cancer or a neurodegenerative disease, from deciding to take that route rather than suffer needlessly for months?

Many religious denominations would. Although secular society is gradually recognizing that assisted dying in terminal cases is not only merciful
but moral, some faiths, especially Catholicism, object on the grounds that only God has the right to determine when you will die. (As with most issues this controversial, many liberal Catholics disagree with church policy.) In its official Declaration on Euthanasia, the church affirmed that assisted suicide is actually sinful in two ways. First, the decedent himself sins by suicide, a sin that may, depending on God's mood, send one to hell:

Intentionally causing one's own death
, or suicide, is therefore equally as wrong as murder; such an action on the part of a person is to be considered as a rejection of God's sovereignty and loving plan.

Although it's seen by nearly everyone as humane—and even moral—to end the life of our terminally ill pets, it's regarded as murder to make the same decision for ourselves. This unconscionable equation of murder with end-of-life assistance clearly has a religious basis, for the church sees unbearable suffering as an actual good:

According to Christian teaching, however, suffering, especially suffering during the last moments of life, has a special place in God's saving plan; it is in fact a sharing in Christ's passion and a union with the redeeming sacrifice which He offered in obedience to the Father's will.

Is there any institution other than religion that could see terminal suffering as beneficial?

Further, the church declares that anyone who, without repenting, hastens death for the terminally ill is also bound for damnation. In a 1995 church document, Pope John Paul II declared:

I confirm that euthanasia is a grave violation
of the law of God, since it is the deliberate and morally unacceptable killing of a human person. This doctrine is based upon the natural law and upon the written word of God, is transmitted by the Church's Tradition and taught by the ordinary and universal Magisterium. . . . Depending on the circumstances, this practice involves the malice proper to suicide or murder.

(“Natural law,” of course, does not refer to the scientific “laws of nature,” but to the innate morality supposedly vouchsafed to Catholics by God and understood by reason.)

With its cult of suffering, the Catholic Church has clearly taken the lead on this issue, but other faiths have followed. Anglicans in Canada and the United Kingdom are opposed to assisted dying, as are Baptists and other evangelical Christians in America. Protestants, Buddhists, and Jews are divided, while Muslims, based on Muhammad's supposed opposition to suicide, are adamantly opposed to assisted dying, holding both the decedent and those who aid his death culpable. In most countries these religious views are the law, and those who lack money to travel to the few countries that allow assisted dying are doomed to perish in agony. (In the United States, only five states—Oregon, Washington, Montana, New Mexico, and Vermont—permit physicians to help patients end their lives.) While many nonreligious people would still resist assisted dying, organized religion has thrown its weight behind trying to deny people that choice.

The ability of people to ignore inconvenient truths that conflict with their faith, whether or not the faith be religious, is astonishing.
An AP-GfK poll
taken in 2014 showed that fully 51 percent of Americans were either “not too confident” or “not at all confident” in the universe's having begun 13.8 billion years ago with the Big Bang, something that all cosmologists accept. Forty-two percent showed a similar lack of confidence that life on Earth (including humans) evolved by natural selection, 36 percent lacked confidence in the indisputable fact that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old, and 37 percent weren't confident that the Earth's temperature was rising because of man-made greenhouse gases. When people's religious beliefs were tallied with those data, the pollsters got the unsurprising result that acceptance of evolution, the Big Bang, the Earth's age, and anthropogenic global warming was dramatically lower among those who were more confident about God's existence and who attended church more often. Given this correlation with
religious faith, and the widespread availability of evidence for the age of the universe and Earth, evolution, and anthropogenic global warming, it's hard to believe that all of this ignorance reflects a lack of acquaintance with scientific facts.

While such ignorance is distressing, it becomes positively harmful when coupled with political and social action. Such is the case with global-warming denialism. But while doubts about evolution and the age of the universe usually rest on conflicts between scientific and religious views of nature, it's not so clear what climate-change denialism has to do with religion. As we'll see, there is a connection, one based on beliefs about God's stewardship of the planet and his promise to preserve it until his return.

While denial of evolution doesn't pose an immediate danger to the planet, denial of global warming does. It is now the nearly unanimous view of climate scientists that the Earth is warming because of human-generated emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane. Unless these emissions are curtailed, the results will be dire not just for humans (coastal areas will be inundated, droughts will reduce food supplies), but for other species whose habitats will change or vanish. We will, for example, certainly see the demise of species like the polar bear.

Nothing less than the future of our planet is at stake, and denialist opposition is simply dangerous. That opposition comes in two forms, both involving pseudoscience. One rests on manufactured “scientific” claims supporting preconceived political positions, the other on religious belief. Both in the end rely on faith, and on the need to hold views that agree with those of your group, be it religious or political.

And just as we saw for the religiously motivated opponents of evolution who were just as science-savvy as those who accept evolution, climate-change denialists also know just as much about the relevant science as those who accept global warming. Yet denialists dismiss that science because it conflicts with the beliefs of their “community”—usually political conservatives. As Dan Kahan, a professor of law and psychology at Yale University, found when analyzing earlier data:

When people are shown evidence
relating to what scientists believe about a culturally disputed policy-relevant fact (e.g., is the earth heating up? is
it safe to store nuclear wastes deep underground? does allowing people to carry hand guns in public increase the risk of crime—or
decrease
it?), they selectively credit or dismiss that evidence depending on whether it is consistent with or inconsistent with their cultural group's position. As a result, they form polarized perceptions of scientific consensus even when they rely on the same sources of evidence.

These studies imply misinformation is not a decisive source of public controversy over climate change. People in these studies are
misinforming themselves
by opportunistically adjusting the weight they give to evidence based on what they are already committed to believing.

The only difference between this case and that of evolution is that the communities are political in the former and religious in the latter.

Religion's role involves declaring that God gave us stewardship over the Earth, which some interpret as also allowing us to do whatever we want with the planet. This is often coupled with the claim that God will ensure that the Earth will recover from all human intrusions. So, for example, Rick Santorum, a Republican politician and former U.S. senator, proclaimed at a meeting in Colorado that climate change was a “hoax,” and then played the religion card:

We were put on this Earth as creatures of God
to have dominion over the Earth, to use it wisely and steward it wisely, but for our benefit not for the Earth's benefit. . . . We are the intelligent beings that know how to manage things and through the course of science and discovery if we can be better stewards of this environment, then we should not let the vagaries of nature destroy what we have helped create.

John Shimkus, a congressman from Illinois, went even further, quoting from the Book of Genesis when testifying in 2009 before the House Subcommittee on Energy and Environment:

“
Never again will I curse the ground
because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood, and never again will I destroy all living creatures as I have done. As long as the Earth endures,
seed time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease” [Genesis 8:21–22]. I believe that's the infallible word of God, and that's the way it's going to be toward his creation. . . . The Earth will end only when God declares it's time to be over. Man will not destroy this Earth. This Earth will not be destroyed by a flood. I appreciate having panelists here who are men of faith, and we can get into the theological discourse of that position. But I do believe God's word is infallible, unchanging, perfect.

It's unbelievable that an elected official can try to affect government policy by twisting a quotation from a Bronze Age deity. And Shimkus is not alone.
Thirty-six percent of his fellow Americans
(and 65 percent of white evangelical Protestants) see increasingly severe natural disasters as evidence for the arrival of the biblical End Times, which, of course, are part of God's plan. Slightly more Americans (38 percent) agree that “God gave human beings the right to use animals, plants, and all the resources of the planet for human benefit.”

The most blatant denial that the Earth is endangered comes from the “Evangelical Declaration on Global Warming” by the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, a conservative Christian think tank. Here's part of it:

What We Believe

We believe Earth and its ecosystems—created by God's intelligent design and infinite power and sustained by His faithful providence—are robust, resilient, self-regulating, and self-correcting, admirably suited for human flourishing, and displaying His glory. Earth's climate system is no exception. Recent global warming is one of many natural cycles of warming and cooling in geologic history. . . .

What We Deny

We deny that Earth and its ecosystems are the fragile and unstable products of chance, and particularly that Earth's climate system is vulnerable to dangerous alteration because of minuscule changes in atmospheric chemistry. Recent warming was neither abnormally large nor abnormally
rapid. There is no convincing scientific evidence that human contribution to greenhouse gases is causing dangerous global warming.

That statement was signed by hundreds of ministers, theologians, physicians, scientists, economists, and educators, even including prominent meteorologists like Joseph D'Aleo and Neil Frank, former director of the National Hurricane Center. The document calls for continuing use of fossil fuels and makes dire predictions of how “the poor” will be harmed by reducing harmful emissions.

To show how far religion (or simple wish-thinking) can affect scientific judgment, another part of the declaration makes the completely insupportable statement that “we deny that carbon dioxide—essential to all plant growth—is a pollutant.” Yes, carbon dioxide is consumed by plants during photosynthesis, but it's also produced in huge quantities by burning fossil fuels. Water is also essential to plant growth, but forests can be destroyed by flooding, and cities by rising sea levels. Carbon dioxide is in fact the main greenhouse gas that causes global warming (others are methane and nitrous oxide), and denying that is not only willful ignorance, but a recipe for disaster.

While one can claim that the religion card is played only as window dressing for the true motivation of greediness (or suspicion of scientists), there's no reason to think these believers aren't sincere. The common religious view that God will save the Earth, or that pollution doesn't matter because the End Times are at hand, surely affects how people regard global warming.

Because Americans with conservative attitudes
tend to be religious (particularly when they're more involved in politics),
it's often difficult to separate views on climate based on religion from those resting on a secular faith-based rejection of science. This shows again how pseudoscience converges with religion. And even when not motivated by religion, climate-change denialists still make palpably false claims resembling those used by advocates of alien abduction or Holocaust denialism. Climate denialists have, for example, asserted that scientists on a climate-change panel of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, whose report implicated fossil fuels in global warming, actually
profited financially from their efforts
(not true: they don't get a penny
for such work). Other arguments are that climate-change scientists don't base their conclusions on “real scientific facts”; that the “real” evidence shows no trend of global warming, which is “
one of the greatest hoaxes
perpetrated out of the scientific community . . . there is no scientific consensus”;
and that climate-change concern is “
a massive international scientific fraud
.” Amazingly, all of these quotations come from Republican members of the House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, the committee responsible for formulating U.S. policy on such issues. Fully 72 percent of the committee members are outright climate-change denialists or have voted against bills to alleviate global warming.