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Lawrence Krauss On the Pope's Encyclical: Not Even Close?
Lasrick writes: Lawrence Krauss muses on the hoopla surrounding Pope Francis' encyclical on climate change, and finds the document lacking: 'It is ironic that while the scientific community has long tried to raise warning signals and induce action to address human-induced climate change, an encyclical from the pope on this subject is being taken by many as an ultimate call to action on this urgent issue.'
The Pope holds a great deal of moral authority. Scientists not so much.
I've read Laudate Si'. It's not really about the science, or arguing that AGW is true, or that biodiversity is being lost, or that pollution is killing people. It takes these things for granted but it does not marshall evidence per se.
It's main point is that AGW, true or not, is evil and must be stopped, and it ties this into social teaching by associating the consumer culture of rich countries with the exploitation and immiseration of small, poor ones; mankind's moral obligation to protect the Earth, and it asserts baldly things like "man has no right" to push a species, any species, even the smallest plankton, to extinction (Francis actually mentions plankton).
I don't hear scientists talk like this, and that's fine, it's probably not their place. But evidence isn't enough to actually move people to action, you do actually have talk about right and wrong, and why this thing is wrong and must be stopped. And Francis specifically argues against the idea that technology will one day solve this problem for us, to him the problem with the planet is 100% between people's ears, it has to do with the way modern people see the world as a resource to be exploited. Don't ask me to defend this, I think he's a little too pessimistic here, but it just continues the idea that his argument isn't about science, or technology, or even the material world, to him it's fundamentally spiritual.
And he has a point; why should we care about climate change if the Earth if it's just a ball of dirt and we can just fly a rocket to another one? Science can tell us what the planet is and where it's going, but it can't tell us if that's a good thing or not. So does Krauss think scientists should hold more moral authority than a Pope? Is that the paradox here? Should scientists teach us right and wrong?
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
As I've argued before, much to the anger of some, at least one country, the US, can do a lot by reducing coercion in a critical area that happens to be responsible for around 25% of US CO2 emissions.
The US is the only country I' m aware of where most urban areas are mandated to follow suburban planning policies, making redevelopment within cities prohibitively expensive as all developments are subject to absurd parking mandates that make little sense in high density areas where good doesn't-even-need-subsidies transit should be the norm.
Change that, and give developers more freedom to build what people actually want, and a sizable number of people won't feel forced to live in suburbia any more (and many people who currently live there thinking urban living is somehow synonymous with run-down crime ridden neighborhoods will change their minds.)
Staggeringly enough, I don't think most people want to live inefficiently. Most want to make the maximum use of their dollars to get the best living environment they can. Most state and counties currently force them to waste dollars on supporting huge amounts of infrastructure that offer little value to them.
Unfortunately, I can pretty much guarantee some idiot will respond to this claiming I'm the one forcing people to do something, because I'm proposing offering a choice of living more efficiently, and that... I don't know... will make people who still choose to live in the middle of nowhere feel bad or something? Or maybe they're terrified that the market will choose the urban areas and all of a sudden suburbia will become run down and impossible to live in? I have no idea. I don't understand the mindset.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Krauss brings up points that the pope doesn't _because_ of the pope's "moral authority". For example, Krauss makes the point that contraception is a must. A large world population is simply unsustainable without doing major environmental harm (and may simply be unsustainable, period). Needless to say, the pope couldn't really go there, although he has previously said that people should have fewer children -- never mind how.
So, while I think the pope is doing much good, he is dangerously restricted by the very moral authority you mention. It's a double-edged sword.
Nazi's were religious, supported by pope https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler's_Pope . Communists invented their own religion with Stalin as god. And nobody says "scientists know it all", only ignoramuses such as yourself.
Well if one mass delusion is what it takes to counter another mass delusion, then so be it. It wouls be nice to think people would accept the science on its own merits, but I guess we are still fundamentally a superstitious race.
Won't make much difference to most of the Koch legion, who are Catholic hating uber protestants.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
If you read past the flowery language, you'll see that the Catholic Church's position is based on misogyny and the denial of women's rights to control their bodies. Mind you, so are most religions so don't think I'm bashing Catholicism particularly.
Specifically in the Catholic case, it's also highly hypocritical. We have this "divine gift" from God, yet priests are not allowed to enjoy it --- all so the Church will inherit their property, of course, rather than natural living heirs. How conveeeenient.
Science has faith in the scientific method, in the reproducibility of experiments.
Yeah, true. I'll take that faith over religious faith any day of the week. How about this: I'll book a ticket on a commercial airliner that has been designed by competent engineers using sound scientific principles. You strap a couple of wings to your arms, have them blessed by your favourite priests/pastor/rabbi/imam/whatever and leap off a cliff.
Let's see whose faith is misplaced.
I really enjoy Lawrence Krauss, and Richard Dawkins, and, alas, Christopher Hitchens etc. I am an "anti-theist" and someone who has absolutely no belief in god. That being said, I have spoken at my wfe's church, cooked for their dinners, and was friends with the last pastor. He and I accepted that we had no common ground in the spiritual world, but we both agreed that community is good, and that creating friends and being good friends and neighbours is good. How could that not be? I stood up in front of the church and said I was an Atheist and that I enjoyed the community. I got applause. This is a true story.
Lawrence, Richard, an others obviously need to continue the Atheism work that they do, but they also need to understand that this was a HUGE movement by the catholic church. HUGE. The pope is a chemist. A scientist. If you judge this pope by his words and his actions, he may be the sort of man that can lead a sizeable portion of the world population in a better direction.
I think "Atheism" and "Climate Change" are separate. If this pope did not do enough, reach out. He isn't the nazi-youth that was there previously, this is a man trained in chemistry and seems earnest. I think this is the best chance science and a major religion have ever had to work together to address a real problem facing human kind. Rather than snipe at the pope for not going far enough, holy shit guys, 1 billion people claim to listen to this guy, convince him to do better.
I did not say both were equally probable. I said they're equally reasonable, which is to say that believing either requires no more of a leap of faith than the other, and neither has more evidence than the other.
Perhaps we should apply the same examination to this "law of nature" as you have to the idea of a supernatural being?
The theories which underlie the idea of a spawned universe are conjecture, based on the idea that our universe exists in an unobservable space adjacent to another universe, and that given the right set of circumstances, our universe could have been created, with the initial collapsing quantum effects being manifest in now-our dimensions as the Big Bang.
Unfortunately, we have no proof of this. We can invent mathematical theories that come close to describing a multiverse where such an event is possible, but we have no proof that those theories are actually correct. There is no surviving evidence of their use in the Big Bang, and currently no means to travel beyond our universe to observe those "laws of nature" directly. To note your final concern, those theories also have not produced any testable predictions, as far as I know.
In short, such a "law of nature" is as much a human invention as a story of an extradimensional intelligence that likes to create sentient creatures in his spare time. For the purpose of satisfying the human desire to know everything, both are sufficient tales.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
You have it backwards. You can't prove there is no magical all powerful sky fairy that uses it's powers to be undetectable. But believing in one without any evidence it exists fairly qualifies as a delusion. Billions of people believing in such qualifies as a mass delusion.