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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.'
Three modes of persuasion/rhetoric identified by Aristotle are ethos, pathos, and logos.
ethos is an appeal to authority or credibility
pathos is an appeal to emotions
logos is an appeal to reason
Tthe pope's statement may have enough ethos with some audiences to make an impact.
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.
A church almost by definition cannot be truly pro-science. Their entire MO is based on faith in unproven/unprovable things and do not readily accept questioning of that faith even in the face of overwhelming evidence.
You speak of one type of religion -- one that is anti-science. You are also invoking the so-called conflict thesis, which was basically made up by a distortion of history in the 1800s and which actual historians now recognize is largely bogus.
There are plenty of religions in the world (including the Catholic Church) that have been pioneers in scientific research. Why? Because they believe there is a moral responsibility to understand God's creation, to appreciate it, to protect it.
The pope's recent message is more of this.
The fact that the catholic church hasn't stood in the way of science isn't the same thing as being pro-science.
Can you seriously look at this list of Roman Catholic clergy who were scientists throughout history, including many of people who FOUNDED entire modern scientific disciplines, and tell us that there's a fundamental conflict there?
Read about the relationship between the Catholic Church and science over the past millennium. Aside from the Galileo affair (where the actions of the church should be condemned), you'd be hard-pressed to find many other examples where the church has impeded scientific progress... and MANY periods where they have explicitly promoted and funded it.
Yes, there are plenty examples of anti-science religious wackos out there. By all means, condemn their ignorance. But religion can also be an inspiration to cause people to look harder at the world around them. That's what the Catholic Church has promoted for the past thousand years or so. The belief in "unproven" things generally does not come into conflict in the Catholic Church -- they aren't biblical literalists (unlike some evangelical movements) and pretty much never have been. St. Augustine and other early writers were already talking about the allegorical nature of scripture 1500+ years ago, so they aren't the wacko "young-earth creationists" who insist that evolution can't occur or that the earth was created in 6 days a few thousand years ago.
It's one thing to believe in something that is against empirical evidence -- some religions do that. But others mostly believe in supernatural phenomena when it CAN'T be proved nor disproved. (This is the true original meaning of agnosticism, developed by a SCIENTIST to classify a belief that some statements about religion cannot be proved nor disproved from empirical evidence and are thus beyond adjudication by science.)
If such beliefs do not conflict with empirical evidence, then what is your SCIENTIFIC basis for discounting them or declaring them antithetical to science? At worst, they show wishful thinking. Any scientist who has ever bought a lottery ticket should be drummed out of the profession if wishful thinking should be banned. At best, they might inspire some moral or ethical thinking about "bigger questions" that science doesn't usually address.
The Catholic Church not only was pro-science for much of the past 1000 years -- in many cases it was a PIONEER in science. To not admit that fact either shows ignorance or unsupported anti-religious bigotry.
(P.S. I'm NOT a Catholic. I don't care what the pope says. But I do care about ignorance of history. The Catholic Church has been responsible for many bad things throughout history, but so has every other nation or organization which has existed for centuries. But I think you'd be hard-pressed to find another such organization, nation, or other corporate body that's at least a couple centuries old and has been so consistently pro-science.)
The Catholic Church has been pro-science for a while now.
A church almost by definition cannot be truly pro-science. Their entire MO is based on faith in unproven/unprovable things and do not readily accept questioning of that faith even in the face of overwhelming evidence. The fact that the catholic church hasn't stood in the way of science isn't the same thing as being pro-science. I think science and faith of the sort espoused by organized religion are irreconcilable to one another.
You have evidently never heard of the Jesuits. It's entirely possible to believe in religion and still be a grounded person - and it's entirely possible to be completely devoted to science and still be crazy (see Nazi Germany as an example). Religion when taught as a form of philosophy (which is what it really should be) can make for a great moral compass. Religion when taught in the form of governmental law is what's harmful.
"Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."