Christianity Is Not Great by John W. Loftus

Author:John W. Loftus
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781616149574
Publisher: Prometheus Books
Published: 2014-09-25T16:00:00+00:00

William R. Patterson

Christianity has done a lot of harm in the world and continues to do so.1 War, witch hunts, assassinations of abortion doctors, slavery, the oppression of women, recriminations and violence against gays, the list goes on. Yet often overlooked is the damage that adherence to Christian dogma has had, and continues to have, on the environment. Environmental damage has the potential to severely degrade the quality of human life, and can in fact be life-threatening. Some of this damage may inflict consequences over generations rather than merely in specific instances of time. There are many environmental challenges that Christian dogmas have negatively impacted by preventing or slowing down their remediation. Excessive population growth (“be fruitful and multiply,” Gen 1:28) and the loss of biodiversity through animal extinction and deforestation (seen as the natural outcomes of humankind's dominion over the earth) are only a few examples. John Loftus's chapter in this book on Christianity's effect on the treatment of animals powerfully exposes another. As it would be impossible to sufficiently cover in one chapter all of the environmental issues on which Christianity has a negative influence, I will focus here on the most important—global climate change.

Climate change represents one of the greatest challenges currently facing human beings. It has the potential to radically alter the environment and cause irreparable damage to the planet on which we live. Insofar as Christianity impedes dealing appropriately with this issue, it is not hyperbolic to say that the religion represents a great threat not only to the current generation of human beings but to all future generations as well. This chapter will detail how Christianity has hindered a response to this impending catastrophe and does therefore pose such a threat. Though climate change is being focused on, many of the arguments used by Christians regarding this issue are equally applicable to other environmental issues. It will take little imagination to see how the discussion here applies to a broader range of environmental problems.

The Facts about Climate Change

Before getting too far along into the discussion about how Christianity has impacted our response to climate change (also referred to interchangeably as global warming), it is necessary to get a good grasp of the problem. Here I will provide a brief overview of the science of climate change's causes and impacts so as to make clear the full extent of the problem.

The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) defines climate change as “a change in the state of the climate that can be identified (e.g. using statistical tests) by changes in the mean and/or the variability of its properties, and that persists for an extended period, typically decades or longer.”2 This is most apparent in the global rise in temperature observed during the past 150 years. In 2007, the IPCC concluded that “warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice and rising global average sea level.”3

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