Real Science Versus Post-Normal Science

A little over a year ago I wrote an article titled “Wanted for Premeditated Murder: How Post-Normal Science Stabbed Real Science in the Back on the Way to the Illusion of ‘Scientific Consensus’ on Global Warming.” The article explained the difference between real science and “post-normal science” and referred to another article on the subject by British scientist Kevin McGrane. Understanding that difference is, I believe, one of the most important things for Christians—indeed for everybody—to grasp in today’s world, for a great deal of dangerous nonsense now masquerades as science and undeservedly gets the respect real science has earned, and the consequences for mankind are deadly.

Now another scientist friend, John Swayze, a research chemist, having read about the hyper-politicized, misanthropic views of the editors of one scientific journal, has written two paragraphs that state that difference between science and “post-normal science” about as clearly, simply, and concisely as anything I’ve seen:

Traditionally, science worked something like this: "I was curious, asked a question, and had an idea. So, I tested that idea through experiment and observation, obtaining some results. Those results caused me to ask more questions, posit more ideas (including some which contradicted one another), and test them all through further experiment and observation. After examining all the data, I have reached this conclusion which I am sharing with you. Feel free to examine my data and conclusions, have alternate ideas, test yours and mine, and reach your own conclusions, even if they contradict mine. Eventually, a range of ideas and conclusions may coalesce into a coherent whole, which we will regard as true until a countervailing argument is found to be more compelling. I acknowledge that this process may take generations, also knowing that an upstart with new ideas may upset the applecart at any time. That is a good thing."

Unfortunately, the system has been transformed in many ways to be this: "I had an idea. I liked it a lot because it could transform politics and economics, in ways I would like, if people believed it. So, I set out to find only those data which supported it. When I found data which didn't support my idea, I sought other sources which would allow me to reach the conclusion I wanted. By combining some sources of data and information, and ignoring others, I was able to support the conclusion I had already reached. By joining forces with like-minded others and obtaining public support from news media and politicians, I was able to claim ‘overwhelming scientific consensus,’ drowning out voices raised in disagreement. As I had become a prophet uttering profound oracular claims, it was both reasonable and necessary to stifle dissenting views. The truth is what I say it is. Anyone who disagrees is, therefore, a liar and a scoundrel. It is reasonable to use both the courts and the court of public opinion to silence heretics."

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The Green Tyrants

The Greens' Agenda, in Their Own Words
by Kevin Andrews


The Green movement projects the whole planet with a spiritual dimension. The British chemist James Lovelock described the Earth as a complex living organism, of which humans are merely parts. He named this planetary organism after the Greek goddess who personified the earth—Gaia—and described “Her” as “alive”.

Singer and Brown are correct to describe this as revolutionary. It involves the creation of a new pagan belief system, concerned not with the relationship between humans and a creator, but based on a deification of the environment.

For the Greens, a pristine global environment represents earthly perfection. . . .

What is at stake in the Greens’ “revolution” is the heart and soul of Western civilisation, built on the Judeo-Christian/Enlightenment synthesis that upholds the individual—with obligations and responsibilities to others, but ultimately judged on his or her own conscience and actions—as the possessor of an inherent dignity and inalienable rights. What is also at stake is the economic system that has resulted in the creation of wealth and prosperity for the most people in human history.

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The Australian Jim Wallace, Not the American Jim Wallis

Greens are attacking religious freedom

by Jim Wallace

THE move by the Greens to give territories as small as Norfolk Island the power to set legislative precedents on social issues such as euthanasia and gay marriage is an attempt by gay-green activists to render us all the same.

During more than 40 years of pursuing its objectives, the homosexual lobby has trumpeted its differences. "Queer" and "proud" were calls to include homosexual lifestyle in the diversity that is modern Australia.

But now the tactic has changed. Not only do they want to be the same as everyone else, they're not prepared to suffer diversity in anyone else, particularly if it is religiously inspired.

The latest target has been religious freedom. Admittedly they don't discriminate - anyone's religious freedom will do.

Churches are portrayed as wantonly discriminatory for refusing to employ someone who doesn't subscribe to their values. So might any corporation, particularly after the money spent on defining corporate values.

Read more.

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I wish that Jim Wallis would have the understanding of Jim Wallace.

I’m glad Jim Wallace understands the strategy of “multiculturalism and diversity” that, when necessary, morphs to take on its new form of the Green Movement and Sustainability Movement. Actually, multiculturalists and diversiphiles always planned to render everyone the same; their social engineering has always been designed to make everyone in their own image. It’s their way of playing God. Multiculturalists have always had in view the imposition of a single culture, their own. Their whole agenda is cloaked in a ruse, “multi-culturalism” when it should be “uni-culturalism.” Diversocrats have always had as their agenda the expulsion of bona fide diversity and the socially engineered imposition of sameness, everything after their own likeness, which is their way of playing God. Again, their entire plan is disguised with deliberate equivocation, for “diversity” is their code word to make their agenda palatable to the ingenuous among us who fail to recognize the purposeful equivocation. Lamentably, the ingenuous among us includes most people. And the diversocrats’ design in exploiting “diversity” has been to render any argument with the rest of us, who have caught on to their agenda, a dispute passed off as a squabble over semantics or worse, a devilish opportunity to charge opponents of their agenda as opponents of real diversity—racism, bigotry, sexism, etc. Of course, the same is true with those who have chosen to identify their agendas “Green” and “Sustainability,” as though we who oppose their agenda crave filthy drinking water, desire toxic waste to foul the earth, want noxious fumes to fill the air we breath, eagerly wish for the earth to heat up to kill off millions of people, and long for the oceans to rise to drown out millions more. Being a conservationist, as I have been my whole life, is not acceptable to Greenies and Sustainabilocrats, for my conservationism is born out of my Christian faith which is antithetical to the innate paganism that energizes the Green Movement and Sustainability Movement.

Environmentalism: Pagan Religion

Last week I had the privilege, at the urging of two colleagues, to attend the Think Tank conference of truthXchange founded and led by Dr. Peter Jones and his wife, Rebecca. Wow! What a conference! It was superb. All of the presenters instructed us well. I was able to get to know several new friends. The conference theme was “One-ism: A Poison Pill for the Church.” Dr. Jones’ specialization is to expose how paganism is not only overrunning Western culture but also invading the church. Find the conference program here with a few changes. Bob DeWaay did not attend or present, and James Wanliss presented instead of Calvin Beisner. For a corrected program see here.

Dr. James Wanliss, author of Resisting the Green Dragon, made an excellent presentation concerning environmentalism’s roots in paganism and how paganism is invading the church in the form of environmentalism. The session was open to the public.

Dr. Wanliss is associated with the Cornwall Alliance. The latest Cornwall Alliance Newsletter (Jan. 12) links to the following article in The New Antlantis: A Journal of Technology & Society.

Environmentalism as Religion 

Joel Garreau

Traditional religion is having a tough time in parts of the world. Majorities in most European countries have told Gallup pollsters in the last few years that religion does not “occupy an important place” in their lives. Across Europe, Judeo-Christian church attendance is down, as is adherence to religious prohibitions such as those against out-of-wedlock births. And while Americans remain, on average, much more devout than Europeans, there are demographic and regional pockets in this country that resemble Europe in their religious beliefs and practices.

The rejection of traditional religion in these quarters has created a vacuum unlikely to go unfilled; human nature seems to demand a search for order and meaning, and nowadays there is no shortage of options on the menu of belief. Some searchers syncretize Judeo-Christian theology with Eastern or New Age spiritualism. Others seek through science the ultimate answers of our origins, or dream of high-tech transcendence by merging with machines — either approach depending not on rationalism alone but on a faith in the goodness of what rationalism can offer.

For some individuals and societies, the role of religion seems increasingly to be filled by environmentalism. It has become “the religion of choice for urban atheists,” according to Michael Crichton, the late science fiction writer (and climate change skeptic). In a widely quoted 2003 speech, Crichton outlined the ways that environmentalism “remaps” Judeo-Christian beliefs:

There’s an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature, there’s a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a result of our actions there is a judgment day coming for us all. We are all energy sinners, doomed to die, unless we seek salvation, which is now called sustainability. Sustainability is salvation in the church of the environment. Just as organic food is its communion, that pesticide-free wafer that the right people with the right beliefs, imbibe.

In parts of northern Europe, this new faith is now the mainstream. “Denmark and Sweden float along like small, content, durable dinghies of secular life, where most people are nonreligious and don’t worship Jesus or Vishnu, don’t revere sacred texts, don’t pray, and don’t give much credence to the essential dogmas of the world’s great faiths,” observes Phil Zuckerman in his 2008 book Society without God. Instead, he writes, these places have become “clean and green.” This new faith has very concrete policy implications; the countries where it has the most purchase tend also to have instituted policies that climate activists endorse. To better understand the future of climate policy, we must understand where “ecotheology” has come from and where it is likely to lead.

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CCCU's Green Awakenings Critiqued

‘Green Awakenings’ and Missing the Point of God’s Story

by Kathleen Nielson

A booklet recently came my way, distributed through the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU). Titled Green Awakenings, the booklet offers a report from “Renewal”—a movement of “students caring for creation.” Introduced as “stories of stewardship and sustainability” from Christian colleges and universities throughout the United States and Canada, Green Awakenings celebrates the quickly growing attention to creation care among the rising generation of Christian students. Before peering at this booklet’s version of creation care in the light of the gospel, let me briefly and straightforwardly affirm the sincere efforts of students to deal responsibly with the God-given gift of the earth. Consider these activities, all described in the booklet: cleaning up local highways and waterways, finding creative uses for discarded clothes and paper products, creating and supporting local organic gardens, restoring prairies, conserving water and electricity, re-using landscape and kitchen organic waste products. . . there’s nothing wrong and a lot right about such stewardship of God’s creation. As one who interacts regularly with college students, I wholeheartedly appreciate their efforts to undo some of the habits of waste and excessive consumption they have observed in the generation before them.

The language of this booklet, however, quickly reveals a view of these efforts as far more than a diligent, worshipful response offered by believers in the gospel of Jesus Christ. These efforts are described on a number of pages as gospel enterprises in themselves. Here are four observations, in light of the biblical gospel, concerning the presentation of creation care in Green Awakenings.

Read the whole column.

HT: JT