The New Religion

Many people, including me, are made uncomfortable by Sarah Palin's evangelical faith. So it was surprising to see Palin attacked this morning in a New York Times editorial for her lack of faith.

"She has questioned whether humans are responsible for climate change," huffs the Times editorialist as part of a litany of her sins.

Questioning is a good thing. Questioning is what scientists do. Questioning is what I hope our leaders will do – of all orthodoxies. It is religions that insist on faith instead of questioning; anthropogenic (man-made) global warming is apparently our new religion – not to be questioned.

Way back when I was in college the accepted dogma pushed by Carl Sagan and other leading scientists was that we were headed for a "nuclear winter" – catastrophic global cooling caused by dust in the atmosphere from nuclear testing and other "civilized" activities. Questioning that theory was as disreputable then as questioning carbon-caused global warming is today.

Comments

[lickedcat]

Obviously, you don't know history, or the history of western thought. If you did you would know that questioning was and probably still is part of religion (at least western European religion) all the way from the first christians, to St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas even to this day.

[Karl Ramm]

Nuclear winter is also a much easier bullet to dodge; the habit of exploding nuclear weapons is much easier to kick than internal combustion.

[Tom Evslin]

Tim:

You raise so many interesting points in your comment that I replied in a new post http://blog.tomevslin.com/2008/09/the-new-relig-1.html.

Thanks for commenting.

[Tim O'Reilly]

Tom, I think you're misrepresenting the facts here. Global cooling and nuclear winter were never the subject of a serious scientific consensus in the way that global warming is today. This is more like tobacco companies questioning the link between smoking and cancer.

I'd also point out that Sarah Palin didn't say she questioned the science. She said she didn't believe the science. She also thinks that creationism should be taught in high school biology as an alternative to evolution. Is that also appropriate "questioning" in your opinion?

[Alexander M Zoltai]

"It is religions that insist on faith instead of questioning..."

Some do...

Mine insists on the kind of faith that scientists exhibit when holding to an hypothesis while testing the hell out of it...

~ Alex