Environmentalism's Attack on Reason, Individualism & Capitalism

Climate change environmentalists deny that they are motivated by their well-documented opposition to capitalism. Question their motives, and you will often find yourself accused of being ignorant, of being on the take, of being like a Nazi, or of being a criminal.

Fortunately, it is not necessary to question their motives. To know what they would do to society, one needs simply to understand the essential nature of their arguments for restricting or banning the use of technology.

To light a fire, decontaminate water, erect a shelter, bake a birthday cake, or build machines that increase human productivity and broaden human opportunities, requires humans to act in accordance with the facts of nature. To do so requires that someone achieves knowledge of those facts. Only rational thought – a strictly logical process of thought about that for which there ultimately is physical evidence – makes it possible for human being to obtain knowledge of the facts of nature. A belief not supported by physical evidence, or not resulting from ones own rational process of thought, is not knowledge.

All knowledge is the result of rational thought, but not all rational thought results in knowledge. Novel observations and the discovery of new evidence sometimes change the logical mind’s conclusions: what was originally thought to be knowledge may prove eventually to be false belief. That is why scientists never conclude further inquiry is unwarranted. However, the fact that a lack of the appropriate data – or the fact that a lack of knowledge has led someone to consider immaterial facts or irrelevant evidence – does not change the fact that knowledge cannot be achieved except by rational thought.

Those at the forefront of efforts to have the government fight “climate change” ultimately take issue with that assertion. They tell us that, because rational thought sometimes leads us to erroneous conclusions, rationality is dispensable, worthless, or even harmful. Knowledge of the facts of nature, they erroneously or falsely imply, can and should be obtained with faith, consensus, or illogic.

In 2005, Green Party of Canada leader Elizabeth May gave a speech which began with a quote from Bertrand Russell: “Ever since Adam ate the apple, man has refrained from no folly of which he was capable…”. She lamented that, since the commencement of the industrial revolution, humans have “…taken the life-giving, life-creating, life-nurturing systems of Planet Earth and pushed them into reverse.” Making it clear that she believes the Garden of Eden actually to have existed – she, for example, refers to the “location of the Garden of Eden” – she concluded with a hope that “we can re-write Russell’s History of the World to say that humanity rejected folly and that we returned to the Garden”. Taken to its logical conclusion, May’s message is a demand for an anti-human atrocity. Her belief, founded on faith, is that the fruit of rationality – knowledge – leads us always to sin, so we must outlaw productive thought and action, return to a state of naked ignorance, and have a supernatural being provide for us when, where, how, and to the extent that he wants to.

With his foundation’s website, geneticist turned CBC TV personality David Suzuki spreads the falsehood that the “…Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is universally recognized as the world’s most authoritative voice on the science of climate change” (emphasis added). You will not find scientific reports on Suzuki’s web site, but you will see lots of talk about “consensus” that man’s use of technology is causing catastrophic global warming. Suzuki’s implicit message is that a belief is knowledge if an alleged majority of allegedly credentialed people say so. Galileo and Einstein would undoubtedly beg to differ.

In his self-promotional flick “An Inconvenient Truth” Al Gore points to a genuine historical correlation between changes in global temperature and changes in CO2 levels. He implies that changes in CO2 drove the temperature changes with which they were correlated. At least, this is a logical fallacy, because correlation does not prove causation. At worst, it is a lie, because the data he claims to have presented to over 1000 audiences actually shows CO2 levels to change hundreds or thousands of years after the temperature changes with which they are correlated. Encouraging us to accept logical fallacy or plain lies as a means of obtaining knowledge, he is discouraging rationality.

The victims and foot soldiers of Hume, Kant and Hegel frequently can be heard to say “We have to cut CO2 emissions because we simply cannot risk the possibility of a man-made CO2 global warming catastrophe in the future”. To those who deny the possibility of knowledge – or who are too lazy to achieve it – rationality is no virtue. In a misguided attempt to avoid perishing in the distant future, such people would have us all chop off our heads in the present.

The west’s standard of living is highest precisely because western governments have done a better (though hardly good) job of shielding individuals from such irrationality; of ensuring that people are free to conduct themselves rationally and productively, hence consistently with the facts of nature. Western governments have better defended every individual’s control over their own life, liberty and property. To that end, they have also been better at separating irrationality and state.

When a government succeeds in defending rational conduct from irrational restrictions of individual freedom, the result is a capitalist society: a wealthy and happy society in which trade is governed solely by consent. When a government founds its decisions on faith, alleged consensus, or logical fallacy, it merges irrationality and state, fails to defend rational conduct, and undermines every individual’s ability to live and pursue their own happiness. The political result is a collectivist society: a society condemned to rationing, misery and premature death, in which trade is governed not by consent, but by coercion.

It makes no difference whether May, Suzuki, Gore and the others are consciously anti-capitalists, or whether they are simply well-intentioned irrationalists because their expressed or implied disregard or hatred for rationality necessarily implies a condemnation of capitalism and an endorsement of collectivism. However, more fundamentally, their assault on rationality implies a condemnation of human life; of life that depends upon rationality. To the extent that our governments appease these Romantic Savages of the Endarkenment, humanity’s survival on this earth is imperiled.

The Golden Compass: Not Pro-Reason, (and not atheistic?)

On the basis of a “status” entry on my Facebook profile, a facebook friend (Natasha Blair) asked whether I didn’t like “The Golden Compass”. The book’s author, Philip Pullman, is a self-styled “atheist”. He reportedly made comments to the effect that the purpose of his book series “His Dark Materials” (of which The Golden Compass is the first book) is to turn children into atheists. Based primarily on such reports, religious communities (especially Catholics) have spoken out against going to the movie version that was released recently in theatres.

Having received other enquiries about my views on the book/movie, I thought I’d share here what I wrote on Natasha’s wall…with a few additions.

I watched “The Golden Compass” at the theatre the other day, and I’m almost finished the book. The movie is not perfectly faithful to the book, but it is pretty similar. In each case, the story is chock full of talking animals, flying witches, and grumbles about the church…but no grumbles about allegedly supernatural things, apparently. So far (and I’m only on the first of several books in the series), Pullman appears to be attempting to champion free inquiry, and to condemn the Catholic church as the enemy of free inquiry. However, his choice to use talking moths and bears, and magical flying witches, to make his point undermines his case against the church – and against religion and God – entirely. Preventing free inquiry is but a non-essential: it is but a side-effect of religion’s assault on the efficacy of man’s rational faculty. Reason, not “free enquiry”, is the intended victim not merely of “the church” but of all advocates of “the supernatural”.

By making his case with supernatural characters, Pullman cannot help but imply to children that supernatural beings might exist. If that inference can easily be made by children – and it can – then tirades about the church stifling “free inquiry” fail to imply anything more than a call for the church not to stifle free inquiry…a call for the separation of church and state. Such a call is not the same as – and will not be inferred to be the same as – a call to be rational, and to reject beliefs in “the supernatural”.

Putting aside essential arguments, one is certainly left asking: “Why on earth should I refrain from adopting a belief in a supernatural being called ‘god’, but entertain a belief in supernatural beings that take the form of talking bears and flying witches?”.

I had hoped that the series might serve children well by demonstrating the importance of not engaging in any form of dishonesty – with oneself or with others – about anything, including the facts of reality. Instead, the series appears little more than a pro-mysticism, anti-Catholic tirade…something resembling a battle to separate the Catholic Church from the governance of Britain. Yawn.

Perhaps Pullman will turn his guns on irrational beliefs, such as the supernatural, later in the “His Dark Materials” series. On the basis of what I’ve read/seen so far, however, it seems rather unlikely. The field remains open for a pro-reason book for children.

Reason, faith, and tax-funding for education

Reprint

 

The non-sectarian presumption

 

The London Fog

(thelondonfog.blogspot.com)

 

Thursday, February 23, 2006

Freedom Party of Ontario leader Paul McKeever sends along this letter in response to the Izvestia editorial on that mythical beast, “non-sectarian” education:

I agree that it is a mistake for the government to use taxes to subsidize “faith-based” schools. However, it is self-defeating to base that opposition on the idea that a society that funds multiculturalism should protect funding for a “melting pot role” of public education.

Intentionally or unintentionally, all schools – public and private – have a major influence on a child’s beliefs about the nature of reality, about how it can be understood, and about morality. When a government funds or subsidizes a school with taxes, it eliminates any pretence of a separation of church and state. The state becomes a god of sorts. The schools it funds become its temples. The taxpayer becomes the state’s followers, compelled to pay for the temples and to accept, on faith, that the state is the origin of moral truth. All schools a government funds are “faith-based” in that sense.

In a day when tax-cutters are blamed for murders, our politicians – to avoid offending any voter – fund public schools in which moral relativism wages war against objective codes of right and wrong. At a time when the criminalization of blasphemy is considered seriously in some quarters, Mr. Tory would have the state fund mysticism in a war against the idea that man can understand the universe and use reason alone to distinguish right from wrong. The religious and the moral relativists must be free to teach their children their beliefs and philosophies, but not at the expense of those whose philosophy they seek to destroy. Instead of funding public or private schools with taxes, we must let every parent pay tuition directly to the school that their child attends, and only to that school. A separation of education and taxation is reason’s only hope.

Paul McKeever
Leader, Freedom Party of Ontario

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