Catholic and Enjoying It!
Latest claim: Unpronounceable Icelandic volcanos are caused by climate change.
Climate change: is there anything it can’t do?
In the olden days, everything that happened was blamed on our displeasing the gods in some way. Santorini explodes? It’s because we ticked off the gods. Bad harvest? It’s *your* fault, you god ticker-offer! Wife barren? You’re being punished for angering the gods.
The temptation to blame ourselves for everything is always present. And, to be sure, there’s sin enough in the world that we have plenty to feel guilty about. But with Christianity something new was introduced (actually, something as old as the book of Job), the possibility of *innocent* suffering. The notion that bad things could happen to people who didn’t deserve it–and therefore the notion that we should feel compassion, not self-satisfied righteous smugness, over the sufferings of others.
With the advent of the New Religion of Earth Worship, we seem to be taking a giant step backward. Once again, *everything* that happens is Our Fault. Volcanoes blow up and ruin the European economy? It’s only what we sinners against Gaia deserve. We caused it and now the earth is punishing us in her just wrath. Guys like Weismann are prophets of the Coming Wrath who write in that tone that suggests that, really, things will be better once the human race is culled down to humble numbers in the great Slaughter of the Unrighteous that is long over due.
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