School Board Folds After One Idiot Parent Objects to Global Warming Video
Please read the above. This incensed me so much that I had to write my own commentary on the subject below:
Let me make something clear from the outset, I’m a Christian. Now thats out of the way, I’m also a Physicist in academia. Do I have any porblems reconciling the two? Not really, I believe that God has given me an equiring mind and senses that are the only Earthly things I can trust. As a result, when I’m experimenting I must trust my senses, which tell me that a raidoactive isotope has the half-life it does. The amount of the isotope in my possesion now easily inferrs the amount there was in previous time; now if this isotope happens to be carbon-14, it is simple to find out how long ago my coal sample was formed. This coal used to be a tree and would have had died with a relatively standard amount of carbon-14 in it, so the amount there is now tells me how old it is, if that is greater that 14,000 years, then the world is older. It’s very simple.
Global warming is a scientifically corraborated and accepted fact, our senses show that it’s happening, and will get worse if left unchecked. When Christians argue that global warming is the manifestation of the predictions in Revelation that, as put by Frosty Hardison, ‘everything will burn up’, and therefore should be ignored, irritates me greatly. Should Christians disregard looking after our planet because we’re living in the end times? I heartily diagree for two reasons: firstly, we have no proof that we are living in the ‘end times’ as described in the Bible, Christians have continually pointed to world events as indications of this, and we are still here; secondly, I cannot believe that God, who created this Universe (in seven days or over billions of years) would want us to disregard our responsibilty to look ofter the gift he has given us. Who can possibly be so sure that we are living in the end times that they are so prepared to risk leaving a broken world for their children? The movement of Evangelical Chritians in the US, and somewhat in the UK too, would appear to show that members of the Church are so self-confident that this is a risk they are willing to take. It’s embarrasing that I may inadvertantly be lumped in with thaat crowd of small-minded, unquestioning people.
January 17, 2007 at 18:59 pm
Well said, thank you
January 17, 2007 at 19:08 pm
You’re welcome DaveK.
January 17, 2007 at 22:33 pm
Not going into quiet presumptions in your C-14 logic I personally think that a look in the night sky (with some information of elementary astronomy) gives a way less denied idence of the old age of the Earth.
I too agree, that counting that these are the end times is just about the greatest folly of all - we might have a reason to HOPE that. But our standing orders are to take care of the Earth, not destroy it.
Having said that, I also doubt that whatever we do there might be little left of the world as we know it when all this mess is over. Let’s hope there still are future generations.
January 17, 2007 at 22:36 pm
I know carbon dating is more involved than the way I’ve decribed it, but it was just to give an example, and not everyone would be able to grasp a full explanation. My minor at uni was in Cosmology, so I’m not sure why I didn’t think of that! Thanks for your thoughts.
May 12, 2008 at 23:18 pm
Well said. It never ceases to amaze me how quickly elected officials will knuckle under to right-wing ‘crusaders.’ But if a liberal has an objection, they are vilified in many different ways.
And for the earth’s age, I believe comparing potassium/argon ratios, or lead isotope ratios work’s quite well for the older dates.