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Eco-Sacrifice is Closer Than You Think

by Christopher Chantrill
April 02, 2006 at 3:38 pm

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WE WESTERNERS have been properly horrified in recent weeks as the Afghani courts have prosecuted the Christian convert Abdul Rahman and imams of the religion of peace have called for the apostate’s death.

“Philistine hypocrisy,” writes Spengler in Asia Times. It makes complete sense to kill the apostate, “for faith is life and its abandonment is death.” The last Christian heretic was executed in Spain as recently as 1826. In the United States we were killing Mormons as late as 1844. Then the real killing began as the modern secular religions spread across the world.

Between the 1920s and 1950s the devotees of the most successful religion in history, the Communists, were killing all the heretic kulaks and capitalist roaders they could find. The pagan Nazis had a go at killing all the Jews.

But now a new secular religion is gaining adherents in the Western world. It too believes that its faith is the key to saving life, not just human life but all life on the planet. It declares that we are all doomed by the coming apocalypse of global warming unless we repent.

Conservative politicians are beginning to take this religion seriously. President Bush has spoken about our addiction to oil and British Conservative Party leader David Cameron has installed a wind turbine on his London home.

The conservative media is also taking the religion of global warming seriously. The London Times and Daily Telegraph both ran opinion pieces April 1 on the religious nature of the global warming movement. As of old, its prophets warn us of the dangers of our luxurious times. They tell us, writes Matthew Parris, that

“Our age is not living as it should. The pursuit of riches has distracted us. Lives have been corrupted by lust, vanity, wastefulness and greed. We have become lazy and selfish. Our spirits are sick. And — count upon it — we shall be punished. One way or another we shall have to pay.”

These new Jeremiahs, prophesying that we are all doomed unless we repent, are the prophets of climate change, and they are calling us to sacrifice. They do not want us to sacrifice our first-born sons, not yet, but they do want us to sacrifice our big cars, our big houses, our meat, our fat, and our needless jet travel to faraway places.

Then there is Dr. Eric R. Pianka, a “University of Texas evolutionary ecologist and lizard expert” who advocates “the elimination of 90 percent of Earth’s population by airborne Ebola.” At a speech delivered to the Texas Academy of Science and reported by Forrest M. Mims III “Professor Pianka said the Earth as we know it will not survive without drastic measures.”

All religions have this theme of sacrifice and repentance, but one religion has finessed it in a brilliant way that few commentators have grasped. The concept starts in Genesis. Instead of making Abraham sacrifice his son Isaac God lets him sacrifice a ram instead, which you will agree is a much more sensible thing to do. The Jews developed this form of sacrifice into a fine art. The Temple in Jerusalem had a special drainage system to drain away all the blood when the rich brought hundreds of animals at a time to the slaughter.

But then came a radical change. About 2000 years ago in a confusing episode over which people still furiously contest, God said: Enough of all this wasteful sacrifice. Because I so love the world, I will sacrifice my own Son for your sins so you don’t have to sacrifice your sons or your livestock.

This Christian doctrine can have a practical effect. In China, when non-Christian villagers experience sickness or misfortune they often sacrifice their livestock to appease the evil spirits. But Christian villagers don’t sacrifice, for Jesus already died for their sins. They end up being more prosperous.

Of course, the eco-apocalyptics are not fooled by this. They are much too sophisticated to fall for the transparent and self-serving notion that God would sacrifice his Son for our sins. They demand the satisfaction of real sacrifice and real blood gushing into the gutters as in the old Temple in Jerusalem.

Some people have complained that the eco-believers are hypocrites and instead of sacrificing are buying expensive Prius hybrid cars, eating high-priced organic food, and are building huge eco-friendly mansions. But they are missing the point.

If the infidels of the world do not acknowledge the one true faith and worship the gods of global warming with sacrifice and true repentance in strict observance of the Kyoto rituals, shall we not have to kill them in order to “save the planet?”

Christopher Chantrill blogs at americanmanifestobook.blogspot.com.

Buy his Road to the Middle Class.

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Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.”  —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

China and Christianity

At first, we thought [the power of the West] was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity.
David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches... they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Class War

In England there were always two sharply opposed middle classes, the academic middle class and the commercial middle class. In the nineteenth century, the academic middle class won the battle for power and status... Then came the triumph of Margaret Thatcher... The academics lost their power and prestige and... have been gloomy ever since.
Freeman Dyson, “The Scientist as Rebel”

Conservatism

Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority — the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says ‘we should...’.
Danny Kruger, On Fraternity

Conservatism's Holy Grail

What distinguishes true Conservatism from the rest, and from the Blair project, is the belief in more personal freedom and more market freedom, along with less state intervention... The true Third Way is the Holy Grail of Tory politics today - compassion and community without compulsion.
Minette Marrin, The Daily Telegraph

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Drang nach Osten

There was nothing new about the Frankish drive to the east... [let] us recall that the continuance of their rule depended upon regular, successful, predatory warfare.
Richard Fletcher, The Barbarian Conversion

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

presented by Christopher Chantrill

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