Lies, and more lies

If you are not acquainted with the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, you should be.  This is a group of Christians who have not gone over to the dark side of modern environmentalism, but who are concerned about the physical creation.

In a recent article one of their members explores the deception being foisted on the public by a group (the Evangelical Environmental Network) dedicated to the idea that mixing environmentalism with Christianity will yield anything more than moral and conceptual sewage.

I will not explore the details here.  If you want to do that, read the article for yourself.  In the end, this campaign by the Evangelical Environmental Network is a collection of lies built on a foundation of lies.

One of the most significant reasons why Christianity is not compatible with environmentalism is this inextricable connection between environmentalism and lying.  Environmentalism is a kind of ‘religious’ (in the way that word is so often misused) fervor that attempts to convince humans beings to do things harmful to human beings.  It does this by lying about the danger of human activity that has produced a setting in which human beings can thrive.

These lies are sometimes grand ones, and they are sometimes detailed ones that are somewhat technical in a way that most people will not take the time to understand.  These are often the most effective kinds of lies.  Lies that are very broad in scope at one end of the spectrum, or lies that are very detailed at the other end of the spectrum, are the ones most likely to overwhelm people.  We sometimes tend to ignore them because of the effort required to analyze them properly.

Environmentalists – ‘Christian’ or otherwise – exploit this situation to their advantage.  I try to be charitable with people, assuming that they might be honest but misguided.  In the case of environmentalists, this is not possible.  Their views, as well as the tactics they use to promote their views, are inseparable from a whole collection of lies.

The Cornwall Alliance is a good resource for uncovering these lies.  I highly recommend their work.

PETA People–Wrong, Even When They’re Right

Found an interesting article in Christianity Today recently:

December 8, 2011 12:19PM

FRC, PETA Call for Continuing an Explicit Military Ban on Bestiality

Tobin Grant

In an unlikely alliance, the Family Research Council (FRC) and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) have found a common cause: the criminalization of bestiality in the military. Both groups are calling for keeping an explicit ban on sex with animals in the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) that may be eliminated by the Defense Authorization Act.

Kent comments:

While these two groups both don’t want to decriminalize bestiality in the military (or probably anywhere else, for that matter) they get there by such different routes that this “cause” is only marginally “common.”

Presumably, the Family Research Council opposes bestiality because human beings, being made in God’s image, are qualitatively different from animals.  (The article does not get into the rationale of this group explicitly, but it is a fair assumption.)

PETA, on the other hand, has a radically different reason for their opposition to bestiality.  As the official PETA statement said, they want to “protect all Americans—human and nonhuman alike.”

The PETA people (redundant, but it sounds good) seem to base their rather insane agenda on the idea that animals are persons, and thus “Americans” just like human beings.  To give them their due, however little that may be, they never quite say that animals are persons.  What they do say is that “supporters of animal rights believe that animals have an inherent worth.”  If that is not personhood, it is as close as you can come to it.

What I can’t quite figure out is how the PETA people think they can know that animals don’t want to have sex with humans.  From perusing their website, my best guess that they think animals are somehow morally innocent and would never “want” to do something like engaging in sex with humans.  Humans, on the other hand – well, we all know how they are about such things.

As one Family Research Council member said about another issue, “PETA folks get this one wrong, too, as they get most things wrong.”  They mostly get this one wrong too.  They just blindly stumbled into the right conclusion for all the wrong reasons.

But that’s just the PETA people way.