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Darwin’s Modern Bulldog Defends Climate Alarmism from the Threat of Reason
by Douglas Gregory and E. Calvin Beisner
January 18, 2012
As the case for catastrophic, anthropogenic global warming (CAGW) erodes in light of Climategate and studies finding that global average temperature’s response to rising atmospheric carbon dioxide is small, not large, some states have responded by allowing, or even requiring, opposing views (“climate realism,” or “climate skepticism”) to be taught in classrooms. Texas and Louisiana require teachers to present opposition to CAGW as “a valid scientific position.” Similar legislation has passed in South Dakota, Utah, Tennessee, and Oklahoma.
Climate alarmists are—well, alarmed. Not to worry. They have a new partner—Eugenie Scott, Executive Director of the National Center for Science Education, a think-tank dedicated to defending Darwinism.
Scott has a long history of battling what she considers the forces of anti-scientific ignorance. She has been a leading opponent of Intelligent Design, as in this TV exchange with ID proponent Stephen Meyer.
The Los Angeles Times reports that Scott thinks the controversy over “climate change” (You do understand the code, don’t you? No critic of CAGW denies that climate changes.) “is where evolution was 20 years ago,” clearly implying the connection between faith in evolution and faith in “climate change,” and hinting that the strategy for dealing with “climate change denialism” (nudge-nudge!) will be the same as that for dealing with Darwin denialism.
This is not a surprise. The common philosophical basis of both CAGW and Darwinism is naturalism: belief that only the material world is real.
In evolution this means affirming that every natural system, including life and particularly human life, came about by chance, not as a product of design. Belief in CAGW rests on the implicit assumption of that worldview and applies it specifically to Earth’s climate system. According to this view, Earth’s climate system is not the magnificent, robust, resilient, self-regulating product of an omniscient Designer but the fragile product of chance, subject to catastrophic impacts from tiny influences.
Evolution and CAGW, then, are two sides of the same coin. Man and nature are accidents. Man could conceivably ruin the natural world by making tiny changes in atmospheric chemistry—like increasing carbon dioxide from 27 to 54 thousandths of one percent (270 to 540 parts per million).
So what is to be done about “climate change” (aka CAGW) education in schools? What, especially, about the threat that “climate change denialism” might be entertained in the schools?
Heaven forbid that students should be exposed to competing arguments based in physics, chemistry, mathematics, statistics, astronomy, meteorology, geology, biology, or oceanography. Then—God forbid!—they might think for themselves, and some might reach the wrong conclusions.
No, what we need are new national standards in science education that will exclude such arguments—as present standards exclude scientific arguments against Darwinism. That is what Scott and her ilk have demanded for decades in the evolution/creation and Darwinism/Intelligent Design controversies. It’s a version of the logical fallacy of argumentum ad baculum: agree with me or shut up—or I’ll make you shut up.
Not surprisingly, this debate tactic is consistent with the naturalistic worldview underlying both Darwinism and climate alarmism. Because it sees everything as the result of blind chance over time, it is ultimately inconsistent with belief in reason, as opposed to force, as the justification for beliefs. As C.S. Lewis argued in chapter 3 of his book Miracles, “no thought is valid if it can be fully explained as the result of irrational causes.” But naturalism is precisely the belief that everything in the universe is the result of irrational causes—matter and energy interacting blindly over time. Consequently, as Lewis continued,… the whole process of human thought, what we call Reason, is … valueless if it is the result of irrational causes. Hence every theory of the universe which makes the human mind a result of irrational causes is inadmissible, for it would be a proof that there are no such things as proofs. Which is nonsense. Or, as J.B.S. Haldane put it in Possible Worlds, “If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain, I have no reason to suppose that any beliefs are true … and hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms.”
Naturalism, then, is the implicit rejection of reason. No wonder the Apostle Paul wrote of those who deny God, “they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools” (Romans 1:21–22).
And no wonder the proponents of naturalism—whether in its Darwinist or its climate alarmist guise—abjure rational debate and demand the use of force (legal or institutional exclusion of contrary ideas from educational curriculum or refereed journals) to ensure that their ideas prevail.
There is a poetic consistency in this. Darwinism asserts the survival of the fittest—and the fittest are defined, circularly, as those that, by brute force of nature red in tooth and claw, survive the struggle. So, likewise, in the struggle for survival of ideas, the fittest—defined, again circularly, by the naturalists, as those that survive the struggle—will prevail, and it matters not that they prevail not by reason but by force.
Post Script: There is another similarity between Darwinian naturalism and climate alarmist naturalism. Climate alarmists insist on equating “climate change” with belief in catastrophic (or at least dangerous) anthropogenic global warming and calling all who question CAGW “climate change deniers”—though in fact none deny that climate changes, and if anything the epithet better describes the alarmists, whose view presupposes the “climate change” is a new thing. Darwinists, likewise, insist on equating “evolution” with belief in naturalistic macroevolution (from Big Bang to man by chance, not design) and calling all who question Darwinism “evolution deniers”—though in fact all would affirm at least microevolution and many would affirm macroevolution guided by God. Argumentum ad baculum isn’t the only fallacy embraced—naturally!—by naturalists.
Douglas Gregory, B.S., is Research and Communications Specialist for The Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation. E. Calvin Beisner, Ph.D., is Founder and National Spokesman of The Cornwall Alliance and author of Answers for Atheists, Agnostics, and Other Thoughtful Skeptics.
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