The Great and Abominable Church: Environmentalism
Posted: Mon Mar 19, 2007 1:34 am
The recent (and now stalled) thread on AGW brings up an interesting point vis a vis the environmental movement and its relation to the prophesied “Great and Abominable Church” of Satan that would hold sway amongst the peoples and nations of the earth in the Latter Days. It would seem that environmentalism’s (as opposed to conservationism) strong connection with the cultural and political Left, including notions of communitarian Socialism, Communism (Barry Commner,(Ecological Marxism) Mikhail Gorbachev (Green Cross International and the Earth Charter), and numerous other Communist theorists who moved strongly into the movement after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989 , as well as the rise of a Neo-Pagan, neo-primintivist secular Pantheism (normatively known as “Deep Ecology”) give environmentalism a major place of importance within the major branches of that “church” among the many other branches or divisions that are a part of its overall structure.
Indeed, environmentalism, as a counter religion with respect to the Gospel, and the Judeo/Christian tradition in a broad sense, and as a vigorous opponent of liberal democracy and the classical Liberal tradition in political and economic theory, is well placed to be a pivotal aspect of the Great and Abominable Church’s continuing (through the agency of the cultural Left) war upon liberty, the concept of unalienable rights, private property, free speech, and gospel norms regarding family and the proper organization of a civil, free society.
If convenience abortion is the sacrament of the adversary culture, environmentalism is its cultus and AGW its Eschaton (the hunter/gatherer state of human history being its golden age, or Eden). Environmentalism is implacably hostile to both liberal democracy and the Judeo/Christian background of that civilizational model, and hence has been in the forefront of the forty or so year assault upon the core principles and institutions upon which that civilization rests. In this context, AGW is of paramount importance to the Left because as falls AGW, so falls the last (thus far) best pretext for the imposition of collectivist social and economic model upon American, and by extension, other western representative societies. Socialism is well beyond serious philosophical support except in the intellectual ghettos that now, for the most part, define the humanities and social science professorate in North American academia. This, and the mainstream media and the arts, are the only places sympathy for socialist economic theory and social organization continue to exist unencumbered by the lesions of history or the critical light of philosophical rigor. Outside of either these towers built of ivory or glitter, there is little sympathy for the ideology of leveling and outcome based social structure beloved of those Dr. Thomas Sowell as fittingly called “The Anointed”.
AGW, as well as the many other apocalyptic myths created by the environmental movement (overpopulation, DDT, nuclear power, Dioxin, ozone hole depletion, species extinction, deforestation, massive air pollution (supposedly bringing on a new ice age during the seventies), the endless and pervasive chemicaphobia (manifest primarily as the cult of cancer as caused by modern lifestyles and technology), the anti-fast food hysteria, hostility to biotechnology, resistance to the use of pesticides and synthetic fertilizers in modern commercial farming) over the past four decades to create a continuing sense of overpowering fear and anxiety that, it is hoped, will eventually override rationality and love of freedom such that those Gaddianton Robbers seeking power who form the core of the ideological and political leadership of the environmental movement will finally be able to overcome the constitutional and political obstacles to the taking and wielding of power in a manner utterly inconsistent with that document’s divine and timeless principles of individual liberty and self governance.
Environmentalism is already the alternative and adversarial religion of the adversary culture, and stands poised against the background of both historic Christian ideals, the Enlightenment, and the English Classical Liberal tradition to subvert and finally destroy both representative government and the moral and ethical (Peter Singer, for example, among many that could be given) foundations of western liberal civilization.
Modern environmentalism is really kind of a fusion between ancient Mediterranean fertility cult religion and Marx, combined with elements of modern Neo-Paganism and New Age metaphysical concepts and some post seventies French philosophy thrown in just to make things a little more nihilistic than they otherwise would have been (the Left has always vacillated between nihilistic relativism and dogmatic absolutism, but that’s another discussion).
My take on this is that, in essence, environmentalism is a the unofficial fundamentalist religion of the cultural Left, both in North America and around the world. It represents, for them, not a camel’s nose, but a whole herd of camel’s noses in the western, liberal democratic tent. If AGW fails (and its beginning to make its last stand even as I write this), the Left (the committed and systematic ideological aspect of the Great and Abominable Church) will move on without pause to the next crisis (which will always be the fault of America, capitalism, private property rights, representative government, and Christianity regardless of the catastrophe in question) , just as they did when they left the new ice age behind for Waterworld.
Rachel Carson’s influence has been almost single handedly responsible for as much death and human suffering as the Soviet Union during its entire 70 or so year reign of terror among its own people, killing needlessly over thrity million third world people, mostly children, when most of those deaths could have been easily prevented. We are in the oil predicament we are in at the moment, with sky high prices and dependence for oil on our most violent and unpredictable enemies, precisely through the influence of the environmental movement and its lobbying arms who have seen to it that not a single petroleum refining or production facility has been built on American soil for almost thirty years. We have not built a single now nuclear power facility in some twenty five years. Tens of thousands of jobs were lost in the nineties in the Pacific Northwest to the Spotted Owl extinction hoax perpetrated by the same people within the same movements. The GAACOS (hereafter Great and Abominable Church of Satan) moves on apace, consuming all before it in its continuing war against righteousness and human dignity. Hoaxes (mass public deceptions for ideological or other reasons) are of course a major part of the techniques used under the auspices of such a movement. AGW is a myth that has little if any scientific support, and therefore, little or no political value in culture war, unless vast exaggerations and frightful scenarios are spoon fed a media and image saturated and driven society to the extent that Goebbles could never have imagined (his “big lie” had only theatre, radio and print media to aid in its dissemination. Modern communications technology creates whole new vistas that the propagandists of prior ages could not even have dreamed).
Hence, my thesis is that environmentalism is a alternative counter-religion with respect to the Gospel and to historic Judeo/Christian social, moral, ethical, and political paradigms, that it is the unofficial religion of the Left, much of which considers itself utterly secular (and in is, in a very real sense of course), and that it is an important branch or sect of the GAACOS.
Indeed, environmentalism, as a counter religion with respect to the Gospel, and the Judeo/Christian tradition in a broad sense, and as a vigorous opponent of liberal democracy and the classical Liberal tradition in political and economic theory, is well placed to be a pivotal aspect of the Great and Abominable Church’s continuing (through the agency of the cultural Left) war upon liberty, the concept of unalienable rights, private property, free speech, and gospel norms regarding family and the proper organization of a civil, free society.
If convenience abortion is the sacrament of the adversary culture, environmentalism is its cultus and AGW its Eschaton (the hunter/gatherer state of human history being its golden age, or Eden). Environmentalism is implacably hostile to both liberal democracy and the Judeo/Christian background of that civilizational model, and hence has been in the forefront of the forty or so year assault upon the core principles and institutions upon which that civilization rests. In this context, AGW is of paramount importance to the Left because as falls AGW, so falls the last (thus far) best pretext for the imposition of collectivist social and economic model upon American, and by extension, other western representative societies. Socialism is well beyond serious philosophical support except in the intellectual ghettos that now, for the most part, define the humanities and social science professorate in North American academia. This, and the mainstream media and the arts, are the only places sympathy for socialist economic theory and social organization continue to exist unencumbered by the lesions of history or the critical light of philosophical rigor. Outside of either these towers built of ivory or glitter, there is little sympathy for the ideology of leveling and outcome based social structure beloved of those Dr. Thomas Sowell as fittingly called “The Anointed”.
AGW, as well as the many other apocalyptic myths created by the environmental movement (overpopulation, DDT, nuclear power, Dioxin, ozone hole depletion, species extinction, deforestation, massive air pollution (supposedly bringing on a new ice age during the seventies), the endless and pervasive chemicaphobia (manifest primarily as the cult of cancer as caused by modern lifestyles and technology), the anti-fast food hysteria, hostility to biotechnology, resistance to the use of pesticides and synthetic fertilizers in modern commercial farming) over the past four decades to create a continuing sense of overpowering fear and anxiety that, it is hoped, will eventually override rationality and love of freedom such that those Gaddianton Robbers seeking power who form the core of the ideological and political leadership of the environmental movement will finally be able to overcome the constitutional and political obstacles to the taking and wielding of power in a manner utterly inconsistent with that document’s divine and timeless principles of individual liberty and self governance.
Environmentalism is already the alternative and adversarial religion of the adversary culture, and stands poised against the background of both historic Christian ideals, the Enlightenment, and the English Classical Liberal tradition to subvert and finally destroy both representative government and the moral and ethical (Peter Singer, for example, among many that could be given) foundations of western liberal civilization.
Modern environmentalism is really kind of a fusion between ancient Mediterranean fertility cult religion and Marx, combined with elements of modern Neo-Paganism and New Age metaphysical concepts and some post seventies French philosophy thrown in just to make things a little more nihilistic than they otherwise would have been (the Left has always vacillated between nihilistic relativism and dogmatic absolutism, but that’s another discussion).
My take on this is that, in essence, environmentalism is a the unofficial fundamentalist religion of the cultural Left, both in North America and around the world. It represents, for them, not a camel’s nose, but a whole herd of camel’s noses in the western, liberal democratic tent. If AGW fails (and its beginning to make its last stand even as I write this), the Left (the committed and systematic ideological aspect of the Great and Abominable Church) will move on without pause to the next crisis (which will always be the fault of America, capitalism, private property rights, representative government, and Christianity regardless of the catastrophe in question) , just as they did when they left the new ice age behind for Waterworld.
Rachel Carson’s influence has been almost single handedly responsible for as much death and human suffering as the Soviet Union during its entire 70 or so year reign of terror among its own people, killing needlessly over thrity million third world people, mostly children, when most of those deaths could have been easily prevented. We are in the oil predicament we are in at the moment, with sky high prices and dependence for oil on our most violent and unpredictable enemies, precisely through the influence of the environmental movement and its lobbying arms who have seen to it that not a single petroleum refining or production facility has been built on American soil for almost thirty years. We have not built a single now nuclear power facility in some twenty five years. Tens of thousands of jobs were lost in the nineties in the Pacific Northwest to the Spotted Owl extinction hoax perpetrated by the same people within the same movements. The GAACOS (hereafter Great and Abominable Church of Satan) moves on apace, consuming all before it in its continuing war against righteousness and human dignity. Hoaxes (mass public deceptions for ideological or other reasons) are of course a major part of the techniques used under the auspices of such a movement. AGW is a myth that has little if any scientific support, and therefore, little or no political value in culture war, unless vast exaggerations and frightful scenarios are spoon fed a media and image saturated and driven society to the extent that Goebbles could never have imagined (his “big lie” had only theatre, radio and print media to aid in its dissemination. Modern communications technology creates whole new vistas that the propagandists of prior ages could not even have dreamed).
Hence, my thesis is that environmentalism is a alternative counter-religion with respect to the Gospel and to historic Judeo/Christian social, moral, ethical, and political paradigms, that it is the unofficial religion of the Left, much of which considers itself utterly secular (and in is, in a very real sense of course), and that it is an important branch or sect of the GAACOS.
