Climate Science and Christian Faith
Today’s the big day for environmentalists living near Santa Barbara; Dr. Katharine Hayhoe is speaking at Westmont College, an extremely high-end interdenominational Christian liberal arts college. Dr. Hayhoe writes books encompassing topics of climate science, communication and faith, including her most recent, “A Climate for a Change: Global Warming Facts for Faith-Based Decisions.”
It’s always interesting to learn others’ perspectives on the relationship between faith and reason. This has been a certain challenge of the church for at least 800 years; Thomas Aquinas set out to prove the existence of God with unaided reason, using the logic of Aristotle. Did he succeed? It depends on whom you ask.
Craig,
Dr. Katharine Hayhoe is a charismatic and enthusiastic preacher. The daughter of missionaries, she possesses absolute “faith” in her beliefs and convictions.
Her evangelical skills are certainly impressive.
however, this is the dilemma all ” Scientists” face when becoming involved in advocacy. At some point, “scientists” stop being scientists and become evangelical advocates, entwined more in the politics and formation of a new “faith” based movement, than the rigorous pursuit of scientific knowledge.
It’s only natural, when you’ve written 1200 papers in support of any concept, given thousands of sermons to the faithful, dedicated your life to a cause, not to be open to any challenge or undermining of your lifelong faith.
The knowledge of how, and why, our planet’s climate changes is still relatively minute and only recently the subject of intensive study.
The problem for scientists is the way scientific data and debate has been seized upon and adapted to create political philosophies and “faiths” or “fitted into” and adapted to reinvigorate older political ideologies.
In this process, scientific reasoning has been abandoned, original objectives forgotten, caught up in the whirlwind of a gigantic new “Crusade’, equipped with all the organizational and physiological paraphernalia of older mass religious or political movements.
Scientists have suddenly found themselves in intellectual strait-jackets or worse, they become victims of vicious and unrelenting persecution if found straying from the new orthodoxy.
Dr. Katharine Hayhoe, is a charming and charismatic preacher, but that’s what she is, an evangelical preacher, not a scientist.