The Gospel as eco-justice?

Rachel Miller has posted an interesting article analyzing Redeemer PCA's Center for Faith and Work's (CFW) view regarding creation and redemption. It seems that Keller's view of "generous justice" is very much in line with the leftist view of "social justice" at least as interpreted by the CFW. An excerpt:

In an equally scandalous way, we are now commissioned as co-redeemers. Redemption is the re-orientation and re-direction of our culture-making capacities. It is we who have invented the twisted cultural systems that deface and despoil this good world; restoring creation to its lush plenitude and fecundity will not happen by divine fiat or magic—it will require the hard, patient, Spirit-inspired work of building well ordered systems, creation-caring institutions and life-giving habits. While not quite a matter of “save the cheerleader, save the world,” the scandalous economy of redemption does seem to suggest, “save humanity, save the world.”

I can think of no better picture of this than the sort of health-giving practices that Wendell Berry notices and celebrates in his recent collection, Bringing It To The Table: On Farming and Food. Consider, for example, his praise of Amish farmers in northeastern Indiana who are “working to restore farmed-out soils.” That is a compact rendition of our redemptive calling. Systems, institutions and practices have grown up that fail to care for the soil (and the animals who live from it); they leech it and steal from it without restoring it. The error—yea, sin—of such ill-gotten gain will show itself soon enough because such systems and practices run against the grain of the universe. Creation itself tells us what we’re doing wrong. Redemption, in this case, is tangible and concrete: it is rotating crops, spreading manure and being attuned to what the soil is telling us. Working to restore farmed-out soil is situated within a way of life—indeed, it is a way of life.

Thanks be to God, such redeeming, health-giving, cultural labour is not the special province of Christians. While the church is that people who have been regenerated and empowered by the Spirit to do the good work of culture-making, foretastes of the coming kingdom are not confined to the church. The Spirit is profligate in spreading seeds of hope. So we gobble up foretastes of the kingdom wherever we can find them. The creating, redeeming God of Scripture takes delight in Jewish literature that taps the deep recesses of language’s potential, in Muslim commerce that runs with the grain of the universe, and in the well-ordered marriages of agnostics and atheists. We, too, can follow God’s lead and celebrate the same. (Bold added)

Co-redeemers? Just where in the Bible do we see any human being or institution being called "co-redeemers"? I was of the opinion that Redeemer PCA is Presbyterian and as such believed only in one redeemer, the Lord Jesus Christ, and redemption limited to the elect of God for salvation from sin?

The distortion of the Gospel by the CFW and the embrace of environmentalism is amazing. TE Brian Carpenter in the comments section made a very insightful remark regarding the evolutionary basis behind this distortion of the Gospel.

You know, I’ve been puzzled by this “redeeming the creation” thing for awhile now, but I think I finally understand it.

If you are a theistic evolutionist, then the world is pretty much the same today as it was in the beginning. The only thing that’s changed is mankind’s “sin” of chopping down trees and paving over fields and not rotating crops and spreading manure. So “undoing” the effects of that “sin” is as close to the traditional understanding of Eden as the theistic evolutionists are going to be able to get. Any nitwit can pick up a shovel and spread manure, so that doesn’t have to be a Christian activity. Or it can be a place where Christians and non Christians meet and pat themselves on the back for being so avant garde.

We who believe that all of nature fell when Adam fell see this sort of activity as coming perilously close to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. In the most pristine rainforest (and perhaps there most of all) death and decay are rampant. To restore the rainforest might be a helpful thing, but it is not the same thing as redemption. Redemption of the creation will not happen until the sons of God are revealed, and the unbeliever will have nothing to do with it:

“For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.” (Rom 8:19-21)

And yes, Keller endorses Theistic Evolution. The fruits of the evolutionary paradigm is now manifested in the undermining of the Gospel. One wonder how long Keller will be accepted within the New Calvinist circles. My hunch? Indefinitely.

"'Global warming is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life" - Prominent Physcist

It seems that a prominent physicist has gotten tired of the unscientific behavior of the so-called "scientific community" in the Global Warming scam. Harold Lewis, Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, has send in his resignation letter to the American Physical Society, citing their unscientific behavior as his reason. The letter, addressed to the APS president Curt G. Callen Jr., states as follows:

Dear Curt:

When I first joined the American Physical Society sixty-seven years ago it was much smaller, much gentler, and as yet uncorrupted by the money flood (a threat against which Dwight Eisenhower warned a half-century ago). Indeed, the choice of physics as a profession was then a guarantor of a life of poverty and abstinence—it was World War II that changed all that. The prospect of worldly gain drove few physicists. As recently as thirty-five years ago, when I chaired the first APS study of a contentious social/scientific issue, The Reactor Safety Study, though there were zealots aplenty on the outside there was no hint of inordinate pressure on us as physicists. We were therefore able to produce what I believe was and is an honest appraisal of the situation at that time. We were further enabled by the presence of an oversight committee consisting of Pief Panofsky, Vicki Weisskopf, and Hans Bethe, all towering physicists beyond reproach. I was proud of what we did in a charged atmosphere. In the end the oversight committee, in its report to the APS President, noted the complete independence in which we did the job, and predicted that the report would be attacked from both sides. What greater tribute could there be?

How different it is now. The giants no longer walk the earth, and the money flood has become the raison d’être of much physics research, the vital sustenance of much more, and it provides the support for untold numbers of professional jobs. For reasons that will soon become clear my former pride at being an APS Fellow all these years has been turned into shame, and I am forced, with no pleasure at all, to offer you my resignation from the Society.

It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare. (Montford’s book organizes the facts very well.) I don’t believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist.

So what has the APS, as an organization, done in the face of this challenge? It has accepted the corruption as the norm, and gone along with it. For example:

1. About a year ago a few of us sent an e-mail on the subject to a fraction of the membership. APS ignored the issues, but the then President immediately launched a hostile investigation of where we got the e-mail addresses. In its better days, APS used to encourage discussion of important issues, and indeed the Constitution cites that as its principal purpose. No more. Everything that has been done in the last year has been designed to silence debate

2. The appallingly tendentious APS statement on Climate Change was apparently written in a hurry by a few people over lunch, and is certainly not representative of the talents of APS members as I have long known them. So a few of us petitioned the Council to reconsider it. One of the outstanding marks of (in)distinction in the Statement was the poison word incontrovertible, which describes few items in physics, certainly not this one. In response APS appointed a secret committee that never met, never troubled to speak to any skeptics, yet endorsed the Statement in its entirety. (They did admit that the tone was a bit strong, but amazingly kept the poison word incontrovertible to describe the evidence, a position supported by no one.) In the end, the Council kept the original statement, word for word, but approved a far longer “explanatory” screed, admitting that there were uncertainties, but brushing them aside to give blanket approval to the original. The original Statement, which still stands as the APS position, also contains what I consider pompous and asinine advice to all world governments, as if the APS were master of the universe. It is not, and I am embarrassed that our leaders seem to think it is. This is not fun and games, these are serious matters involving vast fractions of our national substance, and the reputation of the Society as a scientific society is at stake.

3. In the interim the ClimateGate scandal broke into the news, and the machinations of the principal alarmists were revealed to the world. It was a fraud on a scale I have never seen, and I lack the words to describe its enormity. Effect on the APS position: none. None at all. This is not science; other forces are at work.

4. So a few of us tried to bring science into the act (that is, after all, the alleged and historic purpose of APS), and collected the necessary 200+ signatures to bring to the Council a proposal for a Topical Group on Climate Science, thinking that open discussion of the scientific issues, in the best tradition of physics, would be beneficial to all, and also a contribution to the nation. I might note that it was not easy to collect the signatures, since you denied us the use of the APS membership list. We conformed in every way with the requirements of the APS Constitution, and described in great detail what we had in mind—simply to bring the subject into the open.

5. To our amazement, Constitution be damned, you declined to accept our petition, but instead used your own control of the mailing list to run a poll on the members’ interest in a TG on Climate and the Environment. You did ask the members if they would sign a petition to form a TG on your yet-to-be-defined subject, but provided no petition, and got lots of affirmative responses. (If you had asked about sex you would have gotten more expressions of interest.) There was of course no such petition or proposal, and you have now dropped the Environment part, so the whole matter is moot. (Any lawyer will tell you that you cannot collect signatures on a vague petition, and then fill in whatever you like.) The entire purpose of this exercise was to avoid your constitutional responsibility to take our petition to the Council.

6. As of now you have formed still another secret and stacked committee to organize your own TG, simply ignoring our lawful petition.

APS management has gamed the problem from the beginning, to suppress serious conversation about the merits of the climate change claims. Do you wonder that I have lost confidence in the organization?

I do feel the need to add one note, and this is conjecture, since it is always risky to discuss other people’s motives. This scheming at APS HQ is so bizarre that there cannot be a simple explanation for it. Some have held that the physicists of today are not as smart as they used to be, but I don’t think that is an issue. I think it is the money, exactly what Eisenhower warned about a half-century ago. There are indeed trillions of dollars involved, to say nothing of the fame and glory (and frequent trips to exotic islands) that go with being a member of the club. Your own Physics Department (of which you are chairman) would lose millions a year if the global warming bubble burst. When Penn State absolved Mike Mann of wrongdoing, and the University of East Anglia did the same for Phil Jones, they cannot have been unaware of the financial penalty for doing otherwise. As the old saying goes, you don’t have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing. Since I am no philosopher, I’m not going to explore at just which point enlightened self-interest crosses the line into corruption, but a careful reading of the ClimateGate releases makes it clear that this is not an academic question.

I want no part of it, so please accept my resignation. APS no longer represents me, but I hope we are still friends.

Hal

Climategate

In Nov 2009, data was leaked from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, UK. The scandal, in which seriously unprofessional behavior from supposed unbiased scientists was exposed and possible data manipulation was seen in their work, came to be known as Climategate.

Coming on the heels of this scandal is the book named Climategate, by former veteran meteorologist Brian Sussman. It purports to expose the junk science behind the entire Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) movement and the Marxist root of the radical environmentalist movement that is hijacking science for their own ends. I have reviewed this book here on my website, as follows:

Climategate is the book written by Brian Sussman, a veteran meteorologist turned radio talk show host. In this book, Sussman utilized his professional skills and training and researched the facts behind the Global Warming fad, and found it rather to be a farce. Instead, the idea of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) was a mask for socialists/marxists to impose their socialism upon the world under the guise of "saving the planet", knowing that most of the populace are not critical thinkers and will accept whatever any group of scientists tell them as truth to be really true — hook, line and sinker.

...

With the stakes being so high, it is all the more important that Christians know exactly what is going on, instead of parroting the official line of the "experts". Climategate is thus a good source of information on this issue. This is especially so given the near media blackout on any opposing viewpoint, with the silence on the subject being deafening. Even the Climategate scandal was covered up as much as possible, with little news about it reported in the Singapore newspapers when it happened for example.

Fascism and the spirit of this age

In the May/June 2010 issue of his Critical Issue Commentary, Pastor Bob DeWaay has written an interesting piece summarizing Gene Veith's book on Fascism and noting the uncanny resemblance postmodernity has to it As society goes downhill, it is feared that fascism will make its comeback under another name - something we can already see in the militant homosexual movement.

This article will reveal similarities between the philosophies prevalent in Germany that characterized fascism and those of postmodern thinkers today. I am not suggesting that because these similarities exist postmoderns would be in favor of a new Hitler. I am suggesting that ideas have consequences and that history ought to teach us how serious they can be. The key issue is the rejection of a transcendent God who has revealed moral law. The result of such a rejection will most certainly be some form of lawlessness.

Recently, radio host and friend Chris Rosebrough called me and insisted that I read Modern Fascism by Gene Veith. Chris suggested the book because it draws a parallel between the ideas popular in Germany between World Wars I and II and the ideas popular in America today. These ideas now are called “postmodern,” a term introduced by Martin Heidegger, a popular German philosopher who became a committed fascist. Veith’s Modern Fascism unpacks the philosophical ideas that led to fascism.

This review of Veith’s book will show that the postmodern/emergent ideas that are popular today are identical to those in vogue in post WWI Germany. [Note: I also use the term paraphrase in the title, because I quote extensively from Veith’s book and explain his ideas.] I do not claim that those who promote postmodern theology are guilty of promoting fascism, but I do claim that ideas have consequences. As we examine the ideas that led to fascism, we shall see why those ideas led to horrific consequences. Once we see the parallels between those times and today we can hope that today’s ideas will not lead to such consequences. But we have no guarantees that they won’t.

[more]

Feeling a sense of alienation, man in his wickedness and depravity imagined that we are alienated from "Mother Nature", thus setting the stage for greater wickedness. The real problem however is sin - alienation from God

I agree with Veith: “The problem is not alienation from nature, but alienation from God through the rebellion of sin” (Veith: 51). The longing for a return to nature has never been stronger in American society than I see today. The term “natural” is deemed synonymous with “good” and “unnatural” with “bad.” This ignores the problems that nature is fallen, that nature is impersonal, and that nature, therefore, is not a goddess who wishes to care for us. The deification of nature common today places many contemporary Americans in a philosophical league with the Nazis. They are blinded to that fact. Our problem is not alienation from nature, but from God.

The firewall we have against postmodernism (which is a fancy name for paganism) is an inerrant, authoritative Bible. Our sin problem finds its remedy through the gospel that is revealed in the Bible. We find morals and restraint from our sinful tendencies through the law of God revealed by God through the Biblical writers. Western civilization used to be based on such ideas. That is why Hitler hated the Jews and the West. Jesus is the Jewish Messiah. He came in fulfillment of prophecies found in the Old Testament in such places as Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53. If the Christian church confesses Christ and the authority of Scripture, she shall put herself in opposition to Modern Fascism as Veith describes it. We will thus be seen as the enemies of society.

May God strengthen His Church and may we be found faithful in this time of increasing darkness.

Article: Global Warming, Blind Faith, and Global Delusion

This is an interesting article, based upon a book, by Pastor Bob DeWaay on the hysterical Global Warming religion.

Global warming caused by the sun?

Interesting article here:

Al Gore may have to return his Nobel Peace Prize...

NASA reports that the "fleet of THEMIS spacecraft, launched less than 8 months ago, has made three important discoveries about spectacular eruptions of Northern Lights called "substorms" and the source of their power. The discoveries include giant magnetic ropes that connect Earth's upper atmosphere to the Sun and explosions in the outskirts of Earth's magnetic field."

So what? Here's what: The U.S. Committee on Environment and Public Works website reported the following back in March:

"Astrophysics and a host of the rest of the world's leading solar scientists are all convinced that the warming of recent years is not unusual and that nearly all the warming in the past 150 years can be attributed to the sun."

Mars's ice caps are melting, and Jupiter is developing a second giant red spot, an enormous hurricane-like storm.

[HT: Christian Research Net]

Radical Environmentalists refuse to have babies... Good riddance!

Radical Gaia worshippers have decided that to save Gaia, they must stop pro-creating, as humans beings will add to the destruction of the planet. Good for us as they have less lives to corrupt. Nevertheless, they are to be pitied for their misguided beliefs in this religion of theirs, in worshipping the created earth in such a manner contrary to nature (small n):

Had Toni Vernelli gone ahead with her pregnancy ten years ago, she would know at first hand what it is like to cradle her own baby, to have a pair of innocent eyes gazing up at her with unconditional love, to feel a little hand slipping into hers - and a voice calling her Mummy.

But the very thought makes her shudder with horror. Because when Toni terminated her pregnancy, she did so in the firm belief she was helping to save the planet. Incredibly, so determined was she that the terrible "mistake" of pregnancy should never happen again, that she begged the doctor who performed the abortion to sterilise her at the same time.

He refused, but Toni - who works for an environmental charity - "relentlessly hunted down a doctor who would perform the irreversible surgery. Finally, eight years ago, Toni got her way. At the age of 27 this young woman at the height of her reproductive years was sterilised to "protect the planet".

You see here one reason why I am skeptical about issues such as global warming? With mostly Gaia worshippers promoting Global warming, I am skeptical that the scientific evidence actually supports their case. Of course, there are more reasons, but such would suffice for the moment.

[HT: Christian Research Net]