The recent UCT Sax Appeal gave Christians a gilt-edged opportunity to demonstrate the gospel in action. With Islamic militants rioting and threatening death over some Danish cartoons not so long ago, the tendency of the religious to over-reaction and intolerance is all too fresh in the global memory. We had the chance to show the world that Christianity is different. Not only did we fail, but we’re making it worse.

God experiences the blasphemy of rebellious humanity every minute of every day. It’s not news to him that this kind of sentiment exists. It is just news to us. Given that God sees the blasphemy of the human heart and is patient with us, not wanting anyone to perish, but all to come to repentance (2Peter 3:9), it is no surprise that Jesus himself is given as the model for us to follow when under attack. 1Peter 2:20-23 says that Jesus didn’t retaliate when they hurled their insults at him, and this is the kind of response that we have been called to make. We should be demonstrating willingness to suffer unjustly if it means that we can play a role in the salvation of others.

Well, we didn’t do that. Christian pressure groups made sure that ‘outrage’ was the chosen mood, some parties even calling for nationwide boycotts. But we just can’t stop outselves, it seems.

I’ve been writing to Errol Naidoo (president of one of the pressure groups), urging him to take cognizance of the uniform teaching of scripture that Christians are to direct their attention at keeping the life and doctrine of the church pure, and not to appoint ourselves as judges of unbelievers (eg. 1Cor 5). Christ himself was known as the ‘friend of sinners’, and he shockingly reserved his harshest words for the holy, law-abiding Pharisees.

Yet this week, Errol Naidoo has again written to the papers about the Sax Appeal issue, this time accusing the media of a prejudice against Christianity, and favouritism towards homosexuals. He says,

‘Much has been written in the liberal press about the “threat” to freedom of expression by “over-sensitive” Christians…’

In fact, the major article in the ‘liberal press’ in support of freedom of speech and in criticism of over-sensitive Christians was written by me, a conservative, Reformed Evangelical Christian. He goes on to say,

“Significantly, however, homosexuals and all expressions of homosexuality are strictly off limits… When [the liberal media] contend that “religion” does not deserve protection and should be the object of satire and ridicule, what they actually mean is, “We must be allowed to attack Christ and Christianity exclusively, without any limitations, mercy or remorse, because this makes us feel better about ourselves.”

Even if this were true, it still wouldn’t justify the fact that Christians have not imitated Christ in their response to this minor and inconsequential assault, but have ignored the scriptures that they claim to obey.

But beyond this, the media do not attack Christianity exclusively, and nor do they do so without limitations (and, of course, free speech allows us the right to answer any illegitimate attacks). Naidoo seems to forget that the blasphemy was not (as far as I’m aware) printed in the ‘liberal media’ until he quoted it there, and nor would they ever have printed such unfunny, thoughtless material as that. It was printed in a base, low-fi local student rag. How is that a media prejudice?

Secondly, as David Benatar has pointed out, Christianity is by far the majority faith in this country and is therefore rightly subject to the most exposure and the most criticism. The president of a country gets singled out for more abuse than minor opposition party leaders; the tallest grass gets trimmed first. As it turns out, we have not been guarding the purity of our church life and doctrine, and so the volume of criticism that we deserve is more of a concern than the volume that is printed.

But to Naidoo’s great shame, by insisting on ‘protecting’ the name of Christ in a way that scripture has not commanded, he has now once again added to ‘petulance’ the charge of ‘homophobia’ to Christianity. Gone is Christ, ‘the friend of sinners’, who was a known associate of traitors and prostitutes. The Jesus that South Africa needs can’t take a joke and wishes for a bit more public gay-bashing.

We had a gilt-edged opportunity to show the gospel in action…

David Benatar’s anti-natalist monograph Better Never to Have Been left me unconvinced.  The short book presents Mr. Benatar’s simple argument in favor of non-existence, describes how life is more harmful than most people think, and discusses the implications of Mr. Benatar’s view.

The non-existence argument is so simple I can sum it up in several sentences (if I read it correctly).  The absence of suffering is always good even if there is no one to be not suffering.  The absence of pleasure is however merely neutral, neither bad nor good.  Thus not having a child is always good, because no matter how pleasurable a child’s life may be, there will always be some suffering.

If Benatar had convinced me that this asymmetry between pleasure and suffering was real, his conclusions would have been hard to argue with.   Unfortunately, he didn’t explain why the absence of pleasure is only neutral, and not bad.  The closest he comes to defending the asymmetry is to say that if we accept that the absence of pleasure is bad, we must have as many potentially happy children as possible, and regret that there are uninhabited islands on which people could pleasurably live.  It is strange that someone who is advocating the cessation of childbirth and extinction of the human race would be unwilling to accept these much less counter-intuitive conclusions.

Benatar is on stronger footing when he discusses the harmfulness of life.  The discussion is more complicated than the asymmetry argument, but most convincingly Benatar notes that even the people with the most satisfying lives spend much of their time stressed out, tired, uncomfortable, hungry, having to go to the bathroom, etc.  Nearly everyone’s life has some events of profound suffering, such as grieving the loss of loved ones.  Moreover, many people have profoundly unhappy lives (malnutrition, war, etc.).   Even here, though, there is a way around Benatar’s argument.  Certainly some people are more likely than others to have happy children.  People in a country like the Democratic Republic of Congo, for instance, with its extended, brutal, ongoing civil war are likely to have children that profoundly suffer.  But on the other hand, a very rich family in Switzerland might be relatively likely to have happy children.  As long as the Swiss family has a high chance of having a happy child, it doesn’t seem immoral for them to give birth.  This, of course, if we reject the asymmetry argument.

On the whole, the book was provocative and peppered with interesting digressions and a surprising variety of famous peoples’ anti-natalist quotes.  It was worth reading, but in the end left me where I started–on the fence about the kid question.

Manger végé pour sauver la planète
Benoît Lacroix – Agence Science-Presse

«Rien ne bénéficiera autant à la santé humaine et n’augmentera autant les chances de survie de l’humanité sur Terre que l’évolution vers une alimentation végétarienne.» Qui a prononcé ces mots? Nul autre que l’un des plus grands physiciens de la planète: Albert Einstein! Visionnaire, l’éminent scientifique?

Dans un éditorial publié récemment dans l’American Journal of Public Health, David Benatar, chercheur à l’Université de Cape Town, en Afrique du Sud, propose de prescrire le végétarisme, ou du moins de diminuer de façon radicale notre consommation de viande, pour lutter contre la grippe aviaire et les autres zoonoses, des maladies transmissibles de l’animal à l’homme. Par ailleurs, un article récent du journal médical The Lancet vient appuyer le recours à une telle approche préventive, mais pour d’autres raisons. Selon les auteurs de l’étude, l’élevage du bétail contribue fortement aux changements climatiques, en plus de restreindre l’accès à la nourriture dans certains pays pauvres et de causer des problèmes de santé chroniques au sein des pays riches. Ils proposent donc de diminuer la consommation mondiale de viande de 10 % d’ici 2050.

Gilles-Éric Séralini, président du conseil scientifique du Comité de recherche et d’information Indépendantes sur le génie génétique (CRIIGEN) et spécialiste mondial des OGM précise que la diminution de celle-ci (consommation de viande) appelle à une remise en question globale de l’économie mondiale. «Nous savons que l’alimentation carnée est trop importante et qu’elle nuit à notre santé. Nous savons aussi que moins nous mangerons de viande, plus notre agriculture sera durable. Mais pour changer les choses, il faut repenser notre système économique, notre manière de distribuer la richesse et nos modes de production.»

Grippe aviaire, SRAS et maladie de la vache folle sont les plus connues des maladies transmissibles de l’animal à l’homme, remarque David Benatar. Il note aussi que certains chercheurs ont émis l’hypothèse que toutes les infections virales prendraient leur source chez les animaux. C’est d’ailleurs le cas du VIH-SIDA, dont on soupçonne l’origine chez les singes. Dans cette perspective, M. Benatar met en lumière le fait que manger moins de viande constitue une méthode de prévention évidente pour réduire les chances d’épidémies de grippe. À long terme, cela permettrait aussi d’éviter l’apparition de maladies encore inconnues qui naîtraient de l’élevage intensif.

D’ailleurs, en matière de propagation des zoonoses, les modes de production sont de plus en plus montrés du doigt. Le mois dernier, l’Organisation des Nations Unies pour l’alimentation et l’agriculture (FAO) mettait en garde le monde entier face au danger grandissant que représente la transformation de la production animale. Malgré tout, les avis sont partagés quant aux modes de production à privilégier. Élevage industriel s’oppose souvent à élevage traditionnel. Et il est encore difficile de remettre en question l’élevage intensif. «Le monde doit incontestablement faire appel à certaines technologies des systèmes de production vivrière animale intensive. Mais la concentration excessive d’animaux dans de grandes unités de production industrielle est à éviter […]», déclare Joachim Otte, expert en politiques d’élevage à la FAO. De son côté, Danielle Nierenberg, chercheuse pour le Worldwatch Institute, demande à la FAO de concentrer ses efforts de prévention contre la grippe aviaire sur les grands producteurs de volaille, plutôt que de s’en prendre aux petits fermiers des pays en voie de développement.

Les récentes recherches nous apprennent également que l’élevage du bétail produit 18 % de tous les gaz à effet de serre de la planète en plus d’utiliser 37 % des pesticides et 50 % des antibiotiques. Si on ajoute à cela que la diète végétarienne exige près de 15 fois moins d’eau potable que l’alimentation normale, il y a de quoi regarder d’un autre œil notre steak.

Alors, sommes-nous prêts à passer au végétarisme? Richard Giovannini, président de l’Association végétarienne de Montréal, nous rappelle que la liste des bonnes raisons pour devenir végétarien est longue. Il se réfère d’ailleurs à un rapport très complet du Worldwatch Institute, dans lequel sont citées les conséquences d’une diète carnée sur la santé de la planète. En plus des changements climatiques, des zoonoses et des maladies chroniques (maladies cardiovasculaires, obésité, diabète, cancers), on y parle aussi de déboisement, de consommation et de pollution de l’eau, de quantités phénoménales d’excréments et de pertes de biodiversité. Et M. Giovannini se dit heureux de la prise de conscience environnementale actuelle. «Il est maintenant reconnu que la diète végétarienne a un impact majeur pour sauver la planète. Le discours doit maintenant faire son chemin comme ce fut le cas pour les changements climatiques.»

Références utiles:
- http://www.fao.org/newsroom/fr/news/2007/1000660/index.html

- http://www.fao.org/newsroom/fr/news/2006/1000448/index.html

- http://www.delaplanete.org/Rien-de-personnel.html

- http://www.passeportsante.net/fr/Actualites/Nouvelles/Fiche.aspx?doc=2006030608

The following rationalization is not to be taken seriously. It is merely a nonsense thought experiment based on an (IMHO) equally nonsense philosophy.

Gaia hypothesis preaches that the planet Earth is akin to a sngle organism, its living and nonliving parts working in smooth synch to support life overall.

According to some versions of Gaian-ish belief, humanity and our environmental destruction are merely a disease or cancer that is plaguing the planet. The latest threat to be raised by the green-sane crowd is the ‘irrefutable fact’ of global warming.

The best solution for the planetary natural ecosystem (meaning everything except humans, even though we live here too) is for all humans to die off.

This post is my response to such self-destructive philosophy. (Or rather, everyone-else destroying philosophy – the noisiest back-to-primitive-living proponents are invariably the richest, most luxury-loving, last ones who would ever leave their comfortable air-conditioned mega-mansions and do what they preach.)

So here’s the conundrum – Let’ say Gaia taken as a whole is an organism, has a form of sentience, and also control over its natural phenomena such as earthquakes and tsunami. Why would Gaia allow us horrible parasites called humans to infest her surface, instead of utilizing mass extinction to cure herself of the human plague?

Here’s my suggested reason: We ‘horribly destructive’ humans are merely an itchy growth on the skin of Gaia, a tiny niggle. We hardly put a dent into her.

Even if we wipe out 99% of all life with our nukes, Gaia could easily repopulate herself with new life forms in a few million years – a blink of an eye on a geological time-scale. After all, she did it before when the dinosaurs died out.

Ah! There are the two points I want to raise, right there in the preceding paragraph! Human nukes and the dinosaur extinction.

The leading theory as to how and why the noble dinosaurs died out en-masse is the Alvarez hypothesis. Basically, it says that a massive astroid around 10 kilometres in diameter struck the Earth… I mean, Mother Gaia.

This incredible impact released 100 trillion tons of TNT of force, which is about 2 million times greater than the most powerful nuclear bomb ever tested’s mere 50 million tons.

The super-impact released tons of Gaia’s fragile, quivering body into the atmosphere, blocking out sunlight and causing a global winter (heh, 1975 Newsweek magazine). Fireblast, acid rain and total collapse of the food chain are also theorized.

Gaia, obviously badly injured by such a MASSIVE attack, decided that a countermeasure had to be developed. The Moon floating around every now and then simply wouldn’t be good enough precaution against another world-devastating meteorite smash.

A massive volcanic explosion might do the trick. Krakatoa in 1883 managed 200 million tonness of TNT. Earlier supervolcanos had even more force. Surely a massive ejection of Gaia’s boiling blood and flesh would deflect a rogue asteroid away?

But such a huge explosion erupting from her body would also injure Gaia greatly in and of itself. And the short range (on an astronomical scale) of the explosion might not have the reach to sufficiently deflect a mega-rock headed directly at Gaia. All a volcanic explosion would accomplish is expose Gaia’s vulnerable, inviting innards to the astronomical rapist.

A different approach was needed. Thus, Mother Gaia evolved… Us. Humans. Those nasty little tech-monkeys who are going around spoiling Gaia’s environmental beauty with our Deforestation, Super Radiation, Smog, Toxics and Hate (“By your powers combined, I am Captain Pollution!”)

But for all our spoiled brattiness, Mother Gaia is patient with us… Even to the point of tolerating our occasional nuclear-test tantrums. Because she needs our nuclear weapons, with their massive but focused destruction and off-world capable ICBM mountings.
 
After all, what is a few eons of bad acne compared to a fatal orbital bullet through the heart? Gaia intends to keep us around, as evident by her not smiting us into extinction.

Shouldn’t we concur with our wise and revered Mother, and not spite her by voluntarily killing ourselves off in the name of ill-advised ‘environmentalism’?

Or do the enviro-nuts care to admit to blasphemy, heresy and apostasy against the Jungle Temple of High Mother Gaia?

To summarize in a nutshell…

Human-technology including nukes = Good for Gaia’s long term survival.

Daft, hypocritical and genocidal enviromental greensanity = Bad for Gaia’s long term survival.

So there.