Well, There's Your Problem Right There

Today, I saw this bumper sticker on a car:



I'm sure I've seen it a million times before without giving it much thought, but, for whatever reason, this time around it struck me that, despite being an atheist, I can actually endorse one particular interpretation of this Bible verse, which I'm nearly 100% certain Matthew didn't have in mind when authoring it 2000 or so years ago. See, since prayer and worship never seem to prevent tragedies or do anything or anyone any tangible, verifiable good, not even churches or churchgoers, and therefore God, if He exists, is nothing more than a negligent absentee slumlord at best, or a malicious universal tyrant at worst, this is kinda how I see things here.



When it comes to global issues like climate change, which require widespread public acceptance and understanding to gain any meaningful traction, the "all things are possible" bit is precisely the problem. Just ask this guy.



Unfortunately, belief in God, once again, leads to all manner of contradictory outcomes.

• Cornwall Alliance Evangelical Declaration on Global Warming: We believe Earth and its ecosystems—created by God’s intelligent design and infinite power and sustained by His faithful providence—are robust, resilient, self-regulating, and self-correcting, admirably suited for human flourishing, and displaying His glory. Earth’s climate system is no exception. Recent global warming is one of many natural cycles of warming and cooling in geologic history...We believe mandatory reductions in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions, achievable mainly by greatly reduced use of fossil fuels, will greatly increase the price of energy and harm economies.
• Eden Reforestation Project: "In the United States, climate change is controversial, so I want to go on record that Eden Projects is not first and foremost about whether climate change is right or wrong."
• Southern Baptist Evironment & Climate Initiative: We have recently engaged in study, reflection and prayer related to the challenges presented by environmental and climate change issues. These things have not always been treated with pressing concern as major issues. Indeed, some of us have required considerable convincing before becoming persuaded that these are real problems that deserve our attention. But now we have seen and heard enough to be persuaded that these issues are among the current era’s challenges that require a unified moral voice.
• Katharine Hayhoe, climate scientist and co-author of A Climate for Change: Global Warming Facts for Faith-Based Decisions: "When I look at the information we get from the planet I look at it as God's creation speaking to us. And in this case there's no question that God's creation is telling us that it is running a fever."
• Tom Minnery, Sr. Vice President of Public Policy, Focus on the Family: "When we think about science, we think about the truth. Yet, in so-called global warming science, we've gotten a lot less than the truth many times."
• Rick Santorum: "We want to make sure we have a candidate go up against President Obama who...didn't buy the last environmental hoax, man-made global warming...The dangers of carbon dioxide? Tell that to a plant, how dangerous carbon dioxide is."

Faith is, after all, belief without evidence, so, even having never personally encountered religious thinking before, one would safely assume, based on the definition alone, that its application in matters of intellectual investigation will bring about a legion of unreliable, unrelated, unsatisfactory results, as the above list pretty clearly demonstrates. How could an examination which ignores evidence produce anything but helter-skelter diagnoses?

Quite the contrary, with scientific consensus, our most reliable, verification and evidence-intensive means of uncovering truths about the world around us, all things are not possible. In fact, more often than not, there can be only one conclusion drawn, when the majority opinion in any area of research is considered in an honest and open-minded way. This is why climate change deniers are so deserving of the title. They simply deny the mountains of peer-reviewed evidence in the attempt to sway the rest of us over to their dishonest, close-minded side.