Apostle Paul's Missionary Journey
The great Hellenist the Apostle Paul

Killing Children - Nature has Rights

by Lewis Loflin


When a Christian fundamentalist denies their children modern medicine and medical treatment and instead relies on faith, they can and should face legal action.

One example is Herbert and Catherine Schaible of Philadelphia, who allowed two children to die relying on prayer instead of science.

They faced criminal charges and were already on probation for the death of their first child. Ref www.wptv.com 4-23-2013.

Let's take this a little further. What if we had a religious group that prevented Herbert and Catherine from getting the medicine needed to save their children? Should religious-spiritual beliefs of third parties override child welfare?

What would we do if those two children went blind or died because third-party religious zealots knowingly blocked medical treatment?

Should they also face murder charges? If committed millions of children would that not be a crime against humanity?

Can we claim those that believe Nature and the environment come before the welfare of individual children be accused of murder when it results in death?

Now we come to the thorny problem is environmentalism a religion? When I classified it as such, a visitor posed this question, and I agree the position needs a closer look.

The Schaible family has a "religion" in the traditional sense of the word. The term "religion" has been redefined today in a negative light.

Environmentalism today is a spiritual movement with the psychological pattern of religion. Disregarding those that have hijacked it simply for wealth or political gain and those I call passive (see Separation of Pseudo-Religion and State)

I'll focus on Greenpeace both an organized pseudo-religious cult with very dogmatic and often anti-science views bordering on religious fanaticism.

Golden Rice

WHO estimates 250 million preschool children are vitamin A deficient, and an estimated 250,000 to 500,000 vitamin A-deficient children become blind every year, half dying within 12 months of losing sight.

Nowhere is this disaster worse than in the Philippines, where 1.7 million children under five suffer from VAD: as many as half may go blind and die.

Yet some claim this tragedy could have been averted 20 years ago with as little as a cup a day of Golden Rice.

Golden Rice is a genetically engineered rice (GMO) that has genes that turn on the plant's ability to produce beta-carotene, which humans can convert into vitamin A.

While science and technology can provide real solutions and save the lives of innocent children, caution is reasonable - while presently proven safe, GMOs could have unintended results elsewhere.

In this case, Golden rice isn't a magic bullet to solve hunger by itself. Rice alone in any form won't do that. What these children need is protein, fats, etc.

Organic farming and even traditional scientific mechanized farming won't solve all this. Bio-engineering holds excellent promise, but like in the past, while science looked sound, other problems could literally "crop up" later.

The "Green Revolution" or corporate agriculture we have in America is vulnerable to supply chain disruptions, and the costs are unaffordable in developing countries.

Now we come to Greenpeace, a fanatical pseudo-religious political cult. They seem to hate all technology, but I can't tell if that rejection is hatred of capitalism or their anti-human stances - Nature before humans.

They place "Nature," whom they seem to think has "rights" within itself, over human beings. Dogma and irrationalism are their driving force, as is Marxist economics. They are anti-science when they see it as benefiting corporate interests.

Greenpeace was sometimes different from this. Founder Patrick Moore found that six years after its founding, the Board has nobody with a scientific background other than himself. Most were political activists with purely political and social agendas.

Greenpeace went on to demand supporting a ban again the use of chlorine in drinking water in complete odds with scientific data. For 20 years, they fought the use of chlorine and thankfully lost. As Mr. Moore noted,

"My former colleagues ignored science and supported the ban..Opposition to the use of chemicals such as chlorine is part of a broader hostility to the use of industrial chemicals."

Ref. Why I Left Greenpeace Wall Street Journal April 22, 2008. Link

Jamie Purfeerst a writer in http://beefmagazine.com Nov. 19, 2013 quotes Mr. Moore as saying:

"There is no getting away from the fact that 7 billion people wake up every morning on this planet with real needs for food, energy and materials. I found that my Greenpeace, which had begun as a humanitarian organization trying to prevent all-out nuclear war, had drifted into a position where we described humans as the enemy of the earth..."

Industrial chemicals or anything not "natural" is seen as defiling Gaia. Humans, as defilers of Gaia, will find Gaia comes first.

In my local community, environmentalists oppose everything from hydraulic fracturing for natural gas that's reducing the use of far dirtier coal.

They tried to stop the construction of a truck stop (they lost), demanding a "sustainable" economy. But their vision is "sustainable," according to one of them, was based on communist Cuba.

Yet these mostly migrants and retirees to the Bristol, Virginia area are as indifferent to our local poverty and need for jobs as Greenpeace is to the plight of starving children.

Objective science is also under attack. To quote Richard Lindzen, professor of Atmospheric Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology:

"Scientists who dissent from the (ecological) alarmism have seen their funds disappear, their work derided, and themselves labeled as industry stooges. Consequently, lies about climate change gain credence even when they fly in the face of the science."

Biodiversity and sustainability have become a fundamentalist pseudo-religious dogma for these fanatics. Some have even called for criminal prosecution of those violating the "rights" of Nature.

Oh come on, Lewis, they say, that's nonsense. It's called the "Rights of Nature" In his dissenting opinion in the landmark environmental law case, Sierra Club v. Morton, 405 U.S. 727 (1972), Justice William O. Douglas argued that "inanimate objects" should have the standing to sue in court!

The 2008 Constitution of Ecuador (a country run by Green Marxists) codified the "Rights of Nature" in Articles 10 and 71-74 and recognizes "the inalienable rights of ecosystems to exist and flourish, gives people the authority to petition on behalf of ecosystems, and requires the government to remedy violations of these rights."

In 2012 in New Zealand a river was legally declared a person! this link from www.ssrn.com decries "Global Health Law Embracing Ecosystems as Patients" is one example how Nature has been elevated to the status of a living being. That's religious lunacy.

But what about the status of human beings? Now that Nature has a defacto divine status and a being with rights, children can be expendable and perhaps letting them live would further violate the rights of Gaia to "a balanced ecology".

Oh come on, Lewis, that's nonsense; you're making it up.

In a news report on August 9, 2013, BBC reporter Matt McGrath reports on the destruction of test plots in the Philippines.

20 years of militant resistance by Greenpeace and their assorted Green allies has led to the deaths of millions of poor Filipino children.

Their reasoning is bazaar. In working to block genetically modified eggplants that resist insects and reduce the necessity of using pesticides, they claimed: "that the crop violated the constitutional rights of Filipinos to health and a balanced ecology."

Right to a balanced ecology? Their total view is Nature trumps human welfare - Nature is, after all, divine, and humans are simply another organism or parasite.

The Greenpeace website is heavy on political rhetoric but completely lacking in any form of scientific proof.

They admit that Golden Rice has been in development for over 20 years and further admit there's no evidence of any adverse harmful effects.

It's "could" this or "maybe" that and on and on. Their wording reveals a pseudo-religious ideology.

"It is irresponsible to impose GE 'Golden' rice on people if it goes against their religious beliefs, cultural heritage and sense of identity, or simply because they do not want it."

What utter rubbish! Letting children die of blindness and starvation because it might go against somebody's religious beliefs?

No, it's the pseudo-religious beliefs of white Greenpeace members living in affluent nations, not that of hungry brown people they don't give a damn about anyway.

Nearly all of their solutions in all of their rhetoric cover up their basic contempt for technology (often seen as tools of capitalism) and demands that "the earth comes first," to quote a local environmentalist in my community.

None other than Yale University is now offering a joint degree in religion and ecology. To quote:

"Yale Divinity School offer a joint Masters degree program in Religion and Ecology. It is aimed at students who wish to integrate the study of environmental issues and religious communities in their professional careers and for those who wish to study the cultural and ethical dimensions of environmental problems. The joint degree is strongly supported by co-appointed faculty and by the Forum on Religion and Ecology at Yale (www.yale.edu/religionandecology)."

And it's not only Yale that is in on this trend of Green religion. The California Institute of Integral Studies offers a similar program Ecology, Spirituality, and Religion:

"We live in the midst of one of the greatest transitions in Earth's history. Humanity, having become a planetary force, is now shaping both its own future and the long-term future of millions of species of life. This decisive process occupies the most creative personalities of our time.

One of the most significant recent developments is the engagement of our spiritual traditions in this transformation of consciousness and society. When the moral force of the world's religions combines with the depth understanding of ecology, humanity will find itself in the very center of that profoundly mysterious process by which the Earth Community is revitalizing itself."

This is the thinking and religious nonsense that permeates Greepeace and fellow Green fanatics.

This is the real motivation behind the hysteria of climate change and every other eco-apocalypse these fools have preached over the past 50 years.

You will notice nearly all of their rhetoric they tout humanity but never the individual. Nowhere do they really employ empirical proof or the scientific method, but prefer to fall back on feelings and fear.

In total we must resist this entire pseudo-religious fundamentalist agenda.

We must reject any notion of pantheism or that nature is somehow divine. While science needs to be used with caution that doesn't include the kind if nonsense Greenpeace preaches.

Ref. 'Golden rice' GM trial vandalized in the Philippines By Matt McGrath Environment correspondent, BBC News 9 August 2013

I live in Washington County, Virginia just outside Bristol. We may not have jobs but lots of great natural beauty. There is a difference between conservationism and environmentalism. See Common Sense Environmentalism in Southwest Virginia.


 




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