In light of a recent study exposing that the belief in the Second Coming is stifling climate change reaction, Rhode Island Senator, Sheldon Whitehouse (D), has distanced himself from some of his fellow senators by asserting that God will not save us from a climate catastrophe.
“I was recently at a Senate meeting where I heard a member of our Senate community say, ‘God won’t allow us to ruin our planet,’ ” Whitehouse began. “Maybe that’s why we do nothing.” The Senator then called this mindset “less an expression of religious thinking than it is of magical thinking.”
Whitehouse delivered a passionate talk about using our intellect and reason to learn about the earth and its “natural laws.” Our intellect tells us that we are polluting the planet, he said.
“The statement that God won’t allow us to ruin our planet sweeps aside ethics, responsibilities, consequences, duties, even awareness. It comforts us with the anodyne assumption that no matter what we do, some undefined presence will, through some undefined measure, make things right. Clean up our mess. That is seeking magical deliverance from our troubles, not divine guidance through our troubles.”
“Is God really here just to tidy up after our sins and follies?” Whitehouse challenged his fellow senators, using passages such as Job 4:8, “Those who plow iniquity and sow trouble, reap the same” to reinforce his point. “We are here to do God’s work. He’s not here to do ours. How arrogant – how very far from humility – would be the self-satisfied, smug assurance that God, a ‘tidy-up-after-us’ God, will come and clean up our mess?” Whitehouse admonished.
Whitehouse was likely directing his speech toward several of his peers, who persist in denying climate change in spite of the fact that the vast majority of scientists agree it is occurring, and is man-made. In addition to the unidentified Senator whose statement inspired Whitehouse’s heartfelt address, Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS) recently spoke about the severity of weather events in the United States over the last few years, yet did not link the extreme occurrences to any man-made cause.
Rather, Roberts, who previously called “a lot” of the scientific evidence behind climate change “condescending elitism,” seemed to simply blame Mother Nature. “I don’t know what we’ve done to Mother Nature, but she sure hasn’t been very kind to us,” he said. And he’s certainly not alone.
Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) said last month, during an Environment and Public Works Committee meeting that he believes MoveOn.org, Michael Moore, and George Soros aided Al Gore and the United Nations in creating one of the greatest hoaxes in American history: climate change.
Perhaps Whitehouse should next deliver his speech to the House, where “There seems to be a conspiracy of silence… about the dangers of climate change,” according to Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA). The belief that climate change is a hoax, and that polluting the planet is unimportant because only God decides when the earth will end has been touted by science-denying Representatives like John Shimkus (R-IL) and Paul Broun (R-GA), a high-ranking member of the House Science Committee, who last fall said that everything we are taught about evolution and the big bang theory are “lies straight from the pit of Hell.”
Alisha Mims is a writer and researcher for Ring of Fire.
