You've won a all expense paid vacation to Papua, New Guinea!
Posted on 11/06/2008 3:18:33 PM PST by Soliton
In memory of Michael Crichton, who died Tuesday, let us consider a question that preocuppied him: How do we separate science from religion in environmentalism? As a spinner of sci-fi horror stories himself, he had a finely honed skepticism for the apocalyptic scenarios presented by environmentalists. In a speech in 2003, he argued that environmentalism was a modern remapping of Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths:
There’s an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature, there’s a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a result of our actions there is a judgment day coming for us all. We are all energy sinners, doomed to die, unless we seek salvation, which is now called sustainability. Sustainability is salvation in the church of the environment. Just as organic food is its communion, that pesticide-free wafer that the right people with the right beliefs, imbibe.
Whatever solace these beliefs might offer the faithful, he argued, they were unrealistic for most people — especially for people in poor countries suffering from the ravages of nature — and didn’t do much good for the environment, either:
Religions think they know it all, but the unhappy truth of the environment is that we are dealing with incredibly complex, evolving systems, and we usually are not certain how best to proceed. Those who are certain are demonstrating their personality type, or their belief system, not the state of their knowledge. Our record in the past, for example managing national parks, is humiliating. Our fifty-year effort at forest-fire suppression is a well-intentioned disaster from which our forests will never recover.
(Excerpt) Read more at tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com ...
I didn’t know he had passed. I became a big fan when I read his essays/speeches on the decline of scientific rigor as exhibited in global warming propaganda.
Yup, he's gone. He was a very smart guy.
Crap. I didn’t even know he was sick...completely ignored by the MSM apparently.
Leave it to the NY Slimes to attack the brilliant Michael Crichton immediately after his death. They have no shame whatsoever.
Apparently he didn’t make any announcements about it. They kept it mostly to his family. So sad; I enjoyed his writing.
He will be missed. Andromeda strain just fell off my bookshelf not more than an hour ago.
I would LOVE to see a movie made from his book, “State of Fear”!
Michael Moore
What did I win?
*snort* I imagined Ted Danson in that part. He was the one who came to mind, as soon as that character appeared in the book.
No, be nice to poor ted. We can’t off danson until after he sees the oceans die like he predicted 10 years ago. It might take awhile, since global warming is in a slump at the present.
Buy an SUV for ted.
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