Global Warming Fraud and the Future of Science

American Thinker ^ | November 29, 2009 | J.R. Dunn

[neverdem]

The East Anglia Climate Research Unit (CRU) revelations come as no real surprise to anyone who has closely followed the global-warming saga. The Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) thesis, to give it its semi-official name, is no stranger to fraud. It would be no real exaggeration to state that it was fertilized with fraud, marinated in fraud, stewed in fraud, and at last served up to the world as prime grade-A fraud with nice side orders of fakery and disingenuousness. Damning as they may be, the CRU e-mails are merely the climactic element in an exhaustively long line.

A short tour of previous AGW highlights would include:

The Y2K Glitch.  This episode involved the NASA/GISS team led by James Hansen, possibly the most fanatical and unrelenting of all warmists, a man who makes Al Gore look like a skeptic. (Among other things, Hansen has demanded that warming "deniers" be tried for "crimes against humanity".)  While examining a series of NASA temperature graphs, Canadian statistician Steve McIntyre, himself not so much a skeptic as an anti-warming Van Helsing, uncovered a discontinuity occurring in January 2000 that raised temperatures gathered over widespread areas by 1-2 degrees Fahrenheit. McIntyre had no easy time of it, since Hansen refused to reveal what algorithm he'd used to process the data, forcing McIntyre to perform some very abstruse calculations to figure it out.

Once notified, Hansen's team promised to correct the error, stating that it was an "oversight". When the corrected figures were at last released, they rocked the church of warming from bingo hall to steeple. Vanished was the claim that the past few years were "the warmest on record". Now 1934 now took precedence. A full half of the top ten warmest years occurred before WW II, well prior to any massive CO2 buildup.

No explanation has ever been offered. We have a Y2K glitch that behaves like no other computer glitch ever encountered, uniformly affecting a large number of sources distributed almost nationwide. Although the incident trashed all recent data and raised uncomfortable questions about the warming thesis as a whole, NASA itself made no effort at an investigation or inquiry. All that we're ever going to hear is "oversight". I guess that's how they do things at NASA/GISS.

The Arctic Ice Melt. We've been informed for the better part of a decade that Arctic ice was melting at an unprecedented rate, and that the North Pole would be ice-free in twenty, thirty, or forty years, depending in the hysteria level of the media platform in question. In truth, ice thinning was due to a cyclical weather pattern in which winds blow ice floes south into warmer water. Everybody involved knew that this cycle occurred, everyone had seen it happen previously time out of mind. But it was too good an opportunity to pass up. Worse yet, when the weather returned to its normal pattern two years ago, large numbers of scientists put in considerable effort to suggest that the "new" ice was thinner than usual and would vanish in a flash as soon as the temperatures went back up. The media went along with the joke. The Germans have a phrase to cover such eventualities: this crew should be stripped of their trade. (Several expeditions setting out for the Pole to "call attention" to the coming Arctic catastrophe had to stop short due to icy conditions. In one case, both women involved suffered serious frostbite.)   

The Poor Polar Bears. Closely related is the saga of the polar bears, staring extinction in the face due to warming while, somewhere beyond the aurora, Gaia weeps bitter tears. This was evidently inspired by a single photograph (you've seen it -- the entire world has at this point) of a woebegone polar bear crouched on a melting iceberg. That bear had to be sulking over allowing a nice juicy seal to escape, because it was in no danger. Out of the twenty major polar bear populations only two are known to be decreasing. Estimates of bear population (there are no exact figures) have increased over the past forty years, from 17,000 to19,000 to the current number of 22,000 to 27,000. The bears are becoming pests in municipalities such as Churchill and Point Barrow. (As clearly shown here.)  Despite all this, last year the bear was put on the U.S. "endangered" list.

The Hockey Stick That Wasn't. The "hockey stick" is a nickname for a chart prepared by Michael Mann, a University of Pennsylvania professor and leading warmist. The chart purports to show temperature levels for the past millennium, and consists of a straight line until it reaches the late 20^th century, when it suddenly shoots upward, creating the "hockey stick" profile. This chart was a major feature of International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports on global warming and is a commonly-used media graphic.

This chart creates immediate doubt in anyone knowledgeable about the climate of the past millennium, which more resembles a roller coaster than a straight line. It developed -- in yet another impressive McIntyre takedown, this time with an assist from Ross McKitrick -- that Mann was utilizing an algorithm that would produce hockey sticks if you fed it telephone numbers. (Mann is the "Mike" mentioned in the CRU e-mails, and this is one of his "tricks".) Despite this disclosure, Mann has never withdrawn the chart, offered an explanation, or made a correction. The chart remains an accepted piece of evidence among warmists.

Tree-Ring Circus. Due to the fact that direct temperature measures for past epochs are lacking, climatologists utilize "proxy measures", such as tree rings, glacial moraines, and lake sediments. Tree rings have played an important part in the warming controversy, as evidence backing the claim that temperatures have been consistently lower worldwide until recently. A crucial series of measurements, utilized by Mann among others, involves trees located on the Yamal peninsula in Siberia. How many trees were measured, you ask? A hundred? A thousand? Ten thousand?

The answer is twelve. A number perfectly adequate to trigger international panic, overthrow the capitalist system, establish a Green totalitarianism, and completely turn Western culture on its head.

But it turns out that further measurements were in fact made in the area, involving at least thirty-four other trees. And when this data is added to the original twelve, then the warming evidence disappears into the same branch of the Twilight Zone as the blade of Mann's hockey stick. Another "oversight", you understand.

We could go on to mention the automated U.S. weather stations chronicled by the tireless Anthony Watts, which were conscientiously placed next to air-con vents, atop sewage plants, in parking lots, and in one case, in a swamp (as many as 90% may be giving spurious high readings). The glaciers that are vanishing worldwide except where they aren't. The endless papers demonstrating that the coral reefs, along with various birds, animals, insects, and plants, are facing extinction even though no warming whatsoever has occurred for twelve years. (And in the thirty years before that, the total rise was 1.25 degrees Fahrenheit, easily within normal variation.) Powerful stuff, this warming -- it maims and destroys even when it's not happening.  

It's within this context that the East Anglia e-mails must be judged. The vanishingly small number of  legacy media writers who are paying attention behave as if the messages comprise some kind of puzzling anomaly, with no relation to anything that came before. In truth, they stand as the internal memos from the East Anglia branch of the Nigerian National Bank, which can save us from the horrors of global warming after payment of a small up-front fee.

There is always a deeper level to the damage caused by fraud. It strains social relationships, generates cynicism, and debases standing institutions. What has suffered the most damage from AGW is faith in the scientific method, the basic set of procedures -- it could be called an algorithm -- governing scientific investigation. These procedures embody simplicity itself: you examine a phenomenon. You gather data. You construct a hypothesis to explain that phenomenon. And then...

Well, first, let's cover what you don't do.

• You don't manipulate data. (As CRU chief scientist Phil Jones stated he was doing in the now-famous "Mike's trick" e-mail, not to mention throughout the now-famous source code.)

• You don't fabricate data. (As one CRU scientist did while compiling weather-station data. Running into problems, he states, "I can make it up. So I did." He adds an evil smiley face. This e-mail has gone under radar up until now. It can be found in the comments on James Delingpole's blog.

• You don't deny data to other investigators. (As Hansen, Jones, and, it appears, everybody else in the warming community has done at one time or another.)

• You don't destroy evidence. (As the members of the CRU did following a Freedom of Information request.)

• You don't bury contradictory data. (As Jones and several colleagues did in an attempt to undercut the impact of the Medieval Warming Period.)

• You don't secretly manipulate the argument from behind the scenes. (As the CRU staff did with the website Realclimate.org., screening comments to allow only those that supported the warming thesis.)

• You don't secretly undercut your critics. (As Mann advised the CRU to do concerning the scientific journal, Climate Researh: "I think we have to stop considering ‘Climate Research' as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal.")

• You don't try to get a journal editor critical of your case fired. (As the CRU staff evidently succeeded in doing with an editor for Geophysical Research Letters.)

What you do, if you are a serious scientist operating according to the established method, is attempt to falsify your hypothesis. Test it to destruction; carry out serious attacks on its weakest points to see if they hold up. If they do -- and the vast majority of hypotheses suffer the indignity embodied in a phrase attributed variously to Thomas Huxley and Lord Kelvin: "a beautiful theory slain by an ugly fact" -- then you have a theory that can be published, and tested, and verified by other scientists. If you don't, you throw it out.

None of this, amidst all the chicanery, fabrications, and manipulations, appears to have been done by anyone active in global warming research, the CRU least of all. From which point we are forced to conclude that AGW is not science, and that any "consensus" that can drawn from it is a consensus of fraud. 

(The late-breaking revelations of temperature manipulations at New Zealand's NiWA institute   -- another one of Mike's tricks? -- merely underlines the lesson of CRU. Now that the dam has busted, we'll be hearing dozens of stories like this over the weeks and months to come.)

The West is a technological society. Science is as responsible for making us what we have become as any other factor, including the democratic system of government. The two are in fact complementary, each supporting and encouraging the other across the decades since this country was established. (And yes, I am aware that Britain and Germany were both centers of scientific progress, both of them nations liberalized by the example of the United States. Even the utterly authoritarian Bismarck was forced to heed the voice of the people despite his inclination to do anything but.)

The technology developed from scientific research has created a world that would be unrecognizable to our forebears of even a century ago. Technology has transformed diet, health, communications, and transportation. It has doubled lifespans in advanced countries. Prior to the modern epoch, few ever caught a glimpse of the world past their own farming fields. India, China, and Africa were wild myths, the Pacific and Antarctica utterly unknown, the planets and stars merely pretty lights in the sky. Technology opened the world, not just for everyday men and women, but for invalids, the disabled, and the subnormal, who once lived lives of almost incomprehensible deprivation. Technology was a crucial factor in the dissolution of the ancient empires, the humbling of the aristocracies.

As Paul Johnson has pointed out, a technological breakout appeared imminent at a number of points in the past millennium. Consider the anonymous Hussite engineer of the 15^th century who left a notebook even more breathtaking than that of Leonardo, or the revolutionary English Levelers of the 17^th century who dreamed of flying machines and factories. If a breakout had occurred at those times, the consequences would have been unimaginable. But the Hussites were destroyed by the German princes, the Levelers by the reestablishment of the English crown. It required the birth of a true democratic republic in the late 18^th century to provide the setting for a serious scientific-technical takeoff, one that after 200 years has brought us to where we stand today, gazing out at the galaxies beyond the galaxies with the secret of life itself within reach.

It is this, and no less, that scientific fraud threatens. This is no trivial matter; it involves one of the basic elements of modern Western life. When scientific figures lie, they lie to all of us. If they foment serious distrust of the scientific endeavor -- as they are doing -- they are creating a schism in the heart of our culture, a wound that in the long run could prove even more deadly than the Jihadi terrorists.

Such failings are not relegated only to climatology. With the apparent success of the climate hustlers, it has infected all areas of research. Over the past decade, stem-cell studies have proven a hotbed of fraud. Recall Dr. Hwang Woo Suk, the South Korean biologist who claimed to have cloned various higher animals and isolated new stem cell lines, to worldwide applause. Suk was discovered to have faked all his research, prompting the South Korean government to ban him from taking part in any further work. Nor was he alone. Researchers throughout the field have been caught fabricating and manipulating data, and at least one large biotech company has developed the habit of announcing grand breakthroughs to goose its stock prices.

A number of factors are responsible, among them the grant-making process, which rewards extravagant claims and demands matching results, and the superstar factor, in which media adulation creates a sense of intellectual arrogance -- as in the case of Dr. Suk -- unmatched since Galileo's heyday. But the major problem lies in politics, specifically as involves ideology.

In both major recent cases of fraud, science had become entwined and infected with ideology to a point where its very nature had been transformed. It was no longer science in the classic mold, boldly asking basic questions without fear or favor. It had become an ideological tool, carrying out only such research as met with the approval of political elites. Stem-cell research had become enmeshed with the abortion question. Embryonic stem cells, obtained by "processing" aborted babies, received the lion's share of funding and attention despite its showing no potential whatsoever. Adult stem cells, obtainable from bone marrow, skin cells, or virtually any other part of the body, were shunted aside despite extraordinarily promising research results. This bias permeated the entire field and distorted all perceptions of it -- one of the reasons Dr. Suk was so wildly overpraised was his willingness to attack Pres. George W. Bush for limiting embryonic stem-cell exploitation.

The climatology story is little different. Environmentalist Greens needed a threat, one that menaced not only technological civilization but life on earth itself. They had promoted an endless parade of such threats since the 1960s -- overpopulation, pollution, runaway nuclear power, and global cooling -- only to see them shrivel like popped balloons. They required a menace that was overwhelming, long-term, and not easily disproven. With warming, the climatologists gave them one. In exchange for sky-high funding, millennial scientists, the heirs of Bacon, Copernicus, and Einstein, men who bled and suffered for the sake of their work, continually inflated the nature and extent of the CO2 threat, using, as we now know, the sleaziest methods available. The result has been complete intellectual degradation. 

Scientists were once among the most trusted figures in Western public life, similar to bankers, priests, and doctors, but in a real sense standing above them all. Scientists were honored as truth-tellers, aware that their reputation for veracity and seriousness was their only real asset. And while exceptions existed (read the story of Blondlot and his N-rays,   for one example), the public took them at their own valuation.

That is ended, one with the scholastic monasteries and the academy at Athens. Scientists today are well on their way to becoming an amalgam of the cheap politician and the three-card monte dealer. They are viewed by the less educated as a privileged class making alarming and impudent claims for their own benefit. The better informed find ourselves in the uncomfortable position of being unable to defend something we once admired.

The next set of questions in physics cannot be answered without equipment costing billions at the very least, and possibly much more. Will a disbelieving public pay for that? We are facing serious dilemmas concerning breakthroughs in biology, not only in stem-cell technology but also in neurology and synthetic biology, breakthroughs that threaten to distort the very nature of humanity itself. Should we leave the solutions up to people who want us to pick a card, any card?

The collaboration between science and democracy is one of the great achievements of human history. It is now threatened by the behavior of people at the very heart of that collaboration. If it is destroyed, something of unparalleled value will have vanished, something that will be nearly impossible to replace. If the Western world wishes to continue its magnificent upward journey, we will have to save science from itself. An errant and corrupt climatology is the place to start.

[betty boop]

Our Republic’s founders warned that only a well-informed, virtuous people—people characterized by impulse control-— can be a free people.

So very true, spirited irish! The Republic's Founders were very well aware of the "downside" of human nature. As you note, only "impulse control" can keep a person and a society in good order. I do believe the Framers would have agreed with you about this.

The problem is, without a moral center, there is no source for "impulse control." What society has evidently lost, in the post-modern period, is any idea of a moral center. Previously, the moral center was derived from the laws of God, or Natural Law (if one is not a theist). Our materialist, empiricist culture has failed to produce any rationale for a new moral center that can serve a good and just society. With God "gone," and Natural Law disparaged, no substitute has yet been found; and I strongly doubt one is being sought.

What we are left with is what I'd call the Naked Individual. He stands alone, with no helps beyond his own (puny!) powers. Thus we proceed to the laws of the jungle, a sort of "every man for himself" mentality. The implication being: What is good for me personally is "moral."

But you cannot build a peaceful, prosperous, just and good society on a "moral code" or "moral foundation" like that. IMHO FWIW.

Go figure.

Thank you so very much for your excellent, perceptive essay/post, dear spirited irish!

[betty boop]

My point: the human footprint isn’t as large as some would have you think.

I so agree!

You know what is really ironic here, xzins? Man Writ Large is "guilty" (according to them) of being the source of the "global warming problem." Which anybody with even general knowledge of the long-term cyclical weather warming/cooling patterns over the course of the Earth's history — some warming cycles occurring before the arrival of man — would know simply isn't true.

But all the "expert" solutions to this problem involve writing Man Very Small indeed (i.e., stripping him of his natural liberties)....

That's why it's perhaps not so very strange that these scurrilous AGW boosters were caught red-handed slaving over the design of algorithms to feed their models that would not only obscure the Medieval Warming Period, but would produce "evidence" of the kinds of gradual, inexorable overall warming trend, spiking in the "hockey stick" of suddenly rapid acceleration in the most recent period, that they wanted to see — all due, they say, to human activities.

Question: What was the massive (human-caused) hydrocarbon threat that brought on the rather long-lived warming in the Mediaeval Period? In this period, Greenland was an agricultural paradise, sustaining both crop production and animal husbandry.

Then it got cold again. Human-caused CO₂ emissions had nothing to do with either.

Thank you so much, dear brother in Christ, for your most astute observations!

[CottShop]

[[The problem is, without a moral center, there is no source for “impulse control.” What society has evidently lost, in the post-modern period, is any idea of a moral center.]]

Exactly- objective universal morals have given way to lust, $$, power, and pride appeasing subjective ‘morals’

[[With God “gone,” and Natural Law disparaged, no substitute has yet been found; and I strongly doubt one is being sought.]]

Subjective morals are always inferior to objective morals- always. Any subjective laws or morals that come close to being fair and balanced are simply objective morals which have been watered down

[[What we are left with is what I’d call the Naked Individual. He stands alone, with no helps beyond his own (puny!) powers.]]

Yep- but pride prevents him from admitting that he’s puny an inferior, and he’ll never admit his subjective morality is inferior to God’s universal objective morality because he’s blinded by his own pride, the only thing that can reveal the inferiority of his subjectivem orality, is the Holy spirit removing hte scales from his eyes

Good post- We’re seeing hte corruption of the subjective morality play out perfectly in this global warmign scandal which pretends to be about ‘the little poor nations’ who ‘need our help’ but when the scam is revealed, it shows how ugly, how self-centered, and how corrupt this ‘morality’ really is, and hte left, the subjective ‘moralists’ are furious that their scam and lies have been exposed- let’s just hope objective morality and truth take hteir rightful place once more

[betty boop]

Thanks, now my tongue is bleeding.

Please forgive me, dear brother in Christ: I had no idea how much you'd suffered over this problem already! It's especially disheartening to see a lie seemingly thrive due to propagandistic "boosting."

You wrote: "I wasn’t aware of that [i.e., the number of Senators it takes to ratify a treaty] — thought it was only 60?"

Article II, Section 2: "...[POTUS] shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two-thirds of the Senators present concur...."

Occasionally, the Constitution requires "supermajorities" for certain extremely vital constitutional purposes. This is one of them: if 100 Senators are "present" for the vote, then it would take 67 "Yeas" before any treaty could be ratified.

Another interesting supermajority requirement shows up in Article V, the constitutional Amendment process. It takes two-thirds of both houses of Congress to propose an amendment; either that or it may proceed on the "Application of the Legislatures of two-thirds of the several States" calling for a Constitutional Convention, before the amendment process can commence. Then it takes another supermajority to pass it: three-quarters of the States must say "Yea" to ratify an amendment to the Constitution.

Evidently the Framers wanted to make the Amendment process as difficult as possible! They weren't big on lots of light, nickel-and-dime revisions to what they had wrought. Yet they provided the amendment process as the only bona-fide way to change the Constitution, for they realized that "times change."

Thank you every so much for writing, dear CottShop!

[betty boop]

Subjective morals are always inferior to objective morals — always. Any subjective laws or morals that come close to being fair and balanced are simply objective morals which have been watered down.

Totally agreed. What passes for current morality is a decaying relic of the past, an inheritance from our forefathers who, unlike most people today, vividly experienced the moral law as a creation of God, just as He created the natural law.

With God "gone" out of the contemporary picture, the opportunities for experiences of divine Truth become increasingly rare. We remember the words, but we no longer feel what lies behind them. Active reciprocal love is gone out of them. And so if the words constrain us overmuch, we simply ignore them. We become our own "moral center" — thus the increasing subjectivity of "morality" nowadays.

But human history tells us that societies only last and flourish where there is a shared moral consensus, that is, a commonly agreed-on objective morality that binds the entire community together.

Now as an objective morality, I recognize that what the authors of the DoI wrote was the culmination of the classical/Christian historical moral development over two millennia of human experience. It stresses life, liberty, individual responsibility and accountability, self-reliance, and the sacred dignity of the individual human person.

However, the "Modernist project" does not seem to value such things. In our age of "group think," all such are under relentless attack.... The human individual continues to shrink away into virtual nothingness, while the putative "plight" of groups is shouted from the rooftops.

But notice this: There is nothing in the federal Constitution that takes any cognizance of "groups." Justice is always premised on the individual....

In this, the Framers were very prescient, wise men: For the group, not the individual, is the natural unit for party organizational purposes; and the Framers found the idea of "political parties" and "party politics" extremely distasteful, as fomenting passions rather than encouraging deliberation according to reason.

The present moral/cultural meltdown cannot continue much longer without devastating effects (IMHO FWIW). Truth cannot be denied and will always assert itself in the long run — Even if there are human beings who think God and His Truth are non-existent; or find God's Truth "wrong" or inconvenient. In whichever case, the "old morality" needs to be "improved upon" by human efforts to make it other and "better" than it is.

Perhaps it will take a truly horrific catastrophe before human beings wake up to such facts. And I do call them "facts!"

Thank you so much for your excellent essay/post, dear brother in Christ!

[CottShop]

[[self-reliance, and the sacred dignity of the individual human person.]]

Yup- that’s what’s sorely missing htese days- our government feels they are to be relied on, and are imposing subjective ‘morality’ to ensure we becoem dependent upon our government instead of ourselves, which is a real shame because it does away with a sense of accomplishment which is a major dirving source which compels us be the best we can be. Instead, what we have today, are peopel liek the woman who was interviewed and aksed why she voted for Obam, and she replied something like ‘Cuz now we are gonna get us some ‘Obama money’, and when asked where the ‘Obama money’ was suppsoed to come from, she had no answer, just that she felt she was entitled to profit from wealth redistribution, and that was good enough for her. ‘Obama money’ indeed!

[[The present moral/cultural meltdown cannot continue much longer without devastating effects (IMHO FWIW).]]

Agreed- the wealth redistribution has been proposed for a very long time now, since Lincoln’s days infact, when it was tried, but failed. Democrats have tried ever since to manipulate the country to becoem welfare dependents, and as such, We’ve seen a steady and constant degredation of our country to hte point where I beleive that God has removed His blessings from this country, and we’re seeign hte results, and it aint pretty, yet the far left still feels that their subjective ‘morality’ is superior to God’s and won’t go down without a fierce fight.

[[Even if there are human beings who think God and His Truth are non-existent; or find God’s Truth “wrong” or inconvenient.]]

They know i ntheir hearts that His morality isn’t wrong, but you nailed it by stating they feel it’s inconvenient, and impedes o ntheir lust for sin, power and corruption

[[In whichever case, the “old morality” needs to be “improved upon” by human efforts to make it other and “better” than it is.]]

Yup- and we’ve seen the disasterous results of subjective morality ‘improving’ on objective universal morality- it has NEVER worked, and never will- but again, the far left socialists are bound and determined to do away with anythign which sears their conscience

[[Perhaps it will take a truly horrific catastrophe before human beings wake up to such facts. And I do call them “facts!” ]]

Oh I hope not- We’re already sufferign from God turnign His face from this nation- We were ocne them ost repescted nation on earth (Note- I’m not saying we were liked- this is a much different issue than being respected), and it’s clear that Obama values being liked more than he values being respected, and his policies are goign to just turn God’s face fro mthis nation even further- Where God effectively hands the socialists over to their own evil desires. Nations used to look to us for help and guidance precisely because we would NOT compromise on moral values (for htem ost part- yes, there have always been corrupt politicians, but we’ve had great presidents who have udnerstood that this coutnry NEEDS God’s blessings in order to remain great) but unfortunately, our current president just doesn’t get it, or just doesn’t care (I thin kthe latter), and a great many socialists in power are too consumed by the lure of power $$ and shallow ‘pats on the back’ by those who are out to destroy us

[betty boop]

We’re already suffering from God turning His face from this nation....

It certainly seems that way, CottShop. Then again, why shouldn't He turn His face away from the hard of heart, those who have chosen to close off their souls to Him?

Pray, dear brother in Christ, pray — and keep on praying!

Thank you for your beautiful essay/post!

[CottShop]

[[Then again, why shouldn’t He turn His face away from the hard of heart, those who have chosen to close off their souls to Him?]]

He should- most definately however, I just hope, liek Israel, that there is a faithful remnant which God will save through the destruction if our country doesn’t change it’s ways

[[Pray, dear brother in Christ, pray — and keep on praying!]]

I do- and I’m prayign that this global warmign scam gets blown wide open so that it never again is foisted on the innocent by the corrupt who have been elected to protect us

[Quix]

Much agree. Thx.

BTW, what is your perspective on Creme’s ?latest? stuff about the return of the “Star of Bethlehem” as 4 UFO’s etc. etc. etc. ??

[Quix]

I thoroughly agree.

[_Jim]

Much agree. Thx. BTW, what is your perspective on Creme’s ?latest? stuff about the return of the “Star of Bethlehem” as 4 UFO’s etc. etc. etc. ??

Objective, measureable; no.

Subjective, interpretive; Yes

[Quix]

Don’t think I quite understand your point.

[_Jim]

Don’t think I quite understand your point.

On a thread titled: "Global Warming Fraud and the Future of Science" I didn't understand yours either ...

I don't think we breathe the same air on this planet.

[Alamo-Girl]

With God "gone" out of the contemporary picture, the opportunities for experiences of divine Truth become increasingly rare. We remember the words, but we no longer feel what lies behind them. Active reciprocal love is gone out of them. And so if the words constrain us overmuch, we simply ignore them. We become our own "moral center" — thus the increasing subjectivity of "morality" nowadays.

So very true. Thank you for your wonderful essay-post, dearest sister in Christ!

[Quix]

It was an aside to an expert on the topic . . . an expert I happend to already be communicating with.

Asides happen on threads all the time on FR.

[Quix]

VERY VERY VERY EXCELLENT POINTS. THANKS:

#############

BETTY BOOP:

With God “gone” out of the contemporary picture, the opportunities for experiences of divine Truth become increasingly rare. We remember the words, but we no longer feel what lies behind them. Active reciprocal love is gone out of them. And so if the words constrain us overmuch, we simply ignore them. We become our own “moral center” — thus the increasing subjectivity of “morality” nowadays.

But human history tells us that societies only last and flourish where there is a shared moral consensus, that is, a commonly agreed-on objective morality that binds the entire community together.

Now as an objective morality, I recognize that what the authors of the DoI wrote was the culmination of the classical/Christian historical moral development over two millennia of human experience. It stresses life, liberty, individual responsibility and accountability, self-reliance, and the sacred dignity of the individual human person.

However, the “Modernist project” does not seem to value such things. In our age of “group think,” all such are under relentless attack.... The human individual continues to shrink away into virtual nothingness, while the putative “plight” of groups is shouted from the rooftops.

But notice this: There is nothing in the federal Constitution that takes any cognizance of “groups.” Justice is always premised on the individual....

In this, the Framers were very prescient, wise men: For the group, not the individual, is the natural unit for party organizational purposes; and the Framers found the idea of “political parties” and “party politics” extremely distasteful, as fomenting passions rather than encouraging deliberation according to reason.

The present moral/cultural meltdown cannot continue much longer without devastating effects (IMHO FWIW). Truth cannot be denied and will always assert itself in the long run — Even if there are human beings who think God and His Truth are non-existent; or find God’s Truth “wrong” or inconvenient. In whichever case, the “old morality” needs to be “improved upon” by human efforts to make it other and “better” than it is.

[betty boop]

Thank you, dear brother in Christ, for your kind words of support!

p.s.: For the Framers, "party politics" = "the spirit of faction." That sort of thing is the business of you-know-who....

[Quix]

p.s.: For the Framers, “party politics” = “the spirit of faction.” That sort of thing is the business of you-know-who....

############

INDEED.

THX.

[betty boop]

BTW, what is your perspective on Creme’s ?latest? stuff about the return of the “Star of Bethlehem” as 4 UFO’s etc. etc. etc. ??

Jeepers, Quix, I hadn't heard about this. I'm kind of surprised Ben Creme is still a going concern.... In any case, I haven't been "following" his activities in years.

But from past experience I know that he does love to appropriate and twist Christian symbols for his own purposes. In this way he makes his message more appealing and accessible (because it uses language already familiar to most of his accolytes — he is, after all, "converting" people mainly from Western countries) while at the same time transforming the symbols themselves in ways utterly subversive of their original meanings.

The prime example is his treatment of Jesus. Creme's Jesus is not the Son of God; he is a miserable third-degree initiate of the school of the Masters of the Hierarchy. The Crucifixion was not the redemptive sacrifice of God the Son on behalf of sinful humanity, but Jesus' Fourth Initiation Rite. It utterly killed him; he did not rise from the dead. Notwithstanding, He somehow has another three initiations to go before he can really be taken seriously; and this dead Jesus will, according to Creme, be taking them in due course. How a thoroughly dead Jesus will do this is never explained. Meanwhile, the Ancient of Days, Sunat Kamara, not God the Father, is the guy in charge of our "planetary system"....

And LOL!!! that he's blended in the "UFO element" — this sort of thing is irresistible to the credulous....

There is nothing rational going on in Creme's articulations/performances....

JMHO FWIW

[betty boop]

Thank you so much, dearest sister in Christ, for your kind words!

That term "active reciprocal love" came at me out of the blue while I was writing. Thinking about it since, I realize that the One Great Commandment models this perfectly: "Love God with all your heart and mind and soul and strength." And then models it again in the Commandment's great corollary, "Love thy neighbor as thyself."

Love God, love neighbor: This is the Christian moral law, pure and simple, the Truth on which hangs all the law and the prophets....

Notice God is not "nagging us" about anything in His Great Commandment, merely showing us the Way of Truth. We are free to walk that way, or not.

We were made in love, for life and liberty.

And we are subject to divine Judgment for the free choices we make. [Jeepers, even the pagans, the ancient Greeks and their forebears knew that!!! Christianity completely validates this insight.]

Or at least, that is my understanding and belief.

Lately I've been thinking about the ways these concepts are embodied in the Declaration of Independence, and then again in the Preamble of the Constitution of the United States.

It seems so strange to me that here, at FR, there is a coterie that seems devoted to proving that the DoI doesn't in any way depend on Christian ideas. That the very idea of America having a Christian foundation is nonsense. They tend to cite as evidence the historical fact that some of the Framers were Deists and/or Freemasons.

Yet to me, the Constitution is an amazing, radical, totally unprecedented and exceptional political design seemingly "made-to-order" for the sort of creature that God made:

We hold these truths to be self-evident [i.e., beyond question or doubt]: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed....

It seems to me it takes a whole lot of love of God and neighbor to make a system of self-government work. It must start with the order of the self, but it certainly doesn't end there. A very ancient insight: Societies can only be as good as the typical human "capital" that forms them in the moral sense....

Which may be why, when Ben Franklin was asked by the lovely lady what sort of government had been wrought in Philadelphia, he mildly replied:

"A republic, dear lady — if we can keep it."

These days, that looks like an increasingly big IF.... Ultimately, the question boils down to the issue of public morality/virtue.

Or so it seems to me, FWIW.