January 02, 2004

Via GeekPress, here’s an excerpt from a speech made by Michael Crichton in which he argues that Environmentalism is now a religion:

I studied anthropology in college, and one of the things I learned was that certain human social structures always reappear. They can’t be eliminated from society. One of those structures is religion. Today it is said we live in a secular society in which many people—the best people, the most enlightened people—do not believe in any religion. But I think that you cannot eliminate religion from the psyche of mankind. If you suppress it in one form, it merely re-emerges in another form. You can not believe in God, but you still have to believe in something that gives meaning to your life, and shapes your sense of the world. Such a belief is religious. ...

Today, one of the most powerful religions in the Western World is environmentalism. Environmentalism seems to be the religion of choice for urban atheists. Why do I say it’s a religion? Well, just look at the beliefs. If you look carefully, you see that environmentalism is in fact a perfect 21st century remapping of traditional 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.

Eden, the fall of man, the loss of grace, the coming doomsday—-these are deeply held mythic structures. They are profoundly conservative beliefs. They may even be hard-wired in the brain, for all I know. I certainly don’t want to talk anybody out of them, as I don’t want to talk anybody out of a belief that Jesus Christ is the son of God who rose from the dead. But the reason I don’t want to talk anybody out of these beliefs is that I know that I can’t talk anybody out of them. These are not facts that can be argued. These are issues of faith.

And so it is, sadly, with environmentalism. Increasingly it seems facts aren’t necessary, because the tenets of environmentalism are all about belief. It’s about whether you are going to be a sinner, or saved. Whether you are going to be one of the people on the side of salvation, or on the side of doom. Whether you are going to be one of us, or one of them.

The speech contains surprising information on the environment. Read the whole thing.

The point I’d like to make is that the same argument can be applied to today’s left, which demonstrates over and over again, not just a disdain for, but a blindness to the facts.

Lileks, in one of the articles that inspired this post, finds that the arguments of the left are utterly out of keeping with the facts: “It’s like discussing the Apollo program with people who think it was all faked.”

Per Victor Davis Hanson:

Thus by any comparative standard of military history, the last two difficult years, despite setbacks and disappointments, represent a remarkable military achievement. Yet no one would ever gather even the slightest acknowledgment of such success from our Democratic grandees.

The examples are endless. A few more will suffice:

Steven Den Beste discusses the “laughable and unconvincing” arguments against the Iraq War, as does Steyn Online.

Hawken mentions how critics of Bush’s economic policy ignore that the economy is taking off.

Dean’s blindness to the facts is observed by InsultsUnpunished. Via Tim Blair, even James Carville says Dean appars to have “undergone some kind of a political lobotomy”.

Patterico itemizes how hard the LA TIMES works to hide massive quantities of facts that oppose the position of the left.

Larry Elder talks about a self-described “radical socialist” who didn’t appreciate that the very store she was shopping in at the time would be impossible under socialism.

In a previous post I’ve mentioned how preposterous it is for the left to claim Hussein had no ties to terrorism.

Within the past few days I personally heard educated people saying that “Bush is a mass murderer” due to his actions in Iraq – ignoring the fact that Hussein was the mass murderer, killing 50,000 to 60,000 Iraqis a year – Iraqis who have been saved by Bush.

Clearly the left is blind to the facts. Their devotion is to their faith, and they refuse to see any truth that opposes it. They are, therefore, a religion.

Could this explain why the left is trying to ban Christianity? Is it possible that they see Christianity as a competing religion?