Saving the West - Conclusion

Saving the West – Conclusion

The far right seeks a return to a golden past that never was. The far left seeks a utopian future that will never be. Religious extremists believe you can bring salvation by terror. Aggressive secularists believe that if you get rid of religion there will be peace. These are all fantasies. [Rabbi Lord Sacks]

To save the West we need to pursue hard reality not chase enticing fantasies.

Those things in Western cultures and nations which were good, humane and productive of happiness were achieved by the laborious application of Christian principals to further refine moral rules which had themselves evolved over millennia as bases for successful community life coupled with the determined suppression of wickedness, evil and vice.

Jeremiah prophesied in his day: “this people has forsaken me, a spring of living water and hewed out for themselves cisterns – cracked cisterns that can hold no water” This also is the sin of the West.

In France the Revolution ushered in an attempt to create a society without religion. In Germany, th elate 1800's saw a decline which by the 1930's saw a resurgence of Nordic paganism. England, perhaps as early as the beginning of the nineteenth century was showing signs of decline. Australia had revivals in the early 1900's (when some of my forebears were converted by a Methodist revival) and the 1950's with the Billy Graham crusades. But I would place decline visible in the late 1960's. The United States has maintained a much more visible religiosity, but deep it goes is another matter. In any case there has been opposition movements to any Christian influence visible from the late 1960's mirrored in the rise of Social Progressivism.

“We” have attacked the old rules and tried to formulate a new morality. That really was a high point of human arrogance – to think that we could in one go create a better set of rules that those which took generations to evolve, face the test of real life and be endowed with Christian virtues. Our self-hewn cisterns were also cracked: they did not take into account the sad srate of human nature depicted in the Bible, they paid no heed to the Creator's moral character and purposes, and they dismissed Divine aid – either in their project or in transforming human lives.

No wonder the West is teetering on the brink of destruction.

I come back to my original premise that the only hope is a Christian revival.

Jesus said his followers were like salt and yeast. As olden days mariners found, a bucketful of salt can preserve a whole barrel of beef. Just a little yeast can leaven a whole lump of dough. So even though past revivals have rarely converted more that 10% of the population to a sincere faith, this may well be enough to change the course of nations.

One reason is that, even in the present situation many, perhaps a majority have a sort of faith, but are cowed into submission and silence by the vocal Progressives – who will brook no dissent. Revival may firstly inform them better of the Faith they nominally hold and secondly liberate them to express it.

Another is that as discussed in previous posts there is no “golden age” to go back to: we must go on. This does requite continuous effort to apply the basic principles to new situations. As a student of engineering I learned the laws of thermodynamics. The first and second laws can be (very) simply expressed in a jingle that I remember after forty something years : “Heat is work and work is heat. And heat flows from hot to cool as a rule.” However actually applying these to real life requires much more complex formulations. So with our national malaises. Godfearing men and women are needed in every walk of life to formulate the complex solutions from  Biblical teachings.

The third is God's intervention. The Biblical narrative should leave us in no doubt that walking away from God deprives us of his help. It also should leave us in no doubt that “God desires not the death of a sinner but rather that they should turn from their wickedness and live” So a revival where even say 10% truly turn to God may result in their prayers being answered and the whole nation being rescued.

This end the series “Saving the West”

No more posts for 2 weeks, then I begin a new series examining revivals in the Bible and history to see what can be learned from them

Saving the Planet

“Saving the Planet”

The catch-cry “Save the Planet” is a favourite of environmental activists and is so often repeated that ordinary people are starting to echo it without critical thought.

What nonsense. Apart from sci-fi movies where the bad guys manage to blow a planet to smithereens saving a planet has no meaning. Ah! To be sure there is climate change or global warming as it used to be called. But how exactly would that “save” the Earth? If you are a dedicated environmentalist please bear with me writing what must seem the worst of blasphemies for a moment – after all if you read the last post remember that rejecting new ideas because they conflict with the ones you have previously accepted is not a good thing.

Now planet Earth, on our present scientific understanding has been a ball of condensing incandescent gas, had its surface totally covered with ice, and most things in between. In what way is preventing or slowing a few degrees of heating “saving it”?

Ah, not the “planet” itself but “life on the planet”? Well once again any aspiring polymath should be rolling around the floor laughing! The scene we enjoy is the result of what I have been told was the biggest environmental disaster in Earth's history: the release of oxygen into the atmosphere which killed off near all of life on earth at that time. Then there was whatever cause the extinction of the big dinosaurs (I am told birds are the descendants of some little dinosaurs). In the Permian period the “great extinction event” killed off 95% of all life. But life on Earth went on – indeed it flourished. Then as well there were the five – yes five - ice ages scientists have recorded, with inter-glacial warm periods. Geologists reckon that in the late Paleocene period the temperature was about 8deg. C. greater than at present. Really all this makes a few degrees here or there seem child's play – and who knows despite any anthropogenic influence earth may be about to enter another cold patch or even ice age!

OK enough “heresy”! My point is that if people have, or are unthinkingly repeating ideas relating to climate change based on a mystical view of “planet Earth” or even the “life on earth” as a god or gods then these aught to be firmly rejected!

What then really does matter? Humans. From a Biblical perspective only humans were “the image of God” only humans in Genesis are described as having God breath his life into them, thus setting them quite apart from animals. The Son of God took human nature in lived among us and died in order to reconcile us humans to God.

Granted other things have some though lesser importance. Some theologians point out that in ancient near east pagan religions an “image” was thought of as the visible and present representation of the absent deity. On this basis mankind as the image of God would mean something like humans being appointed as God's representatives to manage the earth and its creatures. The “rule over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air and every living creature that moves on the ground” (Gen 1.28) is in the same vein. Naturally with authority comes responsibility and additionally “ruling” would be in accordance with God's moral character – not mankind's fallen and sinful nature!

So a proper response to climate change is not necessarily trying to prevent it – that may even be like King Canute trying to stop the tide – but to work at achieving the best outcome for all humans.

Before one responds “Oh but we are!” let me give a counter-example. Australia has large coal reserves. India wants to build a large new mine here to get coal for its expanding electricity needs. Environmental activists are thwarting this plan on the grounds that to prevent climate change the coal must stay in the ground. But millions of people in India will be trapped in terrible poverty if new coal fired (because they are big and cheaper than alternatives) power stations are not built. So to look after humans in general and not just allow well fed and affluent Western activists feel self righteous the coal should be mined.

Even in the West itself we are in danger of crippling our economies in the name of “sustainability”. This suits the Luddite mentality of activists but it is not looking after humans – in the West and worldwide. Whatever ill effects come from climate change, human ingenuity, technology and money can be used to alleviate. Crippling our economies may be the global equivalent of olden days doctors bleeding their patients!

Finding the best way forward for humanity is being obscured by a number of factors

Global Warming has become an industry – too many funded research positions, manufacturing products like expensive wind turbines and school syllabus are dependent on current thinking to allow for contrary facts to be allowed to emerge

The “save the planet” dogma has become for many a religion – and woe betide anyone who challenges ardent religious beliefs; People innately feel guilty. Having rejected the real cure for guilt – repentance and forgiveness through Christ – many in today's “post Christian” society find relief for their guilt, and even a warm glow of self righteousness in environmental activism and so are quite addicted to it.

Human psychology: We accept the first premise we hear, often without critically examining it, but we then put our blinkers on and employ every critical faculty to defend it from contrary evidence. Thus anyone questioning the “party line” is immediately howled down as a “climate denier”, any research news is censored, anything we do hear that conflicts with what we have been told is rejected.

My bottom line is that the West, to itself rise and also to take poor countries with it, needs to reform its response to climate change.

This, considering what I have said here, and the fact that many churches and people who profess Christianity are so caught up in the bad aspects of the present response, and indeed so addicted that they preach Jesus as a means to this end rather than the one true End in himself and only Saviour, that only a radical and grass roots revival of Christianity will suffice. The political change is, as I said at the very beginning of this series only a spin-off, a very beneficial spin-off but not the real “end” of a revival of Christianity.

Reviving Intellectual Honesty

Intellectual Honesty

There has probably never been a golden age for honesty. Nevertheless in those instances when it has prevailed the West made scientific advances which have brought immeasurable benefit to the world and made the West great.

One tragic example where, although the truth ultimately triumphed, many lives would have been saved and a brilliant man honoured in his lifetime had there been widespread intellectual honesty in the medical profession of the day is the story of Ignaz Semmelweis, also described as the “saviour of mothers”.

As a senior doctor in the maternity hospital in Vienna in the mid 1800's he noticed that many more women died of blood poisoning in the clinic staffed by medical students that the one staffed by trainee midwives. He refused to sweep this observation under the carpet but worked out that midwives washed their hands whereas medical students did not – even when going straight from an autopsy to the delivery room. He instituted hand washing in a disinfectant and the mortality rates immediately dropped.

Semmelweis tried to promote the practice of surgeons disinfecting their hands, but was met with opposition, scorn and ridicule by the medical profession. He was dismissed (for political reasons), and when he continued a virulent campaign for hand washing he was committed to a mental asylum where he died two weeks later after being beaten by the guards.

After he was replaced at the hospital the practice of hand washing was abandoned and mortality rates among mothers returned to previous levels in the clinic training doctors. This statistic was suppressed and ignored by the authorities. However many of Semmelweis's former students spread his discovery around Europe. However he was only vindicated later when Pasteur's work showed how disinfecting hands prevented the transmission of the bacteria that caused blood poisoning. Belatedly he was recognised in his home town as a hero.

Lack of intellectual honesty and rejection of that love of the truth that allows debate so that all the facts can come out has caused harm many times in recent years. A couple of times just in the past few months my wife. Reading the latest medical journal has pointed out that another medical issue long held as incontrovertible has been disproved.

Generally the history of the issue has gone something like this: A paper has been published saying that XYZ is good (or bad) for people's health. The story has been taken up by both medical and allied health professionals, been popularised in the press, and manufacturers have got onto the bandwagon advertising that their product is extra high or low as the need may be in XYZ.

Now that this is the accepted wisdom, research papers claiming the contrary are either ridiculed, or simply refused publication. After 20 years or so some researcher finally breaks through the silence barrier, proves that the original research was faulty and sets things straight. Of course it takes a long time for the trickle down effect to change professionals' and the public's minds and all this time they have been carefully following bad advice!

These examples probably cause little harm, but illustrate the problem when intellectual honesty is made second to other things and free debate is gagged on scientific matters.

Take the DDT case. Malaria kills millions of people a year. There was a campaign to eradicate its animal vector the Anopheles mosquito using the powerful insecticide DDT . The Anopheles was on the verge of being made extinct – which would have made malaria “extinct” too when environmental activists, aided by the film “A Silent Spring” campaigned successfully to have DDT banned. Ten years later the UN reversed the ban having decided on the evidence that DDT was in fact safe to use. But that was ten years too late. The Anopheles mosquito had got the reprieve it needed, and millions of people continue to die each year from malaria.

Take the “Anti-Vacc” movement. True most people do see them as cranks, but to ignore the benefits to humankind of vaccination requires a complete denial of intellectual honesty. Just take Smallpox as one example.

I still have the tell-tale scar of the inoculation I got when I first planned to travel overseas – it was too dangerous to travel to countries where smallpox existed without inoculation. During the 20^th century it is estimated that smallpox caused 300 million to 500 million deaths. But an eradication program largely featuring inoculation was successful and in 1980 the WHO declared the disease to have been eradicated.

In a totally different field of endeavour I read a columnist in the financial section of the paper today emphasising the need for intellectual honesty in order to be successful as an investor. He pointed out that the investment guru Warren Buffet when he formulated an investing strategy spent considerable time trying to dis-prove it! Only when the strategy has survived this process does he put his money on it. The columnist went on to quote a book on rational behaviour: “rational beliefs must correspond to the way the world is, not to the way you think the world ought to be. … If you can't be honest with yourself about the difference between the truth and what and what you think ought to be true, you may be intelligent but you aren't rational.”

Intellectual honesty and love of the truth are essential for successful living in the real world. For the West to pull out of decline one of the many things necessary is to recover the intellectual honesty that gave us the great leaps forward in science and technology and the knowledge that a real world has real truth.