Greta Christina has been writing professionally since 1989, on topics including atheism, sexuality and sex-positivity, LGBT issues, politics, culture, and whatever crosses her mind. She is author of
The Way of the Heathen: Practicing Atheism in Everyday Life, of
Comforting Thoughts About Death That Have Nothing to Do with God, of
Coming Out Atheist: How to Do It, How to Help Each Other, and Why, of
Why Are You Atheists So Angry? 99 Things That Piss Off the Godless, and of
Bending: Dirty Kinky Stories About Pain, Power, Religion, Unicorns, & More, and is editor of
Paying For It: A Guide by Sex Workers for Their Clients. She has been a public speaker for many years, and many of her talks can be seen on YouTube. Her writing has appeared in multiple magazines and newspapers, including Ms., Penthouse, Chicago Sun-Times, On Our Backs, and Skeptical Inquirer, and numerous anthologies, including
Everything You Know About God Is Wrong and three volumes of
Best American Erotica. (Any views she expresses in this blog are solely hers, and do not necessarily represent this organizations.) She lives in San Francisco with her wife, Ingrid. You can email her at gretachristina (at) gmail (dot) com, or follow her on
Facebook.
Well, well, well: another statist regurgitating socialist dogma! I guess you commies just love having your property stolen from you, just as long as there is a history of tyrannical hegemony behind it! Why can’t you liberals stop oppressing those who speak the truth about the global warming religion?
Heh. Well the Global Warming analogy is sound and I don’t mind it, despite being a skeptic myself.
But I’m often surprised at how religiously atheists defend the hypothesis that man-made CO2 is causing significant global warming. Do we have any evidence for that? Seriously, do we?
Greta?
Stef, yup.
CO2 being emitted by humans is accumulating in the atmosphere:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-levels-airborne-fraction-increasing.htm
Additional CO2 in the atmosphere causes significant climate change:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/empirical-evidence-for-global-warming.htm
Stef,
This little chart may help you too. It’s hardly comprehensive, but it boils it down like only the Information is Beautiful blog can.
http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/climate-change-deniers-vs-the-consensus/
Climate computer models, which are accurate throughout prehistoric times times, are unable to reproduce the recent rise in global temperature without adding anthropogenic forcing effects, including CO2 emissions.
Also, it makes little sense to produce a sweeping generalization atheists and climatology, as the two have nothing whatsoever to do with each other – unless someone is once again trying to make atheists look as dogmatic as theists through the use of cute phrases like ‘religiously defend’.
If a religious faith is comforting or “just what [I] needed”, that’s useful … to the degree that having the faith promotes one’s values. (And there’s _a_ rub. Folks don’t know what to value.)
My value system is founded on the ultimate value of “the well-being of all sentience”. It can be simply stated, but it’s fairly complex in its implications.
The core teachings of some religions approach (in effect) an approximation of supporting my values. Thus, in those cases, whatever rationalizations or logical fallacies that lead persons to their faiths _is_ actually good. (To the degree that adherence to such faiths promotes my values.)
Sadly, most religious organizations seem to be at odds with their core teachings, so adopting the comforts of faith tends to be less of an ends-justifies-means sugary-spoonful-with-medicine situation and more of a drinking-a-sixpack-solves-my-problems situation.
I’m looking at you, hateful Christians. The teachings of Christ to be loving of _everyone_ are not easily followed or comforting to the likes of you. And I’m looking at all y’all, hateful whoevers.
PZ just made this point with some piquancy.