The Republican Party: Fertile Ground for Racism

The Republican Party is extremely fertile ground for racists. I am not saying all, or even most, Republicans are racists. But their extreme passion, based on gut feelings and opposed to all facts and reason, is exactly the mental framework in which racism thrives. Most Republicans are not racists, but nearly all racists are Republicans. When a racist Republican creates publicity, the Republican Party is quick to distance itself, but I am not sure whether this is sincere or is merely an attempt to avoid notice. And, as the presidency of Donald Trump has shown, the Republican Party welcomes the support of racists even while disavowing them.

One recent example was a Republican candidate for the House of Representatives from Tennessee. Candidate Rick Tyler’s slogan was Make America White Again, and his campaign website was www.makeamericawhiteagain.info. His big billboards were featured in a 2016 news channel article. I presume that he lost the election, probably even the primary, because his website is no longer up.

It is particularly puzzling that this candidate emerged from Polk County, Tennessee, which is in the very heart of the homeland of the Cherokee Tribe. The candidate owns or owned a restaurant in Ocoee, very close to the birthplace of my sixth-great-grandmother Nancy Ward, one of the most important leaders in Cherokee history. If anyone should know that America has never been all-white, it should be people from Polk County, Tennessee! But this line of reasoning is lost on people like Tyler and to a lesser extent on Republicans in general, because they specifically reject evidence and reasoning.

And racists use the Christian religion specifically to promote their agenda. Notice the billboard in the article link; it shows people praying.

Why I Do Not Plan to Talk with Global Warming Denialists

This essay is an expansion of the one I published today in my science blog.

I live and work in Oklahoma, the hotbed of creationism and climate change denialism. I feel like I am a missionary in a hostile tribe just because I accept scientific evidence. I am, for the most part, personally reclusive about my knowledge of evolution and climate change. I, of course, am quite clear about them when I teach and write, but I seldom engage in discussion about them with people who disagree. The only neighbors who know my views are those who have first declared their similar views to me.

I tell everybody I can about botany, the science of plants. But the reason I seldom speak in person about the sciences of evolution and global warming is that I will almost certainly experience personal attack if I do. Today, I joined in with other activists at an information table outside a farmer’s market to tell people about global warming. This is something I have not done before and probably will not do again. Most of the people who went by were supportive, to varying degrees. This is something you might expect from the visitors to a farmer’s market. But there was one climate change denialist who decided to subject me to a barrage of lies and tried to make me feel like I was a force of darkness and repression.

Okay, I started it. A man and his wife and baby were leaving the farmer’s market. Our information table was not within the market itself, but in the lawn of a nearby church that had specifically invited us to be there. I spoke first. I said, “Thank you for coming to the Farmer’s Market. By doing so, you have helped to reduce your carbon emissions, because you have bought local produce that has not been trucked across the country for thousands of miles.” I thought this was a positive thing to say.

But this was when the man decided to launch his attack. He said that there has been no global warming for the last ten years. I told him that my own research has clearly demonstrated global warming over the last twelve years. (I will present some of my data in another essay.) He simply said that I was lying and had made all of my data up.

But he did not stop there. He said that the government must have paid me thousands of dollars to do my research, and that I was being paid to say that global warming was occurring. I told him that I had done my research entirely for free. I would have told him that I gathered my data about budburst dates in deciduous trees by simply writing them down almost every day for two months each of twelve years, something that required no money. But I didn’t have a chance to do this. He just called me a liar again.

Next he said that Barack Obama was an evil man, a liar, and a hypocrite because of all the fuel that he burned in Air Force One to go to Paris to sign the climate agreement. Of course, when Trump uses a lot of jet fuel to fly to his personal vacation resorts at taxpayer expense, it is just fine. According to an AP report by Chad Day, published last month, “Flying Trump to Mar-a-Lago on Air Force One twice cost at least $1.2 million.” The report continues, "...documents made public Thursday by Judicial Watch are some of the first to put even part of a price tag on Trump's frequent visits to his Palm Beach, Florida, club. The numbers reflect only the costs associated with the president's plane, Air Force One. Not included are expenses for Secret Service protection or support vehicles provided by the Department of Defense, which must be airlifted into place." This is just fine, according to Oklahoma Republicans, but Obama flying to Paris to sign the climate agreement was evil.

Why did the man criticize Obama flying in Air Force one? The key was that the man called Obama a hypocrite. You see, the reasoning seems to go like this. Democrats say that burning unnecessary jet fuel is bad for the climate. Republicans, however, say that they can burn all the jet fuel they want for any reason whatsoever. Therefore, if a Democrat ever burns any jet fuel at all, it is hypocrisy. For Republicans, however, it is not, since they say it is not a problem. This is like a thief saying that it is okay for him to steal money, but not okay for a person who disapproves of theft to do so.

So the only time a denialist will so much as listen to someone who disagrees with him or her is if that person lives in a hovel and is not responsible for any carbon emissions. Well, I don't quite live in a hovel, but I am very frugal in my energy use. I didn't get a chance to tell him this, but if I had, I imagine he would have called me a liar, just as he did regarding my research.

The man's final attack was to say that environmentalists wanted to keep Africans poor and diseased and miserable because we want them to not have any electricity, any at all. This is, of course, not true, but I didn't have a chance to say this. Another person who was with me started to say it, but the man refused to listen to it. We tried to tell him that locally-generated solar and wind energy makes electricity more accessible to rural African villages than would building billion-dollar power-plants, precisely because it would save the expense of thousands of miles of transmission lines from point of production to point of use.

I did get a last few words in to the wife with the kid. She told me she came to the market for safe food. I said that, even though we disagree, she was part of the solution to the climate problem. What she was doing was good for more reasons than she had known. I think she might have been inclined to agree with me on that one point—I sensed a distinct lessening of tension—but I think she did not want her husband to see her agreeing with me about anything.

There are some evolution and climate change denialists who are reasonable people, not necessarily in their approach to the information but at least in their approach to me. There are denialists who will not call me an evil liar. But they are rare enough that I think I will just stay away from any personal discussions on these subjects.

I think it is about time for this old missionary to retire. At some point, it is time to move to some place in which one is not constantly in fear of personal attack. France looks like a pretty good place, especially since the new prime minister has specifically invited climate scientists such as myself to move there. As explained above, if you accept science in Oklahoma you are subjected to the same kind of verbal attacks as black people were throughout the South in the pre-civil-rights era. If I had been black in the 1950’s and France had invited me to come, I would have taken the invitation very seriously.

The reason I include this essay in a religion blog is that the denialists, like the creationists, are inspired by religious fervor. They worship Trump and the Republican Party. Their response to anyone who disagrees with them about anything (not just these issues but all others) is the same as a medieval Inquisitor reacting to someone he declared to be a heretic. To them, creationism and global-warming-denialism are the only essential parts of Christianity. I really do feel like a missionary who is about to be beheaded. I feel like a black man about to be lynched in the early twentieth century. I need to live in a secular society, and soon.

Southern Baptists Denounce White Nationalism

At their convention this week, the Southern Baptists voted overwhelmingly to condemn the white-nationalist Alt-Right movement and to declare all racism to be “of the devil.” But they continue their adulation, one could almost call it worship, of Donald Trump. I simply do not believe that the Southern Baptists have had any change of heart; they just want to look like nice, modern people.

Alas, Hugh Macmillan

When I took up my first, temporary, full-time faculty position (at The King’s College in 1987), I discovered some fascinating books in the library. They were exactly what I wanted to read at the time. I was (and am) a botanist, and I was also an enthusiastic evangelical Christian. (My religious views are now less specific.) They were the writings of a Scottish minister of the Free Kirk (Presbyterian) of Scotland, who was also trained as a botanist. Hugh Macmillan (1833-1903; he lived the perfect Biblical lifespan of three-score and ten) wrote numerous books in which he saw the signature of the Creator in every aspect of the cosmos, especially the botanical world. To him, a forest was not just a forest but a cathedral of God, and an alpine meadow (the subject of his first book, First Forms of Vegetation (first edition 1861)) was not just little plants but living creatures who defied the harshness of their environment to create green beauty. It was not just his love of God and of plants that attracted me to read book after book of his, but his passion for seeing blessings arise out of adversity, a subject on which I wrote two articles for the American Scientific Affiliation (1987 and 1989). I have seldom read books with such pleasure as I experienced from reading Hugh Macmillan. I wanted to write a biography of him, something that has apparently still not been done; I even got a grant from The King’s College Alumni Association to partially cover the costs of travel to Edinburgh to look for his biographical information (a grant that I ended up not using).

His books, which were widely published and translated into several languages, included:

• The Ministry of Nature
• The True Vine, or, The Analogies of Our Lord’s Allegory
• Sabbath of the Fields
• Two Worlds are Ours
• The Clock of Nature
• The Spring of the Day
• Gleanings in Holy Fields
• The Poetry of Plants

There is much to like in Macmillan’s approach to the natural world. He wrote a whole book about The Sabbath of the Fields, which is an ecological commandment in Exodus, inseparable from the much-vaunted Ten Commandments, to let agricultural fields rest and recover their fertility every seven years; a commandment totally ignored by today’s Bible-waving fundamentalists. Two Worlds are Ours referred to the Bible and to Nature, from both of which humans can gain inspiration. In The Clock of Nature, Macmillan noticed the seasonal patterns of organisms, a science now called phenology, which is one of my areas of expertise; and of which Rev. Gilbert White had written in the late eighteenth century in The Natural History of Selbourne, which was one of Darwin’s favorite books. Perhaps most importantly, Macmillan for the most part steered clear of the evolution controversies that attended the publication of Darwin’s works. He was also so observant and thoughtful, very much like Darwin, and very different from the broad sweeping generalizations of Herbert Spencer. Of course, Macmillan fell into a few traps, which is nearly inevitable since scientists must use the best information available, even if this information turns out to be false. Macmillan quoted Job 38:31 in the Bible, in which God challenged Job, “Can you bind the chains of the Pleaides?” To Macmillan, this meant that the Pleiades were the center of the universe which, he pointed out, astronomical observations had confirmed. Oops.

But the major flaw in Macmillan’s approach was that he forced Christian beliefs upon the natural world. Unlike the prevarications of modern creationists, Macmillan’s statements were not demonstrably false, except the Pleaides statement and maybe a few others. But he imposed all of them, rather than letting the natural world inform him. I was doing the same thing at the time I read his books, of course. Macmillan was happy, and so was I, in our shared and (unlike those of modern fundamentalists) harmless delusions. It is therefore with sadness that I must say that the entire opus of Macmillan’s natural history writings was wrong. Gloriously, beautifully wrong.

But that does not mean his life was wasted. As a leader in the Free Kirk, he did a lot of good things and spiritually nourished a lot of people. Though diluted by the passing of over a century since his death in 1903, Macmillan’s influence might yet be felt in people whose lives he made better.

I also published this essay on my science blog.

Introducing a New Philosophy: Real Ecology

I posted this on my science blog, but since religion is so central to it, I will post it here also.

As of this week, it is official. Trump has declared that we will part ways with the rest of the world and produce as much carbon dioxide as we possibly can. Far from just permitting coal and oil, he is encouraging it, even demanding it. The United States is going to pump as much carbon into the atmosphere as possible and happily watch the environmental consequences wreak havoc on the Earth. Trump is delusional and sees Himself as the Great Messiah presiding over the End Times, which he is trying to create as rapidly as possible, in this way as in many others. I think He will enjoy watching the rest of the world, as well as many Americans, suffer.

This seems to be the appropriate time to announce a new philosophy. In 1972, Arne Naess started the Deep Ecology movement, which said that humans had no more rights than other species. He and others who followed him were careful to not seem anti-human. It is now clear that this movement did not go far enough.

Here follows the first draft of the Real Ecology view of the future.

I.                The human species

A.    Good and evil. Evolution produced a human species with amazing intellect but with a nature that consists of both love and hate, both altruism and a desire to massacre fellow humans, especially those of a different ethnicity. Human history has always consisted of both and always will. However, the hate and massacre component has always been predominant. In the past, notably evil people could cause only local destruction. Ivan the Terrible massacred an entire city (Novgorod) but was unable to massacre an entire people. Hitler massacred millions but only in Europe. Now evil people have the ability to cause worldwide destruction, because of our technology. They will, and the good people will be unable to stop them. There is utterly no hope for a peaceful human future.

B.    Environmental destruction. Humans, all over the world and throughout time, have caused environmental destruction, and always will. This destruction will continue until the ecosystems of the Earth become unsustainable, which will be followed by the collapse of civilization except in isolated places. Environmental destruction has almost always occurred as fast as it possibly could. In a few instances, as with the life of Wangari Maathai in Kenya, individual heroes and heroines have inspired widespread progress, but these examples are far too few to make any difference in the overall trend. The only thing that has slowed environmental destruction has been economic collapse. Humans have destroyed as much of the Earth as they could economically afford to.

C.    Religion. Humans are unique in having religion. The main process of religion is that leaders claim that God has given them permission, even commandments, to oppress and destroy all people whom they consider heretics, and to destroy as much of what they consider to be the Creation as they possibly can. The good side of human nature makes it difficult to actually kill a person; but because of religion, it is easy to kill a heretic. In fact, religion is the most potent force that creates a widespread sense of glee at inflicting suffering on entire heretic populations. The number of religious people who revere God’s creation and, out of respect for God, and for the good of other people, wish to maintain the ecosystems of the Earth will not only be outnumbered but wiped out by the dominant religious oppressors. Though not the only such religion, Christianity has been the most destructive religion in human history on a global scale. Religious leaders decide what they want to do, then claim that God wants them to do it; in effect, they are blasphemously using God, should one exist, as their tool. Nothing short of the extinction of this form of religion can change the inevitable outcome of misery and destruction.

D.    Science. Humans are unique in having science, but it has always been and will remain an insignificant component of human thought and action, except insofar as it contributes to the technology by which humans oppress and destroy one another and the Earth. Science has revealed the genetic unity of the human species; but, particularly when inspired by religion, humans have created as many barriers as possible, whereby they justify the destruction of other humans and the habitats on which they depend.

II.              The United States

A.    The United States is the most powerful country that has ever existed. Acts of good or evil committed by the United States have determined the course of world history starting in the second half of the twentieth century, and will continue to do so. The United States has the ability to destroy the human and natural world.

B.    The leaders of the United States, with the support of approximately half of its people, have made the decision to impose their will on the world, even if it means the destruction of that world. These leaders, particularly those who have sworn loyalty to Donald Trump, believe that they will remain safe and prosperous even in a world that they have shattered. There are a few Republican environmentalists, but they are irrelevant in their Party. The United States produces the most carbon emissions per capita, but will suffer fewer consequences of global climate change than most other countries. American leaders have decided that they will intensify this situation.

C.    Accordingly, the United States will prove to be the greatest force for evil in the history of the world and will lead the world into destruction.

D.    Other countries should not attack the United States, which has a military and a nuclear arsenal larger than those of the rest of the world combined, or attempt to change its chosen trajectory. This would be futile, especially as long as it remains under the leadership of a delusional man who does not recognize the constitutional limitations of presidency. The United States will destroy itself. With appropriate preparations, the rest of the world can contain the damage to a certain extent. The rest of the world should prepare to fill in the vacuum that will be left by the inevitable collapse of the United States.

III.            A green future

A.    Nature has always recovered profusely from human activity. It always has and it always will. Jungles grow over ruins. Wild plants and animals have even returned to the area damaged by the nuclear catastrophe of Chernobyl.

B.    The human species may or may not survive, but human civilization certainly will not.

C.    Therefore, there is nothing to worry about regarding the ultimate future of life on Earth.

IV.            How should we live?

A.    As individuals and as nations we must live responsibly on the planet, because this is the right thing to do. It is consistent with the good part of human nature, even though it is inconsistent with the evil part. Those of us who live in a way that shows love to our fellow humans and all other species do so because we believe it is the ultimate joy.

B.    But we do not need to worry. Nothing we can do will prevent greedy and religiously delusional people from nearly destroying the Earth. We recognize that no amount of enlightened ecological economy, no amount of love, can prevent world catastrophe. And no amount of destruction can prevent the ultimate recovery of the post-human Earth.

Though cynical, this manifesto is no more negative than the facts demand.