Environment

Yesterday, Dr. Calvin Beisner of the Cornwall Alliance appeared on Janet Mefferd's radio program where he explained that the modern environmental movement represents "the greatest threat to Western civilization" because it combines "the utopian vision of Marxism, the scientific facade of secular humanism, and the religious fanaticism of jihad" into a pseudo-religion that undermines Christianity:

Mefferd: That seems like, maybe to some people, like hyperbole Dr. Beisner, but why do you think that that's the case?

Beisner: Well, let me just give you four simple, direct reasons.

First, because unlike the Soviet Union and its satellites in the Cold War and unlike Islamic jihad today which were, or are, external and clearly recognized as enemies by the overwhelming majority of people in the free world, environmentalism is internal and thought by most to be friend, not foe.

Second, because unlike arid and nihilistic secular humanism, environmentalism speaks to the inherent spiritual yearnings of human souls and it provides plausible answers to dogged questions about how we got here and what causes suffering and how suffering might come to an end.

Third, because environmentalism incorporates the strengths of all three of those other threats: the utopian vision of Marxism, the scientific facade of secular humanism, and the religious fanaticism of jihad.

And fourth, finally, because environmentalism encompasses all the vague spiritualities that have frankly overwhelmed secular humanism in the West and now threaten the Christian faith as so many people now take to referring to themselves as "oh well, I'm spiritual but not religious," which basically means they are all involved in designer religion.

Televangelist Pat Robertson has, like so many on the Right, turned very quickly from advocating awareness of climate change to denying that it exists at all. On today’s 700 Club, Robertson laughs off a recent Princeton University study that found that climate change is increasing the rate of blizzards while leading to a drop in total snowfall.

Without a hint of self-awareness, Robertson claims that climate scientists are simply elitist ideologues who will hold onto their beliefs in global warming no matter what.

“Only in Princeton would people say nutty things like that,” Robertson said. “You know, they get to be PhDs and they wonder where they’ve studied and learned all these things. But I tell you, if you’re a true believer bad things will happen because you see them coming.”

Among the “nutty” professors Robertson attacks is Princeton geosciences expert Michael Oppenheimer, interviewed earlier in the program, who served in the Nobel Prize-winning International Panel on Climate Change.

Watch:

Cal Beisner of the Cornwall Alliance is the Religious Right's favorite anti-climate change "expert" despite the fact that his academic credentials are limited to a doctorate in Scottish History.  While appearing on AFA's "Today's Issues" radio program today, Beisner provided the most concise explanation of why Christians cannot believe in climate change when he declared that the entire theory rests on the assumption that the earth is an extremely fragile place, which conflicts with the Biblical view that the earth was built by God for man's use.

Therefore, to believe in climate change "really is an insult to God" ... and it will eventually lead to tyranny:

American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer today was joined by pro-corporate, anti-environmental activist Cal Beisner on Focal Point to discuss Rep. Paul Ryan’s egregious record on environmental protection. The two celebrated his votes against the EPA and climate change legislation as signs that he has a “sane, objective and biblical or evangelical understanding of man’s relationship with the environment. “Paul Ryan seems to get it,” Fischer said, and Beisner applauded Ryan’s voting record “fits well with the biblical understanding” of the environment, which for them means that there should be few if any restrictions on environmental exploitation. Later, Beisner repeated his bogus charge that increased carbon dioxide levels and climate change will help the environment and the poor.

Watch:

Fischer: It seems like we’ve got another clear differential when it comes to a sane, objective and biblical or evangelical understanding of man’s relationship with the environment. Paul Ryan seems to get ii and the other team doesn’t. So that would be potentially very good news for those of us that care about seeing a biblical view of the environment in public policy.

Beisner: Yes it would. Ryan’s understanding I think fits well with the biblical understanding that God made man in His image to be creative and productive as He is, to fill and to rule the earth. Not to abuse the earth, not to rape the land so to speak as many environmentalists talk, but rather to increase its fruitfulness, its beauty and its safety to the glory of God and the benefit of our neighbors. I think that really underlies the comments that Ryan has made on these issues through the years and it comes I think from his solidly Christian worldview background.

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Beisner: Most Americans do not see any real purpose in tight restrictions on CO2 admissions. Many Americans actually remembered what they learned way back in seventh and eighth grade biology class, mainly that carbon dioxide is plant food. So the more of that there is in the air the more the crops grow and the cheaper the food is around the world, this actually helps especially the poor.

Yesterday, Cal Beisner of the Cornwall Alliance was a guest on Bryan Fischer's radio program where he revealed that God had given him an insight that Satan was engaged in a systematic attack against God's mandate for humanity as set out in Genesis 1: 27-28.

As Beisner explained, God's created us in His image and made us male and female and commanded us to "be fruitful and multiply" and take dominion over the earth.  Since Satan cannot attack God directly, he instead attacks God's representatives (mankind) by undermining our beliefs in these very principles, which is why we tolerate things like abortion and homosexuality and environmentalism, all of which are aimed at slowing population growth ... oh, and movies like Pixar's "Brave":

Janet Parshall in 2010 narrated a right-wing “documentary” about the “Green Dragon” menace, where Religious Right activists said that environmentalists do not believe in science but superstition, calling environmentalism its own anti-Christian religion. Yesterday, Parshall’s radio show was devoted to exposing the supposedly sinister origins of environmental science with guest Mark Musser, whose works include: “The Nazi Origins of Apocalyptic Global Warming Theory”; “Green Lebensraum: The Nazi Roots of Sustainable Development”; “Enviro-Baalism-Fascism” and “Nazi Oaks: The Green Sacrificial Offering of the Judeo-Christian Worldview in the Holocaust.”

Essentially, Musser’s main argument on Parshall’s program was that evolution, animal rights and environmentalism were the main forces behind Nazi thought and dehumanization of non-Aryan groups. He told Parshall that environmentalism inevitably leads to fascism and tyranny, and warns that the U.S. may be destroyed like ancient Israel if American society embraces environmentalism:

With environmentalism, especially the radical version of it—you know we used to have conservationism in America with Teddy Roosevelt and these people—but now environmentalism has taken over and nature is the most important thing. So you have to adjust everything to nature. Nature is viewed as a holistic tyrant, so to speak, and holism really teaches tyranny. Fascism is all connected here. You have to bow everything to nature’s holistic inter-relatedness and you can’t buck anything with regards to what nature does. This is the problem with environmentalism and why it’s so dangerous, because it becomes your tyrant.

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Israel would be the example of this originally, as they were commanded to go in and subdue the promise land and fill it and that’s what they did and for a while it was a good land, then these other things came in, environmentalism came in and destroyed their culture, what I call the Baalism, the nature worship, instead of worshiping the Creator they worshiped nature and this led to the destruction of their society. I think the same things are happening in our own country today too. We have this nature-worship now that is infiltrating our society, infiltrating Christianity too, and it is bringing us down and it is something that people need to be wary of. There is a dark path to this whole environmental discussion that people need to know.

The number of right-wing conspiracy theories relating to President Obama, Islam, Sharia Law, immigration, Agenda 21 and the debt seems to be growing exponentially…but finally now there is one conspiracy theory that brings them all together.

Avi Lipkin, who on speaking tours in churches and synagogues across America says he learned secret information from his wife, whom he claims is an Israel intelligence officer. On Crosstalk with Vic Eliason of VCY America, Lipkin maintained that Obama is a Saudi plant who is out to destroy Israel and the United States:

Lipkin: Obama was made a Muslim man in Indonesia by age 11. He said, ‘I’ve got health care problems, I got economic problems in America, Muslims in Egypt and Muslims in the Muslim world, be patient, I will show you when the time comes what I am going to do to Israel.’ My wife picked up other broadcasts, for example the Saudis were saying, ‘we will have a Muslim in the White House in 2008.’ The Saudis also said, ‘Obama has three tasks: task number 1 is to destroy the Shiite threat in Iran, task number 2 is to destroy the Jewish threat Israel, task number 3 is to destroy the great Christian Satan America and turn America into a Muslim country.’

Surely you’ve heard that one before. But, you may not have known that Obama will destroy America by supporting the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in order to collapse the region’s economy after the group persecutes the country’s Christians, leading to a wave of Muslim immigration to the United States. Obama will then settle the “50-100 million” Muslim immigrants on “lands confiscated by Agenda 21,” the sustainable development initiative, and bring about Sharia law in the U.S.

Obama also built up the national debt to a point where the U.S. will need a bailout from Saudi Arabia, who will grant it with the condition that “America will surrender its Christianity.” Lipkin explains that God sent the Muslim immigrants to the U.S. to be “hunters” of Jews and Christians, forcing them to leave the U.S. and move to Israel:

Lipkin: The Muslim Brotherhood is going to end up either killing, converting to Islam or expelling the remaining Christians of Egypt. When the Christians of Egypt are gone, the economy of Egypt is gone. When the economy of Egypt is gone, the 76 Muslims who remain are going to starve to death. What do people do when they starve? They leave. Where do they go to? America. Who’s going to bring them in? Obama. Where is he going to settle them? In the lands confiscated by Agenda 21.

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Lipkin: America will be Muslim by 2016. 2016 is the eighth year of President Obama, meaning he is going to bring in 50-100 million Muslims because it is inevitable that all these Islamic countries cannot rule, they don’t know how to rule themselves, they are completely inept, and after they kill all the Christians that remain there will not be any economy left so you’re going to have overnight 50-100 million Muslims coming in. You cannot put them in American cities, you have got to create entire new areas populated in the United States and Canada with these Muslims.

Eliason: Where Sharia law holds forth?

Lipkin: Yes! So you have Agenda 21, you have Sharia law, by the way I’m going to throw out a real wildcard now. You have all those people who talk about the American debt being insolvable, where are you going to get $14 trillion from? The answer is very simple, you don’t think the Saudis have $14 trillion in cash? They’ll give you the cash and they will say ‘we own you now, we’re going to take over America.’ And Americans will say, ‘if we don’t do this we’re going to lose our economy and we’re going to lose our dollar and everything.’ The American economic problem is not a problem if the Saudis come in and bring in their cash. The problem here is America will surrender its Christianity.

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Lipkin: If and when a war breaks out in the Middle East between Israel and its neighbors then you will see 10, 20, 30 million, maybe more, 40, 50 million Muslims, some of them are going to rise up in a 9/11 type terrorist attacks and they are not afraid to die, they cherish death, and American law enforcement with all the best of intentions will not be capable of dealing with this. They are not going to kill 10 million, they are going to kill some and a lot of Jews and Christians are going to go into hiding and eventually a lot of them will eventually leave the United States and coming to Israel so I see this as a spatula, they leave by God, you have the hunters and these hunters are going to be the Muslims. I believe America will come out of this mess but it’s going to be a very rough time, weeks, months, before the situation is brought under control. The more Muslims you have in America the more capable they will be to wreak havoc on Jews and Christians.

It had been a while since James Dobson did a series of radio programs designed to terrify his audience about the looming threat of an Islamic take over of the world, and so he has returned to the topic this week with the help of guest Michael Youssef who graciously offered his "Insights on Radical Islam."

And just what sorts of insights did Youssef have for Dobson and his audience?  Well, when Dobson wanted to know why Americans oppose domestic drilling for oil even though our dependence on foreign oil funds terrorism, Youssef explained that it was because lots of people don't love America coupled with the fact that environmentalism is a militant religion no different than Radical Islam, prompting Dobson to declare that "there's something Satanic about this":

Dobson: I have great difficulty understanding why, here in the United States, 300 million people have more or less acquiesced to the refusal to drill our own oil and we remain silent when that's really the core of the finances behind this anger and threat against our country.

Youssef: Well, I just think there are people who don't really love America. Let's just be blunt about it. I think that America is not primary in their thinking. I think sometimes as an immigrant who loves this country so deeply and I look and I see how people who were born in this country not only take it for granted but they literally don't care about it and they don't care about the exceptionalism, they don't care about its future. And therefore the policies are reflected, so many of those people are behind the scenes, we don't see them but they are the policymakers, they write the policy.

Dobson: Are we going to wait until the blow away a city, or two, or three, or four? It just seems to me that there's something Satanic about this.

Youssef: You have another religion also at play here, so it's not just Islam. We have a very fanatic religious people who worship Mother Earth, the environmentalists. They are as militant about their religion and protecting their goddess - and I'm not exaggerating - and therefore, to them, the environment and planet earth is the most important thing to defend. They are not going to allow anything to happen to their goddess - Gaia, the Mother Earth - and therefore, again, this is back in the policy area, all those who are running the EPA and all those folks, they are motivated by a powerful religion called earth worship.

As we mentioned yesterday, a few episodes of David Barton's "Building on the American Heritage Series" program are available in the TBN archives, including one in which Barton explains how "social justice" is really just another term of "socialism."

At one point, the discussion turned to the subject of climate change, a topic on which Barton fancies himself an expert, in which he explained that the Biblical account of creation in the book of Genesis reveals that God placed man above all animals and the Earth. 

But, Barton explained, today environmentalists have reversed God's order and now place the Earth and animals above man, as proven by the fact that Michael Vick went to prison for dog-fighting but "we don't send abortionists to jail for killing babies":