Based on the science of Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), renowned Christian theologian and mathematician, the Pascal Wager can be used to prove the risks of denying the existence of God and climate change at the same time.
First, watch this video that covers the concept of Pascal's wager, a system used to prove what might happen to someone based on their belief in God and the chance that God exists or not.
More, and the wonky climate science stuff, below the fold
Diarist's note:My apologies to any whom these ideas may offend
I strongly encourage all to read this article, quoted below.
Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) was a Christian philosopher who agreed with skeptics that the evidence for the existence of God was not 100%. So, he argued that faith for or against God was like a gamble-but one in which the benefits of gambling on God and being wrong outweighed those of gambling against and being wrong. I think this applies perfectly well to our necessary decisions about global warming-and I would love to see Pascal's Wager used in debate on the floor of the U.S. Congress.
Pascal created a mathematical graph back in the 17th Century that divided into columns the odds of God's existence and what would happen if one did or did not believe in Him.
Pascal's wager, as it is called, looked like this
Pascal concluded that one should believe in God based on the consequences of not believing in Him should He exist.
Now, if one were to apply the same logic and reason to the idea of man-made Climate Change, this is what you would get.
Must watch video
This graph is very, very modest in it's estimation of the risks of doing nothing about climate change if it exists (which it clearly does). The risk we are taking here is the 25% chance that life on earth ends as we know it. To sum it up more simply, if we do nothing to curb man made climate change the Rapture will be brought to you by BigCoal and BigOil.
While the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that the result of business-as-usual warming would be 7 degrees by 2100, eventual warming over several centuries of 25 degrees is feasible, says Huber.
~snip~
"We found that ... a 21-degree warming would put half of the world's population in an uninhabitable environment," says study co-author Matthew Huber of Purdue University.
Simply put, the odds of you going to hell for not believing in God are equal to the odds of the earth becoming uninhabitable for life in it's present form should mankind do nothing to curb man-made climate change.
I, myself, am an agnostic who leans towards Gnostic Catholicism. I believe in a higher spiritual power, but I believe that I am without knowledge and am ill equipped to what the true meaning of God is. Therefore I pursue knowledge as a tool by which I hope to achieve enlightenment. This is logical, in my eyes, and as Pascal himself once said . . .
"Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed. The entire universe need not arm itself to crush him. A vapor, a drop of water suffices to kill him. But, if the universe were to crush him, man would still be more noble than that which killed him, because he knows that he dies and the advantage which the universe has over him, the universe knows nothing of this.
All our dignity then, consists in thought. By it we must elevate ourselves, and not by space and time which we cannot fill. Let us endavour then, to think well; this is the principle of morality."
If one were to accept Pascal's wager, the costs of not believing in a spiritual Higher Power are that you face a 25% chance of eternal damnation for you own soul. This is a choice that only you can take and only you will suffer from.
But, if one applies the same reasoning to climate change, we find that there is the same 25% chance that if we do not believe in climate change, if we do not act to prevent it and it does exist life on earth may end as we know it. This is a choice that our politicians and business leaders who seek to profit for themselves are making for us, it is wrong and dishonest at best, at worst it is the end of all life on earth. In 300 years, as some scientists estimate, this worse case climate change scenario could come to pass.
"We show that even modest global warming could therefore expose large fractions of the population to unprecedented heat stress, and that with severe warming this would become intolerable," the authors write.
"If warmings of 10 degrees C (18 degrees F) were really to occur in next three centuries, the area of land likely rendered uninhabitable by heat stress would dwarf that affected by rising sea level. Heat stress thus deserves more attention as a climate-change impact."
Would not the wisest course of action be to use 300 year old Christian science in order to ward off the potential end of life as we know it on earth 300 years from now? Matters of faith are personal, no other human being has the right to force you what to choose, but matters that effect planet earth are social, and no individual, be they driven by personal profit or political power, has the right to damn humanity to a boiling planet years from now because they refuse to acknowledge that the same odds that may prove that an unbeliever may face spiritual damnation are equal to the odds that climate change denial would damn our entire species.
And as mankind mistakenly pours oil into our oceans and CO2 into our atmosphere, perhaps this is the best way to prove to the Religious Right who deny the reality of climate change that the odds that God does or does not exist are equivalent to the odds that climate change does or does not exist, and that the odds of taking that wager and being wrong are equivalent as well.
