Gene's Blog

The two greatest threats to Earth.

Would you take bets on what I might think those are? :^). I won’t make you wait. Religion and Global Warming. Come to think of it, they aren’t all that much different. Both create huge division between people and both really heat up any discussion.

Let’s start though with our environment. Since those with an interest in keeping things the way they are, people who already have considerable advantages, I mean, in that they own the means of production globally and all those who are peripherally involved in those enterprises, the advertising, banking, brokering industries, to name three, could find no real fault with Al Gore’s brilliantly put together documentary on global warming, An Inconvenient Truth, they did find a small error in one statement regarding the loss of coastline as the ice at both poles becomes water, they have used that to attack the entire premise. This is the typical stance of right wing, American right wing, politics – if you can’t refute the argument, find some tiny piece of it that you can, then hammer that, relentlessly, ignoring every other part of it. Your core constituency will not bother to do the investigating themselves, they will, as I have mentioned many times already, allow their “leadership” to do their thinking for them, and follow that leadership blindly, waving their arms in righteous indignation, right over the cliff and into that newly teeming ocean. The science is, in the immortal words of Robert Palmer, irrefutable, giggle. So you allege there is no consensus, that not all scientists support the theory behind global warming. Conveniently, or inconveniently, depending on your viewpoint, declining to mention that the ratio of scientists who support the theory behind global warming to those who don’t has been increasing steadily, until now it is overwhelmingly in support of decisive and immediate action. These articles from Wikipedia demonstrate both the danger and the growing consensus.

This page describes the current conditions objectively and scientifically as to the effect this phenomena is having now.

Global Warming

This page lists a large number of official scientific associations who have taken substantive positions on this issue that support the idea that the current situation is exacerbated greatly, and likely caused by, human actions. The most recent surveys of various types are listed on this page as well. The most recent indicate roughly 80% are on the side of human cause and 20% still claiming natural causes. I want to note that the surveys go back roughly 15 years and the percentages have climbed dramatically and consistently to their current levels. There was considerable skepticism to begin with, why would there not be? To think that we puny humans could affect so large a system as that which sustains life on our planet was silly 15 years ago, but as the evidence has mounted, so too has scientific opinion swung toward certainty that it is we puny humans who are at the root of this and that if we do not act, strongly and soon, we may pass a point of no return. We may see global events that have not been ever occurred on this planet by natural causes. We could, we certainly could, make earth uninhabitable without ever experiencing the global holocaust a full-scale nuclear war would precipitate. That is where I am going next. Look at these articles, follow the links, decide for yourselves. Then push your political representatives INTO action. They will not act without, we, the people demanding that action. It is past time that we took our heads out of the sand and demanded significant, immediate, change. Lest we suffer the consequences that so far only religion has threatened us with.

Scientific Organizations Who Have Issued Supporting Statements

Now then, to the other danger I mentioned in the title. Religion. Yesterday I posted a table of the world’s religions. Most of the population of our planet are affiliated in one way or another with one of those, or smaller sects that I didn’t ferret out. Virtually all of those are more about fear than love, division than togetherness. In talking with someone earlier today, I mentioned that it was time to “put the fear of God” in people for real, then amended that to “put the love of God” in them. Because, God is not about fear, God is the antithesis of fear, God, our Creator, is about love and nothing but love. Many religions claim this, teach this, out of one side of their mouths, while out of the other they say but if you don’t do what He wants, as He told me to tell you, He will punish you for eternity. So they combine fear and love in the same sentence, in the same theology. But they are opposites, they are polar opposites. The reason I consider religion so great a threat is that, while so many of its adherents are quite peaceful people, among them have always been those who are not. Those are the ones with the loudest voices. Those are the ones who kill those who do not believe what they believe. Who believe the end justifies the means and the only end that is acceptable to them is that everyone believe what THEY believe. Or pretend to. I got this today in my mail from a friend. I’ve been unable to discern its true source, what I’ve found simply says it is an anonymous email. But it makes an enormous point.

FANATICISM

A man whose family was German aristocracy prior to World War II owned a number of large industries and estates. When asked how many German people were true Nazis, the answer he gave can guide our attitude toward fanaticism.

“Very few people were true Nazis,” he said, “but many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come. My family lost everything. I ended up in a concentration camp, and the Allies destroyed my factories.”

We are told again and again by “experts” and “talking heads” that Islam is the religion of peace, and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace. Although this unqualified assertion may be true, it is entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel better, and meant to somehow diminish the specter of fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam.

The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history. It is the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting wars worldwide. It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave. It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder or “honor kill.” It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque. It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals. The hard quantifiable fact is that the “peaceful majority,” the “silent majority,” is cowed and extraneous.

Communist Russia comprised Russians who just wanted to live in peace, Yet the Russian Communists were responsible for the murder of about 20 million people. The peaceful majority were irrelevant. China’s huge population was peaceful as well, but Chinese Communists managed to kill a staggering 70 million people. The average Japanese individual prior to World War II was not a warmongering sadist. Yet, Japan murdered and slaughtered its way across southeast Asia in an orgy of killing that included the systematic murder of 12 million Chinese civilians, most killed by sword, shovel and bayonet. And, who can forget Rwanda, which collapsed into butchery. Could it not be said that the majority of Rwandans were “peace loving?”

History lessons are often incredibly simple and blunt, yet for all our powers of reason we often miss the most basic and uncomplicated of points: Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence. Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don’t speak up because, like my friend from Germany, they will awaken one day and find that the fanatics own them, and the end of their world will have begun.

Peace-loving Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Russians, Rwandans, Serbs, Afghans, Iraqis, Palestinians, Somalis, Nigerians, Algerians, and many others have died because the peaceful majority did not speak up until it was too late.

As for us who watch it all unfold, we must pay attention to the only group that counts: the fanatics who threaten our way of life.

The following poem/statement exists in various forms but they all have the same message to me. The version inscribed at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. reads:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out – because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak for me.

And this brings me to my point about the other grave danger to our planet, religion. It divides us. It separates us into camps. And in our separate, peaceful camps will steal the wolves of fanaticism, regardless that the vast majority of the adherents to any particular religious tradition are peaceful, there will be among them those who would kill everyone who dares have another idea. The only way to free ourselves from this never-ending cycle of hatred, fear, war, bloodshed and horror is to turn from those who would teach us that different is bad, that our way is the only way, and that all who do not follow our way are our enemies. We must turn to those who teach that Love is the answer to every question AND who put that most basic principle of our true homeland, that place where love is all there is and to which we all return in the end, to work here on earth. If we are here to have an experience that teaches us what we are not, can we not NOW say we have learned that lesson? Can we not count the carnage we have created in our desperate attempts to force our way on others as enough? Can we not quiet the wolves with our love? We cannot win this battle with evil incarnate, and that is what those “wolves” are dear ones, they who are here to show the rest of us who WE ARE NOT, evil incarnate. Isn’t it time we took back our rightful heritage as children of our loving God? Isn’t it time we quiet ones stood up and said, enough. It is time you who would create “faith” and “obeisance” at the point of a sword, or the barrel of a gun, sit down, shut up and learn the truth of us. We are living souls, born in love, who wish to live this experience here in the relative universe as expression OF that love, not as its antithesis? We are here to re-member Who We Really Are, to re-join each other in celebration of our very existence and get on with the business of loving each other? I am not saying we will have no commerce, no government, no faith or tradition, I am saying we can have all those things in whatever way we wish as long as we do so with love and respect for each other. When we have done this, turned planet earth into a place resembling the Eden from which we came, that we will then be ready to turn our attention to the heavens and begin to consider where we might like to live next, giggle. Where we might meet another group of God’s children with whom to enjoy love and fellowship.

It is time we quiet ones took back our truth from the thieves and wolves who have turned it into their platform for spreading hatred, intolerance and bloodshed around this world in the most unholy of ways, in the name of our loving Creator. It is not His will that we live this way, it is OURS. We have created this unholy mess, we can recreate it in its true glory. I’ve described on my main page the feeling of our home. I believe with all my heart that we can all experience that feeling here, when we join together and decide THAT is how we wish to express the truth of our heritage, of our souls and our love for each other and our Creator. Eden on Earth. Has a nice ring to it in my ears, giggle. And it is that to which I wish to dedicate my own life. To which I DO dedicate my own life. Nothing stands between us now, and we will not be denied. Sorry, Sarah, giggle. much love, :^) gene

If today brings even one choice your way
choose to be a bringer of the light :^) gene