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A few weeks ago, we were talking with someone about some of the fads that are now sweeping through the church at large. We then began thinking about the many cultural fads that have come and gone over the decades, along with the “fad-famous” people and ideas that came along with them. Famous from one of our favorite decades, the 1970s, were Elton John, David Bowie, Farrah Fawcett, and Ali MacGraw, just to name a few of the popular cultural icons on the scene at that time. There was the wildly popular film “Love Story,” whose lead character, “Jennifer,” inspired countless parents to name their daughters Jennifer, making it the most popular name for girls in the decade. We have a Jennifer ourselves, born in that decade. And then there was the famous line from that film, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry?” Oh wow, that sounded so wonderful. So freeing… Nobody has to be sorry anymore, provided they love the person they have deeply wounded, or whose heart they may have shattered. A catchy phrase, to be sure, but completely ridiculous, as everyone surely knows by now.

The Godfather 1 & 2, Star Wars, and Saturday Night Fever were also released in the 70s to great applause. Disco music and disco dance became the rage. Mood rings were in, as were “leisure suits.” (Don’t ask). Afros seemed the most popular hairstyle for a time, even among Caucasian men, who got themselves tightly permed right and left, even if they may have felt a bit silly sitting around with little pink curlers in their hair. And among intellectuals, it became common knowledge that the next ice age was fast approaching and was surely going to destroy civilization! Possibly the only people who doubted the global cooling “scarytale” were uneducated dolts. According to the prophets of the intellectual elite, anyone with half a scientific brain knew that the cooler summers and colder winters of that decade proved that man-made emissions were causing this earth-destroying catastrophe.

The first Earth Day took place on April 22, 1970, and attracted approximately 20 million Americans. In preparation for the event, the Environmental Handbook had been produced and distributed to thousands of students across the U.S. and Canada, which contained a call to reject Christianity and “find a new religion.” Gaia worship soon became the religion of the American left as they worked to protect Mother Earth from evil humans. It had become so ingrained in Western culture’s thinking that to doubt it is deemed heretical, and as we all know, heretics must be punished! In his 1970 book, Without Marx or Jesus: The New American Revolution Has Begun, French social historian Jean-Francois Revel wrote, “Earth Day’ in America was one huge pantheistic feast.”¹For more detailed information, see chapter 7- “Magical Re-Enchantment” in Carl Teichrib’s book, Game of Gods

In order to at least give the impression of being well-informed, the government kicked in with legislation to clean up fuel emissions. Manufacturers worked hard to eliminate or at least curtail the use of aerosol sprays to prevent, or at least forestall, the impending global disaster. But something happened on the way to that particular global disaster, and the new Ice Age had a meltdown and never arrived! So naturally, all those priests and priestesses who got everyone all excited over nothing apologized profusely and went home with their tails between their legs. Nah. As is so often the case, false prophets simply get New Light. Rather than acknowledging that they were wrong and the Neanderthal conservative dolts had been correct, the prophets of this doom and gloom ecological religion simply changed the furniture around a bit. Yes, there was still a great calamitous human-caused global destruction coming, but now, instead of the bogeyman being global cooling, it was transformed into global warming, which had their undies in a twist.

In 2005, an online article,  “Global warming or global cooling?” picked up on the unpardonable sin of the 1970s:

A recent Washington Post article gave this scientist’s quote from 1972. “We simply cannot afford to gamble. We cannot risk inaction. The scientists who disagree are acting irresponsibly. The indications that our climate can soon change for the worse are too strong to be reasonably ignored.” The warning was not about global warming (which was not yet believed to be happening): it was about global cooling!

The October 23, 2006, “Newsweek Technology & Science” ran the web article “Remember Global Cooling?” which began with:

In April 1975, in an issue mostly taken up with stories about the collapse of the American-backed government of South Vietnam, NEWSWEEK published a small back-page article about a very different kind of disaster. Citing “ominous signs that the earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically,” the magazine warned of an impending “drastic decline in food production.” Political disruptions stemming from food shortages could affect “just about every nation on earth.” Scientists urged governments to consider emergency action to head off the terrible threat of . . . well, if you had been following the climate-change debates at the time, you’d have known that the threat was: global cooling.

It is enough to give you whiplash trying to keep in step with “eco-heresy hunters,” as Suzanne Fields has dubbed them. And, in the early days of the new millennium, it was manmade global warming that had become the bogeyman du jour! If these eco-soothsayers had retreated to a cave and entertained each other with their fearful fantasies, we might be OK with that, but no, we must all assent to their dire, ever-changing madness. And sadly, in order to avoid committing the “unpardonable sin” of doubting the new prophets of doom and bringing ridicule down on their heads, some Evangelical leaders eventually caved to the pressure and jumped on the bandwagon. The February 2006 article “Evangelical Leaders Join Global Warming Initiative” declared:

Despite opposition from some of their colleagues, 86 evangelical Christian leaders have decided to back a major initiative to fight global warming, saying “millions of people could die in this century because of climate change, most of them our poorest global neighbors.”

Oh boy, here we go again; If anyone does not agree with this coming manmade calamity, they will be personally responsible for the death of millions. We wouldn’t really want to let a little thing like actual facts get in the way of a really good story, however. So just forget about all that earlier global cooling drivel and get with the new program! And by the way, hold onto your wallets, friends, because when blind ideologues climb into bed with politicians, can new confiscatory taxes be far behind?

Christopher C. Horner’s book The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming (and Environmentalism), published in 2007, demonstrated that what we see in warmer and colder times is actually a normal temperature fluctuation which has occurred throughout history. Compared to the 1970s, it is now warmer. Compared to the 1930s, it is cooler. In other words, our conclusions depend on the time periods we choose to examine and compare. At one time, the planet was so warm that Greenland was actually green and being farmed by the Vikings (about 1000 AD) growing such crops as corn and barley. The planet then cooled, and Greenland isn’t green anymore, but looks like it should have been named Iceland. But since the world already had an Iceland, that might have been confusing…No, such information must instead be stricken from the public record. It is blasphemy to believe such things. Heretical! Burn the nay-sayers at the stake! Ellen Goodman from the Boston Globe made this abundantly clear in her February 9, 2007, article “No change in political climate” :

I would like to say we’re at a point where global warming is impossible to deny. Let’s just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers, though one denies the past and the other denies the present and future.

Of course, though she might like to say global warming is impossible to deny, but couldn’t honestly make that statement, an equally effective tactic is to merely paint those who disagree as evil. Folks, this “cooling-warming” switcheroo isn’t science we are dealing with, but the ancient religion of Gaia worship making a resurgence. It’s a sad, frightening religion with its own creeds and its own moral tenets, and its very own devil is standing behind anyone who would dare question its “truth.” Even in this day and age, Meteorologists can barely predict tomorrow’s weather, much less a decade or a century in the future, yet their prognostications are taken as gospel truth. That is why Ellen Goodman can claim that to doubt their doom and gloom predictions of the future is equivalent to being a Holocaust denier.

Think We Need Another Name

Man-made global cooling and the switch to global warming hadn’t worked out well, but with all the government funds and corporate profits, another marketing term was needed to keep the eco-scam going. So, at some point in the 1980s, the phenomena was simply dubbed “Climate Change.” This worked out much better, since whatever the temperature was, the theory was proved correct.

But some eco-activists inexplicably began to wonder whether all the time, money, and resources were truly slowing the world’s impending doom. In 2019, Michael Moore released a documentary film he had executive-produced, written, directed, and produced by Jeff Gibbs, titled Planet of the Humans. What they discovered and documented is that all the money and measures applied to the ability of humans to control the planetary thermostat not only failed but also caused additional ecological damage to the planet. In the end, Michael Moore still affirmed that climate change is real, but the only way to address it is to decrease the Earth’s population. He did not specify which human beings should be the first to leave.

More recently, the assertions by the eco-clergy that the primary cause of “climate change” is CO2 made headlines in August of this year, “New Study Dismantles The ‘CO2 Drives Climate’ In One Fell Swoop.”:

A few of the key points include:

▪ CO2 only contributes about 4-5% to the greenhouse effect, whereas water vapor and clouds contribute 95%.
▪ Of that 4-5% greenhouse effect contribution from CO2, just 4% of that amount can be attributed to human activities (i.e., fossil fuel emissions). Thus, about 96% of the 4% contribution from CO2 can be attributed to natural processes.

For some of us, this is not new news. Groups like the CO2 Coalition have been producing scientific facts and demonstrating this since 2015.

A week ago, a new, very surprising headline, “Business leaders cheer Bill Gates ditching climate doom,” hit the internet:

After years of predicting a global warming doomsday scenario, Bill Gates is seemingly walking back those views and prioritizing innovation above alarmism.

Earlier this week, Gates released “Three Tough Truths About Climate,” a memo that marked a striking departure from his previous advocacy. He wrote that ultimately global warming “will not lead to humanity’s demise” and suggested “we should measure success by our impact on human welfare more than our impact on the global temperature.”

Such sentiments mark a dramatic change from his 2021 book “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster.” It predicted that “we are going to have a catastrophic warming of the planet” if we don’t reach net-zero emissions by 2050.

In “Three Tough Truths About Climate,” Gates is not saying there is no climate change, but rather that we need to redirect resources toward something we actually have control over. His new idea is:

The best way to help people adapt to climate change is to make sure they’re healthy and prosperous.

Wait, Climate Change “will not lead to humanity’s demise” and “we should measure success by our impact on human welfare more than our impact on the global temperature”? The impact of this course change was nearly immediate on two fronts. The reaction of the business community, “Bill Gates, 893 Companies Ditch Climate Initiative…Call For ‘Return to Economic Rationality’” and the eco warriors, “The week Bill Gates backtracked on climate change – and sent eco fanatics into meltdown.”

The Question of Origins

This same elitist attitude we have seen on the issue of Climate Change is evidenced concerning the question of origins. Did the cosmos pop into existence from nothing uncaused for no reason? Are we products of Darwinian Evolution? Are we simply accidents of nature in a mindless “time plus chance” universe? Or, is there above it all an intelligent designer, an uncaused cause, Who brought everything – the cosmos, climate, and humans, and in fact all of life on this planet – into existence?  Can this be TRUE?

Some scientists and people in the mainstream media view the intelligent design position as backward and unscientific, yet another unpardonable sin against the god of liberal thought. In order to prevent actual questioning of their religion, they classify creationist claims as being on a par with belief in “visits of space aliens, lucky numbers, and horoscopes.” In the AOL News article “U.S. Beliefs in Pseudoscience Worry Experts” Randolph E. Schmid writes:

A panel of researchers expressed concern that people are giving increasing credence to pseudoscience such as the visits of space aliens, lucky numbers and horoscopes.

In addition, these researchers noted an increase in college students who report they are “unsure” about creationism as compared with evolution.

But perhaps that too is beginning to change as Michel-Yves Bolloré suggests in “It’s getting harder for scientists not to believe in God”:

Scientists across many fields of inquiry are now coming round to the idea that the thermal death of the universe and the Big Bang are strong evidence that our cosmos had an absolute beginning, while the fine-tuning of the universe and the transition from inert matter to life imply (separately) some more extraordinary fine tuning, showing the intervention of a creator external to our world.

This sounds a bit like Romans 1 at play:

For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. (Romans 1:19-20)

The evidence is there for all to see; they simply have to choose to believe the evidence and follow where it leads.

There is a God. He created everything, and He cares deeply for human beings. They wandered away from His love and broke His law, but He has provided a Savior, His own Son Jesus, so by believing in Him and His sacrificial death on their behalf, lost human beings can be forgiven and adopted as God’s children, who will spend a blessed eternity with Him.Ω

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