Ideas Have Consequences
Everything that we see around us is the product of ideas, of ideologies, of worldviews. That's where everything starts. Worldviews are not all the same, and the differences matter a lot. How do you judge a tree? By its fruits. How do you judge a worldview? By its physical, tangible, observable fruit. The things it produces. Ideas that are noble and true produce beauty, abundance, and human flourishing. Poisonous ideas produce ugliness. They destroy and dehumanize. It really is that simple. Welcome to Ideas Have Consequences, the podcast of Disciple Nations Alliance, where we prepare followers of Christ to better understand the true ideas that lead to human flourishing while fighting against poisonous ideas that destroy nations. Join us, and prepare your minds for action!
Ideas Have Consequences
Climate Change’s deity | Darrell Harrison
Episode Summary: What if climate change isn't primarily about science, but religion?
Darrell Harrison, co-author of A Biblical Theology of Climate Change, makes the provocative case that climate alarmism is more than politics or science—it's a full-fledged worldview rooted in modern pantheism. He exposes how this ideology treats Earth as a deity. This deity demands radical sacrifice and drives policies that often harm both people and the very planet they claim to protect.
We hope this conversation challenges you to approach environmental concerns not with fear or uncritical submission, but with truth, wisdom, and a biblical framework. Ideas really do have consequences. Understanding the worldviews behind today's most pervasive ideas will give you the clarity and confidence to exchange illusion for reality and respond faithfully to even the most controversial issues.
Who is Disciple Nations Alliance (DNA)? Since 1997, DNA’s mission has been to equip followers of Jesus around the globe with a biblical worldview, empowering them to build flourishing families, communities, and nations. 👉 https://disciplenations.org/
🎙️Featured Guest:
Darrell is a native of Atlanta, Georgia, and came to faith in Christ at approximately 28 years of age. Prior to joining the pastoral staff at Redeemer Bible Church (Gilbert, AZ), Darrell served at Grace to You as Director of Digital Platforms. He is co-host of Just Thinking, one of the leading Christian podcasts in the world. Darrell is a fellow of the Black Theology and Leadership Institute at Princeton Theological Seminary (PTS) and holds a graduate certificate from the Theology and Ministry program at PTS. He has a passion for expository teaching, cultural apologetics, and biblical counseling. In his spare time, he enjoys college sports, NFL, writing, classical music, and reading the Puritans. Darrell and his wife Melissa have three adult children, Collin, Naomi, and Yasmine, each of whom resides in their native state of Georgia.
📌 Recommended Links
👉 Book: A Biblical Theology of Climate Change – G3 Press
👉 Recommended Episode: EP # 124 | A Biblical Theology of Climate Change - Just Thinking Ministries
👉 Recomended Episode: Underlying Worldviews: DEI & Climate Alarmism | Darrell Harrison - Disciple Nations Alliance
👉 Recommended Episode: Why are Climate Scientists Anti-Science? With Dr. David Legates - Disciple Nations Alliance
👉 Book: Get Our Amazon Bestseller: Climate and Energy: The Case for Realism – Cornwall Alliance
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Climate change. When you take it to its extreme, it's antithetically opposed to work, to producing, to being creative. This is why you have the tomato soup can throwers going in and pouring soup cans on priceless masterpieces of art, because they hate beauty, they hate the Imago Dei in us. But what the tomato soup throwers would have you do? You would be living in a forest somewhere eating tree bark and insects, and I am not exaggerating. They would have you like you were back in the garden wearing fig leaves. I mean, this is exactly the extreme to which they would go to protect Gaia.
Speaker 2:Well, welcome again everyone to another episode of Ideas have Consequences. This is the podcast of the Disciple Nations Alliance. On this show, we examine how our mission as Christians is to spread the gospel around the world to all nations. But it doesn't stop there. It includes being the hands and feet of God to transform the nations to increasingly reflect the truth, the goodness and the beauty of God's kingdom. Now, tragically, the church today has largely neglected this broader understanding of her mission and, as a result, most Christians are having very little influence on their surrounding cultures. Join us on this podcast as we rediscover what it means for each of us to disciple the nations and to create Christ-honoring cultures that reflect the character of the living God. I'm Scott Allen, I'm the president of the DNA and I'm joined today by Luke Allen, my colleague hey, and we're really excited today to have with us Daryl Harrison. We're going to get into his bio a little bit later, but Daryl's been a regular on our podcast.
Speaker 2:Today we're going to talk about the whole issue of climate change, and that's something that we've hit on at different times because, really, you know, for us our teaching on biblical worldview, it's really important that we not just talk about what is a biblical worldview. What are the core contours, the basic outline of the biblical story. But how does it contrast with the kind of competing, the main competing stories or worldviews that are driving culture today, and this one on climate change certainly is that this is not just a topic or a subject. This really is much broader than that. It really is a comprehensive worldview and it's a dominant and kind of competing worldview. I would say to the biblical worldview that has to be understood by Christians. So that's what we're going to get into today.
Speaker 2:I would say Luke. For me anyways, one of the key takeaways today was just the discussion of climate change as a religion or as a worldview. You know we've had on in the past people like Calvin Beisner and David Legates and we looked at some of the actual scientific kind of data that advocates of climate change put forward and challenged some of those basic data presuppositions, and this is what makes, I think, this a unique kind of discussion. Today we're getting down into the level of kind of presuppositions and kind of first beliefs. What are the basic?
Speaker 3:contours of this worldview. Yeah, I would say that was probably my favorite part of this discussion as well. As you know, at the beginning of any worldview, you have to define who is God and we talked about this a little bit in the discussion and who you, who you are worshiping, who that God is, is is going to inform all the other questions that you build your life upon. Who am I? What's my purpose? You know all those foundational questions. So today we asked the question of, in this climate change alarmism that we see today, if it is a religion, then who is the God that they're worshiping? And I thought that part of the discussion was fascinating.
Speaker 3:It was an area that I have not heard anyone um address so clearly and, um, I think our listeners are going to really enjoy that portion of the discussion. And then from there, we talked about if this is okay, so if this is your God, then how are you going to live your life and what your response is going to be to that? And, uh, yeah, I I won't try to give away too much, but I just thought that was such an interesting take on a topic that usually seems data-heavy, scientific, logic-heavy all things I really enjoy. I like listening to Bjorn Lomberg. He's a scientist that speaks a lot to climate change and yet he's not coming at it from the perspective of worldview. He's not even a Christian, so he's just not able to articulate the argument like we heard today from Daryl. So yeah, it's a great discussion.
Speaker 2:Well, great, luke. And with that, without further ado, let's get into our podcast today. Well, welcome again to Ideas have Consequences. And today we're thrilled to have with us again a guest that we've had on a couple of times, two or three times. He's becoming a regular, which is thrilling to me Daryl Harrison. Daryl, welcome back to Ideas have Consequences, scott.
Speaker 1:Luke. Thank you guys for having me back. It's always a pleasure man. It seems like it's been longer than it's been. It's true, it's so great to see you brothers, again, thank you for having me back on.
Speaker 2:It's such a pleasure, daryl. Thank you, and just a quick bio for those who aren't familiar with Daryl he's a native of Atlanta, georgia, and he's currently on the pastoral staff of a wonderful church in Gilbert, arizona Redeemer Church, and then, before that, he served at Grace For you as the Director of Digital Platforms. That's the ministry of John MacArthur. And just before I go any further, daryl, my condolences on the passing of John MacArthur. I know you were very close to him.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you, Scott. Thank you very much. I appreciate that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I feel that loss as well. So he's a really courageous and great man. Daryl is the co-host of an incredible podcast that if you're not familiar with it, you need to start listening to it. It's called Just Thinking. Along with his friend Virgil Walker, it's one of the leading Christian podcasts in the world. Daryl's a fellow of the Black Theology and Leadership Institute at Princeton Theological Seminary and he holds a graduate certificate from the Theology and Ministry Program at Princeton Theological Seminary. He has a passion for expository teaching, cultural apologetics, biblical counseling. Him and his wife, melissa, have three adult children.
Speaker 2:So a little bit about you, daryl.
Speaker 2:There's a lot more I could say, but the thing I so appreciate about you is your courage and your passion for the truth and just the clarity of your thought when it comes to the Bible, biblical worldview and how that differs from kind of the main kind of cultural worldviews that are present in our culture today, whether it's social justice, kind of the critical Marxist kind of ideology, or the one we're going to talk about today, which is climate change.
Speaker 2:You wrote a book and it was published earlier this year, released earlier this year, called the Biblical Theology of Climate Change, and you wrote that with Virgil, and we wanted to really get into that topic today just because it's such an important topic, such a prevalent topic. It's not a topic, it really is a worldview. It's one of the dominant worldviews of the West today and I think it's imperative for Christians to understand this worldview and how it differs from a distinctly biblical worldview. So if I could just start by asking what prompted you, daryl, in the midst of so many other things that you're teaching and writing, to write this book?
Speaker 1:Yes, scott, that's a great question. Again, thank you guys for having me back on. It truly is a joy to be with you all to discuss this incredibly important topic on climate change. Well, to answer your question, scott, as is the case with many of the books that Virgil and I have co-written, the book that we just released earlier this year, biblical Theology of Climate Change, was actually the product of one of our episodes that we did on the Just Thinking podcast of that same title. It was the Biblical Theology of Climate Change. We released that episode on July 11th, 2023. So a couple of years ago 2023. So a couple years, a couple years ago.
Speaker 1:So in the book, what people are getting is essentially a transcript a literal transcript of the content from that podcast episode, but along with discussion questions which we have after every chapter, and there's also in the book included and this really attests to how important Virgil and I view this topic In the book there's an addendum with additional resources and discussion questions for parents who homeschool their children. We think it's hugely important for parents who homeschool to equip their age appropriate children to be able to respond intelligently and for the children who are believers, we want them to be able to respond bibl. And for the children who are believers, we want them to be able to respond biblically to this issue, because they're not going to get this kind of content in the schools. They're not going to get this kind of content. That's in our book, that was in our podcast episode. Their children are not being taught this in the public school system. In fact, they're being taught exactly the opposite, and we'll get into some of what that content is here later on, I'm sure.
Speaker 1:But Virgin and I felt that this topic warranted a biblical response. After seeing many evangelical churches, in the same way that they embrace critical race theory, I saw many evangelical churches embracing climate change as a so-called quote-unquote gospel issue without having done the research, without having investigated this issue to uncover what its origins are. So, yeah, that's really what prompted us to do the book, because this is, as you said, this is a worldview issue.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And, as with every worldview, we need to, as Christians, be well-informed as to what the origins of these worldviews are, and in the case of climate change, the origins are decidedly and unarguably pagan.
Speaker 2:Well, I really want to get into that. But if that's true, then it's confusing and puzzling why so many evangelicals, prominent evangelicals, are on board, you know, repeating, reinforcing the central claims of quote-unquote climate change. In fact, let me just read a quote from Pastor Gavin Ortland, who's a very prominent pastor in California. This comes from a book by Megan Basham called Shepherds for Sale Excellent book. I highly recommend all of our listeners to pick that book up and read that. She's got a chapter in there on how evangelicals, prominent evangelicals, like Pastor Ortland, have really jumped on board the climate change bandwagon.
Speaker 2:Here's what he says, or she quotes him as saying in the book she says that Pastor Ortlund says that climate change poses a significant risk to human survival. So we're talking about a super serious issue. And then he goes on and suggests that it's settled science. And anyone who pushes back against the claim that it's settled science and anyone who pushes back against the claim that this is settled science hasn't studied the matter and isn't doing so based, or is doing so based, on sociopolitical associations and not on quote-unquote science. Daryl, what's your response to Pastor Ortlund?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I've not met Pastor Ortlund, I've never spoken with him, never interacted with him on any level, either in person or virtually. With all due respect, I have to say that Pastor Ortlund is being very presuppositional in his assumptions, in his presumptions to assert assumptions and his presumptions to assert, number one, that climate change is settled science, and then, number two, to assert, unfoundingly, that those who oppose the argument that climate change is settled science hasn't studied the issue, hasn't really investigated the issue. That's just erroneous and presuppositional. I would argue in all humility that the Just Thinking podcast episode that Virgil and I did is arguably the most in-depth, objective, well-researched exposition of the climate change issue that you will hear anywhere. I mean that's a three and a half hour episode from which we wrote a book. That was a theological apologetic against the idea of climate change, against that worldview. But we we support our apologetic with objective, firsthand sources from those who have promoted what is today called climate change but what has been renamed for decades prior to being called climate change. We cite firsthand sources to basically educate people on what those who support this worldview actually say and believe themselves.
Speaker 1:So again, with all due respect to Pastor Ortlund, he's wrong. There are evangelicals who have researched this issue, who have studied this issue, who have read the white papers, who have read the books and who are very, very fluent on what this worldview entails, who supports it and what its origins are. And I said earlier, the origins of climate change are arguably pagan. I will welcome the opportunity to speak one-on-one with Pastor Orton about this, and even offer him a free copy of our book if it comes to that. But again, he is not well-informed. I think he's somewhat misdirected in his assertions which, again, are all presuppositional and really without basis. In fact.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, and he's not alone, I mean there's many others and again Megan Basham highlights this in her book. We're talking about groups like the National Association of Evangelicals, rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church, christianity Today. You know many prominent members of the Gospel Coalition. So you know many, many evangelicals now are kind of promoting those two big claims. I would say Number one, that this is an existential threat to human survival, climate change is, and that it's beyond. You know, it's beyond the realm of discussion. At this point it's settled. So you know. I know when we first had you on many years ago, we were talking about social justice and there was something very similar happening with that whole issue as well. You had a very I mean essentially a far-left worldview rooted in Marxism bursting onto the scenes and then, all of a sudden, the next thing, you know, there's a whole bunch of sadly evangelicals that are being published and supporting that worldview with kind of a Christian veneer, and I think we're seeing the same thing here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, just real quick, scott, to just sort of tag team what you're correctly saying there See, worldviews like this.
Speaker 1:it was the same with the social justice thing, with Black Lives Matter and now now, more recently, with dei and all that kind of thing, is what these, what these ideologies and worldviews have in common is that they cloak themselves in moralism is what they do. So these are, these are quasi-moral uh, worldviews and ideologies that tap the heartstrings of christ, because and I hate to say this, but I think it's true to a large extent Many people who profess to be Christians, what they really are, are moralists. So they will look at something like social justice. They'll look at something like climate change and they'll say, oh, yeah, that's good, they give a moral definition to it. They give a moral definition to it, they give a moral context to it. They don't necessarily give a biblical context or framework or paradigm to it. So they'll look at something and say, well, you know, yeah, that's good, we should do that. Yeah, that's good, we should support that, and that's how these.
Speaker 1:That's, that's the subtlety of these worldviews. Climate change is no different. Yeah, it's a good thing to take care of the earth, it's a good thing to make sure our wateriblically and looking at them morally, morally, is subjective. You know there is no common agreement on what is moral in the world, in the culture. You ask 10 people, you'll get 10 different responses to okay, is it moral to do this to the earth or is it moral to use these resources in the earth? But see, a biblical worldview of these things fixes you on what God's word says, on the objective, dogmatic truth of God's word.
Speaker 1:You cannot weave or waver one way or the other. So it's important that, as Christians, we not be moralists about these issues. We must be biblicists, we must be theologians. It's like Dr RC Sproul said everyone's a theologian. We must be theologians about these issues, which is why we title our book A Biblical Theology of Climate Change. We use that word deliberately to have people consider hey, what does God's? That's hence the word theology. What does God's word say about what this issue is now labeled climate change? You know it used to be global warming and, you know, had all those kinds of labels before, you know. But now it's being called climate change, you know. So what does the Bible say about this? So we must be biblical apologists and not just moralists about this issue.
Speaker 3:Amen, yeah, I mean, what's so similar between this and the Black Lives Matter issue is just their labels, their titles. Their titles are hard to argue with.
Speaker 2:Right, black Lives Matter yeah.
Speaker 3:Of course, yeah, climate change, you know, and they always love to use the stat. Well, 98% of scientists agree that the climate is changing and I always think to that. Well, that's a silly argument. I would hope 100% of scientists would think the climate is changing, because the climate's always changing. Of course it's changing, you know it's, you can't argue with that, it's just you know. How much is it changing? That's my question how fast? How extreme do we need to be in our measures of combating this?
Speaker 1:so yeah, and we have to also look. I hate to interrupt you, but we hope we also have to be. We also have to be able to define well, what do we mean by changing?
Speaker 1:yeah what do we mean by that? See, we, we have to exit. When you talk great point you brought up look, it's always in the point you brought up Luke, it's always in the terms, it's always in the labels, it's always in the vernacular. It's like the old saying goes you know the devil's in the details. Well, it's no different here with climate change, black Lives Matter, critical race theory. The devil is in the details.
Speaker 1:We, as Christian apologists, we must be able to not only answer the right questions but ask the right questions. So we need to be able to say well, what do you mean, first of all, by climate? What do you mean by changing? You know, here in Arizona, you know the summer is here the last seven months it's hot every day. Okay, but I could still argue that the climate changes. If today is going to be 110, tomorrow is going to be 105. Will the climate change? Tomorrow is going to be five degrees cooler. But we're still talking about general weather patterns for this area, which is desert, and in the desert it's hot. You can't, you can't, you can't say, you can't apply an ideological term to how God has created this area of North America to be it's hot. So we have to be able to challenge the culture, challenge the world, define what you mean by that. That's the first thing we need to do.
Speaker 2:I'd like to jump ahead here a little bit. You talk about it being a religion that's rooted in paganism, to just kind of go down to that deeper level of kind of first principles, first kind of worldview, foundational worldview, assumptions of this movement of climate change. Daryl, if you could just kind of lay that out a little bit for us, especially in terms of how it differs from biblical truth, and this would get into things like you know, who is God? What does it mean to be a human being? You know some of those because you're right, I think it's starting with very different assumptions about some of these really basic questions.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So for the sake of your listeners, I want to be clear here. Climate change not only functions as a religion, it is a religion. Climate change is a religion. This is one of the points that Virgil and I point out in our book as well as the podcast episode.
Speaker 1:Climate change is a worldview that's grounded fundamentally in Middle Eastern pantheism. Now a little exegesis here for context for your listeners that word pantheism, the prefix pan, means all and the word theism means God. So pantheism, the word literally means all God. So in climate change, pantheism undergirds that entire worldview, in that climate change proffers that God is literally in everything. Pantheism equates God with the universe and the universe with God. There is no distinction In pantheism, everything has a seed of the divine. This is what your listeners have to understand about climate change.
Speaker 1:Climate change being undergirded by Middle Eastern pantheism sees everything as having a seed of the divine, and that is precisely what makes climate change a religion. Because with climate change, the earth itself, the creation itself, the planet and everything that constitutes it water, land, trees, animals, fish, birds all of it is divine. All of it is divine and as such it must not only be protected but worshipped. This is what makes anything a religion is that it worships something you see, and in climate change, it worships the earth. Climate change, earth is what is worship and in terms of its core doctrines, there really are only two fundamental core, you know, central doctrines for the climate change worldview. I'm trying to make this very simple for your listeners. But doctrine number one is that climate change sees the earth as divine. Climate change sees the earth as divine in and of itself. Earth is a being. It is a divine being, so the very creation itself is divine and is worthy of worship. Because of core doctrine number one that the earth is divine, man must serve the earth. Man exists to serve the earth.
Speaker 1:And in my own study of this climate change worldview, what I came to understand is how really dangerous the moniker mother nature is, because in climate change, god is a mother. Her name is Gaia G-A-I-A. So this idea of Mother Earth is not some innocuous, harmless, cutesy little nickname. This is a label that has deep pagan pantheistic roots, because if you were to do a search on the internet, just type in Gaia, type in Gaia you would see this image of a Middle Eastern woman who is pictured as the mother of all things. She's the mother of the earth, she's the mother of humanity, she's the mother of everything that's on the earth. She's the nurturer of everything that's on the earth. Again, the elements of the earth fire, water, land. Everything is divine.
Speaker 1:So, just to give your listeners a very relevant case in point, I'm going to read a brief quote from what we covered in our podcast episode, as well as our book, from what's called the Gaian Creed. This is called the Gaian Creed. This is the credo of Gaia worshipers. I'm quoting verbatim we believe that the earth, gaia, is a living being, that Gaia is, at the same time, composed of the vast diversity of life and is alive in Gaia's own right. So they're arguing here that, like the God of the Bible, gaia is self-existing. She was not created, she is self-existing.
Speaker 1:Continuing the quote we understand that we depend completely and utterly on Gaia and are part of Gaia. We recognize that current and human actions are fundamentally altering Gaia. That's their argument for climate change, that they're saying that current human actions are fundamentally altering Gaia. So they're blaming humanity for altering Gaia's balance, if you will, and that, if pushed too far, and that if pushed too far, gaia will shift from Gaia's current state to one inhospitable to humans and millions of other species.
Speaker 1:So they're arguing here in the Gaia Creed that if humanity continues on this course of fundamentally altering Gaia, we're going to make Gaia angry and she's going to take out her wrath on humanity. Continuing to quote here therefore, we commit to living radically sustainable lives. Listen to this part, even to an extent that it may alienate us from our kin, our communities and our cultures. So they're saying that we should submit to Gaia, even if it separates us from our families, from the communities that we're a part of, from the very cultures that we exist in. And then the last sentence of that quote reads as follows we commit to sharing our philosophy and bringing others to understand and embrace their relationship with Gaia and help heal Gaia, their relationship with Gaia, and help heal Gaia and, in the process themselves, their families and their communities.
Speaker 3:Unquote. That is crazy. When I first heard you read that, I was just shocked because they're living it out right. It's a statement of faith and they're living it out.
Speaker 3:It's a religion and when you presented it that way, it made so much more sense of this whole argument than I've ever heard before, because so often we hear and I mean I mentioned this to you before the episode, but we hear the climatologists come on and refute the climate alarmist activists and they'll use facts and they'll use science and great. You know, for any logical-minded, truth-seeking person out there, those kind of arguments will work. But for someone with the religious fervor of someone who believes in the Gyanistic creed, those facts aren't going to work. They're going to go right over their head. You know, for someone who's going to go throw soup at a Monet painting, they don't really care about your arguments and your debates. It's a whole different level when it comes to a worldview. I think it was Dallas Willard who said we are truly at the mercy of our ideas, and this is never more true than our idea about God.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So it really comes all down to worldview.
Speaker 1:Who is?
Speaker 3:God in your worldview and from that base, you're going to answer all of the other big worldview questions. Who is man? What is my purpose? You know what is morality? Um, which you already answered, all of those, uh, within this religion of of human's purpose and whatnot, um, my question would be then, when it comes to conversations that we might have with someone who is truly a follower of this religion, this kind of neo-pantheistic religion, how do you go about a conversation with them, how do you go about questioning someone who is sold out on this religion, if we can't use facts and logic and I you know they may not, you know, say hey, I subscribe to this as a religion.
Speaker 2:I think probably a lot of people including Pastor Ortland or others, you know they would say hey, you know, I just believe that we're facing an existential threat from climate change, you know? So they may not. They may not, you know. Subscribe.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, that's what's so subversive about this. I don't think hardly anyone who's with is a climate change activist would call himself a guyanist, you know but, it just undergirds it in such a way when it's, it's not different than a critical race theory.
Speaker 1:They're not gonna come up and say, hey, I'm a critical race theory, right? They're not gonna say that. They're not gonna say, hey, I'm a racist, correct? They're not gonna say that, although that's what they are. They're not gonna come say that. They're not going to say, hey, I'm a racist, correct. They're not going to say that, although that's what they are, they're not going to come up and tell you that that's what they are.
Speaker 1:I mean, you know, luke, you brought up a good point. You used it as an example. You know the folks who will walk into a museum and throw a can of tomato soup on a Monet painting. You know these guys. That's worship. That's an act of worship that they're carrying out when they do that, and what I want your listeners to understand is that that is not an extreme example. By the way, that's not an extreme example.
Speaker 1:The same people who throw tomato soup on a Monet painting are the same people who block your access to the freeways when you're trying to get home or get to the airport, to a flight. These are the same people who go around vandalizing private property with spray paint. But these are all acts of worship and all their acts of worship are punitive to your freedom. They're trying to say to you yeah, making an interesting way of making punitive your existence, and what I mean by that is that, in climate change, you are hurting, you're making Gaia angry, merely by existing. I'm not exaggerating here. That you exist is the problem, is the fundamental problem.
Speaker 1:This is why, if you go all the way back to the 1960s and this is where Virgil and I were able to trace the origins of this worldview too there's a book titled the Population Bomb, written by a husband and wife team, paul Ehrlich and his wife Ann. They published this book in 1968. And what your listeners need to know first of all, I would encourage them to go get that, that book. It's still. It's still in publication. You can still get it. It's called the population bomb, written by um Paul and Ann Ehrlich. He's a professor at Stanford university, right, I'm?
Speaker 2:familiar with that book and Paul Ehrlich Yep and that whole debate.
Speaker 1:Yep, and what you're going to find is that climate change, which it wasn't, global warming is what it was called then. Global warming, climate change and population reduction are joined at. The hip has been since the beginning. The hip has been since the beginning. So this, so so population reduction, primarily through abortion, and you'll find this out in the book. The population bomb is that parallel to them, arguing for radical environmental laws, is access to abortion. The two go together. So you won't hear I don't mean to sound facetious, but you won't hear. Dr Ortlund, pastor Ortlund, bring that up.
Speaker 2:No, I think that seems very clear to me. You know, I especially see this when I listen to transcripts or videos coming out of things like the World Economic Forum, where they're deeply invested in this ideology of climate change, the belief, the deep belief in it, and people like Bill Gates. I mean they're very much pro-dramatic reduction in human population and they'll never, of course, kind of neither will Paul Ehrlich, for that matter, tell you how they intend to get the population from 6 billion down to 2 billion or whatever they think is a sustainable level. But before we get to that, I have a question. It's puzzling me a little bit. You know, back to the basic worldview assumptions and just to reiterate, you laid out the first one very clearly they do not, as it says in Romans, chapter 1, they don't worship the Creator, they worship the creation. Now They've made the creation into God. But then you said it's a pantheistic kind of a religion. Everything is God. And I think this is where my question comes up.
Speaker 2:That includes us, right? So how is it that we became the villain in the story if we ourselves are also God, you know, according to kind of pantheism?
Speaker 1:I mean that's not to jump ahead.
Speaker 2:But this is another worldview assumption, a kind of a core assumption. Something's wrong with the world, there's evil in the world. Where did it come from? Why is the world so broken? And you've already, kind of you know, answered that question from the vantage point of this religion Human action is what's broken things and created evil in the world. But I'm just trying to understand the role of human beings in this worldview, because on one hand we're God, on the other hand we're the source of evil and the problem in the world. Help me understand that a little bit better.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, scott, in what I call organic pantheism or what I would call, maybe, orthodox pantheism.
Speaker 1:Well, Scott, see, in what I call organic pantheism or what I would call, maybe, orthodox pantheism, yes, there's a, as I quoted earlier, there's a seed of the divine in every human being. But see, this is not Orthodox pantheism that we're talking about. This is a very subjective, mutable pantheism, where only certain people have a seed of the divine in them. So, within this sort of subjective pantheism that undergirds climate change, if you're a capitalist, if you're a free market individual, if you're from the West, if you're a Christian, no, those four disqualify your humanity as it relates to climate change. So again, if you're a capitalist, if you're in any way in favor of the free market, if you're a Christian or if you're from the West, you're totally, you're removed from that orthodox definition of pantheism. You're the enemy, you're the one, you're the ones who are, as I quoted from the guy in creed earlier, you're the one who is upsetting the balance of gaia here, and you either need to be eliminated or your way of life needs to be strictly restricted, very rigidly restricted. Uh, and this is where organizations like the who, the un, the WEF come in where they've got, especially as it relates to the UN Agenda 2030,.
Speaker 1:All these nations, primarily in the East, these Eastern European nations, have signed on to the UN Agenda 23, to quote unquote you know, reduce greenhouse gases by a certain percentage to, you know, to penalize nations with carbon credits and things of that nature. But when you really look at climate change, especially as it relates to those organizations that I just mentioned, there's a lot of money changing hands here. Ok, climate change is the biggest Ponzi scheme ever enacted on humanity, the biggest Ponzi scheme ever enacted on humanity. But it's like with every other sort of quasi-Marxist or semi-Marxist or full-fledged Marxist organization, there is a certain core of people, the elite, who get rich off of this, and then the poor remain poor. As a matter of fact, in climate change, the poor are going to be much poorer than they are right now because they will not, even to the limited degree that they may, have access to the benefits of living in Western society.
Speaker 1:All that's going to disappear because there will be no electricity, there will be no stores, there will be no capitalistic free market ideas being able to be exchanged, let alone developed, within the Marxist paradigm of climate change. Because capitalism must die. Everything must come under the rubric of a sort of Marx, marxo-communist egalitarianism in which you know you're not going to be able to fly a plane, you're not going to be able to drive a gas powered car. You're going to have to be. You're going to live in these 15 minute cities where populations are going to be so condensed they're going to be like ghettos is what they're going to be. So I know we don't have time to dig into this too much in our conversation today, but all this to say that the ruse that climate change is about environmental stewardship is a lie. There's a full-fledged political agenda behind this and Christians need to be aware of what that is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, I think that's and Christians need to be aware of what that is. Yeah, you know, I think that's—in my own kind of understanding of this at a distance, or just trying to get my head around it, that seems to make more sense to me. There's this—it's not so much that they're religious worshipers of Gaia I'm not—you know, I don't want to challenge what you said earlier, because I know that there's a deep thread in all of this but what I see as driving it is more just people that are deeply secular and they want power and they want control and they want to kind of organize the whole world around their particular agenda, world around their particular agenda. And in order to do that, they need a lever, they need some kind of a crisis that's big enough for them to say this is too big of a crisis for any church family nation to deal with. You've got to have.
Speaker 2:This is a global problem that's way bigger, way beyond any solutions that are going to come from any one nation. You know, give us the keys to the car, we'll fix it. We'll fix this. So that makes sense to me, right? It really isn't about climate, climate change. It's really about consolidating power and using this. You know the moralism, the fear that come with it, you know. But again, am I being too cynical? I mean, that's kind of what I am seeing here a little bit.
Speaker 1:No, I don't think you're being too cynical at all, brother, but to be honest with you, I would say, as it relates to this, here's the thing. What we need to understand and I used this word earlier climate change is a very subtle serpentine worldview. You're not going to see these folks at the UN. You're not going to see these. Climate change is a very subtle serpentine worldview. You're not going to see these folks at the UN. You're not going to see these folks at the World Health Organization. You're not going to see these folks at the WF. You're not going to see these individuals come out with these, with necklaces, jewelries, any kind of symbolism or imagery telling you that they're Gaia worshippers. They don't want you to know that.
Speaker 1:It's like I said earlier about critical race theories these guys don't wear badges saying I'm a critical race theorist. They're going to call it something else and what they're doing is they're calling it creation care, they're calling it this. They're calling it that their desire for control. Scott, to your point, they're trying to consolidate control. They're trying to do that because they worship the earth. They are Gaia worshipers, so they want to consolidate control. Take that control from you, meaning they want to take away your right to live freely as an image bearer of God, to live freely in this world that God created us to live in. They want to consolidate that control, take it from you, consolidate it in these upper echelons of global power for the sake of appeasing Gaia. That's the impetus for why they're doing what they're doing. That's the impetus for why they're doing what they're doing.
Speaker 3:Yeah no, that's really helpful. Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, that's a great way to sell a secular globalist on your mission. Right, I'll give you a bunch of power if you side with me.
Speaker 1:It's Luke 4. When Jesus went into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil, the devil tempted him three times. You do this and I'll give you that. You do this and I'll give you this. Here we are here and, scott, I think you alluded to it just a second ago what really makes it easy for them to advance their agenda is to just make people afraid. Advance, uh, their agenda is to just make people afraid. Yes, you know these climate change uh alarmists. They, they know human nature. They know that if you make a, you make a person afraid enough of losing what they care about, they'll pretty much buy into anything to save.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we saw that during covid. We saw we saw the leveraging of fear, you know, for such incredibly destructive ends, didn't we? Yeah?
Speaker 1:Yeah, we saw that during COVID. Covid was a textbook example that if you make people afraid enough, they will acquiesce to pretty much any type of governmental rule. They will. If in their mind it will prevent them from losing what they most hold dear, they will acquiesce to pretty much anything.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and they've been successful in this. It really does break my heart when I talk to people here in Bend, oregon, which is kind of deeply into all that we're talking about in terms of supporting these ideas People, especially young people, are afraid about. In terms of supporting these ideas, people, especially young people, are afraid. I mean, you know, and it's shaping really important life decisions, especially about whether we'll get married, have kids. You know, I can't. I can't do that, you know, and so, and a lot of Christians are afraid too.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of fear about the first premise that I talked about earlier, that this is an existential crisis and we're going to be literally destroying ourselves and the planet. So, yeah, they've done a great job Before we—I don't want to leave this discussion without countering, kind of, what does the Bible say about all these things, because I don't want Christians to kind of walk away thinking, oh, you know, boy, anything about creation, care is wrong. You know, we shouldn't care for creation or whatever kind of be in a reactionary mode. So it's really important to say, okay, this is what these worldview presuppositions are. Earth is God, man is the problem man. You know, the solution to the problem is to eliminate human beings from the planet don't have kids, etc. But what does the Bible teach about these things really quickly? I mean, if you could, daryl, obviously God is God and you know he made this world. This is his handiwork. Go on from there, you know.
Speaker 3:Yeah, if I could just jump in, you just used the phrase creation care, dad. I think one thing Christians need to do in this whole argument is understand the terms that have been hijacked and be cautious of those.
Speaker 3:Creation care is a term that's been hijacked by kind of your Christian syncretist who wants to dabble in both camps here and play the neutral card. Unfortunately. It's a great term, but when you hear someone say creation care, that's usually going to be an evangelical who's trying to, you know, bring in some climate, alarmist beliefs and acquiesce to their friends who believe that, while also trying to be a Christian. Same thing goes for stewardship.
Speaker 2:Unfortunately, the word stewardship, which every Christian should know. Yeah, but I want to be careful, because these are. You know you don't want to lose. This is where I wrote my book on justice. You don't want to. Yeah, they hijack these terms like justice and call it social justice, but that doesn't mean Christians should be anti-justice. I'm not saying give up on it.
Speaker 3:I'm just saying you should know the terms that are being used and which ones to be cautious of and know how to define them properly in the Bible, which I would say stewardship. We absolutely need to know how to define properly in the Bible, unlike the way it's being hijacked believers.
Speaker 1:there's no specific scripture verse or passage that explicitly addresses humanity's role in caring for the earth. However, I do believe that a principle toward that end can be found in Genesis 2.15, which, in the New American Standard Translation, reads then the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to cultivate and keep it. In that verse, the Hebrew verb keep means to guard, to protect and to give heed or attention to. So human beings, and especially Christians, are to endeavor to care for the earth as a response of love toward God who created it for our well-being and enjoyment.
Speaker 1:For that reason, I believe caring for the earth can be an act of worship toward God who created it, while not worshiping the earth itself as a creation. So, again, we need to learn how to exegete the term. So, I think, genesis 2.15, the idea of keeping God's command to Adam to keep the garden, when we understand what it means to keep it. It means to protect it, to give heed. We want to pay attention to how we care for the earth, because this is where God has ordained that we live. After all, we are mortal, ok, we are flesh and blood. So it does matter. It should matter to us. You know how we go about keeping the earth. You know how we go about keeping the earth. Now, you know, luke to your part, about the distinction between you know, creation care and stewardship. I think that's very important because we know that these again, these subtle worldviews, the way they advance more times than not, is that they manipulate the language. So I would just offer this when you're talking about biblical stewardship, that idea intrinsically points us to an objective purpose and motivation and standard for caring for the earth. That standard is God and his word. However, when you look at a term like creation care. That's a more nebulous, subjective, man-centered idea of what caring for the earth should look like. So someone might argue well, you know, caring for the earth might mean, you know, setting your thermostat to 79 degrees. Well, I'm not doing that here in Phoenix, arizona. Ok, my thermostat is going to be set at 72. You know why? Because it's 115 degrees outside at 72. You know why? Because it's 115 degrees outside. But God gives us freedom in that. This is why it's so important to go to Scripture. In Scripture, you have freedom to make these decisions in accordance with your own conscience, but climate change wants to guilt you into adopting this man-centered, onerous yoke around your neck where you give up all of your freedoms and liberties that God has ordained you to have as one of his image bearers. So it is very important, it is crucial.
Speaker 1:Scott, just like you brought up with the idea of justice, look how that unfolded. Now we learn through BLM DEI CRT that all those references of justice were actually sinful partiality that benefited only one ethnic group. So Christians have to be astute. We must be students of these things. Scripture says I think it's in Romans 2.11, that we are not to be ignorant of Satan's schemes. We're not to be ignorant of his sorry 2 Corinthians 2.11. 2 Corinthians 2.11, paul says so that no advantage will be taken of us by Satan, for we are not to be ignorant of his scheme. Climate change is a satanic scheme that we must not be ignorant of.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no for sure. Well, I think that Genesis 2.15 is really a foundational verse for understanding, you know, kind of a biblical, a true biblical response, you know, counter to this ideology of climate change. You know it defines I mean, really you have to go back to Genesis 1, 27 and 28, where we're defined as people that bear God's image and have this unique and special role in creation, as kings and queens. You know, we have dominion over this world, over creation, but under God, and so we're accountable to him. And then you kind of get a further unpacking of that in Genesis 2.15 with these two specific kind of clarifications on what that means.
Speaker 2:One is, as you said, it's to kind of care for it, to keep it, to preserve it, to kind of leave it to your grandchildren, great-grandchildren, even better than you found it, so that that, you know, eliminates this idea that I can, you know I can destroy it for my own personal benefit, right, whatever it is, you know, I know I'm supposed to pass it along even better than I found it. But the other is, you know, to work it. You know we're made to work in this creation, and that's, I think that that one's probably more counter to, you know the idea of climate, the religion of climate change, but we're to work in this creation, we're to make things, use it to make things, and you know that's part of what it means to be an image bearer of God so we can create new technologies. You know that. You know, I think again, the climate change folks seem to. You know, anything that we do, any kind of innovation that we do, is going to be a net negative on this planet, right? So we should just, you know, not do anything or something like that.
Speaker 2:Any thoughts on that?
Speaker 1:That's because work is fundamentally intrinsic with capitalism and climate change hates capitalism. Climate, climate, climate change, when you take it to its extreme, was at least political. Extreme is communism. Yes not Marxism is communism. So that's why capitalism sorry climate change is synthetically opposed to work, to Producing yeah to being creative.
Speaker 1:This is why you have the tomato soup can throwers going in and pouring soup cans on priceless masterpieces of art, because they hate beauty Again. What the Imago Dei in us creatively just makes us burst forth in and producing better ways to live. You know? You, look at, one of the things the Roman Empire was famous for was their sanitation system. They had an awareness that there was a standard by which we were to keep the environment and our culture in which we live safe, humane, so that we can survive and thrive. But what the tomato soup throwers would have you do is capitalism would not exist at all. You would be living in a forest somewhere, eating tree bark and insects and I am not exaggerating. I am not exaggerating. They would have you like you were back in the garden but you're wearing fig leaves. I mean, this is exactly the extreme to which they would go to protect Gaia. They will go to that extreme.
Speaker 2:And there's, you know, the sad irony there is that you end up with just the opposite of what they want. So, for example, yeah, because I, you know, I worked in community development with Food for the Hungry for all of these years and you see, for example, in many poor countries in Africa, people are burning cow dung or wood, and you know, because that's all that they have for energy and they have to eat and they have to cook their food. Well, then you have mass deforestation that leads to soil erosion, you know, and so you end up—the irony is that the people that are capitalists, if you will, are, you know, let's say, biblical capitalists, because there's a lot of really bad stuff that happens under the banner of capitalism.
Speaker 2:But it's people that are innovative that create things like. You know different forms of fuel, you know that can burn with a lot greater efficiency. Protect the environment, you know we have the wherewithal to do a lot more to protect the environment in the United States than they do in South Sudan.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:So to leave people in that kind of state where you can't, you just have to continue to burn wood. We're seeing that actually in Germany right now, where it's going backwards and it's getting a lot more polluted as a result.
Speaker 1:That's exactly what climate change does. Climate change is regressive. They market it as progressive, but it's regressive.
Speaker 2:Right, it destroys. It actually destroys the environment.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you mentioned the people of South Sudan. See the climate change alarmists would see the people of South Sudan as more moral. They're more highly moral.
Speaker 2:Yes, they're not the white Christian capital more highly moral. They're not the white Christian capitalists.
Speaker 1:Right? They're not. They're white. They're not the white Western Christian capitalists who, uh, you know, is building nuclear power plants, although we're creating a clean energy, we're creating more fuel efficient cars, we're actually doing wonderful things as it relates to protecting the environment. But the people in South South Sudan, uh, the people over South Sudan, the people over in Haiti, you know, they're the true moral example, because they're suffering. See, their moralism equates an element of suffering, whereas capitalism ironically reduces suffering. But climate change, no, you have to suffer in order to meet their moral standard.
Speaker 2:I think this is really where it gets back to Luke's point that when you're looking at it from just a basic data like which is actually producing the better outcomes for the environment, it doesn't really matter, and that's the point that you were making earlier, Luke. This doesn't have to do with actual outcomes and data it has to do with deep religious beliefs, doesn't it? At the end of the day, it's pretty clear at this point.
Speaker 3:There's enough data refuting many of these so called solutions to, I think, make anyone disprove it, but it still marches on climate climate change.
Speaker 1:Climate change has never been about data. It's never been about the data. It's always about the narrative to to whatever extent. To whatever extent data is, a, is, uh is referenced is only to make the narrative more effective. It's not about data at all. Not even the climate change scientists agree on the data, so it's not even about the data. It's never been about that. It's all about the story. It's not about data at all. Not even the climate change scientists agree on the data, so it's not even about the data.
Speaker 3:It's never been about that, it's all about the story, it's all about the narrative. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyways, we are running low on time. And just as a final takeaway, daryl, well, actually, for our listeners, the book again is called A Biblical Theology of Climate Change. I believe you can get it. It is on Amazon, I saw it on Amazon. It's also available on G3 Press or probably wherever else you get books. When you wrote that book, darrell, you and Virgil if you could synthesize the thesis down to.
Speaker 3:You know one main point that you're hoping people will take away from this book. If you could just give people one core takeaway, what would that be if you could narrow it down?
Speaker 1:Yeah, the one takeaway would be that climate change is a religion. That's it Climate change is a religion.
Speaker 2:Well, daryl, thank you so much for coming on today and for writing the book and just for defending true biblical orthodoxy, the biblical worldview, especially around this critical issue. I just think it's you know, to understand biblical truth, biblical, you know the core biblical worldview assumptions. You have to understand it vis-a-vis these competing ideologies in the culture. Right, you just have to understand it vis-a-vis those big things that are competing for it so.
Speaker 2:I'm just so grateful that you took the time to help us not only understand this false and counterfeit worldview that's really destructive and really mainstream today, but, by doing so, the biblical worldview as well.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you all for it. Thank you, scott, thank you, luke, for having me on again. It's been my pleasure, brother.
Speaker 2:Great. Well, we look forward to having you back on again at some point here. Daryl, God bless you. Have a great rest of your summer, okay.
Speaker 1:Thank you guys, you too Be safe out there.
Speaker 3:Yep, take care no-transcript. And Virgil Walker on the podcast here pretty soon to have another discussion, this time on the topic of education, so stay tuned, as we'll hopefully have that out this year. As you're picking up your phone to turn this episode off, we'd really appreciate it if you would give this show a rating and review, on whatever podcast app you are using and, as always, if you enjoyed today's episode, please make sure to share it with a friend. That's it for today, guys. Thanks again for listening to another episode here on. Ideas have Consequences.
