{"id":6270,"date":"2017-12-29T17:35:12","date_gmt":"2017-12-29T16:35:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/?p=6270"},"modified":"2017-12-29T17:35:12","modified_gmt":"2017-12-29T16:35:12","slug":"false-idols","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/6270\/","title":{"rendered":"False Idols"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In July I <a href=\"https:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/?p=5058\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">wrote about<\/a> faith in secular societies.:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I mentioned climate change because this seems to be the aspect of modern politics in supposedly secular countries which most closely resembles a religion. Once again, we have the sacred texts, the high priests, the apostates, punishment of unbelievers, calls for sacrifices, and indoctrination all wrapped up in a great moral crusade stretching beyond our lifetimes that secures the blind faith of the followers. It makes me laugh when I hear atheists refer to \u201cScience!\u201d when talking about climate change: these people are no more able to challenge the pronouncements of the scientists, whose words have been filtered through the media and politicians, than a medieval peasant was able to challenge the high priests\u2019 interpretations of sacred texts. They are as much wedded to faith as their devout ancestors, but they don\u2019t realise it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Below is a tweet from fake Indian Elizabeth Warren:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">I\u2019m going to say something really crazy: I believe in science. Climate change is real and we have a moral obligation to protect this Earth for our children and grandchildren.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Elizabeth Warren (@elizabethforma) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/elizabethforma\/status\/946552278655340546?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">December 29, 2017<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Elizabeth Warren is no more able to verify a climate scientist is accurately interpreting data than an illiterate farmer could tell if a bishop was faithfully reading the words of the bible. As for the message, a climate scientist is equally likely to spout self-serving guff as any high priest that&#8217;s walked this Earth, safe in the knowledge the average worshiper has no way of challenging them and in any case wouldn&#8217;t dare.<\/p>\n<p>At least yer average medieval peasant had some useful survival skills at his disposal. What&#8217;s Warren got that&#8217;s useful, other than high cheekbones and more neck than a giraffe?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In July I wrote about faith in secular societies.: I mentioned climate change because this seems to be the aspect of modern politics in supposedly secular countries which most closely resembles a religion. Once again, we have the sacred texts, &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/6270\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[32,101],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6270"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6270"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6270\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6272,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6270\/revisions\/6272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}