Connor Chugs more Kool-Aid

I can always count on Connor Wood to defy the name of his own blog. In a recent post he resorts to his usual tactics in feebly attempting to claim "How religion will save the world." Cherry picking what you like and omitting what you don't doesn't prove anything. Connor's main premise that only through the concerted effort of the world's religions can climate change be addressed fails for a wide variety of reasons.

On of the biggest problems with this ludicrous notion is actually hinted at by Wood himself in the third paragraph.
"Our biggest challenges in tackling these large-scale problems are going to be overwhelmingly social. I’m talking about securing consensus and agreement on these looming ecological and systemic catastrophes, and how to marshal our shared resources to address them."
Before anyone can even attempt to resolve the various disagreements and conflicts between the world's major religions, not to mention the myriad of minor ones, you would first need to get the adherents within each of those religions to reach something resembling "consensus." It hasn't happened yet. A subset of Christians seem to be just as interested in harassing and abusing other Christians as they are about smearing and ridiculing other religions. Throw on top of that that a decent chunk of the various faiths do not see climate changes as either being real or that even if it is real that is a "problem" to be solved by humanity. There are, after all, some factions that want to accelerate it to bring about the end of days.

Christianity alone has over 30,000 identifiable sects/denominations. There is no consensus. So, despite Connor's insistence that he is "not claiming that religions will mumbo-jumbo away our problems" he is in fact counting on some type of miracle. How else can something that has never been attempted let alone accomplished in thousands of years be achieved? He seems to think that since religion is a motivating factor for many that will somehow overcome the fact that such motivation is essentially local in its nature.

If religion could save the world I would not have such a problem with it. In fact, I would probably help promote it despite all its lies and authoritarian tendencies. Unfortunately, it has never "saved" anything but itself.

"Biblical" End Times

Seriously? "One in three Americans see extreme weather as a sign of biblical end times." Setting aside that the "end times" as portrayed by many evangelicals and fundamentalists is basically a fabrication even by the low standards of Religious believers*, that many people credulously accepting that God is prepping to wipe us out while still not fully accepting humanity's role in global warming is bat-shit crazy.

If this actually leads to a more proactive response regarding climate change it might not be such a bad thing. Unfortunately, I doubt that will happen. As the weather becomes more severe the consequences will become progressive more catastrophic. The cost in lives and resources are nothing to scoff at. Mixing myth into such potentially devastating realities is bound to make things worse.

*The Christian "End Times" which incorporates slightly different but inter-related mythical events like the "rapture" and "tribulations" is only very loosely based on scripture. The overwhelming majority of what believers talk about when referring to the End Times is largely a creation of Christian pop-culture. Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins' Left Behind series is largely responsible for popularizing this kind of nonsense (in the past few decades). Robert Price's Paperback Apocalypse is an excellent critique of this genre.