That the Pope has recently issued an encyclical calling for the preservation of God’s creation and the drastic reduction or total cessation of fossil fuel usage is laughable!
Anybody who believes this has either amnesia or willing fool disease. Christianity is the most enduring civilizing religion that has removed entirely its adherents from nature.
Materialism is not the by-product of capitalism but the inability to find spiritual fulfilment in nature. All of us westerners (Christian or not), despite recent attempts to romanticize it these past few decades, are categorically unable to find spiritual fulfilment in nature.
Do not blame climate change on capitalism, which liberated us from feudalism, or democracy, which liberated us from theocracy and aristocracy, because just as much industrialization has occurred under socialism and communism if not more.
Ask the Pope if you are now free to return to your nature religions, or adopt the beliefs of indigenous people. The answer will surely be a resounding ‘no’, as he will then be out of business.
Edward Kent, Suffolk Park
No mate what has diverged us from nature is the aspirations of humans to rise above the dirt and knuckle dragging of our past. If you want to live like a native go ahead, see how long you can enjoy the stench of your own body because soap is not a viable thing for your puritanical ideals and do not fit in with the notions of the noble savage. Humans had been destroying nature long before Christians came along. The Greeks and more so the Romans siege engines alone were usually built of wood which relied on stripping local forests of their trees, leaving nothing behind in many cases. Australian Aborigines are most likely the cause of vast areas of denuded forest being turned into grasslands and desert by their wildfire regimes over the centuries, nothing ecologically friendly there. Just because they happened to live off the dead animals they caught when those fires out paced the animals ability to escape does not make them more ‘ïn tune”with nature, it just shows they were lazy hunters at times in their attempts to do what humans have always done, tried to survive comfortably and with little effort. That is why we invented machines. If you have any clue about Chriistian teachings you will know that Christians are taught to respect Gods creation not exploit it to death. It is the human nature that Christianity attempts to raise us above that has destroyed this planet, things like lust, greed and ignorance. The last of which you seem to openly display in this nonsensical little diatribe against Christianity. Bashing Christians seems to be all the rage amongst the Oshoites, atheists and other esoteric cults in Byron Shire. The fact that the Popes words carry weight with over 1.5billion people must give him far more credibility than any cultist hypocrite and also more chance of influencing vast numbers of people to boot. Please keep your Christian bashing to yourself.