Print 
PDF
Today is international "Earth Day."
It is also Earth Day's 50th anniversary of the re-emergence of an ancient religion that worships the created rather than the Creator.
Futurist and atheist Carl Sagan predicted such a time and belief would emerge.
Be informed.
In his 1994 book, "The Pale Blue Dot," Carl Sagan wrote:
"A religion old and new, that stressed the magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science, might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths. Sooner or later such a religion will emerge."
The Pantheist website asks these two questions of those seeking the path to enlightenment:
- "Do you believe that humans should be a part of Nature, rather than set above it?"
- "Are you skeptical about a 'God' other than Nature and the wider Universe?"
A number of years before Sagan advocated the idea of a "religion old and new" atheists, pantheists, and uninformed "nones" were laying the groundwork for the new religion---based on science, of course.
In the beginning.
In 1970, as a 25-year-old graduate student, Denis Hayes, organized the first Earth Day.
"The resounding success," the official organization says, "brought out 20 million Americans---10 percent of the United States population at the time---this helped spark the modern environmental movement."
Denis Hayes is now board chair emeritus at Earth Day Network and serves as president of the Bullitt Foundation.
The Bullitt Foundation was established in 1952 by Dorothy S. Bullitt, a well known Seattle secular progressive who founded King Broadcasting Company in Seattle.
Hayes says he well remembers today in 1970. He began by attending a "sunrise ceremony with Native Americans welcoming the sun to bless the day."
He then flew to New York where then-Mayor Lindsay had blocked off 40 blocks---with "the sea of people literally extending out over the visual horizon."
Hayes remembers he then flew to Chicago and was met with crowds "organized mostly by [progressive community activist] Saul Alinsky."
He spent the evening with staff, drinking beer and "feeling good about the way the day had gone."
A new movement had been created.
At about the same time in the 1970s, James Lovelock developed the "Gaia hypothesis"---Gaia being the name of the ancient Greek Earth goddess---as a religion that worships Mother Earth because the earth is a living organism that gave birth to the human race through the evolutionary process.
Unto us, an old-new religion is given.
Earlier this month Dennis Prager wrote an article, "Maybe Nature Shouldn't Be Worshiped After All," in which he quotes GK Chesterton: "When people stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing: they believe in anything."
He notes that "of all the false gods, nature is probably the most natural for people to worship. Every religion prior to the Bible had nature gods---the sun, the moon, the sea, gods of fertility, gods of rain and so on."
This is why the farther Western society gets from the biblical, Judeo-Christian beliefs, the more nature is worshiped.
Ross Douthat, a writer for the New York Times, has written, "The threat of global warming... has lent the cult of Nature qualities that every successful religion needs: a crusading spirit, a rigorous set of 'thou shalt nots', and a piping-hot apocalypse."
"There is nothing higher than science for an atheist because the natural world is all there is. So, worship of the earth, the environment or nature is almost inevitable," says Prager.
"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth..." is a very inconvenient truth for the secularist-humanist-atheist.
If the person who believes in nothing, continues to read Genesis, it becomes intolerable, because they soon read God telling humans to, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it."
The idea of subduing, rather than worshipping the Earth, is meltdown time for the secularists.
Interestingly, the coronavirus pandemic makes an undeniable point.
"Nature, as it turns out, is not our friend, let alone a god. It it were up to nature, we'd all be dead," Prager says, "Animals would eat us; weather would freeze us to death; disease would wipe out the rest of us. If we don't subdue nature, nature will subdue us."
Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote of nature: "Nature, red in tooth and claw..."
Nature follows no moral rules and shows no compassion. "The basic law of all biological life," Prager says, "is survival of the fittest."
The law of Judeo-Christian beliefs is the opposite. Nature wants the weakest eaten by the strongest. The core of Christian living is to help the poor and the weak.
Prager says, "Hospitals are as anti-natural an entity as exists."
God's view of nature.
Romans chapter one explains God's view:
(v 20, 21) Since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen... Take a deep breath, open your mind and look at nature---you have no excuse. You will see God in all of it. Nature reveals God---It isn't a god. Stop rebelling.
(v 21) "Although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts and their foolish hearts were darkened."
(v 22) "Professing to be wise, they became fools."
The account describes how they changed the glory of God into an image like man himself, and birds and four-footed animals and creepy things.
( v 25) Those "who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator...(v 26) "For this reason God gave them up to vile passions," specifically homosexual behavior---described as "that which is against nature."
"Because they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things that are not fitting" (v 28).
In fact, God says (v 32) those "who practice such things are worthy of death...as well as those who approve of such things."
So if your belief leads you to begin this day with the worship of the sun, and then signing up for all the activities on the Earth Day website, ending with a rousing sermon from teenage Greta Thunberg, here it is: Greta's message is 1 minute, 32 seconds. Take a look---listen up, you've got an extra minute and a half.
Now, consider this: "The Earth declares the glory of God, and the fullness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein." (PS. 24:1)
Happy earth day. Worship the Creator and enjoy His creation.
Be Informed. Be Discerning. Be Blessed. Be Prayerful.