“Listen to the Scientists”: Considering the Limits to Growth

This post is directly related to the one I made on January 25. It is about the possibility of an “ecological Armageddon” (words not used but implied in the 1/25 post), which might occur even before the end of this century. 

Becoming Aware

I have been much concerned about this issue for 50 years, and more. By 1970 or ’71, I had read Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich’s book The Population Bomb (1968), or had read enough of and about that book, to be greatly concerned about what was often called “the population explosion.”

Then in 1972, the Club of Rome published another highly significant book. It was titled The Limits to Growth, authored by Donella H. Meadows et al. The New York Times (here) summarized the central thesis of that book succinctly:

Either civilization or growth must end, and soon. Continued population and industrial growth will exhaust the world’s minerals and bathe the biosphere in fatal levels of pollution. As the authors summarize, “if the present growth trends continue unchanged, the limits of growth on this planet will be reached sometime within the next hundred years.”

It was, however, many years later before I began to be aware of the serious problem of global warming—and I recently learned that the term “global warming” didn’t even appear in a scientific article until 1975.

In fact, as late as that year, some were still talking of climate change making the world too cold—which is why the term global warming is now much to be preferred to climate change.

In recent years, though, I have been very aware of the danger of global warming, and my 1/5/20 blog post was titled “Climate Crisis: The Challenge of the Decade.”

However, I have only recently become aware of the fact that global warming itself is not the primary ecological problem confronting humankind. Rather, global warming is the result of a network of problems all related to unrestrained growth, which is also called overshoot.

EarthOvershoot.org explains, “Overshoot is when a species consumes resources and generates wastes faster than the ecosystem in which it inhabits can replace those resources or absorb those wastes.”

Further, “Climate change is just one symptom (and a pretty big one) of a much larger ‘disease’ called overshoot. Overshoot is the all encompassing threat to sustainability posed by too many people consuming too many resources and emitting to much waste.”

The concept of overshoot clearly acknowledges the limits to growth—of the world’s population, of the consumption of nonrenewable resources, and of the global standard of living (and the stock market).

Unquestionably, we all need to be deeply aware of this perilous predicament.

Becoming Alarmed

“Listen to the scientists” has been widely used over the past couple of years in the attempt to get people to fight the covid-19 epidemic by getting vaccinations and wearing masks. That is good advice.

But I am afraid that, as William Rees forcefully emphasizes, politicians as well as the general public don’t listen to scientists well when it comes to considering overshoot / the limits to growth.

Rees (b. 1943), who has a Ph.D. in population ecology, was a professor at University of British Columbia from 1969 to 2012. During that time, he coined the phrase/concept ecological footprint (in 1992).

Since his retirement, he has continued to be an active advocate of protecting human life on this planet. Several recent talks are available on YouTube, and in one of them, he wisely emphasizes the great need for politicians and the general public to listen to the scientists.

In February 2020, Rees gave a talk entitled “Will Modern Civilization Be the Death of Us” (see here). I encourage you to watch that video as well as other more recent talks you can easily find under his name on YouTube.

Given the alarming facts that Rees graphically presents, I wonder when, oh when, are we the general public and political leaders going to listen to the scientists about the limits to growth?

And when, oh when, will we (humankind) begin to take more decisive and meaningful steps to limit growth?

“Carved in Ebony”: In Observance of Black History Month

In December, I received a book from my granddaughter Katrina—and I am happy to report that on February 9 she and her husband Ryan became parents of Nina Irene, a beautiful baby girl and Junes’ and my first great-grandchild. But this blog post is about Katrina’s Christmas present to me. 

Observing Black History Month

As is widely known, February is designated every year as Black History Month in the U.S., and I read the book Katrina gave me partly as a way to learn more about Black history. Let me share with you a little of what I learned from that book.

Carved in Ebony (2021) was written by Jasmine L. Holmes, a youngish (b. 1990) Black woman who lives in Jackson, Mississippi, with her husband Phillip and their three young sons.

Author Holmes’s slim book is about ten outstanding African-American women, all born in the nineteenth century, who have largely been unknown by the general public. Indeed, I didn’t remember hearing even one of their names prior to reading this book.

But they were all notable women—and good for me (and you) to learn about during Black History Month.

“God’s Image Carved in Ebony”

While, fortunately, it is not nearly as true now as when he spoke those words fifty years ago, in the Introduction, Holmes cites these words of Malcolm X: “The most disrespected person in America is the black woman. The most unprotected person in America is the black woman. The most neglected person in America is the black woman” (p. 18).

But writing about ten outstanding Black women of strong Christian faith, Holmes asserts, “black women are made in the image of God. They are that image carved in ebony hues, wrought with a purpose, for his glory” (p. 19). Their exemplary lives should no longer be neglected.

“God’s Image Carved in Ebony,” the fifth chapter, is about Amanda Berry Smith (1837~1915), who even though she was born into slavery, became an evangelist, a missionary to Africa, and the founder of an orphanage for Black children.    

Amanda’s father bought his freedom from slavery and then that of his family when she was still young. But the Berry family was still poor, so Amanda left home to work as a live-in domestic.

She married at the age of seventeen, but that rocky marriage ended when her husband didn’t return from the Civil War. Then her marriage to James Smith ended with his death due to cancer in 1867. Soon afterward, Amanda began to fulfill her calling to be an evangelist.

In 1878, Amanda traveled overseas and preached in Great Britain and in India. Then she served as a missionary in Liberia for eight years, beginning in 1882.

Her final ministry was at the Amanda Smith Orphanage and Industrial Home for Abandoned and Destitute Colored Children, which she founded in Illinois in 1899 and where she served until 1912.

At the end of her long, productive life, Amanda was described as a woman in whom “God’s image was carved in ebony.”

The Example of Charlotte Forten Grimké

Charlotte Forten was born the same year (1837) as Amanda Berry and died about seven months earlier (in July 1914). But their lives were vastly different: whereas Amanda was born into slavery, the Forten family were prominent free Blacks in Philadelphia and active abolitionists. 

Although I hadn’t heard of Charlotte before reading the ninth chapter in Jasmine Holmes’s book, I had probably heard of the man she married in 1878, the nephew of the amazing Grimké sisters, the subject of my Feb. 24, 2016, blog post.  

The same year Amanda went overseas as an evangelist (1878), Charlotte married Francis Grimké, pastor of the prominent Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C.

In addition to her position as the pastor’s wife at that church until her death, in 1896 Charlotte helped found the National Association of Colored Women, and she remained an active advocate for civil rights until her death.

Yes, although not widely known, there are many outstanding nineteenth-century Black women—and now in 2022 the U.S. will likely have a new Supreme Court Justice similarly “carved in ebony.”

“God is Dead”: What Did Nietzsche Mean?

The most widely known words of Friedrich Nietzsche, the 19th-century German philosopher, are, “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.” What did Nietzsche mean by such a statement, and what relevance do those jarring words have for us today?  

What Nietzsche Wrote

Friedrich Nietzsche was born in 1844 in Leipzig, (now) in the eastern German state of Saxony. His father was a Lutheran pastor, and before his 20^th birthday, Friedrich began studying theology at the University of Bonn with the intention of following in his father’s footsteps.

After one semester, however, Nietzsche lost his faith and stopped his theological studies. He wrote to his deeply-religious sister Elisabeth (b. 1846), ”. . . if you wish to strive for peace of soul and pleasure, then believe; if you wish to be a devotee of truth, then inquire.”

(Sadly, Nietzsche was seemingly unable to grasp the fact that believing and inquiring are not mutually exclusive.)

Many years later, 140 years ago in 1882, Nietzsche authored a book published under the title Die fröhliche Wissenschaft, first translated into English as The Joyful Wisdom, but now, unfortunately, it is generally known by the title The Gay Science.

In that book, the “madman” spoke the above-cited words about God being dead. (They can be read in context on this website.)

Later in Thus Spake Zarathustra (which Nietzsche published in parts over several years, beginning in 1883), the central character exclaims the same words, “God is dead!”

But what did Nietzsche mean by having the “madman” and Zarathustra utter that shocking (at that time, if not now) expression?

What Nietzsche Meant

It seems quite clear that Nietzsche was not writing about the ontological existence (or lack thereof) of a supernatural being commonly called God in Western society.

Rather, Nietzsche was expressing his observation that the Age of Enlightenment had ended the centrality of the concept of God in Western European civilization and that the belief in the pivotal role of God in human affairs had ceased to exist (=been killed).

In other words, we might say that Nietzsche was one of the earliest thinkers to assert that secularism had become victorious over the Christian religion.

He was also a primary progenitor of postmodernism. Since God was now “dead,” he thought that there is no longer any basis for believing in a divinely ordained moral order. There are no absolute moral values. There is no objective truth.

Thus, Nietzsche’s thought led to nihilism, which he sought to counter with an emphasis on the importance of the subjectivity of individual persons. This is why he is also considered one of the most significant early proponents of what came to be called existentialism.

Why Nietzsche was Right/Wrong

In many ways, in his day as well as in this present day, God as the ultimate Being and ultimate concern seems to be “dead” to so many people who were reared in Christian homes and/or in an ostensibly Christian society.

There are many today, as in Nietzsche’s day, who give intellectual assent to the idea of God’s reality, but who live as if God does not exist. So in that sense, God is “dead” to them. This situation is what is sometimes called practical atheism.

There are distinct similarities—and vast differences—between Nietzsche and Søren Kierkegaard. (Some refer to the two seminal thinkers as if they were contemporaries, but Nietzsche was born the year Kierkegaard published one of his most important books, Philosophical Fragments.)

“Practical atheism” was certainly an apt description for many Danes in the 1840s and Germans in the 1880s—but perhaps no more so than for many North Americans and Western Europeans now. For many, there is religious form with little or no substance.

In the midst of rampant practical atheism, people can choose to follow Nietzsche’s proposal for creation of the Übermensch (Overman), who creates their own future without reference to traditional religious and/or moral beliefs.

Or we can choose, as one scholar wisely wrote, to see the “problem of religious downfall as . . . a chance to embrace the New Testament’s original teaching and return to a dynamic and living faith.”

Isabel’s Testimony: The Power of Faith

In my March 25, 2021, blog post, I wrote briefly about Rachel (Clark) Seat, my great-grandmother. This article is about Great-grandma Rachel’s oldest daughter Isabel (also spelled Isabelle) and her strong faith expressed shortly before her death 132 years ago tomorrow, on February 13, 1890.

Introducing Isabel

Isabel Tempe Seat was born in rural Worth County, Missouri, on September 9, 1871. She was the first child of William and Rachel Seat, who had also been born in the same township.

When she was still 17, Isabel married Jake Williams, and before long they were expecting their first child. Leslie was born on January 25, 1890. But before three weeks had passed, his 18-year-old mother Isabel died of complications from childbirth.

Three days before her untimely death, a sizeable number of relatives and friends gathered around her deathbed where she repeatedly urged people to become Christian believers so that they would later be reunited in Heaven.

Isabel’s Testimony

A document titled “The Last Words of Isabel Williams” has been preserved in the Seat family. I don’t know who initially put those words in writing, but the first copy I saw was one made by Mary Rachel Seat, Isabel’s niece and my “wonderful aunt,” as I called her in my 6/25/16 blog post.

The first line of that document says, “Isabel Williams, while on her deathbed and there being several present, asked them to talk.” But actually, Isabel wanted to talk to them, and most of the document (which can be read in full here) are the words of testimony and entreaty given to many people.

I don’t know how so many people could have been present under one roof—and probably they were not all there at the same time—but Isabel called for them to come one or two at a time for her to speak to them from the depths of her Christian faith.

Her most often spoken words were, “Will you promise me you will meet me in Heaven?”—or words to that effect. And, evidently, many did make such a promise, including many who had not been Christian believers, or active Christians, at the time they heard Isabel’s question and plea to them.

Several of the people didn’t live close to New Hope Church where Isabel and her close family were members, so not long after her death, a new church was started—and given the name Isabelle Church. (It was about 3½ miles northeast of New Hope, a fair distance when traveling by horse and buggy.)

The Isabelle church building has been torn down in that sparsely populated part of northwest Missouri, but the cemetery is still there—and just a year and a half ago, J.W. Harding, a man I knew fairly well, was buried there. The picture below (taken several years ago) is of the entrance to the cemetery.  

Isabel’s Faith

Isabel’s belief/certainty about going to Heaven after death was not at all unusual for someone living when and where she did—although perhaps it was a bit unusual for someone only 18 years old to express that faith so strongly.

Isabel’s parents lived within easy walking distance from New Hope Church after it was constructed in 1877-78, and she, no doubt, attended services every Sunday morning and evening with her mother during her girlhood years. (Isabel’s father, sadly, died in 1880 on Isabel’s ninth birthday.)

My previous blog post was partly about common sense, and I asserted that “common sense” can be called that only for those who see the world through the same, or quite similar, “conceptual lenses.”

The conceptual lenses of most people in Worth County, Mo., in 1890 were those fashioned by evangelical Protestant Christians. While certainly everyone was not a professing or active Christian believer, Christianity as understood by Baptists and other evangelicals was the dominant culture.

Certainly, there were many things about Christianity that Isabel still needed to learn—but who can say that her faith that she expressed so powerfully was wrong?

Isabel’s faith was, without doubt, highly comforting to her. But who can say, and on what basis, that her powerful Christian faith wasn’t also basically true?

Considering Common Sense: In Memory of Thomas Paine

For most of my life, I have known the name Thomas Paine. But also for most of my life, I have known little about him and his importance. This month, however, seemed like a good time to learn/think a little more about Paine, who was born 285 years ago, and about his emphasis on common sense. 

Who Was Thomas Paine?

Paine was born in England in 1737 on January 29, which was February 9 according to the “new style” calendar used after 1752.

After losing his wife and baby at childbirth in 1760, and then after various failures and the loss of his job in 1774, he moved to Philadelphia and got a job working as an editorial assistant for the Pennsylvania Magazine.

After the first battles of the Revolutionary War in 1775, Paine argued that the colonists should not simply revolt against taxation but demand independence from Great Britain entirely. He expanded that idea in a 50-page pamphlet called “Common Sense,” printed in January 1776.

Why Is Thomas Paine Memorable?

Within a few months after its publication, “Common Sense” sold more than 500,000 copies, and according to Biography.com (here), more than any other publication, it “paved the way for the Declaration of Independence, which was unanimously ratified on July 4, 1776.”

Then beginning in December of that year, a most uncertain time regarding the outcome of the revolution, Paine began publishing a series of pamphlets under the title The American Crisis, and he signed them with his pseudonym, “Common Sense.”

The first of those thirteen pamphlets famously begins, “These are the times that try men’s souls.” At the beginning of that harsh winter of 1776, a great many soldiers were ready to quit—until ordered by General Washington to read Paine’s Crisis (which can be read in full at this link).

The morale of the American colonists was bolstered and their resolve fortified by Paine’s words, “Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered, yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”

In 1787, Paine returned to England, and two years after the beginning of the French Revolution in 1789, he wrote The Rights of Man. That tract moved beyond supporting that revolution to discussing the basic reasons for the widespread discontent in Europe and railing against an aristocratic society.

Paine’s last major book was The Age of Reason: Being an Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology, the first part of which was written in 1794 after he had been imprisoned for nearly a year in France.

Paine returned to the United States in 1802 or ’03, but by then his influential revolutionary work had mostly been forgotten. He died in 1809, and only six mourners were present at his funeral.

Because of his last book, though, he became known in the mid-nineteenth century as a leader of “freethinkers.” And then in the early twentieth century, Paine's reputation was restored and he again was (accurately) viewed as a vital figure in the American Revolution.

What Is Common Sense?

“Common sense” can be called that only for those who see the world through the same, or quite similar, “conceptual lenses.”

What Paine wrote about common sense for those who wanted to be free from the “tyranny” of England was, truly, common sense for them. But it certainly was not common sense for King George and all the Redcoats who fought for him.

And so it is regarding many burning issues today.

You would think it is only common sense that everyone would get covid-19 vaccinations and only common sense for the government to mandate vaccines and masks in order to control the spread of covid-19.

But, alas, a sizeable portion of society wears different conceptual lenses: they see the greatest good as personal “freedom” and oppose “tyrannical” governments they see as seeking to usurp that freedom. Even a “Christian” organization is used to support the “Freedom Convoy” in Canada (see here).

And you would think it is only common sense that we humans would acknowledge the seriousness of global warming and take even drastic measures to mitigate the coming environmental crisis. But, again, alas! 

Is There a “World without End”?

Since watching several of Michael Dowd’s videos last month (and writing a bit about Dowd on Jan. 25) I have been thinking much about the end of the world as we know it—and about the traditional Christian belief in a “world without end.” Is it possible to affirm both?

The Traditional Christian Belief

There is little doubt that from New Testament times until the present Christianity has asserted a firm belief in a “world without end,” that is, the reality of an eternal world that in every way surpasses the present physical world in which we now live.

The New Testament says, “Unto [God] be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen” (Ephesians 3:21, KJV). Based on these words, the Catholic and some liturgical Protestant churches regularly sing the Gloria Patri doxology: 

As the “world without end” is understood as the abode of those who have received the gift of eternal life, the Apostles’ Creed ends with words affirming belief in “the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.”

And the Nicene Creed, which is also regularly repeated in public worship services of many churches, ends with these words: “We look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Amen.”

Even those of us who grew up in non-liturgical churches, belief in “eternal life” and Heaven was central to our understanding of the Christian faith. But that basic belief seems to have been weakened, neglected, or even denied (in practice if not in words) by “progressive” or “liberal” forms of the faith.

For example, in spite of his dire prognostication about the coming ecological crisis that will most likely result in the end of the world as we know it, Dowd, an ordained Christian minister, says nothing (at least that I have heard) about even the possibility of life beyond death.

The Problem of “Evangelical” Over-emphasis

Those who grew up in conservative evangelical circles, as I did, know how strong the emphasis was on “soul-winning,” that is, getting people “saved” so they would go to Heaven when they died.

During my boyhood years, pastors and especially traveling evangelists would regularly emphasize the Second Coming of Jesus and the concomitant end of this present world, focusing on the reality of “the world without end.”

These same emphases became even more pronounced in conservative evangelical churches after the publishing of Hal Lindsey’s bestselling book The Late Great Planet Earth in 1970.

And then from 1995 to 2007, the Left Behind series of sixteen books by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins was highly popular and influential in evangelical circles.

But all of this emphasis on the “end times” was usually accompanied by a marked lack of interest in the plight of people living in the world now. Hardly any emphasis was placed on social issues such as war, systemic racism, poverty, destruction of the environment, etc.

The Problem of “Liberal” Under-emphasis

Although the roots go back much farther into the past, from the 1960s on “progressive” or “liberal” Christians placed more and more emphasis on the social issues of the present world and less and less emphasis on the idea/hope of a coming world without end.

The apocalyptic ideas/beliefs of the conservative evangelicals were mostly ignored, or even scoffed at by many liberals. Of primary interest and importance was the formation of a “beloved community” here and now and being on the right side of the arc of the universe which bends toward justice.

The coming of an ideal society, the Kingdom (or Kindom) of God, was a strong hope for the future of humankind on this earth.

How utterly sad it is if, as Dowd and many liberal Christians (as well as most people without any religious faith) acknowledge, all we can do now is to serenely accept the coming demise of the world with no hope for the future either on this earth or in a world without end.

Is there not some radiant center position between the two extremes?