Posted by JM Ashby
This is the belief at the heart of the climate-change deniers isn't it? As ex-Christian fundamentalist Frank Schaeffer says, they see the idea of man having power over the earth as an affront to their religion. They believe that man could not possibly have the power to destroy the earth because god would never let man do that.
There will always be people among us who believe such nonsense, but unfortunately a lot of them hold positions of power in our elected governments. Most of them will not come right out and relay those views, but Mike Bear of Minnesota certainly will, and he illustrates his views in one of the most ridiculous ways imaginable.
Mike Beard, a Republican state representative from Minnesota, recently argued that coal mining should resume in the Land of 10,000 Lakes, in part because he believes God has created an earth that will provide unlimited natural resources.
"God is not capricious. He's given us a creation that is dynamically stable," Beard told MinnPost. "We are not going to run out of anything."
..."It is the height of hubris to think we could [destroy the earth]," Beard told MinnPost, before saying that even devastating nuclear events shouldn't cast doubt on his theory that the earth can always be repaired.
"How did Hiroshima and Nagasaki work out? We destroyed that, but here we are, 60 years later and they are tremendously effective and livable cities. Yes, it was pretty horrible. But, can we recover?" Beard asked. "Of course we can."
Yeah, we killed over 200,000 people in nuclear bombings, but no harm no foul! See? God fixes everything. If millions of people die from starvation, chronic illness, or exposure due to the poisoning of the environment, it will all be ok because god will fix it. We'll never run out of Oil either. God will just hook an IV up to his arm and pump some more oil into the ground like magic! Don't worry about your water supply that is no longer drinkable because of run-off from coal mining either, god will purify it for you.