I hear there are lots of people around the country who aren’t that worried about the fate of the earth and humanity. Judgment Day is coming and both are doomed, in their view, but that’s OK because righteous people like themselves will be going to a better place and leaving the losers behind. It is kind of like the hippie vision in the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young song Wooden Ships. While I’m not a theologian, however, I’m not sure Judgment Day will turn out like those waiting for the Rapture have planned. Perhaps God has placed humanity in a circumstance that will force all of us to cast judgment, collectively, on ourselves — by placing us on a planet with the resources, and giving us both the ability and the will, to create either heaven or hell right here on earth. And He is sitting back and waiting to see what our choice will be.
Here on earth, there is the potential to create both nuclear power and nuclear bombs. There is the possibility of understanding our own genetics to cure our diseases — or to create a disease that will wipe us all out. Swords or plowshares of unlimited scale are ours to make and use as we choose, as our knowledge expands. But perhaps the greatest test, and the greatest temptation, is global warming.
All of us have hormonal glands sending chemical messages to our brains that, although the specifics differ, essentially amount to “I want for me now!” We all get the messages and only Saints can completely ignore them. Yet all of us have thoughts of concern for other people as well, thoughts that make us care very much how we affect those other people. Only sociopaths can completely ignore those. So there is, for most people, an inner conflict. Life is a tough job that way.
In order to satisfy the chemical messages, if doing so will harm other people, one must find a way around the thoughts of concern, to avoid feeling guilty. So people lie to themselves about how others are affected by their actions. And vote for politicians who help them lie to themselves. Or just close their eyes to the consequences for others.
In setting up a situation in which satisfying our material desires the easy way could destroy the planet, God has done the equivalent of setting a child in a room before a large cookie. The child is told that he can have the cookie, and no one will stop him and no one will see. If he doesn’t eat it he will get a smaller cookie, and everyone else in the class will get one too. The large cookie is poison. And if the first child eats it, the good cookies will be taken away from the rest of the class, and poison cookies will be substituted in their place. And there is someone telling the child he deserves the cookie, and it won’t bother anyone else if he eats it.
That’s what makes global warming such a great joke on humanity. The day both it and its consequences become so clear that absolutely no one is capable of denying it, it will probably be too late to do anything about it.
If you believe the righteous will be leaving this sinful world behind, and the world and the sinful are doomed anyway, why not eat the cookie? But if you believe there is no God, and therefore there are no souls, and thus all we are, objectively, is the random consequence of a few billion years of chemical reactions, what else matters other than those chemical messages to our brain? Why not assert ourselves, be what we are, do what we feel like, and eat the cookie anyway? That’s what any other cookie eating animal would do, if the poison were disguised. We’re all just things, in that case, and a feeling of moral obligation to future generations makes as much rational sense as a feeling of moral obligation to future rocks. That’s what Nietzsche was honest enough to say.
If you don’t take the Bible literally you wonder what is meant when Abraham asks God if he will “sweep away the innocent with the guilty” by destroying a wicked city. God says the city will be spared if 50, 45, 40, 30, 20 or even 10 innocent people may be found there. Could the city really be the earth? If so, the author of Genesis believed God would not destroy the earth as long as there were some good people on it. But I know who might. If the story of Noah and the ark is in some metaphysical sense true, God has already decided once that the human experiment was a failure, and decided to start over. If we blow it again, maybe next time He won’t bother.