Christian Not Sure Why He Should Look Forward To Heaven When He Already Lives In America

FRISCO, CO—Local Christian man Dave Hearth recently came across an interesting verse in the Bible: Philippians 3:20, which says that our citizenship is in heaven.

Confused, Hearth checked the cross-references and read that we are supposed to set out hearts on things above, not on earthly things in Colossians 3. In 2 Corinthians 5, Paul even had the "gall" to write that he "longs" to be clothed with his heavenly dwelling instead of his earthly tent.

"I just don't get it," Hearth told reporters. "I already live in the United States of America---what could the eternal state possibly hold for me?"

"I guess I can understand the Bible writer guys saying they long for heaven," he said. "They just lived in Israel, which is pretty nice, but it's not like it's God's chosen country or anything. I just don't feel these verses really apply to me."

Hearth pointed out that he already has baseball, Chevrolet, and guns, concluding that there's just nothing that eternal life with God could possibly provide him that he doesn't already have. He's now rescinded his eternal citizenship in the new heaven and new earth, saying "thanks but no thanks" to the offer to reside anywhere but the present-day US of A.

"For my citizenship is in America," he said. "I'm just passing through the Kingdom of God."

https://babylonbee.com/news/christian-not-sure-why-he-should-look-forward-to-heaven-when-he-already-lives-in-america

Climate change: 11,000 scientists warn of 'untold suffering'

Climate crisis has arrived and is accelerating faster than most scientists expected, signatories say.

More than 11,000 scientists have "clearly and unequivocally" declared a climate emergency that could bring "untold suffering" unless there are significant transformations in the way humans live.

"Scientists have a moral obligation to clearly warn humanity of any great existential threat," the signatories, who hail from 153 countries, said in a paper published in BioScience magazine on Tuesday.

"To secure a sustainable future, we must change how we live ... [This] entails major transformations in the ways our global society functions and interacts with natural ecosystems."

The signatories suggest six steps that would lessen the worst effects of climate change: replacing fossil fuels with low-carbon renewables; reducing the emissions of pollutants such as methane; protecting the Earth's ecosystems; eating mostly plant-based foods and fewer animal products; creating a carbon-free economy and stabilising the human population.

In their statement, the alliance of scientists, led by William Ripple and Christopher Wolf of Oregon State University in the United States, said the climate crisis is "accelerating faster" than most researchers expected.

"Despite 40 years of global climate negotiations, with few exceptions, we have generally conducted business as usual and have largely failed to address this predicament," they wrote.

"Especially worrisome are potential irreversible climate tipping points and nature's reinforcing feedbacks (atmospheric, marine, and terrestrial) that could lead to a catastrophic 'hothouse Earth', well beyond the control of humans," they said.

The scientists say they are "encouraged by a recent surge of concern" over the climate crisis, demonstrated by the student-led Fridays for Future movement and other grassroots campaigns.

"As the Alliance of World Scientists, we stand ready to assist decision-makers in a just transition to a sustainable and equitable future," the paper concludes, adding that humanity should "act to sustain life on planet Earth, our only home".

'Change the trajectory'

Thomas Newsome, one of the authors of the report, said that even though some of the effects of climate change are already evident, the scientists still believe there is time to reduce greenhouse gase emissions "and hopefully change the trajectory of the graphical indicators that we presented in the paper".

Small individual changes that people make in their day-to-day lives, such as reducing meat consumption,  reducing air travel and using renewable enerfy sources are going to make "larger scale impacts," Newsome told Al Jazeera from Sydney.

"It's also going to influence policy makers, business communities and governments to really start taking the much bigger steps that are needed at a global scale to tackle this problem of climate change.  

"All of the indicators in our paper are heading in the wrong direction and we are clear in advocating for global action against - what we are calling - a climate emergency."

The letter's publication comes one day after US President Donald Trump begun the process to quit Washington's participation in the landmark Paris climate accord, which seeks to fight climate change by mutual reductions in climate emissions."It's also going to influence policy makers, business communities and governments to really start taking the much bigger steps that are needed at a global scale to tackle this problem of climate change.  

Washington presented its withdrawal letter to the United Nations on Monday, the first possible date under the accord negotiated by Trump's predecessor Barack Obama, making the world's largest economy the sole outlier from the agreement.

But Chinese President Xi Jinping and his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, declared on Wednesday that the Paris climate pact is "irreversible".

Key powers expressed regret and concern after Trump went ahead with the pullout despite mounting evidence of the reality and effect of climate change.

In a joint statement released after Xi and Macron held talks in Beijing, the two leaders reaffirmed "their firm support for the Paris accord which they consider as an irreversible process and a compass for strong action on climate".

Without directly naming the US, Macron said he "deplores the choices made by others" as he sat next to Xi following the talks.

Sound Skepticism vs. Motivated Reasoning

Science skeptic Steven Novella writing at Neurologica blog comments on a common thinking flaw that self-professed skeptics apply when they reject mainstream science. Novella uses Bill Maher as his example of skeptical thinking gone sour. Maher isn't the only one, but he is a very well-known example.

Novella writes:

I see Maher as a cautionary tale – clearly there is something wrong with his process, and since he is trying to be skeptical but also clearly failing, we should perhaps try to figure out what that is.

So what is Maher’s major malfunction? Again – based on the evidence in the public domain – what I have observed is that Maher does not really follow a process of logic, science, and critical thinking. He apparently takes positions for other reasons, based on ideology with a huge helping of arrogance. He then defends his positions with logic and critical thinking as much as he can. So when his positions happen to be reasonable, he sounds like a champion of critical thinking. When he defends the scientific consensus, like on global warming, or when he takes on religion-based anti-science, he champions skepticism. But then he pivots to positions that are not based on the scientific consensus, and he engages in willful motivated reasoning, untempered by humility. 

That, I think, is the cautionary tale. Just because you are right, in line with science, and can defend yourself with good principles of skepticism on some issues, that does not make you right on every issue. You have to approach each issue with humility and the acknowledgement that you may be wrong. You should be very concerned when your views do not conform to legitimate experts. The chances are overwhelming that the reason for the disconnect is because you are not an expert, and not because you are smarter than all the experts. (emphasis added)

The context is Maher’s commentary on anti-vaccine quackery. Novella characterizes Maher as trying to portray himself as reasonable, but spouts nonsense. Novella argues that Maher is wrong to argue that a doctor who relies on their own experience and subjective feelings trump expert-reviewed evidence and the standard of care. That kind of thinking makes a doctor a bad doctor because the doctor is always wrong with very few or no exceptions in modern times.

Novella also points out a straw-man fallacy that Maher bases on that “he is smarter and has a more thoughtful approach to medicine than the world’s medical experts who have dedicated their lives to thinking carefully about medicine.” In essence, the non-expert Maher insults real experts. Novella points out “further evidence of Maher’s guru-like medical insight, [when he counters] the mountain of scientific evidence he admits to with, ‘It seems more realistic to me…’ Sure, there may be many scientific studies showing no correlation between vaccines and autism – there is simply no signal in the data – but on the other hands we have these anecdotal reports.”

No signal in the data, but there are anecdotal reports.

Anecdotal reports are not scientific evidence. They are just anecdotal reports, nothing more. That is the same thinking that climate science deniers assert to support their beliefs while rejecting nearly all real experts and the overwhelming evidence they base their conclusions on.

Other commentary on Maher’s mental implosion:
https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/shame-on-hbo-bill-maher-interviews-dr-jay-gordon-and-the-antivaccine-misinformation-flows/
https://www.thedailybeast.com/bill-mahers-show-has-gone-completely-off-the-rails
https://www.forbes.com/sites/ninashapiro/2019/11/03/bill-maher-supports-vaccine-autism-connection/#7177154a723d

Saudi Arabia: arrests of dissidents and torture allegations continue

Relaxation of social laws has belied repression since murder of Jamal Khashoggi, says report
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/04/saudi-arabia-mass-arrests-of-dissidents-and-torture-allegations-continue

Activists, clerics and other perceived critics of the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, continue to be arbitrarily detained more than a year after the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, a report has said.

Bin Salman has overseen the relaxing of a number of the kingdom’s restrictive social laws since assuming a leadership position in the Saudi government four years ago, most recently allowing women over 21 to obtain passports and travel abroad without the permission of a male guardian.

But these reforms have belied a “darker reality”, according to a report released on Monday by Human Rights Watch, including the mass arrests of women’s rights activists, a number of whom have allegedly been sexually assaulted and suffered torture including whipping and electric shocks.

Saudi government agencies have denied mistreatment of female activists.

About 20 people have been arbitrarily detained this year and there have been 30 detentions since the murder in October last year of Khashoggi, a journalist, in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, HRW said.

Khashoggi’s murder attracted a wave of scrutiny of the crown prince’s efforts to transform the kingdom and make it less reliant on oil revenues.

A UN report released in June said there was “credible evidence” Bin Salman and other senior Saudi officials were liable for Khashoggi’s killing, which the kingdom has characterised as a rogue operation by its agents.

But the international criticism has failed to halt a campaign against perceived dissidents inside the kingdom, according to the HRW report, with waves of arrests carried out against women’s rights activists and their allies this year, including the writer Khadijah al-Harbi, who was pregnant at the time of her detention.

Anas al-Mazrou, a lecturer at King Saud University, was arrested in March after raising the issue of the detained women’s rights activists during a panel discussion at Riyadh book fair.

Michael Page, a deputy Middle East division director at HRW, said: “Mohammed bin Salman has created an entertainment sector and allowed women to travel and drive, but Saudi authorities have also locked away many of the country’s leading reformist thinkers and activists on his watch, some of whom called for these very changes.

“It’s not real reform in Saudi Arabia if it takes place in a dystopia where rights activists are imprisoned and freedom of expression exists just for those who malign the dissidents.”

The crackdown under Bin Salman began in September 2017 with the arrests of dozens of critics, including intellectuals and influential clerics, in what was widely interpreted as an attempt to crush dissent.

The report noted the arrest of human rights activists and dissidents was not a new phenomenon, but the wave of repression since late 2017 had been distinguished by “the sheer number and range of individuals targeted over a short period of time, as well as the introduction of new repressive practices not seen under previous Saudi leadership”.

These practices included extorting financial assets in exchange for a detainee’s freedom, a tool used against dozens of businesspeople and royal family members arbitrarily held at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Riyadh in November 2017.

The kingdom has also allegedly scaled up its use of commercially available surveillance technologies to penetrate the online accounts of critics and dissidents. Guardian journalists are among those to be warned they have been targeted by a hacking unit inside the Saudi government.

On Sunday, the engine of Saudi Arabia’s economy, the state-owned energy company Aramco, announced plans to list on the domestic stock exchange.

The sale of shares in the world’s most profitable company, including eventually on a foreign stock exchange, would raise at least hundreds of millions of dollars the Saudi government hopes to use to fund the country’s transformation and ensure its long-term future in a world where fossil fuel use is projected to dwindle.

The social reforms shepherded through by Bin Salman, often against significant opposition from conservative elements, are part of this wider economic transformation, but Saudis have complained the new “red lines” are difficult to discern and inconsistently enforced.