RUSH: It’s a Reuters story: “Americans Becoming Less Religious, Especially Young Adults.” Now, this is according to a poll.
“Americans are becoming less religious, judging by such markers as church attendance, prayer and belief in God, and the trend is more pronounced among young adults, according to a poll released on Tuesday. The share of US adults who say they believe in God, while still high compared with other advanced industrial countries, slipped to 89% in 2014 from 92% in 2007…” So we’ve dropped 3%. You 3%, you probably know who you are who have become less religious and maybe stopped believing in God. This is “according to the Pew Research Center’s Religious Landscape Study.
“The proportion of Americans who say they are ‘absolutely certain’ God exists fell even more, to 63% in 2014 from 71% in 2007. The percentage of Americans who pray every day, attend religious services regularly and consider religion important in their lives are down by small, but statistically significant measures,” it says here. “The trend is most pronounced among young adults, with only half of those born from 1990 to 1996 absolutely certain of their belief in God, compared to 71% of the ‘silent generation,’ or those born from 1928 to 1945.
“Younger people also are less likely to pray daily, at 39%, compared to ‘silent generation’ adults at 67%. Young adults are also much less likely to attend religious services, the survey found. On the other hand, 77% of Americans continue to identify with some religious faith, and those who do are just as committed now as they were in 2007, according to the survey. Two-thirds of religiously affiliated adults say they pray every day and that religion is very important to them, the survey found. The survey also found religious divides among the political parties, with those who are not religiously affiliated more likely to be Democrats, at 28%, compared to 14% of Republicans.
“About 38% of Republicans identify as evangelical Protestants — the largest religious group in the party, the survey found. Catholics make up 21% of each major political party.” Now get this: “Orianna O’Neill, 21, a student at Beloit College in Wisconsin who comes from a non-religious household but sometimes prays, said she thinks the anti-science, anti-gay rhetoric of some politicians may be turning some young people away from religion. ‘The idea of Republicans not believing in global warming is contributing to the notion that religious people are not intelligent,’ O’Neill said.”
May I get a little personal here for just a brief moment, folks? I’ve had many people ask me, “You talk about climate change/global warming a lot. You make it clear you don’t agree, that you think it’s all a hoax, and you’re so certain, and it makes us uncomfortable.” Some people say, “Nobody’s that certain. I mean, how can you know this? I mean, there are people out there claim they’re scientists who say it’s happening, and that we’re causing it, and you tell us…? I mean, who are you? You’re not a scientist, and you’re telling us to disbelieve them all because it’s political?”
Yep.
A lot of people say, “You just can’t! Nobody can be that sure of themselves. You just can’t sit there and just automatically reject what scientists say!”
“Damn I can if I want to. If they’re Democrats — liberal Democrats, funded by liberal Democrats — you are bound to reject it. Your own sanity requires that you reject it if it comes from the funding of that group by the liberal Democrats or a big liberal Democrat donor, the Democrat Party, doesn’t matter. Because it’s a political issue that’s designed to get you believing you’re responsible, you must pay penance, you must acknowledge that you’re responsible, you must turn over all of this to big government to fix it. You must agree to raising taxes, carbon tax or whatever.
“Because the premise is you and the way you’re living your life are causing this destruction. And I’m sorry, but I don’t believe that.” And then I floor them. I wish I didn’t floor them. I wish what comes next did not shock people. But I tell them, “It is my devout belief in God that gives me every bit of confidence that man is not destroying — and furthermore, cannot — destroy the climate.” Then you go through all of what I consider the common-sensical ways of rejecting the premise, such as: “Have you ever noticed that the predictions are all for 30 years from now, 50 years from now, 100 years from now when people alive today will not be here to know whether they were right or wrong?
“Did you ever notice that a global warming catastrophe is never predicted for next year or next month? Have you noticed that ever since Hurricane Katrina, they’ve been hoping for more of them, so that they can use that to prove it, and there haven’t been any more? We haven’t had a major hurricane strike the country in 10 years, and yet they claim that Katrina was evidence galore of global warming?” I go through all of these things that you’ve heard for years, just the common-sensical ways of rejecting this premise.
I acknowledge the climate changes.
Everything changes. Nothing is static. Everything is dynamic.
The argument is, is Western Civilization responsible for it? That’s what the allegation is: That prosperous people, high standards of living, are responsible…for destroying the climate? Have you ever stopped to consider that charge? “If you wanted to destroy the climate, what would you do?” I ask them. “Would you go out and buy a fleet of SUVs, keep your thermostat at 60? What would you do? Like, if you really wanted to destroy the ozone layer, what would you do? I mean they’re claiming that you’re doing it, so what are you doing? What about your lifestyle is destroying the world when you go outside?”
They never have an answer for it.
They just are afraid to reject it.
They want to believe.
I mean, even some friends of mine. They want to believe in source authorities. They want to believe people are not lying to them. That’s one of the toughest things about dealing with liberalism that you run up against is people want to believe people in positions of power. They want to believe the president. Of all people, they want to believe the president. They don’t want to consider the president may be phony, a liar, a saboteur. They just don’t even want to contemplate it. But when I get into my religious belief as that is what informs me of my opposition to global warming, that’s where I learn how — I don’t know, what’s the word — irreligious people are. See, if I could go through this very briefly, I believe this a loving God. I believe in the God of creation. I believe the story of creation, as an allegorical story.
I do not believe, put very simply, that God could create human beings and not provide for them mechanisms whereby they can strive to live longer, to live happier, to live healthier. I believe in the loving God of creation that provides all of these things of beauty and substance and opportunity which permit one species, the human race, to harness as much as we can, and we are forever trying to harness more.
We were created to do so. We are as much a part of nature as any other living organism or species. We are not violating nature by using what God created in us to improve our lives, to improve the lives of as many others as we can. We have definitions of how we improve lives, standard of living, prosperity, contentment, happiness, pursuit of happiness, all of this I believe is the product of creation of a loving God, and I just can’t intellectually believe that a loving God would create such beauty and substance and opportunity, that if exploiting it — and I don’t mean in a negative sense — by examination, experimentation, by living our lives and trying to improve them, that we destroy what has been created for us. It just doesn’t make any sense to me.
I can’t come to grips intellectually with the idea that the way we live our lives — and I don’t have any doubt that the Western civilization lifestyle provides the best opportunity, the best chance for humanity on this entire planet. And yet every day I’m pummeled with the charge, with the allegation that all of us who are simply trying to provide for ourselves and our families, we’re trying to better our communities, we are trying to improve the future for our children, I just can’t accept that the process of doing all of that leads to the destruction of all that has been created for us. I don’t think we have the power. I don’t think we have the power to destroy this. Even if we nuked it, it’s still here. We are gone. Life is still here in some shape, manner or form. And the whole process will start all over again.
But we’re not talking about nukes. Nobody in the global warming movement is accusing us of global warming by using nuclear weapons. I’m using the most extreme example I can. If you really want to destroy the planet, that’s the best we could do. We don’t know how to do anything else, other than nuke everything. That’s the further advanced weaponry we’ve got. They have been used a couple of times, and the places they have been are in fine shape. They were not ultimately forever destroyed, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Chernobyl, plant accident. But to me the evidence is all around us and is abundant that, despite our efforts in many cases, standards of living improve.
I just have never been able to come to grips — throw the religion out, if it makes you uncomfortable. I just can’t come to grips with the idea that the only people responsible for climate change happen to be capitalistic related Western civilization industrialized countries, especially when you look at pollution and the messes that we make here and how far advanced we are in cleaning them up than in poverty stricken, poverty-ridden areas, depressed areas of the world. Where there is poverty there is pestilence and pollution and filth and misery. And where there is poverty, there is usually dictatorship or tyranny of some kind. There is socialism, communism, some sort of ism that denies the individual liberty and freedom that we in this country have.
I believe in the basic goodness of most human beings and the goodness of most human beings leads to the betterment of life for everybody. And I just can’t come to grips with doing that destroying the planet. And yet that’s what they tell us every day. Frankly, I resent it. I intellectually resent the idea that people trying to improve every aspect — we have people trying to clean up messes emit as little pollution as we can. And in a capitalistic society, people are gonna do that on their own, contrary to what critics will say. They will say that a free people living in a capitalistic system are selfish and greedy and don’t care about the messes they make, because they don’t care about other people. It takes a governing authority somewhere in a distant capital where only the people there have the correct answers of compassion and so forth. Yet when you take a look at what those people do in that distant capital you see mess after mess after mess that gets worse and worse and worse. And they continue to be the ones called on to clean up each mess that they make, and it progressively gets worse and worse and worse and we have a cycle. Create the mess, fix the mess, mess gets bigger, come in, create it because some reason they are judged to be the only ones who can fix it.
Yet people not involved in that bureaucracy, not involved in that distant capital, people living among themselves who have the authority and the power have clean neighborhoods, have clean cities, because it’s what they want, and they have the freedom and the means and the prosperity to do it. You run around the world where there’s poverty, pestilence, disease, what’s missing is the ability to clean up any of those messes because there isn’t the means, the license the prosperity, there isn’t the freedom, there isn’t the capitulation, there isn’t the know-how.
All there is in those places is the desire to get out, and where do they want to go? Right here. Somehow, some way, some reason they want to come here to the home of climate destruction? Really? The car you drive, the air that you exhale, the soft drinks that you drink, whatever you eat and consume, cars, cows farting and belching is causing climate destruction, we’re supposed to intellectually just accept it? I’m sorry, I can’t, folks.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: You’re gonna destroy the climate, how you gonna do it? What are you gonna do? What are you gonna tell other people to join you in doing if you want to succeed in destroying the climate? “Rush, nobody’s talking about destroying.” Okay, change it, ’cause they’re saying change equals destruction. Have you ever noticed it used to be global warming, then it stopped warming so now it’s climate change. You ever notice that any normal weather pattern that doesn’t happen very much is considered an example of extreme. It’s all absurd. None of it holds up to common sense.
But this quote got me, this 21-year-old student at Beloit College. “The idea of Republicans not believing in global warming is contributing to the notion that religious people are not intelligent.”
It’s the exact opposite. She’s a nitwit, but she has an excuse. She’s only 21. Her mind has been polluted and poisoned by a bunch of professors and teachers and so forth. Here’s the difference, folks, and it’s just one of many. One of the differences between God-d and global warming or the difference between God-d and climate change, you don’t have to believe in God in order for him to exist. But you have to believe in climate change in order for it to exist, because it doesn’t, unless you believe it. It is an article of faith that you can’t prove.
And I again, I’m just gonna open it up to anyone out there — let me put it a different way. I’m not gonna even issue it as a challenge. I’ll make it even easier. Those of you who think you or we are changing the climate for the worse — that’s what it’s all about — tell me what it is you’re doing. Tell me what it is I’m doing. Tell me what it is, what we’re all doing that’s making this happen. See what you come up with. I’m serious. Dead serious.