© Clintel Foundation/Tuesday 17 September 2024

Pope Francis’ Climate Crusade or the erosion of faith in God

By uncritically embracing climate catastrophism, Pope Francis, perhaps unwittingly and most certainly unwillingly, rejects the God he clearly tries to serve wholeheartedly. That is the main conclusion of the essay Pope Francis’ Climate Crusade or the erosion of faith in God, a tale of two encyclicals, written by Jaap C. Hanekamp and William M. Briggs and published by Clintel today.

Pope Francis outlined his views on climate change in two encyclicals, Laudato Si’ (2015) and Laudate Deum (2023). Concisely, the Pope fears that the world in which we live is collapsing and may be nearing the breaking point because of climate change. In fact, the Pope announced in his encyclicals that there is a “global climate crisis.”

In the essay Pope Francis’ Climate Crusade or the erosion of faith in God chemist and theologian Jaap C. Hanekamp and statistician and meteorologist William M. Briggs reflect on both encyclicals, though they do not assess the scientific information on climate change as such. Instead, they examine the Pope’s use and understanding of models, and delve deeper into the overarching philosophy that sustains both encyclicals. They conclude that the Pope, carelessly in their view, embraces scientism, and not science, which inadvertently weakens his position, and those that follow his scientistic prescriptions.

Scientism is the ideology that science alone is deemed capable of elucidating and resolving all genuine human problems, and that all human affairs can be reduced to science. Accordingly, scientism is the effort to expand science to all other fields of human affairs, even theology, and to usurp them in a reductionist fashion.

Hanekamp and Briggs conclude that the climate scientism Pope Francis peddles stands diametrically opposed to the Christian worldview. “Scientism of any stripe is incommensurable with not only the Christian faith but also with science.”

About the authors
Jaap C. Hanekamp is a chemist by trade and received his first PhD in 1992. In 2015, he defended his second dissertation: Utopia and Gospel: Unearthing the Good News in Precautionary Culture. He blogs at https://jaaphanekamp.com/. William M. Briggs holds a PhD in Mathematical Sciences and an MS in Atmospheric Physics, and has served in various roles including professor, consultant, and statistician. He blogs at https://www.wmbriggs.com/.

The essay can be downloaded here.

It is better to be half-turned than to have gone astray!

Not climate change but climate policy is the main threat for the prosperity of western societies at this moment. The Clintel Foundation has stated, with a global network of 2000 scientists and experts, that there is no climate emergency. Western leaders, however, have all voted in favour of Net Zero targets for 2050, which will have a disastrous effect on our economy and therefore our prosperity.

These climate policies are a threat for entrepreneurs and it enters deeper and deeper into the private life of citizens. Wind turbines of close to 300 meters in height industrialise our countrysides, harming the environment,, biodiversity and public health. House owners are forced to replace their gas heaters by costly heat pumps, leading to rising energy bills. More and more cities reduce speed limits to 30 kms per hour.

There is no support base among the population for all these costly measures but our political leaders so far ignore these objections. Sooner or later the tide will turn, because these policies are unfeasible and unaffordable. Clintel wants to speed up this process by making both citizens and political leaders aware of all the pitfalls. Clintel receives no funding from the government nor from the Postcode Lottery or the industry. We therefore ask citizens and small businesses to support us in our mission.

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Clintel is an Amsterdam (The Netherlands) based thinktank founded in 2019 by Dutch emeritus professor Guus Berkhout and science writer Marcel Crok.

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