The Pope's Encyclical

How dare that Pope Francis presume to say anything about the environment! Ahead of Thursday's release of his encyclical, Laudate Si, the conservatives are spinning and protesting that the Pope isn't a scientist, and of course climate change is faked by greedy scientists!  Uber-Catholic Rick Santorum tells the pope to stay away from science.  Though while the recent internet meme that he has an MS in Chemistry is wrong, Francis did study chemistry and worked as a chemist before seminary-- which is more science than Rick Santorum understands.

The Catholic magazine Our Sunday Visitor scolds the protestors,

A line is crossed [when] rational exchange turns into venom-spewing, ideologically based commentary. And this is what has taken place. Well before the encyclical’s release, a veritable campaign against its content has not only been initiated, but has been growing in intensity. That these efforts presuppose the document’s content is bad enough, but they have gone much further. Some Catholic observers and commentators have recommended that their fellow members in faith completely ignore the work, calling it baseless and not a priority. Others have even mocked the Holy Father and questioned his mental state. It’s shameful behavior, and hardly befitting a Church that calls itself “one, holy and apostolic.”

That the majority of this vitriol should come at the hands of self-styled conservatives is as disappointing as it is ironic. Just a few short years ago, with Pope Benedict at the helm of the Church, it was these same Catholics calling on their self-styled liberal counterparts to not ignore or berate the teachings or the office of the Holy Father — in short to not be “cafeteria Catholics” when they disagreed with Benedict. Now the situation is reversed, and these offended Catholics are becoming the perpetrators of the same offensive abuse.

It’s true that Catholics are not required to agree with every word that is proclaimed by the pope. His infallibility is used sparingly, as is prudent. But to prejudge his teaching is unacceptable. To disparage, cast aside and belittle the leader of the Church is worse. Not only is it profoundly disrespectful to the office, it’s simply the wrong behavior for Catholics to be engaging in. It’s nasty, negative spin.

CNN reports,

The head of the Vatican's Academy of Sciences dismissed the attacks, saying they came only from the "Tea Party and those who derive their income from oil."

Ya Think? 

Correlating faith with science

Blogger Josh Rosenau created this neat graphic, showing a striking correlation between support for environmental regulation (basically, as a proxy for believing in climate change)  and evolution, associated with religious belief.  The size of the circle represents the population associated with that belief group.  Rosenau explains,

I examined two questions. One asked people which of these statements they most agreed with:

Stricter environmental laws and regulations cost too many jobs and hurt the economy; or Stricter environmental laws and regulations are worth the cost

The other question asked people to agree or disagree with the statement:

Evolution is the best explanation for the origins of human life on earth

He goes on,

First, look at all those groups whose members support evolution. There are way more of them than there are of the creationist groups, and those circles are bigger. We need to get more of the pro-evolution religious out of the closet.

Second, look at all those religious groups whose members support climate change action. Catholics fall a bit below the zero line on average, but I have to suspect that the forthcoming papal encyclical on the environment will shake that up.

Chris Mooney in the Washington Post comments,

One possible way of interpreting the figure is that as with political parties themselves, people at least partially self-sort into faiths or denominations that seem more consonant with their own worldviews. And thus, a cluster of issue stances may travel alongside these choices of affiliation. “People are choosing what religion they want to associate with,” suggested Rosenau. “If people feel alienated from a church, they’re switching.”

There may also be a substantive point here that links together the ideas. A view of the world that thinks of human beings as having evolved, as being part of the natural world and having emerged through the same process as other organisms, may also be related to a manner of thinking that puts great overall emphasis on the value of nature and one’s connectedness with it.

In any case, while the pattern above may require more analysis, one clear punchline of the figure is that it really doesn’t make sense to say that religion is at war with science. You can say that for some people, religion is clearly linked to less science acceptance — especially on evolution. But for others, clearly, religion presents no hurdle at all.

Can religion preserve biological diversity?

From Science Daily:

Leaders of the major world religions can play a key role in preserving biological diversity. A new study carried out by ecologists at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), among others, indicates that if the world's religious leaders wished to bring about a change, they would be ideally positioned to do so. 

"Our study investigates how the various religions are distributed around the world and how they overlap areas that are important for global biological diversity," says Grzegorz Mikusinski, a researcher at SLU who directs the project. Our analysis indicates that the majority of the most important areas lie in countries dominated by Christianity, especially Roman Catholicism.
....
"We believe that members of religious groups, guided by a moral resolution to preserve the world's natural resources for coming generations, can implement a conservation agenda both in their daily lives and in their political activities," says Grzegorz Mikusinski.