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Think worldview doesn't matter? By: Shane Morris|Published: September 1, 2010 4:00 PM Topics: Crime & Justice, Environment Tell that to this guy. Just after noon today, a lone gunman entered the Discovery Channel headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland, taking a security guard hostage and triggering an evacuation of the Discovery building and those surrounding it. According to the Washington Post, an employee who called 911 soon after the suspect entered the building reported shots fired and said that the suspect was also carrying explosives. Police are currently on the scene, and while there are no reports of injuries so far, the situation is still developing. What does this have to do with worldviews? According to the Washington Post, police have identified the suspect as James J. Lee, proprietor of the website savetheplanetprotest.com. Among Lee's most recent posts are a series of demands addressed to the Discovery Channel, ordering the network to "broadcast to the world their commitment to save the planet." The Washington Post reports that the site also "lists 11 demands about airing shows that would promote curbing the plant's population growth, finding solutions for global warming and dismantling "the dangerous US world economy." '"All programs on Discovery Health-TLC must stop encouraging the birth of any more parasitic human infants, and the false heroics behind those actions," writes Lee. "In those programs' places, programs encouraging human sterilization and infertility must be pushed. All former pro-birth programs must now push in the direction of stopping human birth, not encouraging it."' Be in prayer for the staff at the Discovery Channel, and for law enforcement officials as they attempt to defuse the situation. |
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Comments:
He also cites & praises Malthus...
the 1798 guy who talked about getting rid of "the surplus population"
...and as many of us know...a vocal member of "the surplus population" created the pre ghost Scrooge sorta in the Mean Malthus image!!!
Go Dickens!
Sop therein lies my point. Mr James had a faulty worldview that was not coherent. Might have been rational, but not coherent and along with internally consistent. Makes a bad worldview.
I have a few questions for Ben, re:
"The other half of my post: the extreme pro-environment, anti-human view of the James Lee is countered on the other extreme by people who think birth control should be illegal and that *every* baby is a good thing. "Humans always bad" against "babies always good", right? Both are nuts and obviously wrong"
Who are you thinking of? Do these people think birth control should be illegal or that it is morally wrong? Do they think all "birth control" is equivalent? Do you? Is their view exactly and exclusively: "babies always good"?
Besides that, I don't see how exterminating all human life is equivalent to defending all innocent life.
The other half of my post: the extreme pro-environment, anti-human view of the James Lee is countered on the other extreme by people who think birth control should be illegal and that *every* baby is a good thing. "Humans always bad" against "babies always good", right? Both are nuts and obviously wrong.
So, Terrence: If the crazy environmentalist is simply pursuing his idea to its rational conclusion, the abortion doctor killer is doing the same (and both are universally rejected).
And calling abortionists "doctors" is a desecration of the term. A doctor is a healer.
But yeah, some people have in fact bombed abortion clinics. They were universally denounced.
And the argument that "Earth would be better with no humans" certainly is less rational and ethical as if you take that seriously you have to reduce the number of humans. Of course an easy place to start would be suicide by those who hold that view, a course of action which they do not seem eager for.
Really, the extreme environmental view that "Earth would be better with no humans" is just as rational and ethical as the opposite view of "more humans is always better". Both are wrong, and the arguments for them tend to be oversimplified and selective.
Where does Singer of Princeton fit here? He can't live his worldview. This might be cause for some ideological soul searching at the Discovery Channel. It had gotten too "green" for me so I found something else to watch.