There is perhaps a case to be made that:
1. Climate change warnings are overstated and alarmist
2. That climate change, like anything else can become an obsession that becomes an idol and so a religion. This article is not it.
The author pleads with Christians to show respect and not dismiss those they disagree with. Yet, by dressing up climate change as being a false religion and a conspiracy theory, without considering that Christians have looked soberly at the evidence, the article is itself dismissive of other believers.
Remember there is nothing in the Bible which says that there won’t be man made climate change and it won’t be catastrophic (just as Scripture does not rule out the possibility of nuclear war). To be sure, there may be natural climate cycles (though you probably need an old earth creation to really make that case ). However, we also do know that pumping emissions into the atmosphere etc really isn’t going to help.
What concerns me about this article, itself alarmist about supposed one world governments and Christians ensnared into a false religion is how it handles information.
Essentially, the approach is to take climate change arguments and overlay them into religious terminology/models. We can of course do that with everything from food to football and of course those things can become idolatrous too. However, this does not automatically make them so.
The approach is questionable. Take for example the attempt to argue that Climate Change activists engage in prophecy. There is a fundamental difference between using models to forecast potential outcomes and prophecy where we announce revelation from God on a matter. It’s possible to model and forecast all kinds of things from factory output through to the weather. I can also predict now that Evangelicals Now will publish something a bit silly each month (often to be seen to provide balance so that an article looking at creation care will be followed by something like this), I can also predict potential outcomes to both godly and ungodly decisions. Neither of those things are claims to prophecy.
Climate change denial can itself be a false religion especially when based on lazy engagement with Scripture, science, history and opposing views.
Faithroots 