c/fediverse_vs_disinfo · by supersquirrel@lemmy.ca · 3d

The Great Barrier Reef isn’t dead yet. According to News Corp that makes climate science a ‘pseudo-religion’ | Temperature Check

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/aug/15/the-great-barrier-reef-isnt-dead-yet-according-to-news-corp-that-makes-climate-science-a-pseudo-religion

45 points · 10 comments · view on lemmy.world

10 Comments

Australis13@fedia.io · 18 pts · 3d

I have had conversations like this where people point to the ability of the reef to "recover" as evidence that everything's fine. When you try to point out things like it's the fast-growing, vulnerable coral that returns first, or that mass bleaching events are increasing, they accuse you of "twisting" a good news story into doom-and-gloom.

Basic logic is above these people.

MrSulu@lemmy.ml · 8 pts · 3d

This isnt just dumb it's as terrible as reporting that there are still signs of life in Palestine.

Souvenir@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 3 pts · 2d

I know doomerism is often nothing more than disguised climate change denialism, used by those who want to prevent us doing anything about climate change while there's still time. A new narrative by those who profit from pollution.

But it's really hard to stay motivated when the world's literally burning and the same cunts running the world are still insistent on ruining the world.

Honestly, I still pretend we can still do something about climate change and act accordingly. Rationally it is still possible according to the science and people who do seem to know what they're talking about, but deep down I've lost all hope.

SnoopSqueak@lemmy.today · 0 pts · 2d (6 replies)

Science is a process we use to acquire and refine knowledge.

Religion is a label adults apply to their unscientific beliefs because they can't admit when they're wrong.

I wish people would stop conflating the two.

While I am at it, atheism is also not a religion. It is a lack of belief in any gods.

I don't see how any scientist can also be religious; science does not accept claims without evidence, and there is no evidence suggesting the existence of any god, magic, superstition, etc. All the benefits of religion (socialization, self reflection, placebo effects) can also be found outside of religion, and without the needless risk of building your worldview on unfounded claims.

On the plus side, anyone can perform science, and due to its evidence-based verifiable nature, we can tell whether someone is being scientific or is distorting the truth.

The whole point is that we do not blindly trust authority, and we aim to reduce our biases as much as possible. I want the reef to heal, of course. But my wants do not change reality.

"The scientific concern is not that the GBR should already have disappeared, it’s whether reefs will have sufficiently long periods between disturbances for full ecosystem recovery"

Eakin told Temperature Check it was “well-understood this rapid colonisation by weedy, fast-growing corals is only the first step in the succession that occurs after reef destruction and that full recovery takes decades.”

“The rapid return of five severe marine heatwaves causing widespread bleaching in less than a decade shows that the reefs of the GBR are not being given enough time to recover,” he said.

supersquirrel@lemmy.ca · 0 pts · 2d (5 replies)

I don’t see how any scientist can also be religious

It is easy, to a scientist the least interesting question to ask about religion in terms of how it comes to life through humans or anything else someone identifies as a product of god is whether god actually exists or not.

Beyond simple philosophical questions, there is nothing generative to be found, science by definition is interested in questions that can be tested and are falsifiable and faith by definition exists outside of proof and is "allergic" to being contained by any kind of rationale proof whether you think that is because god doesn't exist or because you keep moving the goalposts to reassure yourself that god exists, or because you simply have an irrationale life defining feeling that god exists....

There are many scientists who have been deeply religious, they aren't incompatible and they aren't compatible, rather they exist perpendicular but intersecting at the juncture of politics where religion has often done great damage to science, but we are talking about primary levers of geopolitics here, we can't see violence along their axis as indicative of a fundamental incompatibility... or compatibility.

To see everything as a battle between science having a hold over truth and religion having a hold over truth is to mistake a political history with the actual mechanism that makes good science work, which is to concern yourself with questions that can be tested and answered in order to learn more about the universe.

SnoopSqueak@lemmy.today · 0 pts · 2d (4 replies)

They are incompatible. We really need to denormalize grown adults believing in magic. It's doing more damage than you can see.

supersquirrel@lemmy.ca · 0 pts · 2d (3 replies)

From a philosophical, rationale and scientific standpoint, strictly speaking religion and science are not incompatible. They are both structures of political power, and thus can be placed at opposing odds and this has indeed happened manyyyyy times in history I am not doubting that, but you cannot extrapolate to a different category of question from that about the philosophical question of whether religion and science are incompatible.

You also doing history a great injustice by assuming religion is always hostile to science, it is not, and you insult the nuance of history to paint with such a broad brush. Religion has done massive damage to science, but it is an egregious simplification to reduce the relationship down to just that.

Countless scientists have pursued entirely rationale science in the pursuit of bringing to light the beauty of god they saw reflected in their scientific passion, I am not saying that is a rationale way to see things, what I am saying is that it is a clear example of how these things are not fundamentally incompatible nor are they fundamentally compatible.

SnoopSqueak@lemmy.today · 0 pts · 2d (2 replies)

I also said:

All the benefits of religion (socialization, self reflection, placebo effects) can also be found outside of religion, and without the needless risk of building your worldview on unfounded claims.

I think you are underestimating how much needless death and suffering has resulted from people pretending that false things are true. There are more victims every day.

supersquirrel@lemmy.ca · 0 pts · 2d (1 reply)

I don't think you understand your argument is sloppy, you are extrapolating from the "fact" that in your perception that all said and done religion has done far more damage to science than good in terms of their relationship.

Crucially I am not debating whether that "fact" is true or not, I am pointing out that only expresses the result of their political intersections and the ways they have been exploited towards entirely earthly ends, you have not actually explained any incompatible mechanism between science and religion, and more damning for your argument you have no way to identify what makes the times religion has had a mutually beneficial relationship with science (sometimes by inhabiting the same famous scientist) anamalous and not immediately destructive?

If you are saying science and religion are like oil and water, I am saying that stating that most of the time oil and water don't mix well doesn't prove that they cannot mix at a general level, and it does not express a mechanism that makes these two things naturally opposed.

SnoopSqueak@lemmy.today · 0 pts · 2d

Say, what's going on at Cambridge University?

https://bylinetimes.com/2026/07/09/peter-thiel-and-reform-uks-cambridge-university-pipeline-project/

Powered by US money and far-right European think tanks, Cambridge has recently become an outpost of a peculiar blend of national conservatism and apocalyptic Christianity, through the figure of James Orr – Head of Policy at Reform UK described as Nigel Farage’s “Kingmaker“.

Oh, just willful ignorance replacing science, cult indoctrination replacing education. Do you think that is coincidence?

The sprawling complex regularly houses at any one time half a dozen or so postgraduate students from the University of Cambridge.

According to James Orr, the property is more than just a home, but a political and religious centre: a “right-wing Mecca” and a “Conservative Kibbutz”.

A regular resident, Rod Dreher, author of the 2017 book The Benedict Option, likens the place to “a Christian Asturias”, after the medieval Iberian kingdom that launched the Catholic Reconquista against Muslim rule. He has said it “needs to happen in as many places as it can”.

It is a cancer that seeks to spread.

Recent guests and visitors read like a ‘Who’s Who?’ of political pilgrims and scholars – almost exclusively from the right.

Peter Thiel has visited; as has his protegee, Donald Trump’s Vice-President, JD Vance, who described Orr as his “British Sherpa“.

Savory characters, huh?

Orr’s Cambridge University position, he said, was central to this. He had met “hundreds” of Cambridge students he considered suitable allies, and his job at Reform was to work out how those students could be “recruited into the party at scale”.

What are all those students learning?

Subjects such as Palestine and human rights are frowned upon; and authors on the reading list include Orr’s former colleague at Oxford University, Nigel Biggar – a Conservative peer who has sought to rehabilitate the reputation of the British Empire against the consensus among academic historians.

But you want to pretend religion is tolerable in the information age. You want to pretend religion and science are compatible.

Jordan Peterson finished his 2024 book, We Who Wrestle With God: Perceptions of the Divine, at the Orrs’ Cambridge base. He endorsed The Bell Curve in an interview with Douglas Murray, whom sources describe as another close friend of the Orrs and a regular guest at their compound.

One Cambridge student familiar with multiple humanities departments outside the Faculty of Divinity described a “normalisation of disparaging views of ethnic minorities” among some Cambridge academics.

You defended this racism whether you meant to or not. That is the harm of magical thinking.

Isaac Riley is a postgraduate student in Old Testament theology at the Faculty of Divinity who currently lives with the Orrs. He writes for The European Conservative – a Budapest-based far-right magazine previously funded by Orbán’s Government through a state-linked foundation. In November 2024, he published a “moral argument against migration”, contending that a government’s “primary obligation is to the native”. A second essay cast transgender identity as theologically “heinous”.

Do not make the mistake of tolerating this bigotry.

In January this year, as part of a US and European tour, Thiel delivered four private, invite-only ‘Antichrist Lectures’ in the Ramsden Room of St Catharine’s College, Cambridge University – again hosted by Orr. Previous leaks from these lectures suggest that his version of the ‘Antichrist’ ranges from the climate activist Greta Thunberg to any regulation of AI.

Religion is killing us. It's time to do better.