Concerning climate change, here is another lesson, which has stuck with me ever since the days when I thought I wanted to be a mathematical modeler in another field.

You can always build a model that predicts everything that has already happened.  That doesn't mean you can predict what is going to happen.

I would advise any young Christians who are considering a career in government, irrespective of branch, at any level, from low to high, that before any other study they read the first six chapters of the Book of Daniel:  Thoughtfully, very carefully, and in the context of the Exile.

Mutatis mutandis, of  course:  Making the necessary changes.  Paganism is not the same as neo-paganism; the times before Christ were not the same as the times after.  And the literary genre of the book is strange and difficult for us.  But the times for which it was written are very like the ones we are in.

An acquaintance tells me that in his part of the world, which would normally be warm this time of year, the weather is unusually cold.

If it’s shivery where you are, this may amuse you:  The next time someone comments on the cold, quietly murmur “Climate change,” then watch for the reaction.

I don’t claim to know whether the globe is getting warmer.  I do know that for scientists who live on money from the government, it’s a beautiful hypothesis.  No conceivable evidence can disconfirm it.  Hot weather or cold, rising global average temperatures or stable ones, favorable data, unfavorable data, or no data at all – it’s all good.

Philosophical hedonists think that in the final analysis, the good is nothing but what we desire, and the only thing we actually desire is pleasure.   Did you think you desired love, knowledge, meaning, friendship, or friendship with God?  No, you only desire the pleasure of those things.

Most of my students find this argument irresistible.

They have all seen movies like The Matrix, so to provoke them to look deeper, I used to pose this puzzle:  “Suppose someone invented a system of illusions you could be plugged into, with sights, sounds, sensations, and memories so photo-perfect that you thought you loved real people, you thought life was meaningful, you thought you were enjoying friendship with God – in fact, whatever you want -- but actually all these impressions were being fed into you by electronics.  The inventor offers to plug you into his device for the rest of your life.  Do you accept the offer?”

Over the years, the number responding “No, it wouldn’t be real” has declined, and the number responding “Sure!  What’s real anyway?” has increased.

So I’ve upped the ante.  I’ve dropped the distraction of virtual reality.  Now I say, “Suppose a surgeon offers to strap you onto a gurney and implant a tiny electrode implanted into the pleasure center of your brain.  You will stay on the gurney forever, but with just a few microvolts of carefully monitored current, you will experience the greatest possible pleasure, and a glucose drip will keep you alive so it goes on and on until you die of old age.  You won’t think you are loving someone.  You won’t ask whether anything has meaning.  You won’t think you enjoy friendship with God.  The only thing you will be aware of is all that pleasure.  Now do you accept the offer?”

Fewer answer “Yes” than before.  But you’d be surprised by how many still do.

All sorts of philosophical fallacies are wound up in that reply, for every pleasure implies a good different than itself – the pleasure is the experience of repose in that particular good.  Hallucinating pleasure is not the same as experiencing it, any more than hallucinating a cat is the same as seeing it.  In one case, the cat isn’t there; in the other case, the good isn’t.

Yet I can’t help but think that the problem is not just an error in reasoning.  What kind of society have we made, that comfortably brought-up young people can prefer death-in-life to life?

After speaking of the duties between sovereign and minister, father and son, husband and wife, elder brother and younger, and friend and friend, Confucius writes gracefully, “Some are born with the knowledge of those duties; some know them by study; and some acquire the knowledge after a painful feeling of their ignorance.”

By those who come to know these duties “after a painful feeling of their ignorance,” I would like to think he means those who experience repentance and change of heart.  Even such a slight and passing allusion to such things is rare outside of revelation.  One is refreshed, as by a breeze from heaven.

On the other hand, the sage goes on to say, “Some practice them with a natural ease; some from a desire for their advantages; and some by strenuous effort.  But the achievement being made, it comes to the same thing.”  These words contain not even a trace of awareness of divine grace – especially of the transformative importance of the motive divine of charity.  To pursue virtue from a desire for its advantages seems to miss the point.

Source:  Confucius, The Doctrine of the Mean