An Inconvenient Spiritual Abuse

I haven't seen Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, but a friend did. This friend was actually expecting to be convinced of the threat of man-made global warming. That is, she assumed it to be true (because that's what we've been told), and was looking forward to the movie presenting actual evidence to back up her belief.

She didn't get the movie she was expecting.

• No evidence was presented that humans were the cause, only assertions.
• Climate change was presented based on the last thousand years, although the earth has been around for 4 billion years and had its share of warming and freezing periods long before man entered the scene, and even since man has been here in the pre-industrial age.
  

My friend admits to getting bored by it and not seeing it all the way through, so she could be wrong. Assuming she isn't, then how in the world are ordinary people supposed to be "convinced" of man-made global warming, if something as well-publicized as An Inconvenient Truth isn't persuasive?

But this failure to be convinced apparently makes my friend worse than a child molester, if an English Bishop is to be believed. From The Birmingham Post:

In a hard-hitting letter to parishioners, Bishop Mursell maintained those who refused to accept the climate change argument shared a 'common philosophy of life' to [Josef] Fritzl, who imprisoned his daughter in a cellar for 24 years during which he sexually abused her and fathered her seven children.

But the question is, why should anyone accept the argument? Because politicians and researchers living off government grants say so? Because your priest says so?

It is people like Bishop Mursell who, by using the issue to enhance their own authority, make the man-made global warming theory less believable. Why believe that man-made global warming exists? "Because WE say so, and WE are credible because of our power and prestige. If you don't agree with what WE say and do as WE command, then you are worse than [insert Hitler, child molesters, or your favorite villain here]."

Saying the same thing over and over again doesn't make it true, and demonizing the unconvinced doesn't actually make them monsters.

What it does suggest, however, is that Bishop Mursell likes to spiritually abuse his parishioners through false comparisons and guilt-manipulation. Perhaps he sees a little bit of Fritzl in his own behavior, and his projecting his self-loathing outward.