Turnbull slams role of religion in Australian society

Well, that might have been one take on these remarks by Australian Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

“I think religion is a very poor guide to public policy,” the Minister has said.

Perhaps Mr Turnbull will next be boycotting prayers during the daily opening of the House of Representatives. Surely he wouldn’t want to be seen to be in league with the Festival of Light, which holds that “Prayers in parliament are an important daily reminder that we must all ultimately answer to the higher authority of Almighty God.”

Of course, the context of Turnbull’s remarks was that they were made as part of a rhetorical attack on the Opposition’s approach to climate change, which he says is “verging on becoming fanatical” in seeking to make climate change a “religious issue”.

There’s also a nice rhetorical flourish about how Labor “do not care how poor we have to become as long as we become pure.” Neat.

If, as Richard Dawkins argues, religious belief is a ‘meme’, then the idea that environmentalism has assumed a quasi-religious character is itself also a meme that seems to be successfully propagating itself in the petri dish of our intellectual culture.

Expect to see much more of this meme, while seeing less of coherent arguments against anthropogenic climate change.

ELSEWHERE: Caz over at Avatar Briefs has a more cogently, while at the same time passionately, argued critique of climate change evangelism.

ALSO ELSEWHERE: The Muftim Tim Blair has sparked an empirical debate over the extent and degree of last night’s ‘Great Darkening’ of Sydney. Don’t yawn, it’s another controversy we have to have. A scientific taskforce should be assembled to examine satellite imagery, including in the non-visible spectrum, to settle this crucial question of our time.