However, a variant of this line can also be used on other religions, to equally pointless effect:
Regarding STDs, pregnancy, etc, "conservatives" say that abstinence is the answer, "liberals" say that education and birth control is the answer. In my experience, most "liberals" would also agree that it is proper and important for HIV research to continue, to produce new and better drugs for the infected, and vaccines to protect the uninfected. However, the "conservative" approach of abstinence from sex and drugs would eliminate the virus from humans in 2-3 generations. The natural attack on this position is that it is completely unrealistic to expect people to behave themselves in the name of the common good.
NOW, let me grind the gears in shifting to - environmentalism. The banner carriers for global warning say we've got to cut carbon emissions to save the environment. I don't really have a problem with alternatives to pumping out carbon dioxide (and methane, which is much worse than CO2, and produced by some of the "solutions" to CO2 production, but that's a different argument), for a variety of reasons. However, the one true faith of environmentalism is that the answer is to STOP. STOP the fossil fuel burning, the end. Read Superfreakonomics, and do your own research here, but the data and models (the currently believed data and models, that is), state that if all human production of CO2 were to STOP RIGHT NOW, the effect would not be seen for 50-150 years, and even then, it's not clear what the effect would be.
However, God gave us a sign to show us the way (here's the bit about how God gave us intelligence to develop science so that we could solve our problems), the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo. This divinely inspired volcanic eruption precisely demonstrated a simple, cheap, rapid, and reversible mechanism to reduce global temperatures. I think it might even qualify as a miracle because of its potential to save all life on earth, if the environmental doom-sayers are right. Mt. Pinatubo precisely injected sulfur dioxide into the proper layer of the atmosphere, lowering global temperatures, reversing the (presumed) sum total of industrial anthropogenic global warming. There should be a festival day commemorating this discovery.
The technology exists for humans to replicate this effect, cheaply. And, from the Pinatubo data (and this is DATA, real-by-God, measured DATA, not models or projections) we know how long the effect lasts (not long). So, it's cheap, we will almost immediately know if it's working (unlike waiting 50 years to see what STOPPING does), and if it's not working right, after shutting it off, the effect is gone in 1-2 years.
Al Gore does not like this. Many environmentalists do not like this. The general opinion is that "climate engineering" is voodoo hocus pocus, and should not be done. What should be done is to STOP. What does STOPPING require? Requiring people to change their behavior in the name of the common good. That should sound familiar, it's the unrealistic approach to sex and drug related problems, as mentioned above. But the environmental answer is different, because governments would FORCE people to change their behaviors, and that would be right because THIS problem is important enough to justify FORCE.
So here it is, the same people who on one day would gleefully say "Maybe God gave us the intelligence and resources to discover a new solution", would on the next day say "science and engineering are not the answer, a set of rules to regulate human moral behavior is the answer."
Everyone has his head up his ass.
"Moral authority does not belong in the hands of those who have the legal right to use lethal force."
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