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Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe, seen here discussing Bible citations in his new book on the "hoax" of climate change science: Inhofe: Well actually the Genesis 8:22 that I use [in the book] is that `as long as the earth remains there will be seed time and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, day and night,' my point is, God's still up there. The arrogance of people to think that we, human beings, would be able to change what He is doing in the climate is to me outrageous. [...] I would say that the other Scripture that I use quite frequently on this subject is Romans 1:25, `They give up the truth about God for a lie and they worship God's creation instead of God, who will be praised forever.' In other words, they are trying to say we should worship the creation. We were reminded back in Romans that this was going to happen and sure enough it's happening. Of all of the arguments made against the science of climate change, I find the ones based on Biblical assertion to be the most ... malevolent. There are people who believe that all of climate change science is one vast conspiracy, a theory constructed around the premise that scientists or politicians have somehow plotted out a secret financial stake in making people believe the planet is getting warmer. There are those that acknowledge it is getting warmer, but refuse to agree that human activity could possibly be playing a role. Then there are those that simply state that God would not allow any of it to happen, so there. Inhofe himself I believe falls into all three camps. I have no idea if he honestly believes these things or just has decided, cart before horse, that his politics demand he believe them. It is the Bible-thumping that bothers me the most, though. The shallowness, the dismissive assertion of knowing God's will, the misuse of passages to mean things very far afield indeed from the actual text. Getting into an argument with such people is a futile effort. It is their ultimate trump card for any situation; you are wrong because God says so. Or, to put it more precisely, you are wrong because I say God says so. There's no competing with that. If someone has a direct line from their brain to God, no matter how obviously questionable the contents of the rest of that addled mind of theirs might seemingly render their God-interpreting skills, then you might as well give up the argument, right? That is, after all, their intention. If they cannot convince you based on science, or logic, or a doorstop's worth of common sense, then maybe ascribing all their own dismal little opinions to God Himself will get you to shut up already. It is, as I said, malevolent. It is also virulent: what James Inhofe has created as God in his own dismal brain is meaningless, but when he sends it out to preach to others, the goal is to convert others to the same level of mean-spiritedness, and pettiness, and shallow thinking. In this mindset, believing that certain chemical reactions can take place in the atmosphere is anti-Christian. Measuring global temperatures and coming to conclusions is ignoring the Word of God. Rejectors of climate science have been called many things, but that particular version of it is Flat Eartherism, period, full stop. It is the mindset that got Galileo in trouble a very, very long time ago for the great sin of Knowing Things. It is anti-science, and anti-knowledge, by definition. It is also anti-pretty-much-anything-else you can think of. If you can reject a scientific conclusion simply by asserting that God says otherwise, where does it end? Does the earth truly revolve around the sun? Does the moon actually exist, or is it merely a spirit-light? What is James Inhofe's religious opinion on the Second Law of Thermodynamics? What about relativity theory? Dinosaurs: fact, or trick of the devil? There is no damn end to it. I despise it. I despise it very, very deeply, and it gives me a pain between the eyes to even contemplate it. I despise it for the pettiness. I despise it for the transparent selectivity as to which science is "acceptable" and which is "evil." I despise it for making my own faith an embarrassing thing by mere association.