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(if they're consistent)
They believe the end is imminent and therefore there is no point to save any of it
I was watching a lot of debates during the GW Bush years and the basic common denominator belief among creationists is that God made the universe for us to use and have fun with. If we run out of resources, surely God has a plan for that, maybe he will just magic up some more stuff for us. Some maybe believed in the rapture, but didn't say it. Most probably never even considered the possibility of resources running out or species going extinct. But everyone very openly said that "God made this for us" and therefore we shouldn't shy away from "doing his will".
Its so backwards from how I read genesis to. God gave us a job, we are supposed to take care of this shit
coulda sworn there was a part about fracking the garden of Eden in here somewhere...
Let me educate you about religion: angels love acid rain. It is their favorite thing.
American Christians have a distinct view that because the earth was meant for man that means it is to be used by man at it's maximum ability, i.e. burn the forests and mine the coal fuck everybody else as is puritan tradition.
Tldr American Christians are a death cult.
Not really. They believe that God created life for humans to lord over. If anything, it's probably more consistent of them to want to drive other species into extinction because if humans no longer have other lifeforms to lord over, then that would mean God broke his humans-lording-over-other-lifeforms promise, so the only way out of this pickle is for God to bring about the rapture.
I've heard fundamentalist Christians accuse atheists of worshiping themselves as supreme beings, and reading this comment makes me realize there's probably a lot of projection going into that.
The Bible says "do not test God", so probably all this arrogant attempts to checkmate him into bringing the rapture early is the reason the US will fall.
Young Earth Creationists may be the least consistent people on the planet. They're also the types to be obsessed with hating and oppressing lgbtq+ people despite their Bible, in no uncertain terms, telling them to not judge others and to focus on belief in Jesus as redemption.
this is how they reason; species get extinct it is gods plan dont worry
Also he made every species for a reason and there was a lot of big thinking and planning involved.
There is ultimately little point debating with these people because even if you get them to admit you are correct on every front they’ll just say that God is coming to fix it all anyways. I have to deal with this constantly because this is the way my dad is. Not that this isn’t the same thing a ton of people in this topic are saying.
Oh believe me, I gave up arguing with creationists around 15 years ago. I just realized a whole new way their worldview is nonsensical and wanted to share.
they'll just go "it's God's will" that they go extinct.
god wouldn't have given us oil if we weren't meant to burn it
This is unironically the theological basis for that behaviour
Yeah, Chapter 1 of the first book is
“Then God said, ‘Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.’ … God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.’”
So it's like how could the exploitation of natural resources possibly produce consequences? It would be sinful not to be fruitful. If instead they were asked to be a steward of the living creatures they'd just ignore it though
I can't remember the name of the book, pretty sure it was some NY times bestselling lib pop-poli slop. But it made the argument that somewhere around the 60's or 70's the South's? Christianity, and it's view of man being custodians of the earth, butt heads with capitalism. And capitalist forces won. Ever since then the environment has basically been abandoned to the left.
Man having dominion over earth went from meaning man was nature’s steward to man being nature’s vampire.
somewhat related, there was a street preacher at my college who shouted one time "evolution can't be true, because monkeys wouldn't be FUCKING UP the earth like we are" and i thought, you know what, that's not a terrible point all things considered
It's what always struck me about American Christians. If you talk to church people here in the Netherlands, their take on environmentalism is that it is their duty to take care of God's creation.
consistency has never been something you could count on right wingers or religious fanatics displaying
Weirdly enough, it's the opposite, they think that God made the world for humanity, so it is fine and good even, if we completely destroy the place. They also think that humanity can't actually really effect things like extinctions because that is "god's domain" or whatever, so if a species goes extinct it is because god wants it too. (Why god would create a species solely for it to go extinct is never explained). They also think that Jesus and God will ascend the righteous to heaven any day now, so humanity's time on earth is going to be less than 6000 years total, and we're basically just sitting here waiting for god to finally come and pick us up.
It's absurd and ridiculous. It's kind of like housesitting for someone and just trashing the place on the grounds that "I'm currently staying here, but I won't be here forever, I'll leave when the guy who owns the place comes to pick me up and take me home." Not at all thinking about the idea that god might be pretty damn pissed off at them for wrecking the earth that he presumably worked so hard on for them.
It's almost as if it is less of a well thought out series of logical (if esoteric and faith based) beliefs and more of a series of increasingly bizarre justifications for taking the actions they already wanted to take.
Sure is nice of God to come up with a religion for them that lets them behave exactly how they want to with no repercussions or need to change their behaviour. He's clever like that I guess.
Honestly it is the ultimate synthesis of Christianity and Nietzsche. The saddest part is that it literally existed during his time period, he was just too much of a euro-centric to actually pay attention to what was happening in the U.S. with Protestant Christian ideology.
I've been handed one of those little evangelical comic books that confidently said God wouldn't let any of his creatures become extinct, and that for example, dinosaurs still existed.
I mean 
Now you know why creationists tend to be virulent deniers of climate change.
Some creationists accept evolution! https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/pope-would-you-accept-evolution-and-big-bang-180953166/
I think the term "creationist" almost always is used as a shorthand for young earth creationists that accept the Bible or another religious cosmology literally. Catholics and other Christians that only accept the Bible as a spiritual (but ahistorical) document almost all accept evolution and the Big Bang theory (hell, one of the guys who came up with the theory was a Catholic priest).
old-earth creationists and evolution-believing creationists don't matter as much because they're not sabotaging public education
Some OECs are I believe a bit of a worry on this account (they believe the earth is a million or so old, literal flood, minimal evolution, etc) but you're right that YECs are the majority of the problem.
It's really just a slightly different ontological/teleological position that has very little effect on everyday life. Whether you believe the nature of the universe is divine or otherwise is not something that affects much of what you do on the daily.