Nad R wrote:

My entire family except me are strong fundamental Christians. I am an
atheist with strong ties to science.

Just to check - When I read this what I see is you reject one actively
anti-rational religion and become an atheist without seeming to notice
that there are a ton of other religious options out there. How is that
a rational approach? It's the major weakness of many atheists than runs
like this -

1) Assume there is only one valid religion in the world. Ignore that
this is a false basic assumption that allows the claims of that one
religion to dictate the terms.

2) Find flaws in that one religion and thus reject all religions.
Become an atheist rather than even address that the competition exists.

3) Never notice that the question of addressing deity has little or
nothing to do with the question of which religion, if any, to use as a
framework for that. For that matter never notice that there are
religions that don't much care if you actually believe in deity or not.

There are only two religions out there that are actively irrational.
They happen to be the two with the largest populations but "eat crap, a
trillion flies can't be wrong" is false in pretty much every group other
than a gardening one with composters in it. If you have such objections
to Christianity I figure you're not going to convert to Islam in
reaction to the irrationality of Christianity.

Science addresses the how. Religion addresses the why. To go without
religion is to throw away ages of why and reinvent the wheel yourself.
To change to a different religion is to chose among why's that have
centuries or millinnia of working on specific why's.

They laugh at me and laugh at the scientific types as being stupid...

So look at the grillion other religions that have zero conflict with
science. This is a gardening group so consider one of the many nature
based religions. At one point I asked Thor if he cared how people
followed him. Thor is very good about being there but not so good at
paying attention to questions. After about a year of repeating the
question he finally came back with a shrugging "followers are good"
"have another ale". I conclude from that that it doesn't much matter
if you decide to follow his nature based system versus one of the many
others. But you don't seem to have noticed that options exist at all.

Religious people refuse to believe in global warming ...

This one I have trouble accepting. Century old photos and year old
photos of pretty much any glacier in the world make the conclusion so
trivial. What I have trouble accepting is the irrationality of the
stance of ignoring such simple and overwhleming evidence. On the other
hand I am also very slow about my stance on the degree of human
input. But my being behind the times on degree of human influence
changes little in how I would approach the issue.

I do have objections to how folks are reaction to the fact of climate
change. In the 900s cattle were ranched on Greenland so it's clear the
current records don't go very far back. But Greenland was settled in a
period of global warming that was clearly warmer than we are right now.
Exactly how bad was it to be able to ranch cattle on Greenland? This
matters on why I am slow to evolve my stance on the degree of human
contribution - There was not much human contribution in those centuries
compared to now.

Reading history books says it was a time of extreme social change. Ah
hah, there's the political motivation right there. Folks are grabbing
for power at a time near the beginning of extreme social change. They
want time to build momentum and use leverage. Clearly it's not about
whether global warming is happening but about who will be in power and
what they will do with that power. That means their degree of sincerity
is extremely crucial. Folks calling themselves environmentalists who
are anti-nuke, check, very low degree of rationality and thus very low
degree of sincerity.

Billy has dived face first into that political fray. What's wrong with
ranching cattle on Greenland? What's wrong with letting the social
change as it will as the USDA zones move? Why bother with an irrational
religion that battles with science when there are rational religions
with zero conflict with science that are nature based?