he presents a compelling evidence that the humans have the inclination for a religion - giving their life a meaning - hard-wired in their brains, and environmentalism is just the most popular religion among the urban atheists. This religion has its
- paradise - Crichton carefully explains that Nature is cruel and people have had to be tough in the past as well to survive; the sissy environmentalists don't realize what it really means to live in wild nature
- sinners - most of us have been sinners, and we must undo these sins
- judgement day - well, this is "The Day After Tomorrow", and every time it's proved that the particular day was not the judgement day, they won't abandon their conjectures but rather "edit" the expected date a little bit
- believers, prophets, and evangelists - well, the prophets are the "consensus scientists" (which itself is an oxymoron, of course)
This religion, much like other religions, does not care much about the arguments of the "infidels" - those who are questioning the faith. But I've learned much more from Crichton's texts. For example, I used to believe that DDT was known to cause cancer - scientifically. Crichton forced me to look at this problem again, and after some web research, it seems pretty obvious that he's right and the experiments that have led to ban of DDT were most likely scientifically corrupt (they fed the birds with carcinogenic food, not just DDT).
This decision to ban DDT, that has already killed tens of millions of people, as he argues, mostly followed from a testimony of a "hysterical woman" called Rachel Carson who was apparently the Goddess of the environmentalist religion and the mother of junk science related to the health. Crichton's text also shows that many of us may be living with many other superstitions like that - about the second-hand smoke and other things. This is why I recommend you to look at his text. Crichton is a great advocate of the "obvious" general principles of science - such as its separation from politics and prejudices - but he also knows a lot of very particular facts that an intelligent reader will appreciate.
