Readers React: Climate change denialism and other political ‘religions’

To the editor: It’s no surprise that politics makes people disagree on the empirical world. It isn’t just denying global warming. (“Neither rain nor snow nor heat sways views on climate science,” Nov. 24)

For years now I’ve thought that ideology has replaced religion for Americans — in intensity and as a self-identified entrenched characteristic of the person. What your politics are has become a shorthand for your worth, just like religion was hundreds of years ago. Answer wrong and people will condemn you entirely.

We are like radical Islamist terrorists in wanting the world, and each other, to conform to our beliefs, which are closed, inviolable and come from God.

This anti-Enlightenment thinking is one of the gravest threats America faces. It also threatens the Earth, because the consequences of our religiously held politics affect the rest of the planet when we do nothing to stop climate change.

Zareh Delanchian, Tujunga

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