What kind of people is Pope Francis surrounding himself with? The fact that this Pope decided to choose German professor John Schellnhuber as his chief climate change advisor is raising a lot of eyebrows. Schellnhuber doesn’t believe in God, but as you will see below, he does appear to believe in ‘Gaia’. Schellnhuber has also advocated for the establishment of an “Earth Constitution”, a “Global Council” directly elected by the citizens of the world, and a “Planetary Court” that would serve as the pinnacle of a planetary legal system. In addition, he believes that the “carrying capacity” of our planet is less than one billion people. This is the man that the Pope has chosen to advise him on the issue that Pope Francis has made the centerpiece of his papacy.
The concept of ‘Gaia’ has deep roots in ancient paganism. Many of the advocates of the ‘Gaia hypothesis‘ do not consider themselves to be religious, but in reality it is a kind of “scientific pantheism”. This quasi-scientific theory was popularized by James Lovelock in his book entitled “Gaia: A New Look At Life On Earth“, and apparently this is a theory that Schellnhuber endorses. The following is an extended excerpt from a recent article by William M. Briggs…
In the Gaia Principle, Mother Earth is alive, and even, some think, aware in some ill-defined, mystical way. The Earth knows man and his activities and, frankly, isn’t too happy with him.
This is what we might call “scientific pantheism,” a kind that appeals to atheistic scientists. It is an updated version of the pagan belief that the universe itself is God, that the Earth is at least semi-divine — a real Brother Sun and Sister Water! Mother Earth is immanent in creation and not transcendent, like the Christian God.
What’s this have to do with Schellnhuber? In the 1999 Nature paper “‘Earth system’ analysis and the second Copernican revolution,” he said:
Ecosphere science is therefore coming of age, lending respectability to its romantic companion, Gaia theory, as pioneered by Lovelock and Margulis. This hotly debated ‘geophysiological’ approach to Earth-system analysis argues that the biosphere contributes in an almost cognizant way to self-regulating feedback mechanisms that have kept the Earth’s surface environment stable and habitable for life….