[Note: Thanks to all who read my climate series and voiced their opinions---especially those who took the time to state specifically why they appreciated my efforts. I value all responses---even from those who didn’t notice that the answers to their comments are contained within the series itself. For instance, I made it clear that individual temperature variations are subsumed by the totality of world-wide data---making the “ironic…record low” temperatures at Copenhagen during the climate conference meaningless as an indicator. Speaking of the environment…]

New York Times columnist Ross Douthat has written one of the more insightful and intelligent “Christmas“ columns of the season (“Pantheism has become Hollywood’s own religion,“ Anchorage Daily News, 12-23-09). It is worthy of a response.

He says: “It is fitting that James Cameron’s ‘Avatar’ arrived…at Christmastime. Like the holiday season itself, the science fiction epic is a crass embodiment of capitalistic excess wrapped around a deeply felt religious message.”

The movie’s director, James Cameron, makes no bones about it---he says he tried to preach about the environment “without being too preachy...” The movie “Avatar” cost many millions of dollars---but it’s just a movie. But then, so was Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ." That movie was criticized (perhaps unfairly) for supposedly blaming the Jews for killing Christ.

My reaction is that Christ, as a Jew, was killed not because he threatened the Jewish people but because he threatened the existing political-commercial-religious establishment---he overturned the money-changers’ tables and more.

A Christ-figure today would prove just as embarrassing and threatening to the modern commercial-political-religious establishments as they are even more riddled with hypocrisy. And, if that Christ-figure once more decided not to invoke divine powers of total invincibility, the religious establishment would once more help the government-commercial interests get rid of him.

“But except as dust and ashes, nature cannot take us back,” says Ross Douthat at the end of his column. The monotheism to which he alludes is unverified. I remind Mr. Douthat that the promise of everlasting life is just that---a promise.

“A potent promise,” according to UCLA Professor Eugen Weber in “the rise of Christianity” segment of his magnificent history series, “The Western Tradition.“ But a promise nevertheless.

Some Inuit people---based no doubt on pragmatic observations of material reality---believe that the soul is impermanent but that matter goes on forever. Given the law of conservation of energy (matter is energy), these Inuit are scientifically more correct (though still not truly “scientific”) than those who claim a soul-entity not only exists but does so forever.

Christmas was “commercialized” by an allegedly monotheistic but highly commercial culture---undoubtedly influenced by pantheistic elements aware of a much older and more basic reality of the winter solstice as a season of natural change and celebration. That awareness, having the quality of being based on the materially real, will always be there.

Of course I am aware of the physical and spiritual comfort provided by all religions. That’s why I have been taught (by Native Americans, ironically enough) to respect all forms of spiritual belief. Including a reverence for Nature and the common environment.

My beef with both Christianity and Islam is their “gentleman’s agreement” that they will occasionally, more or less, tolerate the existence of each others' monotheism---but are always free to violently suppress the belief systems of the more militarily helpless animistic tribes. Tribes who happen to care more about our mutual living space than those crass commercial interests before which the monotheistic religions seem equally helpless but more cooperative.

“The question is whether nature actually deserves a religious response,” says Mr. Douthat.

Neither Mr. Douthat nor anyone else is required to make any "religious response" to anything. However, not all religions are monotheistic, pantheistic or even theistic. If the pantheistic, natural and environmental elements of the movie “Avatar” indeed constitute “a deeply felt…religion” as Mr. Douthat says---then due recognition, respect and tolerance should be observed.

Rudy Wittshirk