Carleas:
Made this in my bioethics class:
THey’ve got us into this fine mess
All extant religions were invented long before the prospect of environmental catastrophe at a time when nature was there to be conquered, and this invasive and destructive tendency in religion is going to get us in trouble.
What is needed is some sort of rational debate. If people think that the world is only temporary and they are all going to be “saved” regardless there is going to be bugger all left for the next generation.
Gentle reminder a command to be good stewards of the earth is in Genesis, which is probably an oral tradition shared before people split off from each other.
Sometimes going forward requires doubling back…
“I will destroy … both man and beast.”
God is angry. He decides to destroy all humans, beasts, creeping things, fowls, and “all flesh wherein there is breath of life.” He plans to drown them all. 6:7, 17
“Every living substance that I have made will I destroy.”
God repeats his intention to kill “every living substance … from off the face of the earth.” But why does God kill all the innocent animals? What had they done to deserve his wrath? It seems God never gets his fill of tormenting animals. 7:4
“All flesh died that moved upon the earth.”
God drowns everything that breathes air. From newborn babies to koala bears – all creatures great and small, the Lord God drowned them all. 7:21-23
Before you call me a young earth creationist, see biologos.org/questions & compare to similar traditions in other cultures.
We are to “keep” the earth the way God “keeps” us. Note: Forest fires promote a healthy forest, and indigenous folk utilized it 
“The most fundamental command given to humanity is found in Genesis 1:28 and reiterated in Genesis 2:15 in more detail (Genesis 2 is like a zoomed in look at our origins, focusing specifically on humanity; these are NOT two separate creation accounts!). In Genesis 1 we see the command to be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth. We are also told to subdue and rule over the earth. If one were to take this alone with certain definitions of the Hebrew words, one could get the idea of being a harsh master to the earth. However, remember that Genesis 2 focuses in and provides more detail. Here we are told to ‘work’ the land, where the Hebrew word has to do with being a ‘servant to.’ We’re told ‘to keep’ which has meanings which include ‘watch’ and ‘guard,’ but also interestingly, it is the same Hebrew word found in the common benediction from Numbers 6:24, ‘the Lord bless you and keep you.’ Let’s hope God has a bit better understanding of ‘keeping’ us than how many people ‘keep’ the earth! Theology matters here folks.”
christianapologeticsalliance.com … istianity/
Cyanobacteria poisoned the earth with oxygen for millennia, effectively destroying the habitat of the only life on earth which was anaerobic life. This mass extinction of anaerobic life also happened to pave or ‘terraform’ the way for new aerobic forms of live.
We, as any biological lifeform, seek to exploit free energy to propagate our biological form over time, and we were actually pretty successful at it, especially when we learned to use fossil fuels… which did come with certain side-effect we all know all to well by now.
There is no particular way the world or ‘nature’ should be, but certain processes do have certain effects on the biosphere and therefor on us, because ultimately we are part of that biosphere. There’s nothing inherently moral or immoral about any of this, it is what it is.
What I’d suggest is that we look at our situation without teleological or moral tinted glasses and just find a way forward that works for us. We need a politics of the future that isn’t stuck in these moralistic narratives of the past.
You say we need something. Where is that need coming from? Why is filling that need something that we should all do together? Do we all share that need? Why? Why does how we meet it (together) need to be different from the way we’ve done it before? Aren’t you being moralistic? What if the problem is that we need to return to the way that need is meant to be met—perhaps we wandered too far? Perhaps we are home sick for a home we haven’t met yet… like birds who migrate and just “know”. Maybe it’s our nests and webs.
That’d be a nice change of pace… though it tends to be difficult to motivate people in relative comfort to make changes or even grasp the gravity of what’s at stake.
Like how people easily and casually sign off for others to go to war far away, not fully comprehending or even wishing to comprehend the hell on earth they are creating… because it’s distant and unintrusive.
Now if you could be made to believe your soul or social standing were in peril, by way of a moralistic tale… then you might well begin to care… not for the right reasons… but still.
As strategies go… I don’t believe people on mass are moved a great deal by reason and logic… social pressure, however, is quite effective.
I wish it were not so and that rational discourse could prevail… but the evidence goes against my wishes on this one.
It’s all the more dire, because once a solution is untethered from reason and made a moral mandate, it’s no longer affected by a cost benefit analysis… so if it should turn out to be the greater cost to human well being to pursue clean energy or recycling or what have you, then more harm will be done than good in it’s pursuit… all while people praise each other for doing the “right thing”.
What if you were not made to believe anything, but were presented with evidence and could choose to follow the evidence where it leads, and where it leads is that if the world destroys the world God will make a new one, and there’s nothing you can do to earn his love, so you’re just like totally not afraid of what people think… so you stand up for yourself instead of cowering to nuke threats, and you love people the way you’re loved by God… despite your/their bullsh**?
Game changer?
Because we allways have a shared project anyway, that seems to be part of what we do, and part of what it means to be a flourishing society. Societies in decline, like say the later Sovjetunion, are societies where most people don’t believe in that project anymore… that’s decay.
More specifically we have a couple of large crisisses coming our way, like climate change, biodiversity loss, resources scarcity etc that will make our lives generally worse if we don’t find a good way to deal with them.
The existing traditional political stories like socialism, liberalism, or christiandemocracy are all political projects that by and large have their origins at the beginning of the industrial revolution, at the beginning of a period of continual economic growth.
All of these aren’t really atuned to today’s problems that are more ecological in nature. The enviromental movement in the seventies was an attempt to find such a new project, but from the start it latched onto some existing religious anti-technology backward looking tropes (i.e. garden of Eden, tower of babel). That did kinda work, from a marketing point of view, because there is some charm in the idea of going back to and connecting with nature for alienated individuals. But it failed as a political project, because we cannot just go back, and it’s also entirely unclear what that would exactly mean for todays societies at large. That’s part of the reason they have been largely unsuccesful in dealing with these problems.
Finally absent any relevant and believable political project, you get the interests of commerce moving into the void, and anti-political movements bordering on fascism.
When Faith, went from ‘local codes of conduct’ to ‘made-up religious dogma’ …sure.
Is that only indicative to religiosity though …or a human condition?
Is attempting to/wanting to ‘undermine’ the natural order of things, solely to blame on Religious Orders alone? …though religions are divisive institutions, installed… to further that particular religious in-group, over all others.
We are all [meant to be] caretakers of the planet… every single one of us, being obligated to be so… but modernity and fast-tracked progress seems to have put paid to that.
All take and no give, seems to be the current order of the day…
Thanks for your myth making.
But there are plenty of examples of religious local codes that were utterly destructive of the environment.
It is those local codes of destruction that won through by killing off the nice people
No there are plenty of other ways of thinking that are destructive, but they all have a bedrock of Christianity mostly. And the AMerican Right are the worst offenders.
“Meant to be”? Says who?
No religion I have ever heard of except maybe Jainism.
I do not think religion can be a solution.
THings that do not make sense to anyone cannot change the game.
The bit in red is where you go off the rails.
The evidence points there. If it doesn’t make sense, one did not follow the evidence where it leads.
And I agree with you “religion” is not a solution that stops MAD or bends people to the will of the powerful. It is Christians behind the abolition of slavery (William Wilberforce), and the Civil Rights Movement (Rev MLK, Jr) and confronting Hitler (Bonhoeffer)…shall I go on? Pragmatism misses the point.
It was Christianity that was behind slavery in the first place and by commission and omission imposed untold suffering on millions of people.
In the same way the racism of the Anglophone world was generated by Christians, until mostly secular people fought against it.
As for Hitler, one of his most important collaborators was God’s own representative on earth - the Pope.
If we grant they were Christians, we must insist they were apostatic, because they were in defiance of Christianity.
That doesn’t mean they/we who defy the Gospel (none but God being perfect) are beyond redemption. See Amazing Grace (song, movie). John Newton wrote it … after repenting as a slave ship captain. He was the pastor of abolitionist, William Wilberforce:
christianity.com/church/chu … 36187.html
Galatians 3:28, 1 Corinthians 7:21-24, Amos
to start^
P.s. Slavery is still around as long as full time workers can’t subsist without debt. Imagine telling sharecroppers after abolition they just need to get an education in order to be able to become better off.
If the 1% paid reparations to all employees & governments who foot the bill for their low wages… justice would beautify the land.
bollocks.
1800 years of christian slavery does not mean “christianity” gets to take credit for emancipation.
What a strange world you live in.