Ecology and Religion essay.
IS RELIGION A NATURAL DISASTER?
Or did God change his mind about the whole Creation thing?
Every natural system on our planet is in decline and in most cases, Religion stands as the architect of the ecological catastrophe, and an active impediment to progressive eco-minded reform. And as environmental issues are the most pressing issues of our time, indeed threatening the earth’s capacity to sustain life, Religion, in practice, has grossly failed to address the need for sustainability.
Human growth throughout the planet has ceaselessly and recklessly been plundering resources from the Earth at exponential rates. Some half-million trees get razed every hour, a systematic deforestation which is destroying eco-systems and tearing through the web of life. The world is a witness and a victim to the greatest level of “background extinctions” than at any other point in the planet’s history, save for the major mass extinction events caused by catastrophic cosmic collisions or massive global climate change. We are permanently losing some 27,000 unique species of life on this planet every year to extinction, or about 74 species per day . Millions of years of evolution, of intelligent design, of God’s plans - whatever your belief - is being eroded away by our insatiable lust for material wealth and energy. It appears that the greatest natural disaster of our time is man.
In the book of Genesis, in the Judeo-Christian creation myth, God said to “be fruitful and multiply” and had granted man dominion over all living things of the Earth. The former is still out of control at 100,000,000 new mouths to feed and material desires to fulfill popping out of wombs every year, and with the latter, through consistent exploitation, we have condemned our subjects - gifts from God - to the peril of certain doom. Indeed, humanity has paved for itself a path of self-destruction. By disconnecting man and nature, as the Judeo-Christian model has done, it had set up an anthropocentric outlook on the world and laid the foundations of our current ecological crisis. By Judeo-Christian standards, all resources of the Earth are exclusively the property of man.
This mentality has placed us in a sort of rat race for resources. Today we burn away an equivalent of 27 years worth of stored energy of the entire photosynthetic powerhouse of the planet in 24 hours . That is, we burn away in one day what it took the Earth 27 years to produce. All things we enjoy today, any material object, came from the Earth, although not all of them will be able to return back from winced they came. The corporations (perhaps our contemporary institutions of Religion) that make these goods are in cutthroat competition with one another to deliver the highest quality product at the cheapest possible price. Meanwhile, nature is footing the bill for these expenditures through permanent destruction of land, and the breaking of the cycle of nature. Many chemicals and toxins produced by man are not reusable. They are extracted from nature and synthesized into biohazardous material that cannot be reabsorbed by the cycle of nature which has kept life on this planet going for 3 billion years. Nature has evolved (or been designed) to be completely recyclable. The build up of any kind of waste would be catastrophic for a system that has survived for so long, because even nominal amounts of unusable waste would eventually accumulate and break the cycle of regeneration. However, at the current rate of destruction, the functionality of the most fundamental cycle of sustainability in nature is threatened. Naturalist Jack Turner warns of a possible “final loss,” when enough destruction has been done to the environment that it becomes irreversible - what Malcolm Gladwell would call ‘reaching the tipping point’ - and the environment would no longer need man to be an active participant to bring about its final destruction.
Religion is still a dominant institution of humanity, claiming 84% of people still faithful to some degree . However, when considering the dominant religions in the 6 top polluting countries in the world, according to the CIA World Factbook, 2004 , America is 78% Christian, India is 80% Hindu, Japan is 84% Shinto and Buddhist, China is officially Atheist, and Germany is 68% Christian. As the dominant institution of our planet, Religions across the board have failed in guiding us towards a more sustainable society.
The wants of people now are being fulfilled at the price of the needs of our posterity. Our planet is quickly shriveling up, with 52,000,000,000,000 (trillion) kilograms of CO2 being emitted yearly into the atmosphere, creating unnaturally high temperatures which creating destructive weather patterns, melting our ice caps, and threatening to destabilize the global water conveyor that may inaugurate an premature ice age. 108,000,000 (million) acres of productive agriculture is being lost every year due to unsound farming practices, toxic emissions, pollution, and droughts which occur as a result of some 20,000,000,000 (billion) more gallons being withdrawn from underground reservoirs than is naturally being replaced . Our population is rising, our agricultural capacity is falling, our forests are disappearing, our planet is warming, our deserts are growing, our ice caps are shrinking, plant and animal species are disappearing, the toxicity of our rivers and lakes, even our oceans, is rising. We are, for all intents and purposes, committing global suicide.
Did God really mean to place man in the forefront of nature, as a parasite that would drain it of its life giving potential, and lead to the destruction of all God’s creation - for which he took a moment to ponder over and declare that it was “good”?
Is it really possible that all these Religions; Christianity; Shinto; Hinduism, Buddhism; the dominant religions of the world’s largest polluting nations, really fail to realize the vital web of life from which humanity is no exception? After careful examination, there are many verses throughout these religions which preach environmental conservation.
In the Jewish concept of tikkun olam, which mandates that social action be taken to “repair the world,” humanity is not acclaimed to be the zenith of creation, and reminds us of our dependence on the web of life. The Torah also has the principle of bal tash chit, which specifically says “do not destroy/waste”, and speaks of conserving trees and keep clean water . There is also the story of Noah’s ark in which Noah God commands Noah to save two of every animal. It is inconceivable that the mind of God would condone the extinction and destruction of his whole eco-system.
The Jain doctrine of ahimsa, or non-violence, extends itself to the belief that all living things, large or small, have a desire to live and that humans should do their part not to interfere with their quest for survival, for which our society, and the Indian society, have failed to do on a massive scale. Hinduism, or Sanatana Dharma, does not endow man with any command over nature, but quite the opposite, there is a tree deity, Vriksa-devata, that even makes it a religious duty of Tree planting. In fact in modern times, Hinduism has come together to fight against destruction of local forests in India by forming a human chain of tree-huggers in 1973 which started the Chipko Environmental Movement.
Buddhism is also, ideally, all about the realization that all life is interconnected in a very intimate way. Buddhism, as Hinduism, preaches non-violence, and is very conscious of not bringing harm to humans and animals alike.
Islamic ideology consists of a belief that all creation belongs to God. As we are living on a lease of his land, it would be a good idea that we do not trash the place completely before we give it back. There is an Islamic concept of hima, which marks land off for environmental salvation. Muhammad, the prophet, was quoted in saying, "Whosoever brings dead land to life, for him is a reward in it, and whatever any creature seeking food eats of it shall be reckoned as charity from him".
Seeing that although in preach there is some acknowledgment of nature, although far more modestly in Western than Eastern religions, there is still no momentum in practice to actually address the problems of a neglected biosphere. I say there is none, disregarding the few moments of ecological preservation that were tried and successful, because that would be equating ‘momentum’ to the attempts at “bailing out the Titanic with teaspoons.”
We have reached a point in time in which precedence can no longer be a source of prudence for the future. By convention, societies take a reactionary stance on such uncharted issues. But the peril is too great to leave to the whim of a potential technological marvel to save us from the fall, or the naïve belief in infinite alternative resources. We are truly in uncharted territories in terms of Human history. The nuclear age is still young, not much older than capitalism, and both are cause for serious concern as they threaten the stability and sustainability of our lone blue marble, our only home, floating around in the infinite void.
It is unfair to place the burden of blame of environmental deterioration solely on religion. I, personally, believe the influence of Religion has dwindled, and it is now the Godless, cold, corner cutting, fatally efficient capitalist market that drives the stake deep into the heart of mother earth. Religious virtue seems lost in the race for power, money, and influence in the cashflow world of corporate politics.
But the job of corporations is not to protect the environment, at least not in the current way in which we define the rights to property, for that is the job of the society, of the regional sovereigns, be it secular or clerical, be it monarchial or democratic, to set standards, perhaps global standards through International organization, to protect the environment, and not allow its destruction. Religions should recognize the imminent danger of continued ignorance on questions of ecology, and firmly stand against environmental destruction. Make it a sin to pollute. Start a Jihad against eco-plunderers. Make it a mitzvah to plant a tree.
It is only fair to say that the move to the major monotheistic religions have radically changed the outlook of many people by separating man from nature. Instead of making man a caretaker of the land, he became an exploiter. For this the western religions hold a great deal of responsibility. However, intrinsically, each religion can be used to advocate the importance of the environment through its own scriptures, if only such a motivation existed.
In the end, however, the problem of ecology runs much deeper than just Religion. One needs only to consider that religion has existed for thousands of years, whereas the problem of ecological devastation is only being realized in this late chapter of human history. The evil needs to be rooted out, and ecocentrism must permeate through social and religious impediments. Man must stop being fruitful, and multiply conservatively. Birthing must be controlled. People must be educated. We must transcend religious, social, economic, and national boundaries to truly be able to come together and form a proactive coalition to change the paradigm of how we do business from one of gang rape to one of sustainability. It is time to mature, because our only alternative is certain doom.
We cannot afford to be reactionary anymore.
Or did God change his mind about the whole Creation thing?
Every natural system on our planet is in decline and in most cases, Religion stands as the architect of the ecological catastrophe, and an active impediment to progressive eco-minded reform. And as environmental issues are the most pressing issues of our time, indeed threatening the earth’s capacity to sustain life, Religion, in practice, has grossly failed to address the need for sustainability.
Human growth throughout the planet has ceaselessly and recklessly been plundering resources from the Earth at exponential rates. Some half-million trees get razed every hour, a systematic deforestation which is destroying eco-systems and tearing through the web of life. The world is a witness and a victim to the greatest level of “background extinctions” than at any other point in the planet’s history, save for the major mass extinction events caused by catastrophic cosmic collisions or massive global climate change. We are permanently losing some 27,000 unique species of life on this planet every year to extinction, or about 74 species per day . Millions of years of evolution, of intelligent design, of God’s plans - whatever your belief - is being eroded away by our insatiable lust for material wealth and energy. It appears that the greatest natural disaster of our time is man.
In the book of Genesis, in the Judeo-Christian creation myth, God said to “be fruitful and multiply” and had granted man dominion over all living things of the Earth. The former is still out of control at 100,000,000 new mouths to feed and material desires to fulfill popping out of wombs every year, and with the latter, through consistent exploitation, we have condemned our subjects - gifts from God - to the peril of certain doom. Indeed, humanity has paved for itself a path of self-destruction. By disconnecting man and nature, as the Judeo-Christian model has done, it had set up an anthropocentric outlook on the world and laid the foundations of our current ecological crisis. By Judeo-Christian standards, all resources of the Earth are exclusively the property of man.
This mentality has placed us in a sort of rat race for resources. Today we burn away an equivalent of 27 years worth of stored energy of the entire photosynthetic powerhouse of the planet in 24 hours . That is, we burn away in one day what it took the Earth 27 years to produce. All things we enjoy today, any material object, came from the Earth, although not all of them will be able to return back from winced they came. The corporations (perhaps our contemporary institutions of Religion) that make these goods are in cutthroat competition with one another to deliver the highest quality product at the cheapest possible price. Meanwhile, nature is footing the bill for these expenditures through permanent destruction of land, and the breaking of the cycle of nature. Many chemicals and toxins produced by man are not reusable. They are extracted from nature and synthesized into biohazardous material that cannot be reabsorbed by the cycle of nature which has kept life on this planet going for 3 billion years. Nature has evolved (or been designed) to be completely recyclable. The build up of any kind of waste would be catastrophic for a system that has survived for so long, because even nominal amounts of unusable waste would eventually accumulate and break the cycle of regeneration. However, at the current rate of destruction, the functionality of the most fundamental cycle of sustainability in nature is threatened. Naturalist Jack Turner warns of a possible “final loss,” when enough destruction has been done to the environment that it becomes irreversible - what Malcolm Gladwell would call ‘reaching the tipping point’ - and the environment would no longer need man to be an active participant to bring about its final destruction.
Religion is still a dominant institution of humanity, claiming 84% of people still faithful to some degree . However, when considering the dominant religions in the 6 top polluting countries in the world, according to the CIA World Factbook, 2004 , America is 78% Christian, India is 80% Hindu, Japan is 84% Shinto and Buddhist, China is officially Atheist, and Germany is 68% Christian. As the dominant institution of our planet, Religions across the board have failed in guiding us towards a more sustainable society.
The wants of people now are being fulfilled at the price of the needs of our posterity. Our planet is quickly shriveling up, with 52,000,000,000,000 (trillion) kilograms of CO2 being emitted yearly into the atmosphere, creating unnaturally high temperatures which creating destructive weather patterns, melting our ice caps, and threatening to destabilize the global water conveyor that may inaugurate an premature ice age. 108,000,000 (million) acres of productive agriculture is being lost every year due to unsound farming practices, toxic emissions, pollution, and droughts which occur as a result of some 20,000,000,000 (billion) more gallons being withdrawn from underground reservoirs than is naturally being replaced . Our population is rising, our agricultural capacity is falling, our forests are disappearing, our planet is warming, our deserts are growing, our ice caps are shrinking, plant and animal species are disappearing, the toxicity of our rivers and lakes, even our oceans, is rising. We are, for all intents and purposes, committing global suicide.
Did God really mean to place man in the forefront of nature, as a parasite that would drain it of its life giving potential, and lead to the destruction of all God’s creation - for which he took a moment to ponder over and declare that it was “good”?
Is it really possible that all these Religions; Christianity; Shinto; Hinduism, Buddhism; the dominant religions of the world’s largest polluting nations, really fail to realize the vital web of life from which humanity is no exception? After careful examination, there are many verses throughout these religions which preach environmental conservation.
In the Jewish concept of tikkun olam, which mandates that social action be taken to “repair the world,” humanity is not acclaimed to be the zenith of creation, and reminds us of our dependence on the web of life. The Torah also has the principle of bal tash chit, which specifically says “do not destroy/waste”, and speaks of conserving trees and keep clean water . There is also the story of Noah’s ark in which Noah God commands Noah to save two of every animal. It is inconceivable that the mind of God would condone the extinction and destruction of his whole eco-system.
The Jain doctrine of ahimsa, or non-violence, extends itself to the belief that all living things, large or small, have a desire to live and that humans should do their part not to interfere with their quest for survival, for which our society, and the Indian society, have failed to do on a massive scale. Hinduism, or Sanatana Dharma, does not endow man with any command over nature, but quite the opposite, there is a tree deity, Vriksa-devata, that even makes it a religious duty of Tree planting. In fact in modern times, Hinduism has come together to fight against destruction of local forests in India by forming a human chain of tree-huggers in 1973 which started the Chipko Environmental Movement.
Buddhism is also, ideally, all about the realization that all life is interconnected in a very intimate way. Buddhism, as Hinduism, preaches non-violence, and is very conscious of not bringing harm to humans and animals alike.
Islamic ideology consists of a belief that all creation belongs to God. As we are living on a lease of his land, it would be a good idea that we do not trash the place completely before we give it back. There is an Islamic concept of hima, which marks land off for environmental salvation. Muhammad, the prophet, was quoted in saying, "Whosoever brings dead land to life, for him is a reward in it, and whatever any creature seeking food eats of it shall be reckoned as charity from him".
Seeing that although in preach there is some acknowledgment of nature, although far more modestly in Western than Eastern religions, there is still no momentum in practice to actually address the problems of a neglected biosphere. I say there is none, disregarding the few moments of ecological preservation that were tried and successful, because that would be equating ‘momentum’ to the attempts at “bailing out the Titanic with teaspoons.”
We have reached a point in time in which precedence can no longer be a source of prudence for the future. By convention, societies take a reactionary stance on such uncharted issues. But the peril is too great to leave to the whim of a potential technological marvel to save us from the fall, or the naïve belief in infinite alternative resources. We are truly in uncharted territories in terms of Human history. The nuclear age is still young, not much older than capitalism, and both are cause for serious concern as they threaten the stability and sustainability of our lone blue marble, our only home, floating around in the infinite void.
It is unfair to place the burden of blame of environmental deterioration solely on religion. I, personally, believe the influence of Religion has dwindled, and it is now the Godless, cold, corner cutting, fatally efficient capitalist market that drives the stake deep into the heart of mother earth. Religious virtue seems lost in the race for power, money, and influence in the cashflow world of corporate politics.
But the job of corporations is not to protect the environment, at least not in the current way in which we define the rights to property, for that is the job of the society, of the regional sovereigns, be it secular or clerical, be it monarchial or democratic, to set standards, perhaps global standards through International organization, to protect the environment, and not allow its destruction. Religions should recognize the imminent danger of continued ignorance on questions of ecology, and firmly stand against environmental destruction. Make it a sin to pollute. Start a Jihad against eco-plunderers. Make it a mitzvah to plant a tree.
It is only fair to say that the move to the major monotheistic religions have radically changed the outlook of many people by separating man from nature. Instead of making man a caretaker of the land, he became an exploiter. For this the western religions hold a great deal of responsibility. However, intrinsically, each religion can be used to advocate the importance of the environment through its own scriptures, if only such a motivation existed.
In the end, however, the problem of ecology runs much deeper than just Religion. One needs only to consider that religion has existed for thousands of years, whereas the problem of ecological devastation is only being realized in this late chapter of human history. The evil needs to be rooted out, and ecocentrism must permeate through social and religious impediments. Man must stop being fruitful, and multiply conservatively. Birthing must be controlled. People must be educated. We must transcend religious, social, economic, and national boundaries to truly be able to come together and form a proactive coalition to change the paradigm of how we do business from one of gang rape to one of sustainability. It is time to mature, because our only alternative is certain doom.
We cannot afford to be reactionary anymore.