Religion, Science and the Current Ecological Crisis

1
Religion, Science and the Current Ecological
Crisis
2
The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis

• In the Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis
  (1967) Lynn White blames Christian attitudes
  towards nature for our current ecological crisis.
  
• He says Especially in its Western form,
  Christianity is the most anthropocentric religion
  the world has ever seen.
• In Pagan (pre-Christian) religions, spirits were
  everywhere in nature. Every tree or stream has a
  spirit, and people had to care for the happiness
  of the spirits. Spirits are not people, but they
  have their own interests and value.
• In Christianity, in contrast, the purpose of
  nature is to serve Man. We need not care about
  nature, except as a way to benefit ourselves or
  glorify God.

3
Christianity and Science

• White argues that Christianity has exploited the
  natural world via science and technology.
• A Christian philosophy towards nature allows
  science to ruthlessly exploit the natural world.
• Historically, man has always changed his
  environment
• Prehistoric overhunting led to many extinctions
• Cultivation in the Nile valley has changed the
  nature of the river
• Ancient Romans profoundly changed their ecologies
  through terrace farming, overgrazing and cutting
  of forests.

4

• But the real change in the man-nature
  relationship, according to White, came with the
  marriage of science and technology, with roots
  long before the industrial revolution of the 18th
  century, or even the scientific revolution of the
  17th century.
• The turning point came in Northern Europe in the
  7th century, when a new type of plow, requiring
  six oxen, turned the sod with a vertical knife,
  and attacked the land with such violence.
• The goal of farming changed from single family
  subsistence farming (modest and sustainable) to
  cooperative action to maximize land yield
  (aggressive and greedy).

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• Mans relation to the soil was profoundly
  changed. Formerly man had been a part of nature
  now he was the exploiter of nature. Nowhere else
  in the world did farmers develop any analogous
  agricultural implement. Is it coincidence that
  modern technology, with its ruthlessness towards
  nature, has so largely been produced by
  descendants of these peasants of northern
  Europe?

6
Whites Solution

• Science and technology caused the problem and
  more science and technology are not the answer.
• What we do about ecology depends on our ideas of
  the man-nature relationship. More science and
  more technology are not going to get us out of
  the present ecological crisis until we find a new
  religion, or rethink our old one.
• Seems to prefer various kinds of mysticism, e.g.
  regarding groves as sacred and trees as
  containing spirits.
• Proposes Saint Francis as a patron saint for
  ecologists.
• His view of nature and of man rested on a unique
  sort of pan-psychism of all things animate and
  inanimate, designed for the glorification of
  their transcendent Creator.

7
Questions for discussion

• Is White right to blame Christianity for the
  ecological crisis?
• Was the new six-oxen plow really the catalyst for
  the creation of a new man-nature relationship?
• Is Christianity the most anthropocentric religion
  the world has ever seen?
• Do we need religion to be the foundation for an
  environmental ethic?
• Is mysticism a better ethic for environmentalists
  than a scientific world view?
• Can we rely on science to find a solution to our
  ecological crisis?

8
Reading for next week

• Required
• Selfish Genes and Selfish Memes, Richard
  Dawkins (1976), in The Minds I (1981), edit. by
  Hofstadter and Dennett (edit), available on
  reserve on the Philosophy Department
• Suggested
• Argument from Poor Design, Wikipedia, available
  at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_poor_desig
  n