Opus 2013-49: Religion and Culture: Environmentalism

One of the points of controversy in our culture has to do with the environment.  Of course, we are all in favor.  Last I heard everyone liked to breathe, drink and eat.  So the disagreements are in how we regard the environment and how we relate to it.

Christians are to be stewards or managers.  The world belongs to God and we are to care for it, but in a very practical way.

(Genesis 1:28 KJV)  And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

The earth is here to serve us.

The extreme environmentalists of our day turn this on its head.  They worship the earth.  Gaia, the earth goddess, is their deity.  Most would protest such a characterization but, as the old saying goes, “If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck...”

Some people divide religions into two groups, those who worship the sky gods and those who worship the earth gods.  Western civilization has tended toward the sky gods.  Pagan religions tend toward the earth gods.  When researching something else I came across an indication that the green movement has roots in eastern religions, which tend to be earth religions.  This is from Wikipedia.

“In 1885, Ledi Sayadaw, a prominent Buddhist monk wrote the Nwa-myitta-sa (????????????), a poetic prose letter that argued that Burmese Buddhists should not kill cattle and eat beef, since Burmese farmers depended on them as beasts of burden to maintain their livelihoods, that the marketing of beef for human consumption threatened the extinction of buffalo and cattle and that the practice and was ecologically unsound.  He subsequently led successful beef boycotts during the colonial era, despite the presence of beef eating among locals and influenced a generation of Burmese nationalists in adopting this stance.”

Notice that over 100 years ago a Buddhist monk was claiming that eating meat was “ecologically unsound.” 

These kind of ideas influence the quality of life.  In America the people trying to apply these principles want to take away individual transportation (cars), personal preferences for comfort (A/C and heating controls), personal preference for hygiene (shower nozzles and toilets) and the list goes on.  Every concern they have limits the freedom of everyone else because they want everyone to worship Gaia as they do and are willing to use the coercive power of the government to force us into compliance.

What you believe makes a difference.

homo unius libri