Christianity and the Environment, Part 1

Christian responses to the environment can be roughly classified on the basis of what a person considers the environment to be: creation, or nature. The first considers the environment and all of its living and nonliving components to be the product of a deity that has made humankind separate from it in some way, while the second considers the environment to be the source of humankind (“nature” comes from the Latin for “birth”). First, in this installment, let us consider the approach that considers the environment to be creation.

The major monotheistic religions of the world (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) believe that a single, all-powerful deity created the world and made humans the rulers of it. Moreover, these religions base their beliefs upon scriptures written long before people even imagined the questions of environmental ethics. Until the last few centuries, humans quite rightly viewed the Earth as unconquerable and usually dangerous. The Earth could take care of itself. Modern adherents of these religions therefore turn to their pre-ecological scriptures and pick out passages that were not written for the purpose of answering such questions and try to base systems of environmental ethics upon them, concluding that the environment is expendable.

Because of the importance of the Judeo-Christian Bible in the history of western culture, historian Lynn White, Jr. wrote in 1967 that Christianity, guided by the first chapter of Genesis, had been in the forefront of a largely successful attempt to conquer the created world. It is beyond dispute that, according to this chapter, God gives humans the command to conquer and subdue the Earth and have dominion over it. The words clearly refer to the kind of conquest that kings exercised over vanquished nations. White did not, however, say that Christianity should be rejected, but that Christians should use Saint Francis of Assisi, a medieval Italian monk who considered the Sun, Moon, wind, fire, and all creatures to be his brothers and sisters, as the model of ethical behavior rather than the Bible.

Not surprisingly, many Christians became defensive and claimed that White had misinterpreted the first chapter of Genesis. Since 1967, Christian writers have found many passages in the Bible that paint a very different picture of the creation. Here are a few examples:

• The second chapter of Genesis depicts God as commanding humans to take care of the Earth the way one would care for a garden (the Garden of Eden).
• The third chapter of Genesis depicts expulsion from the Garden of Eden, and a host of environmental problems (“cursed is the ground…thorns and thistles it shall bring forth”) as consequences of sin.
• The sixth chapter of Genesis describes Noah, whose family was to be the sole survivors of a worldwide flood. God old Noah to build an ark big enough for a pair of each species of terrestrial animal, presumably even those that Noah did not especially care about.
• The Ten Commandments included a prohibition against work on one day of the week, called the sabbath. The result of this commandment, according to conservative Jewish scholars, is the deliberate interruption of the momentum of acquisition—to desist, once a week, from using other people (and the Earth) as a source of profit.
• The Old Testament law included some commandments that dealt directly with the Earth. Most famous is the Sabbath of the Fields, in which agricultural fields were supposed to be left fallow every seventh year.
• In the book of Job, God addresses Job from a whirlwind, and describes a vast unknowable and unconquerable world of creatures, from large ones such as Behemoth and Leviathan to humble ones such as donkeys and conies. The message is clear that the purposes of these creatures have absolutely nothing to do with humans. The fact that these creatures are untamed was a perfectly acceptable part of God’s order of the world.
• Many passages in the psalms and prophets describe the beauty of creation entirely apart from any benefit it may confer on humans. A passage from the prophet Isaiah describes trees reclaiming wasteland and restoring its water resources, and claims that this process, which would now be called ecological, was the work of God.
• Jesus frequently used symbolism from the creation, from wildflowers to sparrows, in his parables—frequently things that would be noticed only by people who stopped to carefully observe them.

Ecology-minded Christians, who focus attention on these passages, claim that God has given humans the responsibility to be stewards, or caretakers, of the Earth, rather than its conquerors. This is an important concept, even though the terms steward and caretaker do not appear in the Bible in connection with the Earth.

This essay is based on the entry “Environmental ethics” in my forthcoming Encyclopedia of Biodiversity.

Do Conservatives Hate Altruism?

On August 16, billionaire Warren Buffett announced his belief that rich people, such as himself, should pay higher taxes than they currently do. This was a direct statement of altruism. He was almost immediately attacked by Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann , who said in a loud sarcastic manner, “I have a suggestion. Mr. Buffett, write a big check today. There’s nothing you have to wait for. As a matter of fact the president has redefined millionaires and billionaires as any company that makes over $200,000 a year. That’s his definition of a millionaire and billionaire. So perhaps Mr. Buffett would like to give away his entire fortune above $200,000. That’s what you want to do? Have at it. Give it to the federal government.”

Not surprisingly, Bachmann was wildly inaccurate. The president does not want people to earn only $200,000; he just wants slightly higher tax rates on people earning more than $200,000.

What Bachmann did not say, but clearly implied, was “Sucker.” Any rich like Buffett who would actually want to pay more taxes to help his fellow citizens must clearly be a sucker.

In encounters between animals of the same species, there are cooperators and there are defectors. Whenever a cooperator encounters a defector, the cooperator loses (becomes a sucker) and the defector wins. It would seem inevitable, in a world that consisted only of simple and direct interactions, the defectors always win, even though they cause themselves to become extinct. The world, however, is not that simple. Intelligent animals such as humans can recognize and remember one another as individuals, and they can remember the bad reputations of defectors and the good reputations of cooperators. In a world of complex interactions, cooperators can work together and drive the defectors into obscurity. In ways such as this, altruism (animals being nice to each other even if they incur a cost) can evolve.

Republicans clearly hate altruism. Some hate it more than others. Mitt Romney and Rick Perry do not make statements as extreme as those of Bachmann. It seems inconceivable to extremists like Bachmann that citizens should ever want to help each other. The Tea Party tirade of anger is not so much against “big government” as it is against a societal expectation that we, as fellow citizens, should be expected to help one another out, and that government should be a mechanism to facilitate altruism.

This conclusion is obvious not just from Bachmann’s statement, but from statements by the founding mind of modern extremist conservatism, Ayn Rand. She wrote, “If any civilization is to survive, it is the morality of altruism that men have to reject.” She was as wrong as anyone could be about anything, and so are her modern disciples. Humans are the most altruistic species, and the most successful, in evolutionary terms. Our survival cannot be assured if the Republicans succeed in destroying altruism.

And the extreme conservatives use the Bible to justify their hatred of altruism. Of course, they have to ignore large parts of it, all that stuff that Jesus said about love. They have to rip, rip, rip the Bible apart until there is almost nothing left except the accounts of Joshua killing all of the Canaanites, and God punishing him if he ever spared any of them, and, of course, the Book of Revelation. I suspect that millions of fundamentalist Christians have read the Left Behind series but not the Bible, except for selected bits fed to them by their angry preachers.

For the love of God, we have to stop these crazy fundamentalists.

Don’t wait for an apology or clarification from Bachmann. This is not the first time she has suck all eight of her feet in her mouth.

A church marquee in Durant, Oklahoma proclaims that people like me, who teach evolution, are calling God a liar. Well, if that is so, then I better watch out. But of course that is not what I am doing. I am just saying that fundamentalists are wrong about how to interpret the Bible. But apparently these fundamentalists believe that if you or I disagree with them about how they interpret the Bible, then we are obviously disagreeing with God Himself. They think that they are as personally inerrant as God himself. I think that they, who place themselves equal to God, are the ones who should be worried about God's wrath, if there is any such thing.

See this YouTube video for Darwin's response!

What is Love? Don’t Read the Book of Revelation

What is love? Any Christian will tell you without hesitation that it is defined in the 13th chapter of the first letter of Paul to the church at Corinth. This is, indeed, a beautiful passage. By the way, Biblical scholars pretty much agree that I Corinthians (unlike some other New Testament epistles) was genuinely written by the Apostle Paul. And Jesus demonstrated love all the time—he was sensitive to the touch of a suffering woman, and he saved the life of another woman who was about to be stoned to death for something that a man did to her. The Apostle John said, God is love.

But if you read the book of Revelation, you will get a completely different picture. This is yet another reason that I consider Revelation, and the conservative Christians who swear devotion to it, to be so dangerous. As I explained in a previous entry, most of the book of Revelation is just one long series of plagues and woes, bringing destruction upon the Earth and unspeakable suffering on human beings.

I noticed an interesting thing about those plagues and sufferings. On at least two occasions, the writer said that, despite the sufferings, the people of the Earth did not repent and love God. So God sends another plague. In the end, it does not work, and God establishes his Heavenly City by force, populated apparently only by the 144,000 people who have never had sex.

Imagine, if you will, a man who beats his wife and children, insisting that they love him. When they do not, he beats them some more. Finally they are dead. I think we would all agree that this man (who sounds like some of the rednecks who live around me in Oklahoma, except that they seldom go as far as murder) has no clue about what love is, and is probably crazy. Well, this is exactly what God does to the human race in Revelation. Revelation makes God sound like a crazy maniac. Most religious people do not believe that this is what God is like, but it is the image that Revelation presents. It presents the image of a God who keeps kicking the shit out of the human race until we love him. And this is why Revelation is a dangerous book, and the conservative Christians who adhere to it are dangerous people. I have no problem with Christians who adhere to Jesus rather than to Revelation.

I will be exploring this idea in a new book, Last Tree Standing, which I will write when current publishing and other obligations allow me some time. Please share with me some of your insights.