Religion And Environment

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Religion and Environment Page 1 of 7 Religion and Environment What role does religion play in shaping our attitude towards the natural world? One answer was proposed in 1967 by UCLA History Professor Lynn White, Jr., who wrote an article entitled, "The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis" (Science 155(3767):1203-1207, 1967). In this article, he said that the Western world's attitudes towards nature were shaped by the Judeo-Christian tradition (he also included Islam and Marxism within this overall tradition). This tradition, White wrote, involved the concept of a world created solely for the benefit of man: "God planned all [of creation] explicitly for man's benefit and rule: no item in the physical creation had any purpose save to serve man's purposes." Along with this, Western Christianity separated humans from nature. In older religious traditions, humans were seen as part of nature, rather than the ruler of nature. And in animistic religions, there was believed to be a spirit in every tree, mountain or spring, and all had to be respected. In contrast with paganism and Eastern religions, Christianity "not only established a dualism of man and nature but also insisted that it is God's will that man exploit nature for his proper ends." White noted that Christianity was a complex faith, and different branches of it differ in their outlook. But in general, he proposed that Christianity, and Western civilization as a whole, held a view of nature that separated humans from the rest of the natural world, and encouraged exploitation of it for our own ends. There has been much discussion of these ideas, and they have been both attacked and supported (some of this discussion is referenced below). But there is no doubt that this article raised some important questions. There is much literature on the influence of religious beliefs and traditions on a person's
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