For years, libertarians and conservatives have charged that much of what passes for environmentalism in the West is little more than faith-based religion. Paul Greenberg and Carl Safina, both environmentalists and university professors, want to make it official. In their Time magazine article, The Case for Making Earth Day a Religious Holiday, they take full ownership of the charge:
But their ambitions stretch far beyond a single day. Greenberg and Safina also modestly suggest that we “reframe” the Christian holy days of Christmas and Easter; the Jewish holy days of Hanukkah, Passover, and Sukkot; the Indian holy day of Diwali; and the Muslim holy days of Eid “as days of thanks for what the natural world gives and reminders that our responsibility for what remains is an ongoing covenant.”
Marriage “might be an opportunity to remind young couples to consider the burden children place upon the planet and to make vows of sustainable patterns of behavior going forward.”
Finally, they argue that for environmentalism to become a full-fledged religion, a “Bible of the Natural World” is needed, “replete with hymns to this world of the living,” and containing “the stories of the prophets of natural earth knowledge—Darwin and Carson, Galileo and Humboldt.”
“In short,” the authors contend, “We must make nature central to our belief system with Earth Day or any number of earth-focused ceremonial days serving as regular reminders of what we owe our home planet.”
What to make of this declaration of faith that each new child is a “burden” to the earth—another mouth to feed rather than a new mind and a new pair of hands? What to make of this call for a return to paganism? This modest suggestion that the world’s major religions be remade in radical environmentalism’s image? This rejection of science in the name of science?
I for one welcome it as a forthright admission that they wish to replace discussion, reason, and scientific inquiry with religious dogma. Better a visible adversary than one shrouded behind words and phrases meant to conceal and deflect rather than to enlighten.
Richard Fulmer worked as a mechanical engineer and a systems analyst in industry. He is now retired and does free-lance writing. He has published some fifty articles and book reviews in free market magazines and blogs. With Robert L. Bradley Jr., Richard wrote the book, Energy: The Master Resource
READER COMMENTS
Monte
Jun 9 2023 at 5:06pm
The problem is that there is no redemptive value in placing our faith in an inanimate object completely indifferent to humanity. We are the masters of our own fate. If we are wise stewards of the environment, we reap its benefits. Otherwise, we become the architects of our own destruction.
Either way:
Thomas Hutcheson
Jun 9 2023 at 9:26pm
More power to them if they include net taxation of CO2 emissions as an article of faith!
Thomas Hutcheson
Jun 9 2023 at 9:33pm
I should add that whether X is a religion or not is more persuasive coming from a religious person who comments on how compatible the supposedly new religion is with their own.
Jon Murphy
Jun 10 2023 at 11:33am
Which, at least so far as Christianity is concerned, I’m not sure how much traction it’ll get. Some of what they propose is heresy and others outright blasphemy
Thomas Hutcheson
Jun 10 2023 at 12:35pm
That would be stronger rebuke than “It’s a religion” from someone who seems to think that “religion” is a bad thing.
Richard Fulmer
Jun 10 2023 at 1:57pm
One problem with carbon taxes is that they could very well push energy intensive industries to countries that, being poorer, don’t have the luxury of spending scarce resources on a clean environment. The most likely outcome is more emissions elsewhere.
David Seltzer
Jun 10 2023 at 6:26pm
As An agnostic, with whom do I have a covenant, save for my social contract not to impose
my subjective bias’s, religious, environmental or otherwise, on the rest of the world? How would avowed atheists respond to Greenburg and Safina?
Monte
Jun 11 2023 at 1:02pm
As rational human beings, we should, in the first instance, cultivate a covenant with reason, agnostic or not.
Greenburg and Safina wish to deify earth. Any response other than complete deference to their orthodoxy would be considered sacrilegious. See, for example, The Gaia hypothesis:
David Seltzer
Jun 11 2023 at 2:50pm
Monte: “As rational human beings, we should, in the first instance, cultivate a covenant with reason, agnostic or not.” Agnosticism is a by definition a covenant with reason. Agnosticism is the essence of science. That means a person doesn’t say he knows or believes anything without scientific inquiry or reason. As an agnostic in the abstract, I am both curious and skeptical. As for the existence of the almighty or extraterrestrial life, I remain an agnostic as they are untestable hypotheses. That is there is, until now, no way to falsify them.
Thanks for your comment
Richard Fulmer
Jun 11 2023 at 5:49pm
The “proof” of God’s existence that satisfies me is that belief in God “works” – that is, it’s useful.
Will Durant, a well-known American historian, was an atheist, but in his book, “The Lessons of History,” he observed that when a people loses its faith in the divine, society fails. Other famous atheists have made the same observation. But that seems strange to me. Why believe in something (e.g., non-belief) that fails? Or, put another way, how can something that fails be true?
In science, theories that don’t work – that is, that don’t explain the data – are discarded. A theory that explains the known facts may not be the capital “T” truth, but it’s at least a “good enough” approximation of the Truth to be useful. It’s assumed to be “true” until new facts are discovered that it can’t explain, or until another theory emerges that better explains the known facts.
No one’s image of God is God – that is, it’s not the capital “T” truth. But, because it “works,” the idea of someone or something greater than ourselves must be at least an approximation of the Truth.
I’ve not yet met anyone else who finds this “proof” convincing, but, as I said, it works for me.
David Seltzer
Jun 12 2023 at 9:26am
Richard, Thank you for your comment. When someone challenged Hillel the Elder to teach the entire Torah while his listener stood on one foot, he famously replied, “That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the entire Torah, and the rest is commentary. Now go and study.” That’s close enough for me as well.
Clay Garner
Jun 11 2023 at 9:38am
Richard
yes, this focus on the material, physical is a religious form.
However, from ancient times this has moved and dominated human thought.
Think the ten plagues on Egypt in the Bible. This was to not just free slaves, but also free people from slavery to materialism, exalting physical over abstract.
The first page of Bible explains original plan . . .
“Then God said: “Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness,’’
(And this seems key, humans are image of god, not just atoms)
”and let them have in subjection the fish of the sea and the flying creatures of the heavens and the domestic animals and all the earth and every creeping animal that is moving on the earth.”
(Humans have authority over animals.)
”And God went on to create the man in his image, in God’s image he created him; male and female he created them. Further, God blessed them, and God said to them: “Be fruitful and become many,’’
(More humans good)
”fill the earth and subdue it,”
(Fill earth and subdue it, not protect it)
“and have in subjection the fish of the sea and the flying creatures of the heavens and every living creature that is moving on the earth.” Then God said: “Here I have given to you every seed-bearing plant that is on the entire earth and every tree with seed-bearing fruit.”
This beginning, this original plan, this fundamental premise (oddly enough) appears to be the very idea under current attack.
Fascinating!
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