Pošteno, zdaj gre zares - Green Bible

Citation from "Environmental Ethics: the main approaches (Sigrid Sterckx):

According to some commentators, our exploitative and destructive attitude towards nature originates in an ‘anthropocentric’ attitude, widespread in Western societies. Hence, they argue, we need a fundamentally new ethic (or some even say a new religion) in order to introduce a new way of interacting with nature. This view can be labelled an ‘idealistic’ approach to the origin of the environmental problem and its potential solution(s).
Others defend a ‘materialistic’ approach. They argue that science, technology and capitalism, rather than cultural factors, are the major causes of the undesirable developments we are witnessing. They do not deny the importance of cultural factors, but consider them as consequences rather than causes. An example of a materialistic approach will be discussed in the next section.

In his famous article The historical roots of our ecologic crisis, the historian Lynn White argues that Christianity bears a heavy responsibility for the environmental crisis because it has promoted the domination of nature. White is representative of the abovementioned ‘idealistic’ approach. He assumes that all species disturb their environment (and have done so in the past), but notes that since the 19th and 20th centuries, something fundamentally new has been occurring: a world-wide destruction of nature. The proximate cause of this development, according to White, is the interaction of modern science with technology in the 19th century.
But the origin and development of science and, particularly, technology, have been
determined by a specific pattern of values, which he calls the typically Christian ‘arrogant’ attitude towards nature. White asserts that this arrogance is the result of a particular view of the relation between God, man and nature
a view typified by the book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible.


"And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth. And the fear of you, and the dread of you, shall be upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your hand are they delivered. (Genesis, 9, 1-2)".


In Genesis, the earth is neither sacred nor divine. Earth is merely a creation, and so is man, but he is made in the image of God. It is not nature that is holy, but Man, to the extent he resembles the Maker. In this creation, Man is central and dominates the animals. Through this conception, White argues, constraints on intervening in nature – which are typical, for instance, of the animistic religions – are removed and, Man is encouraged to exploit nature. Christendom is said to be the most ‘anthropocentric’ religion in the world. In White’s view we need a fundamentally new cultural attitude:


"More science and more technology are not going to get us out of the present ecologic crisis until we find a new religion, or rethink our old one … We shall continue to have a worsening ecologic crisis until we reject the Christian axiom that nature has no reason for existence save to serve man."


The importance of White’s paper can hardly be overestimated. His main thesis regarding the impact of value-systems on our interaction with nature has been taken over by many environmental ethicists, particularly by representatives of the so-called ‘deep ecology’ movement. White’s claim that our attitude towards nature is determined primarily by religion stimulated the interest in searching for alternative religions, including a search within Christianity
for a new and more ‘environment-friendly’ interpretation of the Bible.

Lewis Moncrief wrote a reply to White (also in Science), entitled “The cultural basis of our environmental crisis”.He observed that cultures which have not been influenced by the Judaeo- Christian attitude also had, and increasingly have, a destructive impact on the environment. The only decisive factor seems to be that modern science and technology developed in the West. However, this fact may be unrelated to the Christian attitude towards nature. According to Moncrief, the real explanation can be found in political and socio-economic developments
primarily the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution.

John Passmore presented yet another vision in his book Man's Responsibility to Nature
(1974), one of the earliest major books on environmental ethics. He justly remarks that for a correct understanding of the West, one must take into account the two important inspirational sources of this culture, namely, the Judaeo-Christian and the Greek. The fact that nature has no sacred status in the Old Testament is not sufficient, according to Passmore, to explain the exploitative attitude with respect to nature. He believes that the clearly anthropocentric character of Christendom is co-determined by the influence of Stoicism. In the Stoic philosophy, Man is the only rational creature and the ultimate goal of nature. All other creatures are at Man’s service.
However, two interpretations remain possible. The first is that God has created nature for the sake of Man, and hence everything in nature is as it should be. The other interpretation emphasizes the creativity of Man – here Man is seen as a creature that intervenes in nature and ‘cultivates’ it through technical interventions. This view gained grounds in Western Christianity during the 17th century. It was shared, inter alia, by people like Francis Bacon, Rene Descartes and Robert Boyle.

Passmore’s contribution to the debate is not limited to comments on White’s thesis. He mentions the tradition of ‘man as despot’, which he considers to be the ‘Graeco-Christian’ arrogance, but he also refers to a minority opinion about ‘stewardship’, which dates back to the post-Platonic philosophers. This current of thought, however small it was in the West, gave rise to two traditions:


"The first is, in feeling, conservationist. It emphasizes the need to conserve the earth's fertility, by culling and pruning and good management. The second is rather bolder: it looks to the perfection of nature by man, but a perfection which always takes account of nature’s own resources and of what man has already achieved in his civilising of the world."


Passmore favours the notion of stewardship to that of a despotic attitude towards nature; he suggests a few minor revolutions in science, such as more interdisciplinary research and more respect for scientists working outside laboratories. As to the political and socio-economic problems related to the necessity of reducing economic growth, he has no clear solution.

Robin Attfield, in his book The Ethics of environmental Concern (1983),11 claims that
Christianity is much richer than authors like White and Passmore presume. In his view, there is no need for a fundamentally new ethics as our traditions are sufficiently rich to teach us “that all worthwhile life is of intrinsic value”. According to Attfield, the ecological problem is basically a problem of exponential growth. Judaeo-Christian views cannot be blamed for this phenomenon:
its cause is rather a more recent tradition, the belief in progress:


"[R]ather than the beliefs of Judaism and Christianity, the attitude in large measure responsible for environmental degradation in East and West has been the belief in perennial material progress inherited from the Enlightenment and the German metaphysicians, as modified in the West by classical economists and sociologists, by liberal individualism and social Darwinism, and in Eastern Europe by the unquestioned deference to Marx and Engels."


Attfield’s view on the impact of Christian teachings is that:

"There has been a strong tradition in Europe and lands of European settlement, a tradition of Judeo-Christian origins but not confined to adherents of Judaism and Christianity, of belief that people are the stewards of the earth and responsible for its conservation, for its lasting improvement, and also for the care of our fellow creatures, its non-human inhabitants."

Source: http://www2.agrocampus-ouest.fr/scripts/fr/bioethique/pdf2007/52EN.pdf