Ecology and Christian Life

1. Ecology and Christian Life Christian Worldview Networks August 7, 2009 Man-Sung Yim North Carolina State University

2. Outline • Ecological Ethics • Biblical Perspectives • Christian Spirituality and Ecology

3. References • Patrick Curry, Ecological Ethics, Polity Press, Cambridge, UK, 2006. • Brennan Hill, Christian Faith and the Environment, Orbis Books, Maryknoll, NY, 1998. • Robert Fowler, The Greening of Protestant Thought, University of North Carolina Press, 1995.

4. Ethics • The question of how one should live and act. • A dimension of every human experience and enterprise.

5. Ecological • The word was coined in 1866 by the German natural philosopher Ernst Haeckel. • He borrowed the Greek work oikos (‘home’ or ‘household’) to describe the scientific study of the relationships among organisms and between them and their environments. • Commonly understood to describe a metaphysical and/or political philosophy centered on nature.

6. What about ‘environmental ethics’? • ‘Environment’ is widely understood in its literal meaning, i.e., that which surrounds. • It thus has the connotation that it denotes a passive setting which is of secondary interest to humans.

7. Why care? • The earth is in crisis • Leaving environmental decisions to the “experts” may not rescue the ecosystem. • Expert decisions will not necessarily be objective and value neutral.

8. Ecological Impact • I = P x L x T • Population size • Lifestyle (affluence or consumption, the per capita use of resources) • Technology (the per capita effect of technologies, as energy-consuming and/or polluting) • ‘O’ for the effects of the way human societies are organized: PLOT.

9. Role of Science • Science plays an important part in our awareness of the fact of ecocrisis. • It provides many of the indicators outside of our personal experience. • Green technology will play important role in alleviating ecocrisis. • Science of ecology was a major inspiration for metaphysical and political ecology.

10. Belief in Modern Techno-Science • Some believes that science offers unique access to ‘the truth’. • Scientism: ‘Science is not one way of being among many but the only valid or true one’ • Cornucopian dream • A cornucopian is a futurist who believes that continued progress and provision of material items for mankind can be met by similarly continued advances in technology.

11. Technology • Technology is unlikely to be able to compensate for uncontrolled expansion of either population or consumption. • Technological ‘solutions’ tend to create new problems. • Development of cheap and efficient non-polluting technologies will lead to massive increase in consumption. • “The earth cannot be saved by even the most perfect technocratic scheme if ordinary citizens do not themselves realize the need for a basic change in the way we dwell upon this earth, confront the apostle of consumption and find the will to live in sustainable way” (Kohak, 2000)

12. Other Limits of Science • Science cannot supply answers to the most important, fundamental questions: • Question of meaning • Question of value • Question of justice • What is good, right, or fair? • These are existential decisions we must make for ourselves.

13. What is Ethics? • ‘Ethics’ comes from the Greek word ethos, meaning custom. • Its philosophical usage refers • Not to “how people actually do behave in their dealings with each other” • But to “how they ought to behave”. • The fundamental ethical question: • “How should one best live, or what should one best do?” (Socrates)

14. Ethical Realism vs. Relativism • Realism • There are things, values or ways of behaving that exist independently of whether anyone knows them. • Relativism • Whether or not there are ‘things in themselves’, some things (and arguably all things) can never actually be known in themselves, because they can never be separated from our knowledge of them. • Therefore, ‘representations’ can only ever be compared with other ‘representations’, never with an unrepresented reality. • There are, therefore, and can be, only truths which are relative in the sense that they are not final, complete or absolute.

15. Objective vs. Subjective • Everything we can know, think about, or discuss – including ethics – is a function of both of the ‘objective’ world and of our ‘subjective’ apprehension of it. • The resulting knowledge is converted, through the same process of awareness, reflection and interaction, into decisions for action.

16. The Naturalistic Fallacy • No single ethical position (i.e., prescription: what should be) logically follows from any set of facts (i.e., description: what is). • Ethics and facts are two different orders of discourse: • There is no reason to think that just because a behavior is ‘natural’ it is therefore ethically correct. • Biological or psychological knowledge cannot answer the hard ethical questions we face, and thereby replace ethics. • Ethics exists somewhere in between what is and what ought to be.

17. Secular Ethics • Humanism: Man replaces divinity as the central focus of life. • Secular natural truth took the place of God as the ultimate goal, and human reason played the part once given to the divine revelation as the means to attain it. • Cornucopians (techno-humanism) believe that “There is no serious problem which does not have a scientific/technological solution, and no end to human progress and growth.” • This contributes to a widely held view of the non-human natural world as a set of inert raw resources to be mastered and exploited by human reason.

18. Modern Secular Ethics • Two concerns • The individual rights of liberal democracy • The collective rights of social/socialist democracy • The guarantor of rights is the state, with which individuals and/or groups supposedly have a contract. • Modernism: The ideas and values centered on the interlocking institutions of capital, techno-science and the nation-state – that drive the project of modernity • Questioning the project of modernity - postmodern

19. Three Schools of Ethics • Virtue Ethics • Deontology (‘Rights’) • Utilitarianism (‘Consequences’)

20. Virtue Ethics • Stems from the philosophy of Plato. • Its central focus is on developing a virtuous character. • The exercise of virtue is what produces a good person. • Such a character is marked by its possession of the four classical virtues: temperance, justice, courage, and (practical) wisdom. • These attributes constitute eudaimonia (Aristotle), ‘well-being’. • A person who embodies eudaimonia will also promote it among others. • There is nothing in the theory itself limiting who or what can be the object of virtuous behavior.

21. Deontology (‘Right’) • deon (Greek): ‘duty’ or ‘that which must be done’ • Actions fulfilling duty are morally right regardless of their consequences. • Immanuel Kant: (1) act only on a maxim that you can will at the same time to be or become a universal law; (2) treat all people as ends or subjects in their own right and never merely to be followed regardless of the specific consequences. • Follows universal individual human rights. • Against the assertion by David Hume that ethical behavior is of people’s sympathy and emotion. • Unable to supply any substantive reason as to why non-rational beings (including the rest of nature) should be treated well (thus anthropocentric).

22. Utilitarianism • The highest good is the greatest happiness of the greatest number of people. (Jeremy Bentham (1748 –1832), John Stuart Mill (1806 – 1873)) • The decisive ethical question about an action is whether or not it is useful in relation to the general happiness of humanity. • Happiness has to be susceptible to being ‘objectively’ measured - It tends to measure that which can be measured and ignore that which cannot. • The subjective motivations of objective actions are irrelevant.

23. Utilitarianism • It is the most powerful single philosophy in social and economic policy in the modern ‘Western’ world - Its emphasis on objectivity, on collectivity, and on measurement is a fundamental part of the modern project. • ‘Actions are right or wrong, good or bad, according to how they affect the experiences of beings capable of experience’ (Wenz, 2000) – Non-sentient being, a species or an ecosystem, has little value.

24. Value • Instrumental value vs. intrinsic value • Instrumental value: • The value someone or something has as a means to something else, where that something else constitutes a good in itself. • Intrinsic value: • When someone or something has a value as an end in itself. • Value requires both a world and participation by valuers to be real. It is both objective and subjective.

25. Anthropocentrism • “Human-centeredness” • As a matter of existential or metaphysical fact, humanity is the principal or sole thing of value. • “The unjustified privileging of human beings, as such, at the expense of other forms of life.” (P. Curry) • “A kind of modern religion which casts all of creation into categories of utility to humans” (‘resourcism’, Neil Evernden) • This mindset is dominant in politics, economics, science or culture.

26. Ecocentrism • It recognizes that human beings live in a more-than-human world, of which they are only one part. • Ecosystems comprise a complex ongoing dance of interrelationships not only with other organisms but with the non-organic. • ‘Humankind does have a unique responsibility for the wellbeing of other creatures and the whole ecosystem, yet is at the same time a dependent and integral part of that system’ (Ken Jones, 1993)

27. Ecological Ethics • Principles (incorporating values) concerning how human beings ought to behave in relation to non-human nature • A spectrum • Instrumental value (Light Green): consideration for the non-human is only indirect, insofar as the well-being of humans is affected. • Intrinsic value (Dark Green): consideration for the well-being of non-human places and ecosystem

28. Light Green Ethics • Shallow (Anthropocentric) ethics • Non-human beings of any kind have no independent moral status or considerability. • They only merit consideration insofar as they matter to humans. • Sole Value Assumption • An ecological problem is defined as one that poses difficulty for humans, regardless of its effects on the rest of nature. • Non-human nature is a resource for human ends • Resource management and conservation • Human welfare ecology • Considers precautionary principle, sustainability, and nature conservation • The dominant one

29. Lifeboat Ethics • A particular kind of shallow ethics • Natural resources are necessarily limited. • Human population is now well past what those resources can support without measures, such as ‘Green Revolution’. • The most appropriate metaphor for the situation facing humanity is that of a lifeboat: • The wealthier societies live in a relatively capacious boat, with room for some but certainly not all of the remaining (and more numerous) human flotsam in the sea. • Picking them all up would simply sink the boat.

30. Mid-Green Ethics • It denies that human alone have any intrinsic value. • Natural items have some intrinsic value. • Greater Value Assumption • Ecological problems are not defined solely in terms of problems they cause to humans. • Wherever natural items conflict with human interests, the latter takes precedence. • Animal liberation or animal rights movements. • Only sentient beings are deemed worthy of ethical consideration (Singer) • Biocentrism (Respect for Nature, Paul Taylor) • For individual living things • Not anthropocentric but not fully ecocentric.

31. Dark Green Ethics • Deep (Ecocentric) ethics • Holistic entities are taken as objects of ethical concern • Non-human natural entities deserve protection regardless of their use or value to humans. • Criteria: • It must be able to recognize the value, and therefore support the ethical defense, of the integrity of species and of ecosystemic places, as well as human and non-human organisms. • Within nature-as-value, it must • Allow for conflicts between the interests of human and non-human natutre • Allow human interests, on occasion, to lose. • The Land Ethic (Aldo Leopoldo, 1887-1948) • Gaia Theory (James Lovelock) • Deep Ecology (Arne Naess)

32. Dark Green Ethics • The Land Ethic (Aldo Leopoldo, 1887-1948) • “It enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land” • Gaia Theory (James Lovelock) • “The Earth is more like a living organism than an inanimate machine, which is made up of highly complex interacting ecosystems binding together not only the continents, oceans and atmosphere, but also its living inhabitants; and like an organism, it is (within limits) self-renewing, adjusting to changing conditions through feedback loops in order to maintain relative stability, especially of the atmosphere and temperature.”

33. Deep Ecology • The flourishing of human and non-human life on Earth has intrinsic value. The value of non-human life-forms is independent of the usefulness these may have for narrow human purposes. • Richness and diversity of life-forms are values themselves and contribute to the flourishing of human and non-human life on Earth. • Humans have no right to reduce this richness and diversity except to satisfy vital human needs. • Present human interference with the non-human world is excessive, and the situation is rapidly worsening.

34. Deep Ecology • The flourishing of human life and cultures is compatible with a substantial decrease of the human population. The flourishing of non-human life requires such a decrease. • Significant change of life conditions for the better requires change in policies. These affect basic economic, technological and ideological structures. • The ideological change is mainly that of appreciating life quality rather than adhering to a high standard of living. There will be a profound awareness of the difference between big and great. • Those who subscribe to the foregoing points have an obligation directly on indirectly to participate in the attempt to implement the necessary changes.

35. The Bible • God’s self-revelation to peoples over a span of thousands of years. • The origins of the world • God’s plan for the world • God’s calling of people • God’s saving power through Jesus’ incarnation • A living word from a dynamic God, a revelation that is pertinent to the concerns of each age.

36. The Bible: Dominion Thesis • Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” (Gen. 1:26) • God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish over the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” (Gen. 1:28)

37. Lynn White, Jr."The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis“ (Science, 1967) • This passage has been overwhelmingly, and understandably, interpreted as giving humans the right to do whatever they want to the Earth and all its non-human inhabitants, subject only to God’s approval. • With the insistence on a single, transcendent and universal God, Christianity had removed the sacred focus from the Earth and its creatures. • Christianity is therefore the primary historical causes of ecological crisis (“The Christian Middle Ages were the root of ecological crisis in the 20th century)

38. Influence of White’s article • White's ideas set off an extended debate about the role of religion in creating and sustaining the West's destructive attitude towards the exploitation of the natural world. • It also galvanized interest in the relationship between history, nature and the evolution of ideas, thus stimulating new fields of study like environmental history and ecotheology. • However, many saw his argument as a direct attack on Christianity.

39. The Bible: Stewardship Thesis • God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. (Gen. 1:25) • The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. (Gen. 2:15)

40. Stewardship Thesis • Humanity can use the natural world but only with due regard for the fact that God created it and gave us responsibility for its well-being. • This puts ecology onto the church’s agenda.

41. Creation • “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it.” (Psalm 24:1) • “The heavens are yours, the earth also is yours; the world and all that is in it – you have founded them.” (Psalm 89:11) • “Praise Him, sun and moon; praise Him, all you shining stars! Praise Him, you highest heavens, and you waters above the heaven! Let them praise the name of the Lord.” (Psalm 148:3-5) • “The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.” (Psalm 19:1)

42. Goodness of Creation • It reflects the goodness of God. • It reflects the beauty of God. • It reflects the power of God. • Goodness of creation is brought forth by God’s desire to share divine goodness in a visible manner. • Creation is born from a God who is Love, who generously expresses Self in a multitude of visible forms. In a very real sense, all creation images the love and saving power of the Creator. • For those who can see with the eyes of faith, the entire world is graced and blessed.

43. God as Abba • “I tell you, my friends, do not fear those who kill the body, and after that can do nothing more. But I will warn you whom to fear; fear him who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him! Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten in God’s sight. But even the hairs of your head are all counted. Do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.” (Luke 12:4-7)

44. God cares for creation • When you send forth your spirit, they are created; and you renew the face of the ground (Psalm 104:30) • He gives the animals their food, and to the young ravens when they cry (Psalm 147:9) • We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. (Romans 8:22-24) • For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross (Colossians 1:19-20)

45. Christian Life • Obeying God by following the example of Jesus Christ • Living out his gospel teachings with relevance to my neighbors, community, and world today. • Applying these teachings to the demands of the periods. • Creation theology point to how humans are called to share responsibility in the creative powers of God and to represent God in the care of creation. • The Bible portrays humans in their highest dignity as well as in their lowest disgrace. • “Christian spirituality is the lived experience of the Christian belief…. It is possible to distinguish spirituality from doctrine in that it concentrates not on faith itself but on the reaction that faith arouses in religious consciousness and practice.” (B. McGinn) • Christian spirituality must address a pressing need: to save the very home where all life dwells. (B. Hill)

46. Engineering’s Grand Challenges • Make solar energy economical • Provide energy from fusion • Develop carbon sequestration methods • Manage the nitrogen cycle • Provide access to clean water • Restore & improve urban infrastructures • Advance health informatics • Engineer better medicines • Reverse-engineer the brain • Prevent nuclear terror • Secure cyberspace • Enhance virtual reality • Advance personalized learning • Engineer the tools of scientific discovery

47. The Earth in Crisis • Climate Change • Global warming? • Pollution • Air, water, land • Tens of thousands of synthetic chemicals are introduced into the environment • Biodiversity • 12% of bird species and 25% of mammals are likely to disappear within the next thirty years (at the present rate of distinction). • Habitat • At least 40% of the earth’s ecosystems need to be protected from significant human impact in order for them to remain viable. • Only about 10% are currently in a protected area.

48. Biodiversity • Human population: ~6.5 billion (250,000 new lives everyday), ~ 9 billion by 2050. • All those that are large, dangerous, edible, and/or profitable: tens of thousands. • Tigers: ~8,000 • African lions: ~20,000 • Great apes, all species combined: 414,000 • Whales: a few hundred thousand. • As of 2007, 16,306 species are at risk for extinction. • The leading causes of extinction: human activity

49. Lifestyle • Affluent overconsumption in the developed world – Global corporate capitalism. • A cult of material consumption, spread by the billon dollar advertising and entertainment media industries. • More people than ever now desire an ‘American lifestyle’. • American lifestyle • 5% of the world’s population • Emit the largest national proportion of greenhouse gases • Consume nearly 40% of the earth’s natural resources. • The gap between the relatively poor and the rich is increasing. • It is impossible for everyone to have American lifestyle. • It would take at least another 3 planet earths for everyone to join the privileged few.

50. Ethical challenges • Roughly 2 billion people live in poverty. • “We must live at a level that we seriously can wish others to attain, not at a level that requires the bulk of humanity NOT to reach” (Arne Naess, 1999) • “Just appealing to the ecological conscience of corporate producers and consumers and instituting purely voluntary control will certainly fail”. (Patrick Curry, 2006)