Dances with Labradors: Which of the major religions are least hostile to protecting the world’s natural heritage?
And which are most hostile?
If possible can you justify your answer?
By ‘natural heritage’, I mean biodiversity, the natural flora and fauna of each region, natural landscapes, intact ecological systems, and large open undeveloped spaces.
My impression is that the most hostile religions are Islam and Christianity (especially the Catholic and Evangelical Protestant varieties). While the least hostile is probably Buddhism. But I don’t know enough about the others to judge very well.
Answers and Views:
Answer by prove that i don’t exist
well i don’t think u need a special mention of the most hostile religion again……. u already know it. we all know it.
Buddhism is very gentle, and I think some Pagan religions are very gentle as well.
But this is more of a generalization- All people, regardless of religion, are capable of great good or great evil.
Answer by AlessiaI would agree Buddhism, they don’t worship any “God”
The second I would think would be LaVey Satanism, it isn’t a Devil-Worshipping Religion, it’s more like Atheism.Answer by WillyTK
Buddhism and Jainism.Answer by Old Timer Too
Shinto (the native religion of Japan) is very much tied to the earth. Likewise, the many variants of Native American religions are tied to the earth.
Mankind, as a whole, has a horrible track record with the ecology of the planet. Some of it is simply misguided by (and the only way I can describe them is) fanatics who think that trees need to be saved. I agree with respect to the massive and wholesale destruction of rain forests and deforestation exploitation in many parts of the world. But hugging a tree isn’t the answer, either. Forests can be treated as any crop, one that simply takes longer to grow and harvest. Like a field of wheat, harvesting a forest temporarily exposes the good earth to the ravages of nature, but in the end, the new crop can and does add to the beauty of the land.
But wholesale (and pardon the term) raping of the land and then leaving it forever barren is not acceptable.
For those critical of my comparing forests to a crop, keep in mind that since the mid 1800s there are been more forest acres planted (replaced) than harvested in North America. Some states, such as Oregon, have gone overboard in their zealous “protection” of land.
Now, to another and similar topic. While I have no problem with protecting vast regions of land for “nature” to take its course, we must also not attempt to manage nature in the process. Yellowstone has proven over and over that we simply do not understand enough to properly manage nature in doing its thing while interfering with one or another aspect of the entire ecology.
That said, we also fail to recognize that there is one beast on this planet that also needs vast areas of wilderness set aside for its sanity and by allowing it to roam in a somewhat controlled environment. That beast is man.
We are as much of the planet as any other flora or fauna.
As to religions that are the least hostile, I’ve already mentioned some. There are aspects of each of the major religions, though, that are good and bad for nature. But it isn’t religion, as much as political ideals, that allow greed to rape and plunder our planet. That they translate into certain zealously political religions is nothing new. It has been going on for centuries.
And so it goes.
Answer by SkepsikymaYes… the natural heritage that is in constant flux, and will change regardless of what humans do.
Trying to protect nature is futile. Trying to conserve it in its present state is suicidal, and goes against everything we know about the natural world.
The patently absurd idea that it is mankind’s duty to prevent nature from being touched by mankind is relatively new; most religions don’t address it.
“The dinosaurs and their fellow creatures vanished from this earth long before there were any industrialists or any men, but this did not end life on earth. Nature does not stand still and does not maintain the kind of ‘equilibrium’ that guarantees the survival of any particular species—least of all the survival of her greatest and most fragile product: man.”
“Without machines and technology, the task of mere survival is a terrible, mind-and-body-wrecking ordeal. In “nature,” the struggle for food, clothing and shelter consumes all of a man’s energy and spirit; it is a losing struggle—the winner is any flood, earthquake or swarm of locusts. (Consider the 500,000 bodies left in the wake of a single flood in Pakistan; they had been men who lived without technology.) To work only for bare necessities is a luxury that mankind cannot afford.”
“City smog and filthy rivers are not good for men (though they are not the kind of danger that the ecological panic-mongers proclaim them to be). This is a scientific, technological problem—not a political one—and it can be solved only by technology.”
“An Asian peasant who labors through all of his waking hours, with tools created in Biblical times—a South American aborigine who is devoured by piranha in a jungle stream—an African who is bitten by the tsetse fly—an Arab whose teeth are green with decay in his mouth—these do live with their “natural environment,” but are scarcely able to appreciate its beauty. Try to tell a Chinese mother, whose child is dying of cholera: “Should one do everything one can? Of course not.” Try to tell a Russian housewife, who trudges miles on foot in sub-zero weather in order to spend hours standing in line at a state store dispensing food rations, that America is defiled by shopping centers, expressways and family cars.”
– Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution –
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