From: Steve.Hayes@f22.n7101.z5.fidonet.org
Subject: Pantheism & Environmentalism
Lines: 51

09 Apr 93, Susan Harwood Kaczmarczik writes to All:

 >> "We suspect that's because one party to the (environmental)
 >> dispute thinks the Earth is sanctified.  It's clear that much
 >> of the environmentalist energy is derived from what has been
 >> called the Religious Left, a SECULAR, or even PAGAN fanaticism
 >> that now WORSHIPS such GODS as nature and gender with a
 >> reverence formerly accorded real religions."  (EMPHASIS MINE).

 SHK> First of all, secular and pagan are not synonyms.  Pagan, which is
 SHK> derived from the latin paganus, means "of the country."  It is, in
 SHK> fact, a cognate with the Italian paisano, which means peasant.
 SHK> Paganism, among other things, includes a reverence for the planet and
 SHK> all life on the planet -- stemming from the belief that all life is
 SHK> interconnected.  So, rather than be something secular, it is something
 SHK> very sacred.

I would go further, and say that much of the damage to the environment
has been caused by the secular worldview, or by the humanist
worldview, and especially by the secular humanist worldview.

This is not to say that ALL secular humanists are necessarily avid
destroyers of the environment, and I am sure that there are many who
are concerned about the environment. But at the time of the
Renaissance and Ref ormation in Western Europe man became the centre,
or the focus of culture (hence "humanism"). This consciousness was
also secular, in the sense that it was concerned primarily with the
present age, r ather than the age to come. Capitalism arose at the
same time, and the power of economics became central in philosophy.
This doesn't mean that economics did not exist before, simply that it
began to dominate the conscious cultural values of Western European
society and its offshoots. This cultural shift was, in its later
stages, accompanied by industrial revolutions and the values that
justified
 them.

There was a fundamental cultural shift in the meaning of "economics" -
from the Christian view of man as the economos, the steward, of
creation to the secular idea of man as the slave of economic forces
and powers. There were denominational differences among the new
worshippers of Mammon. For some the name of the deity was "the free
rein of the market mechanism", while for others it was "the
dialectical forces of history". But in both the capitalist West and
the socialist East the environment was sacrificed on the altar of
Mammon. The situation was mitigated in the West because thos e who
were concerned about the damage to the environment had more freedom to
oppose what was happening and state their case.

Steve

--- GoldED 2.40