Does the environment need God?

A lifelong atheist learns to jettison his simplistic views of religion (God as “an old guy sitting in a chair”) when he realizes that something very much like a religious zeal will be required to address the climate crisis.

The worry I have here is of Christians being enlisted into providing a religious imprimatur on any political movement, even one as worthy as I believe the environmental one to be. And yet I can’t help but think that the author of this piece is right: that we do need a shift in “values” (maybe virtues is a better term to use), not just bigger and better techno-fixes, if we want to make a sustainable society.

(Though, let me note for the record that I’m skeptical of simplistic dichotomies between “theism” and “panentheism” that seem to be popular in these circles. The idea of God in the classical theism of the sort that Sts. Augsutine, Anselm, and Thomas believed in is far from the caricature of an overly-anthropomorphized supernatural being “out there.”)

Animals and Good Samaritans

This is in interesting article about the dilemmas that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association faces concerning whether and when to help marine animals in distress.

Dilemmas like this are sometimes used as a reductio ad absurdum of animal rights. For instance, people will sometimes ask, if we have an obligation not to wantonly kill animals or to inflict unnecessary suffering on them, then don’t we have an obligation to, say, prevent the wolf from eating the rabbit?

There are several responses that can and have been made to this, including pointing out that predators are acting under the pressure of necessity, whereas humans are more often acting under the pressure of taste. Plus, it seems likely that a universal policy of rescuing prey from predator would have disastrous consequences, while nothing of the sort seems likely to result from humans cutting back on meat or forgoing it altogether. Clearly the proponent of animal rights/liberation isn’t committed to a universal policy of rescuing animals from natural danger.

However, I do think that philosopher David DeGrazia, who’s quoted in the article, has a point:

“We should regard them to having the same moral entitlements as we have,” DeGrazia said. “Even if they’re not human, we’re talking about individuals who matter a great deal, who are in distress.”

There are certainly times, I think, when we might regard it as our duty to rescue animals in the wild, even from “natural” disasters. For instance, suppose you saw a fawn about to be consumed by a forest fire and could rescue it without any significant risk to yourself. Wouldn’t it be wrong not to do so?

What seems clear is that this is something that could only be decided on a case-by-case basis, weighing the likely consequences of intervening vs. not intervening. But I don’t think a simple policy of “letting nature take its course” is always the right one, anymore than it is when it comes to human beings.

Left-wing American exceptionalism

Christopher makes an important point. To anyone who’s tempted to believe that the Bush years were a complete departure from an otherwise unbroken American tradition of “moral leadership” I’d recommend–for starters–getting acquainted with Andrew Bacevich’s The Limits of Power, which I blogged about here. Then we can move on to the collected works of Reinhold Niebuhr.

Recent musical discovery — Wovenhand

From the department of man does not live by heavy metal alone: Wovenhand (or “Woven Hand” as I sometimes see it written) started off as a side project for David Eugene Edwards, the front man for the alt-countryish group 16 Horsepower. But they broke up and Wovenhand now seems to be his full-time project.

Anyhoo, the sound is kind of hard to describe–I’ve seen it referred to as “gothic roots music.” Musically, Wovenhand incoporates traditional country, folk, some Native American, and electronic rock elements. Edwards’ lyrics and vocal performance bring to mind a twisted rockabilly, apocalyptic Old Testament prophet, the kind of character that wouldn’t be out of place in a David Lynch movie. By all accounts, he’s a serious Christian and takes his inspiration in equal measure from God’s grace and man’s depravity.

You can listen to several tracks at their MySpace page.

Climate and conservation

This article in today’s Post discusses how people responsible for wildlife conservation are having to change their approach because of global warming. The old model, where you set aside a certain fixed area of land to protect the wildlife within it, is becoming obsolete as changes in the climate will, or are already, driving those animals to move to more hospitable environments.

What strikes me when I read pieces like this is how far the very practical people at, say, the Fish and Wildlife Service are from being crazed leftist ideologues drumming up a fake crisis for the sake of some socialistic power grab. These are people trying to do their jobs in light of the very concrete and specific changes they’re observing.

Moyers, Frank, and Sirota on the economy

Bill Moyers’ Journal hosted an interesting discussion with Thomas Frank and David Sirota on the bailout, the economic stimulus, and what people can expect and/or hope for from Obama.

I think Sirota’s point (toward the end of the segment) about the longing some people feel for an “authoritarian capitalism” or a “czarist” model for fixing our problems is an important one. I think there’s a very legitimate concern that we’ll end up further centralizing power in essentially unaccountable hands for the sake of fixing the economy. As Sirota says, progress shouldn’t be in competition with democracy.

You can watch the segment here.

Comments

The WP spam filter is usually pretty effective, but I’ve noticed a couple of legitimate comments being swept up in the dragnet recently. Looks like I’ll have to be a bit more vigilant. Thanks for your patience, esteemed readers!

Is marriage sacred?

In arguments about gay marriage you sometimes hear suggestions that we should have a strictly civil version of marriage (or union) for the public realm that applies to gay and straight people alike, while leaving “sacred” marriage to religious bodies. This may or may not be a good idea, but what I wonder is whether there’s good reason for thinking of marriage as “sacred” in the first place.

In the Lutheran tradition, at any rate, you could argue that marriage is part of the “kingdom of the left”–God’s ordering of civil institutions for the sake of human well-being in this world. Lutherans don’t see marriage as a sacrament, and it’s debatable whether it should be seen even as especially sacred, at least any more than any other legitimate calling. The justification for marriage, like any other institution belonging to the left-handed kingdom, is that it conduces to human well-being. It’s not a matter of salvation, which belongs exclusively to God’s right-handed rule: the proclamation of free grace, forgiveness, and salvation in Christ.

What this line of thinking might lead to is not the abandonment of civil marriage, but the abandonment of religious marriage! This isn’t necessarily to say that churches shouldn’t continue to bless marriages; churches properly bless a whole host of things. (I once heard a gay Christian point out that churches bless everything from pets to apartments, so why couldn’t they bless his relationship? Good question!) What it does mean is that the church, in blessing such a union, isn’t creating some special “religious” relationship. Rather, it’s recognizing that union as a place or station in life where people can serve God, grow in virtue, be restrained from sin, learn to love each other, and contribute to the common good. But there wouldn’t be any reason to talk about “religious” marriage as having some sort existence distinct from or parallel to “secular” marriage.

Obviously, this position won’t be acceptable to Catholics and others who regard marriage as a sacrament. But in the case of Protestants, for whom the church’s raison d’etre is the proclamation of the Gospel in Word and Sacrament, it’s far from clear to me what authority we have for investing various human institutions with “religious” or quasi-sacramental significance.

I’m not at all wedded to this position (you’ll pardon the expression), but it’s worth thinking about.

McGovern: Don’t escalate in Afghanistan

An open letter to the President from Mr. “Come Home, America” himself (via A Conservative Blog for Peace).

Just say nein!

The president of the German government’s advisory body on environmental issues has suggested that, for environmental reasons, Germans should cut back their meat consumption to “prewar” levels and strive for a diet more like the Italians. Predictable attacks from industry about trying to deny consumers “freedom of choice” follow. (Via the–somewhat unfortunately named, given the current salmonella scare–PB&J Campaign blog.)

According to the article, Germans are some of the highest meat consumers in Europe. I’ll note that when I was in Berlin last spring I managed to eat (mostly) vegetarian only by eating a lot of Italian food.