Friday, November 23, 2007

Secular Environmentalists: Re-Think Yourselves

-This by no means is intended to be an attack on anyone.- Given the rise of environmental awareness lately, I came upon some thoughts that I found interesting. It appears that Secular Environmentalism may be a confusion of terms. Secularism implies a degree of (or complete) atheism. Environmentalism implies a way for us humans to actively protect the environment. Now, I feel you cannot be an honest secular atheist as well as an honest environmentalist. First, to be secular means you understand and believe the world to be void of any being such as a God and, consequently, that the natural world is all that exists. However, when environmentalists exercise their beliefs, it suggests otherwise.
Environmentalists typical have two claims (and may hold to one or both): humans are hurting (or can hurt) the environment, and humans can actively improve the conditions of the environment. These views are inconsistent with every secularist (atheist). Their worldview cannot support environmentalism.
Secularists understand the world as being purely natural. Therefore humans are, and can be, no more than just another animal. We differ from dogs and spiders only in biology and other natural ways. If humans are nothing more than an animal, environmentalism shatters.
Environmentalism often criticizes the harmful behavior of humans on the environment, and says we can do something about it. On these grounds, an environmentalist cannot be secular. A secular environmentist cannot criticize a human's behavior because their worldview says the human is nothing more than an animal. If humans are strictly animals, every action a human takes is natural. The secularist is now stuck. It would be like criticizing a spider for spinning a web, or a lion for killing a gazelle, or a beaver for cutting down a tree. The secularist must hold humans to the same standards as any other animal. We are hard pressed to find a campaign by environmentalists to persuade beavers to lay off the trees, or for tree bores to stop killing trees. To a secularist, it must follow that if humans are hurting the environment, so be it. Humans hurting the environment is purely natural for humans to do. To the secularist, humans logging the rainforests is no different than a spider spinning a web. However, secular environmentalists contradict themselves by holding humans to a higher standard than other animals humans are apparently no different from.
So, secular environmentalists, either drop your secularism or drop your environmentalism. This is a difficult choice to make, but it must be made. Environmentalism is only possible with a belief in a higher being (God), that holds humans to a higher standard than animals. Secularism is only possible with taking the belief that humans are strictly just another animal and holding it firmly to it's rational end: that since humans are strictly just animals like the beavers and the bores, they cannot be held responsible for an environmental problem or solution (and even that no environmental problem can exist).
Secularists, it seems your environmental tendencies are your greatest argument for the existence of God.