was Name changes in Massonia>now fundamentalist Christians and their views
Val Gillman (Sun, 20 Jan 2013 17:13:31 PST)

Lou, I often get frustrated with *some* fundamentalist Christians and their
views but here is another take on our belief. God said we were the keepers
of the world and it is our responsibility to treat animals and the Earth
itself in a kind and wise way. This seems like the common view among my
church family.
Valerie G.

Dylan, I don't know what your beliefs are, so I can't criticize them. I was
responding to your suggestion that we ought to restrict or reject the
"reductionist, materialist" worldview because it makes conservation more
difficult. We should not accept a worldview just because it makes our
conservation work easier. We should accept the worldview that best agrees
with our current evidence. Honesty is the best policy in conservation. And
the best evidence we have today is that Darwinian evolution explains all the
beautiful forms of life on this planet, including our own. Do you doubt
that?

I also disagree with your claim that this view makes conservation harder
(and I speak from experience, as I have spent the last few decades
conserving cloud forests in the third world). People can be made to
understand the ecosystem services a cloud forest provides,based on science.
They can learn to experience increased empathy with other forms of life,
when they come to realize that other mammals are literally our cousins, not
some distinct class of unthinking, unfeeling entities created just for our
use.

Non-materialist views of the world vary greatly in their degree of
conservation-friendliness. Fundamentalist Christians are often the least
friendly towards conservation, because many of them believe god made
everything just to serve us. Many also believe apocalyptic myths about "end
times", making conservation a silly goal. The US has even had a Secretary of
the Interior, James Watt, who believed such things, and conservation during
his term became a joke. On the other hand, much nature still survives in
India, in spite of immense poverty and overpopulation, just because of Hindu
respect for animal life (and Jainist respect for all life). Yet in either
case, we should not reject or accept these worldviews because of their
impact on conservation. We should evaluate them based on whether they are
true or not.
Lou