What is the world's leading "secular religon"?

Freeman Dyson, who is a professor of physics at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and a winner of the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion (2000), reviews a couple of books on global warming for the June 12, 2008, issue of The New York Review of Books (ht: CF). What is most interesting, at least to me, are his concluding remarks:

All the books that I have seen about the science and economics of global warming, including the two books under review, miss the main point. The main point is religious rather than scientific. There is a worldwide secular religion which we may call environmentalism, holding that we are stewards of the earth, that despoiling the planet with waste products of our luxurious living is a sin, and that the path of righteousness is to live as frugally as possible. The ethics of environmentalism are being taught to children in kindergartens, schools, and colleges all over the world.

Environmentalism has replaced socialism as the leading secular religion. And the ethics of environmentalism are fundamentally sound. Scientists and economists can agree with Buddhist monks and Christian activists that ruthless destruction of natural habitats is evil and careful preservation of birds and butterflies is good. The worldwide community of environmentalists—most of whom are not scientists—holds the moral high ground, and is guiding human societies toward a hopeful future. Environmentalism, as a religion of hope and respect for nature, is here to stay. This is a religion that we can all share, whether or not we believe that global warming is harmful.

Hmmmm...mull that over for a moment or two. The Catholic Church, of course, teaches that proper stewardship and responsibility are needed when it comes to the earth and material things. The Catechism, for example, states:

In God's plan man and woman have the vocation of "subduing" the earth as stewards of God. This sovereignty is not to be an arbitrary and destructive domination. God calls man and woman, made in the image of the Creator "who loves everything that exists", to share in his providence toward other creatures; hence their responsibility for the world God has entrusted to them. (par 373)

It also emphasizes an important balance:

In the beginning God entrusted the earth and its resources to the common stewardship of mankind to take care of them, master them by labor, and enjoy their fruits. The goods of creation are destined for the whole human race. However, the earth is divided up among men to assure the security of their lives, endangered by poverty and threatened by violence. The appropriation of property is legitimate for guaranteeing the freedom and dignity of persons and for helping each of them to meet his basic needs and the needs of those in his charge. It should allow for a natural solidarity to develop between men. (par. 2402)

When it comes to the religion of environmentalism, one wonders: Will there be a separation between "Church" and State? I doubt it, since the religion of environmentalism seems bent on using governmental power and force to enforce its doctrines and practices. Also: What is being worshiped in this religion? The Earth? What is its final goal? What sort of eschatology, if you will, does it proffer?

As both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI have talked about, man most certainly has a responsibility toward and for the environment. But they insist that this responsibility only makes sense and can only be a reality if man has a proper understanding of his relationship with God, and, directly flowing from that, his responsibility to cherish and protect human life. For example, John Paul II stated:

As one called to till and look after the garden of the world (cf. Gen 2:15), man has a specific responsibility towards the environment in which he lives, towards the creation which God has put at the service of his personal dignity, of his life, not only for the present but also for future generations. It is the ecological question-ranging from the preservation of the natural habitats of the different species of animals and of other forms of life to "human ecology" properly speaking - which finds in the Bible clear and strong ethical direction, leading to a solution which respects the great good of life, of every life. In fact, "the dominion granted to man by the Creator is not an absolute power, nor can one speak of a freedom to 'use and misuse', or to dispose of things as one pleases. The limitation imposed from the beginning by the Creator himself and expressed symbolically by the prohibition not to 'eat of the fruit of the tree' (cf. Gen 2:16-17) shows clearly enough that, when it comes to the natural world, we are subject not only to biological laws but also to moral ones, which cannot be violated with impunity".

43. A certain sharing by man in God's lordship is also evident in the specific responsibility which he is given for human life as such. It is a responsibility which reaches its highest point in the giving of life through procreation by man and woman in marriage. (Evangelium Vitae, 42-43)

He warns of what happens when man loses sight of these truths:

Moreover, once all reference to God has been removed, it is not surprising that the meaning of everything else becomes profoundly distorted. Nature itself, from being "mater" (mother), is now reduced to being "matter", and is subjected to every kind of manipulation. This is the direction in which a certain technical and scientific way of thinking, prevalent in present-day culture, appears to be leading when it rejects the very idea that there is a truth of creation which must be ac- knowledged, or a plan of God for life which must be respected. Something similar happens when concern about the consequences of such a "freedom without law" leads some people to the opposite position of a "law without freedom", as for example in ideologies which consider it unlawful to interfere in any way with nature, practically "divinizing" it. Again, this is a misunderstanding of nature's dependence on the plan of the Creator. Thus it is clear that the loss of contact with God's wise design is the deepest root of modern man's confusion, both when this loss leads to a freedom without rules and when it leaves man in "fear" of his freedom.

By living "as if God did not exist", man not only loses sight of the mystery of God, but also of the mystery of the world and the mystery of his own being. (par 22)

In reality, hedonistic capitalism and the the secular eco-religion aren't nearly as different as they seem. Each of them makes man the final focus and arbiter of truth; each seeks to please himself without reference to objective truth and man's need for spiritual sustenance that comes from the Creator, not the creation. In the meantime, folks like Dyson have done us a favor by highlighting some of the serious challenges faced by the Church in the decades to come.

Comments

[Kirk]

Ironically, the key misturn--so it seems to me--for such an ideology is a failure to respect the nature of being, the natures of things, if you wiil.

Forks are not spoons, and if I use a fork to eat my cereal, well, I just don't have it right with the nature of the thing. From that artifical example, we can move to the nature of water, animals, communities and the like and discern characteistics that comprise the essence of such realities.

Certainly, a hierarchy can easily be seen, and this seems to be where the theist, the natural law theorist, and the man of common sense have the high road. The radical environmentalist who turns his enterprise into a religion has lost the notion of hierarchy and that leads to anarchy and incoherency.

The properly formed Catholic likely can find room for deference to the nautre of things and proper stewardship of created goods while acknowledging that frugality with nature runs the risk of becoming miserliness demonstrated in a failure to trust the God who made these things has reserves of which we do not know. Trying to possess it and figure it out and manage the environment with our own lights alone is too large of a task for created man.

[m]

"When it comes to the religion of environmentalism, one wonders: Will there be a separation between "Church" and State? I doubt it, since the religion of environmentalism seems bent on using governmental power and force to enforce its doctrines and practices."

Interesting observation. I'm slowly starting to see more clearly through the haze of sophism surrounding the liberal political movement in this country.

[Robert Miller]

Thanks for this post. We would do well, I think, to read the New York Review regularly, because it usually provides a pretty accurate gauge of the intellectual "progress" of the Enlightenment.

Dyson said, accurately enough:

"All the books that I have seen about the science and economics of global warming, including the two books under review, miss the main point. The main point is religious rather than scientific.There is a worldwide secular religion which we may call environmentalism, holding ...that the path of righteousness is to live as frugally as possible."

"Environmentalism has replaced socialism as the leading secular religion."

"Environmentalism, as a religion of hope and respect for nature, is here to stay. This is a religion that we can all share, whether or not we believe that global warming is harmful."

Today, Pope Benedict said to a group of Asian bishops:

"In particular, you need to ensure that the Christian Gospel is in no way confused in their (Asians') minds with secular principles associated with the Enlightenment. On the contrary, by 'speaking the truth in love' you can help your fellow citizens to distinguish the wheat of the Gospel from the chaff of materialism and relativism. You can help them to respond to the urgent challenges posed by the Enlightenment, familiar to Western Christianity for over two centuries, but only now beginning to have a significant impact upon other parts of the world."

The Holy Father -- both as Pope and as theologian -- has expressed these insights often enough, but seldom so simply and magisterially. We have become accustomed, during the last 40 years or so, to thinking that faith and reason are "in crisis". What the Holy Father has been at some pains to get through to us is that the Enlightenment civilization is what is in crisis -- precisely because of its despair of faith and reason, and the concommitant natural need it feels for "religion".

Guardini expressed this insight, more than a half century ago in "The End of the Modern World".

But the Holy Father knows, as did Guardini, that any "new religion" after the incarnation of the Christian era -- however much, and even the more, it answers to the human need for religion -- is anti-Christ. It is, at least a precursor of the religion of Anti-Christ. Thus, environmentalism (in Dyson's sense) does stand in a succession with the cults of divine right monarchy, nationalism and socialism.

There will be, as Pieper (also more than 50 years ago)taught in "The End of Time" a final catastrophic failure of man's religious instinct. If we look closely at Dyson's description of the environmentalist religion, it resembles very closely the prevailing cult and ethic that Guardini and Pieper thought will characterize the end-time". It will be a "frugality" in the most radical sense of the word.

"Scientists and economists can agree with Buddhist monks and Christian activists that ruthless destruction of natural habitats is evil and careful preservation of birds and butterflies is good. The worldwide community of environmentalists—most of whom are not scientists—holds the moral high ground, and is guiding human societies toward a hopeful future."

A sense of awesome (and lonely, because "without" God) responsibility for a fragile "world" -- no longer experienced as either as Creation or "Mother" -- will infuse the spirit of the age and make way for the final, catastrophic "religious" enthusiasm. So prophesy Guardini, Pieper and Ratzinger.

And Dyson leaves us with a sobering fact:

"The ethics of environmentalism are being taught to children in (we can easily add "Catholic" to each of the following)kindergartens, schools, and colleges all over the world."

[LJ]

The religion of environmentalism is not monolithic. Among its ranks are secular humanists as well as misanthropes. Philosophically they run from New Agers to plain old anti-capitalists. And they even occasionally spar with each other.
Carl has identified two apparently opposing view-points, the hedonistic capitalists and the eco-religionists and suggested that they are quite similar at root.
As Catholics, we must define ourselves on our own terms as a third way of approaching the environment. And we must do this ground up, organically, if you will (as the CCC is constructed) so that we can know how to position ourselves positively in relation to the eco-religion as well as the technological hyper-consumerist society that they seek to convert. I think that we have, through neglect and good living in the West, given our proxy in many ways to the hedonistic capitalists, while wagging our moral finger at their excesses. That is why the eco-religion is a challenge to us, and without a clearly constructed Catholic way specific to the issue, many Catholics will follow the movements that suit their taste and political ideology independent of their faith, and confident that their faith really has nothing to say.

Our eschatological understanding must be integral to this Catholic approach but it cannot be the prime driver of our practical approach. That is to say, if we take the view, as some have, that God is going to destroy the earth in the end anyway so why not exploit it while it lasts, then we are betraying a very fundamental part of Catholicism (and Orthodoxy too, for that matter) which is the sacramental nature of our living faith. I think that sacramental understanding is the key to a coherent Catholic environmental approach. We sanctify matter in each sacrament through the form of the sacrament and the action of the Holy Spirit. Indeed, each sacrament of the Church must have the required form and matter. The sacramentals follow a similar pattern. Going one step further, it can be argued that as a royal priesthood, in communion with Christ, we sanctify sacramentally the matter around us, when we have the mind of Christ and the action of the Holy Spirit. Moreover, this understanding is consistent with the way we understand our own nature, as the integration of matter and spirit.

Frugality then, in this Catholic light, takes on a different meaning, not as an end in itself or oriented to the harmony with Gaia or the preservation of the material world as the ultimate end of man, but rather as a natural result of harmony with the Creator in reclaiming matter sacramentally and declaring it good as God did, when he created it. Thus excess as well is not intrinsically evil for it can be offered in love to God, just as the woman anointed Jesus with costly perfume (and was scolded for it by some around).

We must remember that the Church has had a very long tradition, almost from the beginning, of evangelical poverty and monasticism. So simple living itself is a good when oriented toward God. We must guard against arguing against the eco-religionists simply because we love the comfortable life. Sometimes our faith can be soft in direct proportion to the softness of our backsides.

[M. J. Ferrari]

This sounds so familiar. M. Gorbachev, at three different press conferences in Rio (at the Rio+5 conference in 1997) said that the 10 Commandments are out of date. They would be replaced by the 12 principles of the Earth Charter. One participant at that conference referred to the Earth Charter as a love letter to Mother Earth. It has since been amended to an even more nefarious document with many more "principles". Also, Rex Murphy in an article in the Globe and Mail referred to the "little green god" that everybody has to worship.

[Telemachus]

It is too simplistic to say that environmentalism has superceded State-socialism as the driving ideology of the secular West. They feed off each other such that State control of our personal lives can now be justified for the sake of a "clean and healthy environment." It's only a further step from there to justify letting the State regulate the "mental environment."

Socialism is alive and well in countless ways, and environmentalism is just one avenue among many through which it operates. And in the end, probably most of the prescriptions of the environmentalist platform will only end up making matters worse, just as State-socialism pushed more control into the hands of oligarchy. What madness!