🚀 go-pugleaf

In article AA10541@phoenix.princeton.edu, "Tormod V. Burkey" <tvburkey@PHOENIX.PRINCETON.EDU> () writes:
>>I would be very interested to hear what Dr. Burkey defines as an
>>"overexposure to JudeoChristianity." Especially keeping in mind
>>the fact that using science to disprove religion is as much a
>>bastardization of science as the creationist's use of the Bible as
>>the basis for science. Neither asks questions which are scientif-
>>ically testible (falsifiable).
>>   I fail to see why so many scientists continue to have such a
>>combative attitude towards religion, except perhaps as a holdover
>>from the days when the organized Judeo-Christian religions were
>>attacking the theory of evolution.
>
>I was displaying my combative attitude towards religion as a
>conservationist, not as a scientist. The reason for this are the bits about
>going out and populating the Earth and having dominion over the Earth.
>(Sorry, my biblical scholarship is rusty in the extreme). The attitudes
>borne of these passages have brought the greatest ills ever visited upon
>the Earth, or at least justified them for those who have sought an excuse
>for their rape and pillage of the land (wow,  I'm really getting into this
>biblical jargon).

Science is equally responsible,  if not more due to the side effect of
"technological advances",  for the destruction of the natural balance
of things.  It is the Newtonian conception of the universe as a dead,  
unintelligent lump of matter that interprets the world as a machine
with replaceable parts--and not a balance or mutual interpenetration
of all things.

>Of course, if modern religious people want to join conservationists in the
>struggle to save what's left of "God's Creation", I for one wont object.

IMHO,  neither the Judeo-Christian nor the scientific community nor a
synthesis would do much for the world.  Both want to interfere with
what nature would do on its own.  "Stewardship"  sounds like creating
a mockery of nature--a "disneyland" for our benefit(which we might as
well admit).  If what we really need is an ecological mind,  then it's
going to be Buddhism in all its forms that will prove the most useful
to draw from,  and the scientific community will have to get used to,
or find another word for,  "mysticism".

Sure,  nature takes a long time to heal,  but I think we should trust
it,  and maybe we'll have no choice,  and let it disperse the elements
we've labored so hard to extract and concentrate and now have no idea
how to get rid of.

"It's quite clear that the world is going to hell,  and the only chance
that it won't,  is if we let it"  -- Oppenheimer(?)

---
Richard Kucera 		usual disclaimers apply 
kucera@nlm.nih.gov