This was extremely difficult for men to assimilate then. And as society drifts from Judeo-Christian values, it is becoming difficult to assimilate again today. Major elements in secular Western society are returning to a form of nature worship. Animals are elevated to equality with people, and the natural environment is increasingly regarded as sacred. The most extreme expressions of nature worship actually view human beings as essentially blights on nature.
Then came Genesis, which announced that a supernatural God, i.e., a god who existed outside of nature, created nature. Nothing about nature was divine.
A majority of this comment is dead on. The problem is it is plausible that there are those who are religiously inclined who find the environment a lesser, but necessary worship to God. In essence, certain of God's natural creations are worth protecting from inappropriate politicing. Otherwise Prager is suggesting there are no acts onto the environment that could be construed as being wrongdoing to God's natural creations (aka "The Bush Record").
This was extremely difficult for men to assimilate then. And as society drifts from Judeo-Christian values, it is becoming difficult to assimilate again today. Major elements in secular Western society are returning to a form of nature worship. Animals are elevated to equality with people, and the natural environment is increasingly regarded as sacred. The most extreme expressions of nature worship actually view human beings as essentially blights on nature.
Again, correct as far as it will go. "Saving the Whales" will strike many as an unhealthy nature worship, but protecting National Parks for the sake of human appreciation can hardly be put in the same category. Simply black & whiting the environmental topic wholeheartedly is an unwise vision considering the spiritual benefits that are present in people in a human/nature symbiotic relationship. That may be a mouthful, but Dennis Prager lives and breathes in LA's metropolitan. The expression 'You only know what you see' is precise considering rural America leads happier lives due to simplicity (less congestion, pollution, and consumption). The urban world, also known by author Robert Devine as the 'Wise Use' culture, knows far less about the rural world than the rural world knows about urban life. It should also be noted that passionate conservationists/environmentalists are far more likely to fight for the survival of natural wonders even though living at times up to thousands upon thousands of miles away. Why? Because they know spiritually that these visual wonders are far more of a lifelong memory and life enhancer than any human-made recreational vacation.
What is puzzling is that many people who claim to rely more on reason would do so. Nature is unworthy of worship. Nature, after all, is always amoral and usually cruel. Nature has no moral laws, only the amoral law of survival of the fittest.
Simply relying upon "it's a cruel world" isn't sufficient considering a wonder like the Grand Canyon is about the spectacle. A spectacle that was created by a God.
Why would people who value compassion, kindness or justice venerate nature? The notions of justice and caring for the weak are unique to humanity. In the rest of nature, the weak are to be killed. The individual means nothing in nature; the individual is everything to humans. A hospital, for example, is a profoundly unnatural, indeed antinatural, creation; to expend precious resources on keeping the most frail alive is simply against nature.
Because those same qualities are found in Nature just as Dennis says they are not. A pack of lions devouring a large prey is vicious and unforgiving. Yet when the meal is over, watching a mother lion clean her younger offspring of blood is "compassion" and "kindness" while creating "justice" in Nature by keeping a balance in the ecosystem for the survival of the fittest.
The romanticizing of nature, let alone the ascribing of divinity to it, involves ignoring what really happens in nature. I doubt that those American schoolchildren who conducted a campaign on behalf of freeing a killer whale (the whale in the film "Free Willy") ever saw films of actual killer whale behavior. There are National Geographic videos that show, among other things, killer whales tossing a terrified baby seal back and forth before finally killing it. Perhaps American schoolchildren should see those films and then petition killer whales not to treat baby seals sadistically.
While it is probable that most school children do not know a whales true predatory nature, do you think it is plausible that many others will just simply want whales to live a free, uninterrupted life in a violent yet beautiful natural world? Simply ascribing childrens naivity to an adult human and natural world doesn't convince.
If you care about good and evil, you cannot worship nature. And since that is what God most cares about, nature worship is antithetical to Judeo-Christian values.
Well, yes you can, but to a lesser extent. Because Nature is filled with good and evil as well.
This column by Dennis Prager, unfortunately like so many other 'conservative on the environment' columns, continues to show that the topic at hand (the environment) is merely a tug-of-war for the two-party battle. As the DNP will instigate the downfall of the current administrations war on terror, so will the RNP continue to demote the environmental topic not on the basis of what's right, but on whatever the Left is not. Once upon a time the words "conservative" and "conservationist" were one in the same as achieved by Teddy Roosevelt. Today the Left are in fact the "conservatives" on the environment, and the Right are the "liberals."
Like conservative sources, it is unfortunate that Dennis Prager's agenda on the environment revolves not around what is right, but what parallels his party. Like Rush, his program has no actual pro-environmental record in the form of taking the time to promote the "good" environmental efforts. Dennis has a record of talking about the negative or extremist green activities, but not one that focuses on any other avenues, as if green extremism has a singular definition on the environmental topic. In fact, Dennis's +/- ratio on the environment is overwhelmingly in the negative. And it becomes even more alarming to me to note that it has taken the same pattern off into conservative bloggers and local radio programs. The focus is uniformly on green extremism. I can only say from this it is the environment which loses in the end for politics, and one that is even more saddening considering I have respect for Dennis Prager on many other values. The bare truth must be told though that sources like Robert Devine's Bush Versus the Environment, Carl Pope's Strategic Ignorance, and The Bush Record are not pieces of information that will make it's way on to national conservative syndication with any consistency. Hence a sentence from my summary: "Each party believes in justice providing it benefits their agenda."
From "Bush Versus the Environment":
Of course, this is ridiculous--free-market capitalism and unbridled production and consumption are perhaps the most serious threat to the environment and the core issue underlying the regulatory aspects of environmental destruction.
It should also be noted that, as a heavey pro-consumer, Dennis Prager could never acknowledge that maybe America does consume too much as a general statement. His long standing liberal fiscal position doesn't have room for any thought process that challenges economists/marketers/producers to develop new ways of stimulating the ecomomy without producing quite the volume we are at. A near impossibility at this rate in our industrialized history given to do so would mean to increase prices to compensate for the what would be lower volume sales. As one of my favorite quotes states, "I can't change the world, but I sure can try."
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