Environmental Ethics, Ecological Theology and Natural Selection: Suffering and Responsibility (Columbia Series in Science and Religion) Book

Nature, this book reminds us, is a rough and predatory place. Recent efforts by both religious and secular thinkers to develop an environmental ethic that is consistent with our understanding of the natural sciences and free of anthropocentrism have foundered on the rocks of a Romantic, pre-Darwinian idea of nature as intrinsically harmonious and interdependent. Such an idea has lead to two abusive extremes, one, of malign neglect, and the other, of the misguided manipulation of nature in an effort to make it more humane. Lisa Sideris proposes a new way of thinking about the natural world, an environmental ethic that incorporates the ideas of natural selection and values the processes rather than the products of nature. Such an approach encourages us to take a minimally interventionist approach to nature. Only when the competitive realties of evolution are faced squarely, Sideris argues, can we generate practical environmental principles to deal with such issues as species extinction and the relationship between suffering and sentience.Read More