Tenth International Conference on Religion & Spirituality in Society

Abstract

Lynn White’s elucidation of the culpability of the Abrahamic religions for our ecological crisis (with the Industrial and scientific revolutions), argued that their destruction of pagan animism “made it possible to exploit nature in a mood of indifference to the feelings of natural objects.” Christian ecology’s rehabilitative “stewardship” model, however, has neither achieved widespread uptake among Christians, nor transcended the dualistic assertion of alpha species status, deputized in charge of “dumb” creation. Radical challenges to this anthropocentrism pervade the new sciences, which seem ever more affirmative of Eastern and Indigenous metaphysics. From quantum physics to cell biology, the materialist, mechanistic, and dualist view of humans vs. nature is being superseded by holistic monism. Systems ecology and Gaia theory comprehend Earth as a synergistic, self-organizing, self-stewarding, complex system that maintains the conditions for life. At the macro level, plant, animal, and microbial consciousness studies centre “the feelings of natural objects.” Renewed focus on panpsychism posits a pervasively conscious, even self-aware universe down to the subatomic level of all matter. Recent microbiome studies reconceive humans as symbionts or “superorganisms,” complex ecosystems of trillions of microorganisms which regulate both body and (significantly) mind. These developments, with other new scientific insights into who we are and how nature flows in and through us (to be elaborated), suggest fresh approaches to reintegrating humans into the natural world. The paper offers some potential paths to reconciling the new sciences with Christianity, especially in light of Pope Francis’ “integral ecology” in his Encyclical of 2015, “Laudato Si.”