Posted on 04/07/2020 4:00:38 AM PDT by Kaslin
A statement widely attributed to the great British thinker G. K. Chesterton describes the modern period as perfectly as any single idea can: "When people stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing; they believe in anything."
One of these substitute gods has been nature.
Indeed, of all the false gods, nature is probably the most natural for people to worship. Every religion prior to the Bible had nature-gods -- the sun, the moon, the sea, gods of fertility, gods of rain and so on.
That is why the farther Western society gets from biblical, i.e., Judeo-Christian, religions, the more nature is worshipped.
Everyone on the left and right cares about the environment. But caring about the environment is not the same as environmentalism. Environmentalism, for most of its adherents, is a secular religion. These people, many of whom refer to, and truly regard, the Earth as a goddess (Gaia, the name of the ancient Greek Earth goddess) worship the environment.
The man who, more than any other, started the modern environmentalist religion was James Lovelock, who developed the "Gaia hypothesis" in the 1970s. Almost 50 years later, in 2014, Lovelock told The Guardian, "Environmentalism has become a religion."
New York Times columnist Ross Douthat described the 2009 James Cameron blockbuster film, "Avatar," as "Cameron's long apologia for pantheism, a faith that equates God with Nature, and calls humanity into religious communion with the natural world." That equation of God with nature was a major reason for the film's popularity.
Douthat, one of the only religious (as in believing in and practicing a religion) columnists at The New York Times, added, "The threat of global warming, meanwhile, has lent the cult of Nature qualities that every successful religion needs: a crusading spirit, a rigorous set of 'thou shalt nots,' and a piping-hot apocalypse."
When you ask atheists, as I have for decades, what they believe in, the most common answer is "science." There was a young man, an atheist, at the gym where I work out, who responded, "Science!" (in place of "God bless you") whenever someone sneezed. There is nothing higher than science for an atheist because the natural world is all there is. So, worship of the Earth, the environment or nature is almost inevitable in a secular world.
The Bible takes an entirely different view. As explained at length in my Bible commentary, "The Rational Bible," the first verse of the Bible -- "In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth" -- contains the most radical idea in history. It stated, for the first time in history, that God created nature and is not part of nature. It is one of the reasons I believe the first five books, the Torah, are God-given. No human beings 3,000 years ago in the late Bronze Age would have come up with an idea so opposed to the way the human mind naturally works -- to regard gods as part of nature.
From the point of view of the secular, Gaia-worshipping world, Genesis gets even worse when, 27 verses later, God tells human beings to, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it."
Both instructions infuriate Earth-worshippers. Regarding being fruitful, they oppose people having more than one child, and many advocate having no children so as to have minimal human impact on Mother Earth. But the second part -- ruling over nature -- is what really angers them.
Maybe the coronavirus will awaken young people, who have been taught by nature-worshipping teachers and raised by nature-worshipping parents, to the idiocy of worshipping nature rather than subduing it. Nature, it turns out, is not our friend, let alone a god. If it were up to nature, we'd all be dead: Animals would eat us; weather would freeze us to death; disease would wipe out the rest of us. If we don't subdue nature, nature will subdue us. It's that simple.
Nature is beautiful and awe-inspiring. It's also brutal and merciless. "Nature, red in tooth and claw," as Alfred Tennyson aptly describes it. Nature follows no moral rules and shows no compassion. The basic law of all biological life is "survival of the fittest," while the basic law of Judaism and Christianity is the opposite: the survival of the weakest with the help of the fittest. Nature wants the weakest eaten by the strongest. Hospitals are as anti-natural an entity as exists.
Only human beings make hospitals. We do so not by worshipping nature but by subduing it.
If the COVID-19 virus destroys the foolish veneration of nature and leads more people, especially the young, to a new respect for the Judeo-Christian worldview, it might be the one silver lining in this catastrophe.
There is only one problem with the thesis of this piece, COVID-19 is not a pure nature derived virus. The human lethality built into the virus is the result of demonic possessed human intervention. God gave man freewill to do good or evil and the Josef Mengeles of the world, scheming away in the P-4 labs, chose death over life.
As I got older and had more Biblical wisdom, I look at the natural world and universe as the wonders of God’s creation. Any other opinion would be disrespectful and an insult.
Very well said.
I always wondered why nature needed to be sududed. The answer(s) was to be found in Chapters 2 and 3 of Genesis.
Amen and I second it.
BINGO! The winning post!
You have no proof of that. Nature comes up with nastier bugs than covid all on its own. Smallpox anyone? anthrax?
Xlnt point. Nature (heat,cold,gravity,friction,virtual particles popping in and out of our purview, disease, entropy, chemical reactions,etc) can easily kill us. Makes you wonder how we got here so well organized with natures “help”.
Correction: Genesis Chapter 3 to find the answer.
When you ask atheists, as I have for decades, what they believe in, the most common answer is “science.”
Science: Preserved thru the Dark Ages by the church. The scientific method invented by the church. Universities and hospitals dependent upon science created by the church. Now science serves ideology. Global warming anyone?
One of these substitute gods has been nature. >>>>>>>>>>>>>
True for those who are weak minded.And they also evolve toward Whacko lefty religio-environmentalism.
But as Saint Francis observed. There is a divine energy in nature with whichi one may connect.
That brings one much closer to God.It also can heal the body and soul. It can also exorcise evil.
So any truth written here by Dennis Prager is so narrow that it is somewhat myopic.
Another answer can also be in Isiah Chapter 14:13-14,which not only talk about the fall of the King of Babylon but also about the Chief Fallen Angel Lucifer.
Humans really do not have the technology to create at will a deadly virus. Nature, on the other hand, has already created many.
Covid-19 is a bat virus. Rabies and Ebola are also carried by bats. Humans should not be eating bats. Humans should, in fact, limit contact with wild animals and should only handle them while wearing PPE.
Homosexuality anyone?
My tagline sums up my entire religious worldview. It took me a long time to get there, but it all begins with those ancient Hebrews and their radical proposition of a single Deity, apart from nature.
Which isn't the fault of science, but those who pervert it for their own ends. After all, science is only a means of validating subjective experience.
‘So, worship of the Earth, the environment or nature is almost inevitable in a secular world.’
an utterly ludicrous statement; Mr. Prager knows better, but he stakes his reputation on his religion, so what can one expect from him...I do not follow an organized religion, and as I have no specific need to believe in the supernatural, nor the preternatural, I feel no urge to ‘worship’ anything, in the sense that we define the term worship...the only thing to which I bend a knee is osteoarthritis...
For now.
‘Any other opinion would be disrespectful and an insult.’
most people, as they get older and see more of life and its inherent differences, become more open minded about alternate possibilities...there are always exceptions to rules, however...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.