Excerpt #112 from my book, Religion, An Obstacle to Human Progress
In a word, our relationship with our environment is about respect.
We live on a planet soaring through space.
It is a spacecraft (Earth) within a spacecraft (solar system) within a spacecraft (Milky Way
galaxy).
We are a product of this tiny orb that is our world.
Over billions of years, we have evolved in concert with other species of plants and animals.
As a part of this whole, we are subject to the natural laws that enable everything to exist.
Every physical thing we require and enjoy is derived from our world.
Everything.
Every breath we breathe, every drop we drink, and every bite of food is derived from our environment.
Every bit of clothing, medicine, and building material, is drawn from this source.
This world gave birth to us and countless other species of plants and animals.
Now much of life, including our own, is threatened.
We are polluting and decimating life-support systems, plundering resources, and driving species to extinction.
“Humanity did not descend as angelic beings into this world. Nor are we aliens who colonized Earth. We evolved here, one among many species, across millions of years, and exist as an organic miracle linked to others.
“The natural environment we treat with such unnecessary ignorance and recklessness was our cradle and nursery, our school, and remains our one and only home. To its special conditions we are intimately adapted in every one of the bodily fibers and biochemical transactions that gives us life.” – Edward O. Wilson