Love the Life You Choose

Where to draw the line?

Issues about the environment, population, and resources, are of great importance in this day an age. I cannot help and look around and be concerned with how we, man, is interacting with our environment. These thoughts have been with me for some time, but recent things have got me thinking about them a lot more, such as the increases in gas prices, and the future oil drilling in Alaska. Upon thinking about these issues I increasingly find myself faced with a philosophical quandary. Where do we draw the line between man and nature? This is a question I think we often but aside in our minds, or don't even ask. Its understandable, because it seems like common sense to most of us that there is a line, that man is a distinct phenomenon, in which we don't find anywhere else in nature. But Man came from nature; Man at some level is nature. So how can be sure that Mans pollution of nature isn't part of some sort of natural evolution. After all, if there is anything we know about nature, its the remarkably ability to adapt to changes, to take a quote from a movie "life finds a way!" Just so no one takes the wrong idea from this, I am not saying that we should turn a blind eye to pollution, I am just posing a philosophical question, and those who talk philosophy a lot know that it usually doesn't translate into a conclusion but rather more questions. I personally am very concerned about protecting the environment and i find that I am spiritually drawn to the natural world. I hold an incarnationalist perspective, which views the world as being charged with the grandeur of God, and that the natural is a representation of the supernatural. I am concerned that we seem to not see a line sometimes; just because we can do something doesn't mean we should. These days the stakes seem to be getting a lot higher as well, with idea of cloning, and genetic manipulation. Where do we draw the line? Is it all just nature being nature? Or is something else going on? How do truly live up to the job of being stewards of creation?

posted by ETeter @ 3:16 PM