rough draft of opening remarks at panel on religion and the environment at St. Edwards University in Austin, Texas
Since I cannot begin to lay out my full worldview in just a few moments in order to derive how that worldview informs my approach to the environment, I will, instead, simply point out a few defining features of my religious/political/scientific worldview and connect those to my stance on the environment. First of all I reject the mythology of the fall. I reject the idea that man was, in some idealized past, perfect, and that he might again, although through no power of his own, re-achieve that perfection. Instead I believe the version of meta-history that Occam’s Razor would select: We humans are a species who has become sentient. We are infants (or toddlers, or adolescents, if you prefer) who are just figuring out how to come to terms with the fact that this sentience has significantly disconnected us from the processes of biological evolution which produced us. Second, I embrace the concept of free-will. I believe that we are, individually and collectively, self-determining to a very...