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| Is God really Gaia?
Posted: 7/21/2008 2:26:49 PM | Reading the original post again, it seems to me the OP, knowing of the honor that the Aboriginal people feel for the planet (and the Native American Spirituality is all about honoring the earth and all on it as sacred), he was wondering if perhaps for those who call God the Father might consider calling it God the Mother and if so, then Mother Earth can be seen religiously as God, or of God.....to try and change the way we have abused her......that IF we could see her religiously, then perhaps we all might finally respect her and truly honor her in the way she deserves.
It was the posters who seemed to remove the religious aspect of the original post.
Plus, perhaps like the OP implies, his view of the term Gaia holds some religious or spiritual power, as it does for me too. | |
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| Is God really Gaia?
Posted: 7/22/2008 5:49:49 AM | The first four words of the OP refer to 'The theory of Gaia' and the remainder of the sentence describes the essence of the scientific theory, now known as the 'Gaia hypothesis' put forward by scientist, James Lovelock. Far from being "New Age nonense based on emotion, not reason." as the second poster suggests, or a 'fashionable fallacy' as suggested in Msg 20, the Gaia hypothesis is based on science, where support for the idea seems quite substantial. In other words, you screw with the environment and there is every rational reason to expect that it will come back and bite you.
Sure, Lovelock wasn't the first to come up with the idea of the world being a complex, interdependent system where humankind was just a vulnerable cog in the cycle of life, but he put it on a foundation which crossed religious and cultural boundries to provide a rationale for acknowledging the importance of the earth that could be understood by people of any leanings.
If you want to elevate Gaia to a religion, go ahead. If you want to claim that Gaia hi-jacked your religion, go ahead too. The reality is that the Gaia hypothesis is based on a much more solid foundation than the usual myths of religion. In my opinion, giving it much more credibility than 'New age nonsense' or 'fashionable fallacy'.
However, 'New age nonsense' and 'fashionable fallacy' have rallied behind the Gaia banner, corrupting an important issue so that many who see short-term gain as their goal can use such expressions to dismiss Gaia and the notion of long-term consequences. Even the notion of stewardship, mentioned in the OP could be criticized for adopting a human perspective of Nature. It's called anthropomorphism. Do we really think that we know best what Nature, Gaia, God need? Perhaps the notion of Gaia suggested in Msg 20 is nearer the truth than we'd like to think. 'Mother' Earth? Whose mother? Humans are probably the only things in the universe which think humans are special. We may be to us, but 'Mother' earth has enough other 'children' that she may take the view that if one of her 'kids' screws up and destroy themselves, there will be plenty more to run around and keep her amused. Nonwithstanding any global disasters those kids initiate. The only reason that humans are here is because there have been huge environmental disruptions in the past. Mother Earth just comes along with a new set of kids. All adapted to their new environment. So, the big concern humans have isn't really for Mother Earth, but for Mother Earth as humans know and can survive upon. Gaia just cautions that human activities have a broad-reaching impact which can potentially impact human ability to survive. For human comfort, it may well be a message too few people choose to hear. For Gaia - it's just an opportunity to clear the table and experiment with a new batch of kids.
As for the Aboriginal spirituality, the notion of the 'Noble Savage' seems to be getting some scrutiny of late. It seems to have arisen as European propaganda to romanticise the perception of natives and energize European efforts to diminish and disrupt native culture under the guise of education and progress. There is growing archaeological evidence that the pre-Columbian American environment was extensively managed by a highly civilized populations which managed woodlands for optimum hunting, the Great Plains by burning and much of South America by soil management and forestry, even in the jungle areas. Far from accepting Nature as it was, these nations modified the environment to their needs. The impression left by archaeolocical and anthropological inquiry seems to be that they managed their environment much more successfully that their conquerors have managed. They had important lessons for us, some of which are preserved in modern aboriginal cultures, but much of which has been lost by the incredible loss of life brought about by European diseases and the cultural discrimination which has persisted since the first Europeans set foot in America. It is still Gaia, because a fundamental principle of the Gaia hypothesis is that organisms change their environment. Other organisms can then take advantage of those changes, changing the environment themselves and ultimately building an intricate web of interdepencies upon which every organism relies. Mess up that environment and some organisms will not survive. But other organisms will move in to take advantage of the new environment. And so the cycle of life goes on - with humans as just one organism within that web of life. There can be no doubt that we can, and should influence our environment. We have a choice to do it in a way which sustains a reasonable comfort level, or we can choose to ignore our ability to impact the environment in positive or negative ways and risk the consequences. Either way, Gaia wins, and will make the final detrmination of human fate, irrespective of our human perceptions of what is right or wrong, good or bad.
If you wish, Gaia is God, but both are far more than most people manage to comprehend. And that is very sad. Honor and respect for the earth is a good place to start. | |
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