Science, Faith and the Climate Crisis (original) (raw)
Related papers
Science and Religion: The Challenge of Climate Change
2019
The paper will present models of relating science and religion. It will attempt to identify a model that allows a constructive dialogue between science and religion to address the challenge of climate change. Today, modern science is the most powerful tool known to explore the physical laws and processes that govern the universe. The methodology of modern science has been amazingly successful in uncovering the working of the planet and universe for us. It has unlocked the code of life and decoded the DNA of many organisms. It has laid the groundwork for astonishing advances in technology, benefiting humanity. On the other hand, religion plays an essential foundation in the lives of the vast majority of people worldwide. Religion has inspired some of the world's greatest art and literature. Moreover, religion has played a vital role in crafting moral and ethical conduct through the ages. Religion throughout history has addressed morality, salvation and the purposes of existence. However, the same science has given us the technology and industries that ravage our earth, pollute our environment and wreaking havoc to our climate. Religion, on the other hand, has become a suspect in fomenting bigotry, intolerance, and violence.
Religion to the Rescue (?) in an Age of Climate Disruption
Since the early 1990s calls by religious elites as well as by scholars who affiliate with and study religions to address the negative consequences of anthropogenic climate change have been increasing. An important example of the trend occurred in November 2014 during the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion in San Diego where ‘Religion and Climate Change’ was the conference’s central theme. Data presented at this meeting, however, was not encouraging for those hoping that religious individuals were embracing consensus scientific understandings about anthropogenic climate change, and becoming deeply concerned about climate disruption and making a strong response to it a high priority. The scientific study of the religious dimensions of perceptions and actions related to climate change, for its part, is showing signs of becoming more rigorous and illuminating, better able to track changes that might unfold with regard to religious perceptions and practices related to the earth’s environmental systems.
Science and Religion in the Face of the Environmental Crisis
2016
BOTH science and religion are challenged by the environmental crisis, both to reevaluate the natural world and to reevaluate their dialogue with each other. Both are thrown into researching fundamental theory and practice in the face of an upheaval unprecedented in human history, indeed in planetary history. Life on Earth is in jeopardy owing to the behavior of one species, the only species that is either scientific or religious, the only species claiming privilege as the "wise spe-cies, " Homo sapiens. Nature and the human relation to nature must be evaluated within cultures, classically by their religions, currently also by the sciences so eminent in Western culture. Ample numbers of theologians and ethicists have become persuaded that religion needs to pay more attention to ecology, and many ecologists recognize religious dimensions to caring for nature and to addressing the ecological crisis. Somewhat ironically, just when humans, with their increasing industry and tec...
Science, Spirituality, and Climate Change
Peace Review, 2022
Ardizzone discusses the role of science and spirituality in addressing climate change. As our planet sits on the brink of catastrophe, humanity's efforts to address climate change remain woefully inadequate. Peace education methodology and core values put forth by Belly Reardon remind us that planetary care, sustainability, environmental justice are all components of peace. Utilizing the three Core Values of Peace Education - Planetary Stewardship, Humane Relationship, and Global Citizenship - transformational work can be done in community settings such as schools, universities, activist organizations, and places of worship. Incorporating the voices of youth, indigenous people, and those hit hardest by climate change is imperative, as we all have a role to play in addressing climate change. To sustain our work and open our hearts and minds to collaborative efforts, we need good science, and we need transformative spirituality.
Holy Climate! Comparing Religious Responses to Climate Change
Master Thesis, 2020
Climate change not only poses a problem of changing weather patterns and alternating living conditions, it also poses a challenge to dominant cultural systems as these are intimately linked with its causes. As such, climate change is described both as a ‘crisis of cultural imagination’ and as a ‘religious event’ - because it challenges the cosmologies and worldviews that underpin the modern world. For these reasons, and because religion plays an important role in the lives of around 84% of the world’s population, understanding religious responses to climate change are an essential part of understanding the cultural implications of climate change. Although research on the climate change-religion relation has been rapidly expanding within the past ten- fifteen years, there still is a lack of comparative studies that map-out variations across global and religious viewpoints. The thesis seeks to address this gap in the research by providing a comparative analysis of the four major world religions (Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism), asking how religious actors are responding to climate change in narratives as well as in actions. Additionally, by also comparing traditional religious actors’ responses with those of secular and neo-religious actors, the thesis reveals how multiple pressures from religious and secular bodies alike, critically express a need for re-evaluating the modern conception of the human-earth relation, and to re-calibrate the conception of nature to one that views it with more respect and treats it with more care.
Annual Review of Environment & Resources, 2018
Understanding the cultural dimensions of climate change requires understanding its religious aspects. Insofar as climate change is entangled with humans, it is also entangled with all the ways in which religion attends human ways of being. Scholarship on the connections between religion and climate change includes social science research into how religious identity figures in attitudes toward climate change, confessional and constructive engagements of religious thought with climate change from various communities and traditions, historical and anthropological analyses of how climate affects religion and religion interprets climate, and theories by which climate change may itself be interpreted as a religious event. Responses to climate change by indigenous peoples challenge the categories of religion and of climate change in ways that illuminate reflexive stresses between the two cultural concepts. [pre-publication proofs; cite from the final paper at Annual Reviews]
Varieties of religious engagement with climate change
Routledge Handbook of Religion and Ecology (eds.) Tucker, Jenkins, Grim, 2016
In exploring the relationship between religion and climate change this essay argues three things. First, it makes the case that religious thought and practice -- cosmologies, beliefs and perceptions, ethics and ways of life -- is important for understanding how the idea of climate change is given meaning in the contemporary world. Second, the meanings attached to climate change by different religious traditions will be diverse and at times contradictory. Third, more informed engagement with the world’s religions – on the part of scholars, advocates and politicians - is essential to shape the unfolding story of climate change and humanity.