{"id":4322,"date":"2007-08-03T23:50:00","date_gmt":"2007-08-03T23:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2007\/08\/saving-mother-earth-from-her-worshippers\/"},"modified":"2007-08-03T23:50:00","modified_gmt":"2007-08-03T23:50:00","slug":"saving-mother-earth-from-her-worshippers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2007\/08\/saving-mother-earth-from-her-worshippers.html","title":{"rendered":"Saving Mother Earth From Her Worshippers"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p>The idea of the earth as mother is not as alien to the Bible as one might have heard. It is quite clearly present in Job 1:21, when Job says \u201cnaked I came from my mother\u2019s womb, and naked I will <em>return there.<\/em>\u201d It is also in the background when God, in Genesis 1:11 and 1:24, is said not to create living things directly, but by commanding the earth to bring them forth out of its creative potency.<\/p>\n<p>Yet having pointed this out, I wish to also express my hesitancy about the usefulness of this idea in our present context. While reading <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/0615130798?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=jamefmcgrshom-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=0615130798\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">What Does God Look Like in an Expanding Universe?<\/a><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=jamefmcgrshom-20&amp;l=as2&amp;o=1&amp;a=0615130798\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" style=\"border:none !important;margin:0px !important\"> in the hope of finding exciting new insights and creative thinking, I was disappointed how many of the contributors thought that, by shifting to a Native American or <a href='https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/library\/buddhism' target='_blank'>Buddhist<\/a> or vague New Age spiritual perspective, they had made progress. But the truth is that none of these traditions is any more obviously in keeping with modern science than is Christianity. Of course, we\u2019ve all encountered books and articles on the similarities between modern physics and eastern philosophy. But the similarities are superficial and far outweigh the differences. Speaking about reincarnation is no more obviously compatible with a scientific perspective than hoping for the resurrection of the last day.<\/p>\n<p>If one looks at India, for example, the belief that the Ganges is the manifestation of Ganga and is divine <em>did not serve as a sound basis for protecting the river from pollution<\/em>. On the contrary, it was hard for anyone to imagine that human beings who depend on the benevolence of the goddess could be doing her harm. The Christian idea of \u2018dominion\u2019 can be interpreted so as to emphasize <em>stewardship<\/em>, and the Hindu idea that rivers are expressions of the divine and above needing our care can be interpreted so as to emphasize the need to show <em>honor<\/em> to the life-giving Ganga by not mistreating her. Neither is inherently in line with either science or environmental concerns, but both have the potential to be, assuming those who adhere to these ideas actually care about the world of which we are a part and the shape in which we pass it on to our children. In the end, it all comes down not to mythology or dogma, but to compassion or the lack thereof.<\/p>\n<div class=\"blogger-post-footer\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/tracker\/7622297540113836091-297617340347087249?l=exploringourmatrix.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The idea of the earth as mother is not as alien to the Bible as one might have heard. It is quite clearly present in Job 1:21, when Job says \u201cnaked I came from my mother\u2019s womb, and naked I will return there.\u201d It is also in the background when God, in Genesis 1:11 and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Saving Mother Earth From Her Worshippers<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The idea of the earth as mother is not as alien to the Bible as one might have heard. 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