Research Paper
What role has religion played in the development of environmental ethics?
I conducted my first original research paper to better understand how religion has influence the way we view, value, and respect nature as a whole. I decided on this topic after taking two specific courses, Environmental Ethics and World Religions. In studying Environmental Ethics I noticed how Western philosophy influenced by Christian beliefs differ in the way it valued and treated nature as compared to Eastern philosophy influence by the pagan Upanishad religion. It appears that Christians who believed in single all loving and powerful God felt that stewardship over the Earth allowed them to dominate and control nature while religions in the east such as Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism saw all nature as sacred and possessing some sort of spirit that was to be respected and saved from harm or violence. I was intrigued to see how deep the connection between religion and environmental ethics ran and decided to do some investigative research involving interviews and a lot of in depth literary research on the topic.
Below is the abstract of my paper, please feel free to download and read the entire paper.
With advancing modern technology and scientific research it is becoming more difficult to deny the impact humans have in damaging the planet’s natural environment. From factory farming, poaching, and tearing down forests humans have caused irreversible damage that has put not only the environment and animals at risk of extinction, but also our very selves. When trying to understand how we have ended up at this problem it is important to ask ourselves: what ethical policy do we as a society hold towards the environment? Additionally, we should dig into what specific beliefs we hold have influenced the development of such ethics. These questions do not have a universal answer as the way the environment is valued and treated vary amongst different groups of people and are often based on the region they live in, their culture, and even inherited religious beliefs. To better understand the connection between religion and environmental ethics, I have researched the topic on the difference between Christian and Buddhist understanding of their responsibility to the environment.
