Video version of this article
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Third and final part in my series about atheism and atheists, and the need for the divine and the sacred.
About the Destruction of Everything Sacred.
If this tree here is sacred,[1]then I'm not going to chop it down in order to sell it for profit, am I? But trees are no longer sacred. Why? Let's find out.
In order to justify the destruction of our forests, the destruction of our fields, of our lakes, of our seas, of our rivers and streams, in order to justify the torture and destruction of animals and animal species, you need to be detached from nature yourself. You need to think of yourself as being above nature, better than nature.
In order to think that it's fine to exploit and misuse nature and anything in nature for the better of man, you need to have a monotheistic religion as the foundation of your morals, your ideology, your worldview. Only people who have this fundament for their ideology and worldview is able to do that.
When nothing is sacred anymore, you can do whatever you want. You can cut down the trees. You can torture animals. You can destroy whole valleys just to make some power plant, a dam. That would bring you electricity for your industry so that you can destroy even more. Only the divine kept our forebears from destroying our flora and fauna. Respect for the sacred, via the deities. If you see nothing divine in nature, then nothing in nature is sacred to you.
And to those who think that technology and what we have is a good thing, I will tell you to please study the consequences a bit more thoroughly. The consequences of industrialization, the consequences of the exploitation ideology that we have, that we must have in order to uphold this high-tech civilization.
To the pre-Christian European, everything in nature was sacred, and connected to a deity. Every tree, flower, animal, forest, hill, stream, lake, etc, was sacred, and not for man to do with as he pleased. Environmentalism is a form of Paganism. Permaculture is a form of Paganism. Desert religions: man is above and better than nature, and nothing in nature is sacred. Atheism: There is nothing sacred at all. Pre-Christian European: Everything is sacred, and man is a part of nature. It doesn't take much brain power to understand what is best for our future.
If this tree here is sacred,[1]then I'm not going to chop it down in order to sell it for profit, am I? But trees are no longer sacred. Why? Let's find out.
In order to justify the destruction of our forests, the destruction of our fields, of our lakes, of our seas, of our rivers and streams, in order to justify the torture and destruction of animals and animal species, you need to be detached from nature yourself. You need to think of yourself as being above nature, better than nature.
In order to think that it's fine to exploit and misuse nature and anything in nature for the better of man, you need to have a monotheistic religion as the foundation of your morals, your ideology, your worldview. Only people who have this fundament for their ideology and worldview is able to do that.
When the Christians arrived in Europe, from the Middle East, they started by cutting down the trees, because they were sacred to the Europeans.
When nothing is sacred anymore, you can do whatever you want. You can cut down the trees. You can torture animals. You can destroy whole valleys just to make some power plant, a dam. That would bring you electricity for your industry so that you can destroy even more. Only the divine kept our forebears from destroying our flora and fauna. Respect for the sacred, via the deities. If you see nothing divine in nature, then nothing in nature is sacred to you.
And to those who think that technology and what we have is a good thing, I will tell you to please study the consequences a bit more thoroughly. The consequences of industrialization, the consequences of the exploitation ideology that we have, that we must have in order to uphold this high-tech civilization.
- Earth erosion, washing almost all our fertile soil into the sea because of modern agriculture
- Genetic deterioration in man, dramatically accelerated by modern medicine
- Poisoning of almost all water on this planet, with everything from pesticides and chemicals to cancer cells flushed from hospitals directly into our drinking water
- Depleting natural resources, leaving nothing for future generations
- Spreading of radioactivity, leaking from both Chernobyl and Fukushima, and many poorly secured nuclear waste storage facilities
- Unjust wars, to fuel the economy and create jobs in the USA
- Domestication of man, turning the natural and free man into degenerated slave creature.
- Globalisation, causing all the world's problems to become global, affecting everybody.
- Overpopulation, making all the above problems even worse
To the pre-Christian European, everything in nature was sacred, and connected to a deity. Every tree, flower, animal, forest, hill, stream, lake, etc, was sacred, and not for man to do with as he pleased. Environmentalism is a form of Paganism. Permaculture is a form of Paganism. Desert religions: man is above and better than nature, and nothing in nature is sacred. Atheism: There is nothing sacred at all. Pre-Christian European: Everything is sacred, and man is a part of nature. It doesn't take much brain power to understand what is best for our future.
- Like it was in pre-Christian Europe, when it was dedicated to HaimadalþaR (Heimdallr/Saturnus/Kronos etc.)