Environmental Ethics and Religion/Science
—Clayton, Simpson, Oxford Handbook of Religion and Science, 2006

"Environmental Ethics and Religion/Science." Pages 908-928 in Philip Clayton and Zachary Simpson, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Science (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). Online at: https://hdl.handle.net/10217/233651

What to make of who we are, where we are, what we ought to do? These perennial questions are familiar enough; what is recently extraordinary is how the science-religion dialogue re-frames these old questions with an on Earth dimension. What to make of Earth, the home planet? Earth is proving to be a remarkable planet and humans have deep roots in and entwined destinies with this wonderland Earth. Simultaneously, however, humans are remarkable on this remarkable planet, a wonder on wonderland Earth. The foreboding challenge is that these spectacular humans, the sole moral agents on Earth, now jeopardize both themselves and their planet. Science and religion are equally needed, and strained, to bring salvation (to use a religious term), to keep life on Earth sustainable (to use a more secular, scientific term).