Creation: God and Endangered Species
— Biodiversity and Landscape 1994

"Creation: God and Endangered Species." In Ke Chung Kim and Robert D. Weaver, eds., Biodiversity and Landscape (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pages 47-60.
Online at: http://hdl.handle.net/10217/37457

Species have evolved from an evolutionary point of view, but by contemporary religious conviction, life is sacred and species exist with a divinely authorized claim to life, which ought to be respected by humans, the overseers of creation. Human-caused extinctions shut down the creative processes. Human dominion over the Earth is constrained by the inherent goodness in and value of creation. Extinction of species is ungodly. Such religious convictions can be an effective force in conservation biology. Also published in Lawrence S. Hamilton, ed., Ethics, Religion and Biodiversity (Cambridge, England: The White Horse Press, 1993), pages 40-64.