Biocentrically-Oriented Ecology and its New Idols. Christian Ethics in Comparison with the Reductionist Anthropology of Current Ecological Trends. Cover Image

Ekologia zorientowana biocentrycznie i jej nowi bogowie. Etyka chrześcijańska wobec redukcjonistycznej antropologii współczesnych nurtów ekologicznych
Biocentrically-Oriented Ecology and its New Idols. Christian Ethics in Comparison with the Reductionist Anthropology of Current Ecological Trends.

Author(s): Paweł Murziński
Subject(s): Christian Theology and Religion, Anthropology, Human Ecology
Published by: Kuria Metropolitalna Białostocka

Summary/Abstract: There is no need to convince anybody that the protection of environment is a current and global problem. However, some ecologists’ and state organisations’ actions have to raise concern. These actions are more and more often harmful to human beings, making them „slaves” of nature. It happens so as a result of a nowadays domineering scientific vision of reality, which is a biocentric vision, deprived of its relation to God as a Creator and a human, and to a human being, as a „crown of creation”. In this „new world” the supreme value is Nature itself, where a human has became one of its main components, „a child of Nature”. This special resacralisation of the Earth as Mother Nature and the holistic vision of the universe (expressed in the belief that: All is one) presented by current physics and astronomy, lead to the anthropological reductionism, which deprives a man not only of his likeness to God, but his so far undisputed ontological (existential or essential) superiority over other works of nature. Its consequence is many actions violating human dignity and even threatening his existence. Ecology nowadays has become a special kind of a battlefield between anthropocentrism and biocentrism. The final result of the battle is not trivial because it may have influence on deep changes in the way of living and thinking of the future generations. That is why the problem of anthropological reductionism in the light of Christian morality (obviously anthropologically oriented but treating with respect all other God’s creations that are His gift to a man) described in the article is relevant, important and up-to-date. The aim of the article is to present the Christian vision of ecology as a good alternative to the domineering, biocentrically-oriented ecology, marked with a new, natural ideology where unfortunately „human” nature of a man seems to disappear.

  • Issue Year: 27/2009
  • Issue No: 1
  • Page Range: 425-451
  • Page Count: 27
  • Language: Polish