The Guardian‘s Belief section has published an excerpt from a sermon by Richard Chartres at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, which reflects on why Robert May, an atheist and Britain’s chief science adviser, has declared that religion may be necessary to avert the environmental crisis:
Our country cannot simply be described as religious but Lord May’s remarks point to the possibility that we are also entering a post secular period in which our perspective on the world is being refashioned in response to contemporary economic and environmental challenges and in which the search for a more holistic understanding of reality is rendering the rather flatland, reductionist descriptions of the recent past increasingly unsatisfying.
If the reference to God is edited out of our perspective then the world simply becomes a theatre of human willing. We come to regard ourselves as gods and our wills as sovereign. We no longer experience ourselves as participants in an animated universe but as detached exploiters of mere matter. Dominance is substituted for connectedness in our relations with the world around us. Choice becomes the highest good and not what we choose.
Continue reading at the Guardian.