GMOs: A Call to Faith and Ethics

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Why do some religious groups have a problem with biotechnology and GMOs?

What are GMO’s?

• Genetically modified organisms are plants or animals whose DNA has been genetically engineered in such a way that it improves the organism’s overall health, strength, etc.
• This procedure is done in a laboratory.
• These organisms can not be found in nature.
• There are food products available for consumption that contain GMOs, yes the Government allows this.

What’s all the controversy surrounding GMOs about?

• GMOs have never been studied long term so technically we don’t know the affects of GMOs on humans after a long period of being exposed to and ingesting these products.
• GMOs have been tested on animals but some claim that the research was not extensive enough.
• Farmers are at risk because biotechnology companies have the ability to sue any farm who has become contaminated with GMOs, for example this could happen if the wind from a neighboring GMO-using farm carries the pollen from genetically modified corn to the next farm over, who is organic. The biotechnology company owns the rights to the GMOs, in turn they have the right to sue anyone who uses their technology even if by mistake…
• There is evidence that GMOs are directly responsible for the production of “super weeds” and “super drugs.”
• The effects of GMOs on the environment have not been fully studied.

Foods you may consume on an everyday basis, that you might not have known contain GMOs.

 

 

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Religion calls for faith, fundamental values, and often times for stewardship.

There are ethical issue surrounding the use of GMOs, there are people who resist consuming GMOs because of their religious beliefs. People of faith see GMOs has giving people the chance to “play God.” Others think that tampering with nature is instinctually wrong or that inserting animal genes in plants is immoral.

Some Christian groups say that their approach to GMOs is based on care for God’s creation as shown in Genesis 2.15 – respect for God’s creations. God entrusted the earth to man’s use. For a Christian who interpreted the passage in Genesis this way, he might say “Yes” to GMOs. It is man’s responsibly to care for the earth, what is wrong with bettering it?

Judaism and GMOs: although Jewish law does not prohibit GMO food, that does not mean that it is ethically okay. In the Jewish religion, humans must work to bring the world closer to perfection and not further away from it. Although GMOs may increase the quality of food, there is also a risk that it may be harmful to human health and the environment . Which may be the reason that a Rabbi would urge people of the Jewish community to scrutinize GMOs  closely.

There are no laws within Islam that prevent the genetic modification of food and crops, the same as in all religions simply because religious practices came about in a time where the thought of science modifying organisms wasn’t even a thought, let alone an idea. Some followers of Islam say that there is no need for genetically modified food because God created everything perfectly and man does not have the right to tamper with God’s creations.

Through these three examples of  different religions, it is clear that religion has the ability to encourage and inspires one’s actions. If religion can influence your view on the debate over GMO use and consumption, couldn’t it influence stewardship for the environment and serve as a vehicle to influence change in the environmental movement?

Ashley

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Saving Chimpanzees

This post will shed light onto the fact as to why saving Chimpanzees can contribute to a solution to our environmental crisis.

Chimpanzees are in danger of extinction

Chimps are losing their home

• Deforestation – permanent destruction of forests for uses such as agriculture, farming, settlements.

• Hunted for bush meat – While bushmeat has always been a popular source of dietary protein for local communities, the scale of hunting has increased dramatically, and the activity has become heavily commercialized with much of the meat now going to urban residents.

The human-caused factors that have led to our environmental crisis

• The ever growing rate of extinction of chimpanzees in the wild is a cause of modernity.
• What does it mean to live in a modern world? Modernity can be described as the rate at which a rapid change in science and technology is evolving. To live in a modern society is to assume that science has the answer to everything.
• Industrialization occurred primarily in the West before moving to the East. Could it be that the West is responsible for rapid industrialization which has resulted in a depletion of natural habitats, led to the extinction of species, caused the globe to warm or should both the West and the East share the burden of a modern life which has lead to the pressing issue of an environmental crisis?
• We live in a data driven, scientifically focused society – A society where there is a relentless economic exploitation of nature and the consumption of its resources.

Why Should we Care About Saving Chimpanzees?

If awareness of the preservation and ecological concern for chimpanzees is not raised, the human-caused factors such as deforestation that are leading to their decrease in population size will keep increasing and the burden of humanity killing its environment will become that much heavier.

How does saving chimpanzees  contribute to the idea of a religious ecology? Different groups within different religions have differing ideologies of how they view their relationship between man and nature. Just like Pope Francis we can imagine a world in which all people, of varying religious groups shared the same ideology, one in which man didn’t exert dominance over nature but instead showed stewardship towards it. Small everyday actions such as recycling (P.S. take my survey about why people recycle here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/3GTHQJY ) can prove to have a domino affect of greener actions on everyone around you.

Ashley

 

We Must Heal the Commons

The Tragedy of the commons, by Garrett Hardin, makes clear that environmental issues like that of the nuclear arms race are national and global security issues. Hardin places a strong emphasis on the fact that the nuclear arms race “has no technical solution.” Could this also be true about the environmental crisis as well?

 
The commons is a public plot of land that no one person has ownership or dominion over, but rather it is shared by every person in a community and owned by the government. This common place was not good enough for farming but was good enough for pasteurizing animals. There are many problems that arise when multiple individuals share a common space.

 
The main ideas of this article:
• Overpopulation: the individual impacts are small but the impacts of a group are huge and no one person is responsible.
• Over consumption: a technical solution would be to stop consumption of a certain substance. The problem is that people will find a way around it and consume that substance anyway. This leaves seeds of problems unseen.
• Economics and human behavior: The tragedy of the commons is presented as a mathematical equation. On an economic level, each individual will act to maximize his utility. For example, each individual increases his herd without limit.
• Pollution must be prevented by coercive laws or taxing devices. Pollution is a consequence of overpopulation.
• Temperance is self control or limit. This would involve an individual and collective movement that has to do with some type of morality to prohibit a certain behavior.

The commons serves as a metaphor for the planet. The commons problems of depleted natural resources, over fishing, over hunting, et cetera have resulted because no one has an economic incentive to limit their fair share. The problems that the commons caused mentioned in the main ideas above, such as over population, do not have a technical solution. Looking for the answers through science and technology will only make the situation worse. Rather the solution but be a nontechnical one and I feel the same way about our current environmental crisis. In order to improve the crisis one must look to nontechnical solutions whether that be in religion, education, government or any other area of life.

To heal the commons, we must first heal ourselves.
Ashley

Creating Ecological Cultures

We need a reconstruction of science and culture; the marriage between technology and science has shown ruthlessness towards nature. Most people today have a modern or capitalistic mindset; it is taught in classrooms, depicted through news stories and of course occurs in politics. This mindset teaches us the idea that we can think our way out of a problem, even on a global scale and implement a solution. But what happens when science alone can no longer fix our problems?

In the Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis by Lynn White, White speaks about what he has come to believe is the main root or cause of our environmental crisis. Much like the authors John Grim and Mary Evelyn Tucker of the book Ecology and Religion, White speaks about the idea of modernity being the cause of the environmental crisis. “Formerly man has been part of nature; now he was the exploiter of nature,” this sets the tone for the rest of the paper where White defines the relationship between humans and the natural world. He depicts this relationship in a negative way, a relationship in which “Man and nature are two things, and man is master.” White thinks that science and technology which originated in the West grew out of a Christian outlook in which man has dominance over nature.

White claims that “Hence, we shall continue to have a worsening ecologic crisis until we reject the Christian axiom that nature has no reason for existence save to serve man.” Since our problems are so deeply rooted in the ideas of westward expansion, science and technology can not alone solve the problem of our ecological crisis; White believes “…The remedy must also be essentially religious.” I agree with White, when he says the crisis has only gotten worse as science and technology has continued to advance. If science and technology cannot in fact provide us with a solution, we must look to a different source. One source is religion; religious groups can serve as a vehicle for environmental change.

 

Despite religious differences we all share one home

Similarly to White, Grim and Tucker, I believe that our environmental crisis will continue to worsen unless the necessary first step of changing the mindset of people all over the world is taken. A problem caused by the very thing, science and technology, that is trying to fix it, will inevitably result in a never ending cycle of one crisis after the other. The solution to our environmental crisis must be one in which science and religion work together to create an ecological culture.

 

 

Religion and Ecology meet

 

Ashley