abaddon

Genesis 1:28
God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

Genesis 2:15
The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.

I've seen some say that disregard for the environment among some or many Christians comes from emphasizing the Genesis 1:28 "subdue it" quote. Then others, championing the idea of environmental stewardship, will emphasize the Genesis 2:15 verse about taking care of it.

Someone had told me she thought the criticism from some environmentalism article she'd read, that Genesis gives humans full dominion to do whatever they want with earth's resources (as she reported it to have said), is flatly contradicted in the 2nd chapter Genesis creation story. For her, Genesis is absolutely clear that humans are meant by God to be stewards.

I replied I thought it was more a matter of interpretation and not so clear. And I thought (though wasn't sure) that some Christians through history have interpreted it pretty starkly to mean humans have full dominion to do as they want with earth's resources.

Now I'd like to be more sure than I was during that convo. I know some modern Christians promote "the greening of spirituality" by emphasizing stewardship of the environment. But was that always how all Christians have viewed the creation myths in Genesis? or is it more open to a variety of views, among various sorts of Christians, as I was thinking?

Clivedurdle

Why is an old book of anything but historical interest? Are these not matters to work out from first principles, for example, evolution, ecology, food webs and energy use?

Would you not get upset if I when teaching trigonometry put God into an explanation of cosine?

Similarly, what has an old book to do with ecosystems?

Maybe we should be very clear about this - the religious tanks are messing up my lawn.

Clivedurdle

Came across a fascinating phrase - constellation making.

Is this not happening here - "and it was very good"?

The Ichneumon wasp, leukemia, are examples that maybe things are messy.

Why give what are really lala fairy stories the time of day?

Would we kindly quote Odum on these matters?

abaddon

It's a matter of historical interest. And for believers it can matter. Some feel their religion gets a bad rap when it's accused of being the major cause of the environmental crises, and in the past half century the liberal Christians are trying to reformulate how "green" Christianity actually is (or at least should be) and, of course, they look for the nicest sounding verses in their Bible as the source to base their new(?) ideas on. But it's most often Genesis that is the focus, 'cuz it's the foundational myth. Creation myths are those ones that say how God intended everything to go from the beginning of time. So they matter a lot to the believers and thus to history and even to current politics.

I somewhat agree with them about some environmentalists being harsh to think it's all religion's fault, because it's civilization as a whole that contributes to how the environment is viewed by people, and used by them. And religion historically is, of course, coincidental with civilization as a facet of it. It has influenced everyone's thought. The secular philosophers that have shaped every modern person's view on reality were in their turn shaped by Christianity. Kant, for example, thought humans have a dignity that must be protected and they're rational beings and thus the only ones with intrinsic value; so he deemed animals to have value only inasmuch as the way humans treat them reflects on the character of the human (if you beat dogs, it means you might also be mean enough to beat humans, so that's what makes the dog-beating bad and has nothing to do with the dog itself). That viewpoint is an exact duplication of Thomas Aquinas, only with "the divine" removed as its justification. But you'll frequently see this view, or something very like it, in contemporary arguments about the value of humans compared to animals too, because of the effects of Christianity and Kant on the modern worldview. The metaphysical foundations of old religionists and philosophers have largely fallen away, but the attitude lives on anyway.

I can make what I'm looking for very simple, I think, if I rephrase my OP as a T/F statement: "From what's written in Genesis 1-3, it can be concluded that it says humans are not to use the earth in just any way they want". I would say that's a pretty stark black and white thing to say. It could be interpreted differently, and maybe has been historically. I was hoping maybe a visitor or two to this forum would know of historical instances when especially the second creation myth (in Genesis 2) was not interpreted by at least some Christians in the light of "be stewards of the earth".

Chili

nure, he said have dominion over the fish and over the birds of the air and the dinosour too. And he said "go for it man" and learn to fly and make sure you get those big ones as they are the ones you want, but forgot to say that a kitty will make a better friend.

In short it has nothing to do with the world 'out there' but the world that is in our mind that we must fill and then subdue so we can be like him, again, and so the 'plan of salvation' is created ex nihilo with the words God spoke.

Accordingly, NO creation takes place in Gen.2 where the plan is put together by Lord God so that the created essence can take form in the mind of man.

So they are not 2 creation stories, but the second one is the design in life wherein the created essence of Gen. 1 is put together as plan so that there will be no suprise to God, and say "holy shit, the bugger sinned" when he does in Gen. 3. So now sin is good and no surprise at all, with the primary in place that we become co-creator with God in his own likeness as human to further knowledge and wisdom to be retained in the TOL where Lord God reigns as man in the image of that God (mythology specific now).

We do this in the river of life that is involutional in Gen.2:10-13 where the gather takes place, on 'his' river, to note, and then the last two rivers in verse 14 are evolutional to get us home again to be with him no longer as 'like-god' in deprivation but in the privacy that we once knew.

Horatio Parker

I would argue that having the divine power to create or destroy isn't license to do so indiscriminately. How does "subdue" become the equivalent of "poison"? Only if no judgement follows the action.

I don't know how persuasive that would sound to a Xtian, but that's what I would say.

Tommy

How could Adam and Eve have obeyed the commandment to "fill the Earth and subdue it" if there was a chance they would stay in the garden?