Of the Religious Nature...

I found our looking into the context of nature within the psalms to be very interesting in class on Friday. Multiple psalms have mention of different aspects of nature to praise God's "handiwork" or show a sense of fascination with his power. This connection got me thinking on a few different tangents:

The cultures we are raised in are extremely dependent on our relationship to the natural world. Likewise with this, our respect and care for the environment seem equally dependent on the intimacy of existence with nature. For example, with foraging socieities (yay cultural anthropology) and past Native American cultures (effigy mounds), their very existence is very intimate and dependent on their surroundings, and in turn they have a very balanced sense of reciprocity in protecting their source of existence (very logical, don't you think?). As compared with industrial societies, our contact with nature is very limited and as a result, our respectful reciprocity is equally limited. This made me think to this connection of nature and culture through religion since studying the psalms. In past works of literature, the presence and mention of nature is quite frequent in glorifying God's or god's power(s) as many of the cultures they are derived from had a close relationship of nature and were able to see this display of power on a personal level. This also reminded me of the drawings at the Caves of Lascaux - though the paintings may not be religious, they do seem to show a sense of fascination and awe of their nonhuman neighbors. I can say myself I'm not awed in the least by the squirrels and bunny rabbits running around my backyard.

This led to another tangent on how our continued detachment from nature over time leads us to downsize its glory. Scientific explanations for natural mysteries have completely demolished their awesomeness and beauty. A sunset is just an assortment of color pigments and particles associated with light reflections; birth is just the replication and development of a bunch of cells (this reminded me of Angels & Demons). It seems as if our expanded knowledge of nature comes decreased respect. Maybe not shown so much in works of religion, but in our actions (yay Earth Day). Is is that the lack of care towards Mother Nature in our western industrialist societies is because we cannot see what we need to care about? Science and technology do have their downfalls.

I've had this argument with a few of my athiest friends who tend to lean towards the scientific argument. I think nature is too intricate and beautiful to just be a result of two objects in space crashing into each other and sparking an explosion of evolutionary growth. Being a scientist myself, its hard to see where to draw the line between religion and science. Instead of needing a distinct line (as some require), I believe the two theories are rather sewn together rather than completely seperate, which helps me see both sides of the religion/science coin. For this particular currency on nature, I like seeing both the fascination and awe-worthy side (as displayed throughout the pslams) as well as the explanitory scientific.