Nature & Humans

Stephen Jay Gould explores the thoughts of 19th century theologians, by exploring their question regarding why God would allow suffering/pain/torture in nature. Gould concludes that nature has no morals and that nature should be kept distant and separate from religious thought. In class, the following question was discussed, “Why does God make nature unmoral?” However, wouldn’t the appropriate question read, “Why do humans act unmorally in nature?” While there are various food chains and feeding patterns in nature, it is when humans start interfering with these patterns that “unmoral” events start to occur.

Personally, one of the most vivid examples I have seen of man interfering with nature was at a carnival one summer, where a huge female lion was kept in a cage, comparable to a shoebox. People could either take a picture by the lion or feed its cubs milk with a baby bottle. As Gould pointed out, when humans “humanize” animals, then our concept of nature becomes problematic. However, humans cannot be totally ignorant of nature and one must be respectful of it. For example, when using animals for food, they should not be “engineered” to meet the high demands of restaurants and grocery stores. Animals do suffer and as humans, we pride ourselves in holding values, hence when dealing with nature one should not let those values be disregarded because we are dealing with a raw environment.