Biologist E.O. Wilson Issues Plea for Creation

c. 2006 Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly (UNDATED) Pulitzer Prize-winning scientist E.O. Wilson fears for the creation _ for many of the 10 million or more species of plants and animals he says are in mortal peril. Wilson, a biologist who recently retired from Harvard University, has written a new book, “The Creation,” that is a […]

c. 2006 Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly

(UNDATED) Pulitzer Prize-winning scientist E.O. Wilson fears for the creation _ for many of the 10 million or more species of plants and animals he says are in mortal peril.

Wilson, a biologist who recently retired from Harvard University, has written a new book, “The Creation,” that is a plea for science and religion to work together to save the species.


“Pastor, we need your help,” he writes in “The Creation.” “The Creation is the glory of the earth. Let’s see if we can’t get together on saving it, because science and religion are the most powerful social forces on Earth.”

In an interview with Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, Wilson said his mission is to protect all of the earth’s species. And the greatest threat to biodiversity, he said, is humankind’s appetite for more _ more lumber, more food, more minerals and more space _ to support a population of 6.5 billion people soon to be 9 billion.

“We are threatened by the immense loss of future scientific knowledge, of future products that could enrich humanity and give us a higher quality of life,” he said. “But the loss that I care about most is in our … spiritual enrichment … in living in the magnificent original environment in which humanity was born.”

The natural world, Wilson said, provides humanity with untold gifts. It cleans water, pollinates plants and provides pharmaceuticals, among others.

“Thirty trillion dollars worth of services, scot-free to humanity, every year,” he said.

Wilson said scientists have identified 25 so-called “hotspots” _ covering about 2.5 percent of Earth’s surface _ in which nearly half of all the plant and animal species have been found. He wants the world to spend $30 billion to protect those ecosystems _ “to throw an umbrella over them.” The same species in other places might be endangered, but those in the hotspots would survive.

Wilson, long an outspoken secular humanist, was raised a Southern Baptist in Alabama, and his book, “The Creation,” is addressed to an imaginary Southern Baptist pastor. That imaginary pastor could be Richard Land, who heads the Southern Baptists’ Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission and who is a major spokesman for conservative religious viewpoints. Land has also written his own book on the environment, “The Earth is the Lord’s.”

Land argues that in the first chapter of Genesis, “God put man in charge (of creation) under his headship. Human beings have dominion and are given dominion.”


But that’s tempered by the next chapter in Genesis, where man is put into the Garden (of Eden) to till it and keep it.

“We’re not to just worship nature in its pristine form,” Land told Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly. “We have a divinely mandated responsibility to both develop the earth for human betterment and to protect it and to guard it and keep it and exercise creation care.”

Land accuses Wilson of being too concerned about wildlife and not enough about humanity.

“He looks upon human beings as an alien species to the habitat of nature, and that we are the ones that are destructive and that we have been a catastrophic event,” Land said. “Nature would have been far better off without human beings.”

“As a Christian, we believe that God created the creation for humankind,” he added. “So, while we are to give respect to all life, we must treat human life with reverence. And there is in Christian theology, a hierarchy of species. And there is a firebreak between humans and the rest of creation. It is human beings that God gave soul.”

Land said humans “certainly” need to do what they can to protect other species “without causing grievous harm to human beings. There’s the difference: without causing grievous harm to human beings.”

According to Land, millions of people, especially the very poor, would be devastated by some proposal for protecting the environment. But Wilson insists that biodiversity could be protected without hurting humans.


“It would increase our standard of living if we did it sensibly with less material and energy consumption and conservation of the rest of life.” Wilson said. “We can actually increase the productivity of the world while saving all of the _ or most of the _ remaining species.”

Wilson said he sees a problem in the belief by some Christians that Christ is coming again “and … therefore there isn’t a lot of value in paying any attention to what we do to the earth. We could go ahead and tear it all to hell and back. And I do consider that, frankly, as a gospel of despair _ a view of humanity and our place on this earth that is indefensible.”

For his part, Land said he has never met an evangelical Christian who believes that.

“I’m beginning to wonder if it’s a mythic figure,” he said. “I believe that history will culminate in a radical second advent of Jesus Christ to judge the quick and the dead and to redeem his creation and humankind. But I specifically repudiate that you can draw from that, that we can ignore the biblical admonitions and the biblical commands to exercise creation care. I think that is a false theology.”

DEA/RR END ABERNETHY

Editors: To obtain photos of Wilson and Land, go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by subject or slug.

A version of this story first appeared on the PBS program “Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly.” This article may be reprinted by RNS clients. Please use the Religion & Ethics Newsweekly byline.


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