In
Christianity Explored, the opening video has Rico Tice telling us how wonderful 'nature' is and that its beauty points us to God.
I wonder if he was thinking of a tiger pulling its live prey to pieces when he came out with that tosh?
The creation certainly is a major pointer to God, its creator, but it has to be thoughtfully and critically done, not by mere romantic ramblings.
Along this line, I came across the following in an article "
The Costs of the Environmentalism Cult"
The central mistake of the romantic environmentalist is to gloss over the profound differences between human beings and the natural world. We are not “natural” creatures. What makes us human is everything that exists nowhere else in the natural world: the mind, language, consciousness, memory, higher emotions, and culture. None of these exist even in the highest primates. Apes do not craft tools, marry, name their offspring, bury their dead, live by laws or customs, or respect inalienable rights. This radical uniqueness of human identity means that we do not have a “harmonious” relationship with nature, but an adversarial and conflicted one. The natural world is the alien, inhuman realm of blind force, indifferent to suffering, death, and beauty. It is meaningless, for only humans bestow meaning on the world. And that meaning reflects our knowledge that each of us is unique, a creature that appears only once, and that each of us must die.
Most important, unlike everything else in the natural world ruled by necessity, humans are free. As French critic Luc Ferry writes, “Man is free enough to die of freedom.” And from that freedom comes morality, all the things we are obligated to do or not do, particularly in regard to our fellow humans. The nexus of consciousness of our individual uniqueness and necessary death, our freedom to choose to act against nature’s determinism, and our moral obligations to one another is what makes us unnatural––and human. Nature is our home only by dint of our alteration of it to make it suitable for such creatures, and that process is one of conflict and struggle against the brutal forces of extinction and destruction that have characterized the natural world for the 3.6 billion years life has existed.
Like many modern evangelical activities, CE talks about God the creator, but not in a real and tangible way; from my memory the CE people are of the 'God created, but evolution was his 'mechanism' " school; so they can't connect God tangibly with his creation, and leave the link in story land. Then they are left having to avoid 'natural evil' and not place it in context of a creation that is turned against its creator.
