Among others, Michael Crichton has postulated that environmentalism is a proxy religion for secular humanists who reject the JudeoChristian metaphysic.
As if to provide further evidence for such speculations, today the New York Times published a Simon Winchester op-ed about the recent tragedy in Sri Lanka. It is entitled "The Year the Earth Fought Back" -- and what else is this supposed to imply, except that "she" "fought back" against her attackers (mankind).
Winchester interweaves science and mysticism in his narrative:
In recent decades, thanks largely to the controversial Gaia Theory developed by the British scientists James Lovelock, it has become ever more respectable to consider the planet as one immense and eternally interacting living system - the living planet, floating in space, every part of its great engine affecting every other, for good or for ill.
Mr. Lovelock's notion, which he named after the earth goddess of the Ancient Greeks, makes much of the delicacy of the balance that mankind's environmental carelessness increasingly threatens. But his theory also acknowledges the somber necessity of natural happenings, many of which seem in human terms so tragically unjust, as part of a vast system of checks and balances. The events that this week destroyed the shores of the Indian Ocean, and which leveled the city of Bam a year ago, were of unmitigated horror: but they may also serve some deeper planetary purpose, one quite hidden to our own beliefs....
For one thing is certain, and comfortless: on earth, eternally restless and alive, there will, and without a scintilla of doubt, be a next time.
Yes, of course. It is "certain" that earth is alive and acts with a "deeper planetary purpose". When we look over the amazing set of alleged coincidences which happened in the past, without which there could be no life on earth, the only reasonable conclusion is that... God is looking out for us.
Haha! No, just kidding. That doesn't make sense at all. The only reasonable conclusion to reach is that the earth is a sentient creature, like a giant goddess, who has deliberate "purposes" for doing things, and, for some odd reason, cares deeply about producing and maintaining this thing we call "life".
And this year, she "fought back" against our environmental transgressions.
All this, despite lacking an identifiable brain, nervous system, and other mechanisms necessary for reason and planning. Not to mention that many of the things "she" supposedly does depend upon circumstances quite beyond "her" control (such as solar activity and our solar system's location within our galaxy).
After all, it is impossible to look at a large complex system and conclude it doesn't speak of intelligence and planning. Oh wait, wasn't the argument the same humanists use against intelligent design? Oh, nevermind. Who needs consistency? We're The New York Times!
And this is our pagan agenda.
As Michael Crichton put it:
I studied anthropology in college, and one of the things I learned was that certain human social structures always reappear. They can't be eliminated from society. One of those structures is religion. Today it is said we live in a secular society in which many people---the best people, the most enlightened people---do not believe in any religion. But I think that you cannot eliminate religion from the psyche of mankind. If you suppress it in one form, it merely re-emerges in another form. You can not believe in God, but you still have to believe in something that gives meaning to your life, and shapes your sense of the world. Such a belief is religious.
Today, one of the most powerful religions in the Western World is environmentalism. Environmentalism seems to be the religion of choice for urban atheists. Why do I say it's a religion? Well, just look at the beliefs. If you look carefully, you see that environmentalism is in fact a perfect 21st century remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths.
I disagree with Crichton's understanding of Christianity (he seems to believe Christian salvation is based on works), but he clearly hits the nail on the head otherwise.
Did anybody else historically advocate such views? That we were upsetting the "delicate balance" and that nature would "fight back"? '
How about this guy:
When man tries to rebel against the iron logic of Nature, he comes into conflict with principles to which he himself owes his existence as man. And so his action against Nature must lead to his own downfall... Nature can be mocked for a certain time, but her revenge will not fail to appear. It just takes time to manifest itself, or rather, it is often recognized too late by man.
Guess who? Yeah, that guy: Adolf Hitler. I'd guess, as long as he wrote under another name, he'd be a welcomed editorial-writer for the contemporary New York Times.