DESCRIPTION BECOMES PRESCRIPTION: THE BIRTH OF THE NATURE GODESS

We started with three very different views of Nature; but that word 'view' is ambiguous. The word 'view' can be used to mean a description of something viewed, or it can be used to mean the expression of a belief or a set of values. When we looked more carefully at those three views of Nature we found that they are not just descriptions; they are actually prescribe beliefs and values just like a religion.

For example, it is possible to describe humans and animals in terms of the laws of physics, chemistry or machine systems; but the trouble starts when our thinking goes along the lines of: 'Grass is green; this is green; there for this is grass'. Yes, if I throw a cat out of a top floor window, the laws of physics that describe it's fall are the same as those that would apply if I threw out a stone instead; but that doesn't mean that a cat is just a stone. The chemical effect of excess alcohol on a pig's diet will have the same drunken effect as excess alcohol on a human's; but that doesn't mean that a human being is a pig (even if he behaves like one). A person running burns up fuel (glucose) and emits carbon dioxide in order to have the energy to move, just as a car burns up petrol and emits carbon dioxide to do the same; but that does not make a human being a machine. So we have to be careful because although grass is green; not everything green is grass.

Each of the three views of nature that we have covered make this mistake. They rightly see that human beings share characteristics with animals and other things in the universe; but they then wrongly conclude that human beings are therefore no different from them. Once this mistake is made, then it becomes a logical step to prescribe the same values for them that we do to ourselves as human beings. We then have a set of beliefs that have taken on the characteristics of a religion.

But the problems do not always end there. They are added to when the believers in Nature as a religion, want to spread their beliefs and values on to other people. For if they can’t do it by inspiration, they are tempted to do it by propaganda. And if they can't do it by propaganda alone, then they use politics and coercion.

When this happens, the Worship of Nature has becomes a plague: But then there are Plagues 3 and 4 . . .