Anthropocentrism vs Cosmic Perspective
Anthropocentrism is the belief that human beings are the central entities in the universe. It stands in stark contrast to the cosmic perspective described in the now popular writings of such stellar scientists as Neil deGrasse Tyson and the late great Carl Sagan. The roots of anthropocentrism are deeply embedded in the fundamentalist grounds of the Old Testament — and yet its fuzzy dogma still roams free-range in many modern cultures, wreaking environmental havoc upon planet Earth. According to the so-called Dominion Covenant in Genesis 1:26:
God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
Today, despite the irrefutable weight of scientific evidence to the contrary, a multitude of dogmatic denizens aboard this pale-blue dot in the cosmos still live by that archaic biblical doctrine — and the blogosphere is abuzz with at least a dozen different species of dominionists whose logic flies in the face of environmental science. Meanwhile, environmentalists maintain that it is precisely the groundless theological claim that man was created in the image of God and then given absolute dominion over the rest of the natural world that allows fundamentalists among us to deny science, lay waste to nature, and make outrageous claims like “global warming is a hoax.”
While the anthropocentric view of nature stems from biblical antiquity, focuses exclusively on human-centered values, and is one source of the Earth’s current ongoing environmental crisis, ecocentrism is a twentieth-century nature-centered environmentalist philosophy that ascribes intrinsic value to all living organisms and their natural environment without regard to their usefulness to human beings. The cosmic perspective explicitly extends the Earth-friendly environmental ethics of ecocentrism to the entire cosmos. Would you like to experience the ultimate rejection of anthropocentrism and witness the excitement of the cosmic perspective in action right now? Read The California Kids Who Saved Cosmic Civilization.
WHAT IS THE ANTHROPOCENE?
AND WHY DOES IT MATTER?
The Anthropocene is a widely used scientific term referencing the geologic epoch that commenced when man’s activities began to impact the Earth’s eco-systems, including the atmosphere and the oceans.
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THE COSMOS IS WITHIN US
The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself.
CARL SAGAN
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WHY WE NEED A PARADIGM CHANGE
Carl Sagan was one of the earliest apostles to spread the message of the danger of climate change. Neil deGrasse Tyson tells us why man’s fingerprints are all over our disastrous global-warming phenomenon.
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