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Lynn White Crisis

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In “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis” Lynn White proposes that the reason behind the modern day ecological crisis is solely to blame on Christianity. White comes to this conclusion by tracing Christianity back to its roots and how it has impacted human interaction with nature. White begins his argument modestly stating how cannons were fired in the 14th century requiring workers to start collecting wood and minerals, which led to early deforestation and erosion. He then compares this to modern day when our civilizations are rapidly destroying nature in order to sustain the dramatically high population. White then asserts that western science and technology are the most successful and due to that reason are adopted around the world indiscriminately. He then goes on and gives an example of how Portugal, in the technologically …show more content…

White gives the example in the 7th century after Christ, farmers started pooling teams of eight oxen in order to plow lands faster and easier than before. White says that this is when man stopped seeing themselves as a part of nature but as the conquerors of nature. White credits Christianity’s defeat of paganism as the greatest win for its anti-nature attitude. He justifies this by saying that getting rid of pagan views of pacifying spirts before cutting down a tree or damming up a river was the last time any kind of Christian views cared about nature. White also says that this allowed Christians to uncaringly destroy nature, even though it was one of God’s creation.He then says Christianity at the same time this was happening was encouraging these views due to the scripture in the bible. White gives examples from the bible of how God created man in his image and how God’s creations were meant to serve man. He then states that this gave man the belief that it was the will of God for them to exploit

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