Environmental Ethics (3)

Explain religious teachings about human responsibility for the environment.

Candidates might include some of the following:

• Creation being valued and treated in relation to the view that its Creator is perfect.
• Environmental concern as part of the believer’s relationship with God.
• Principle of responsibility - Stewardship of the human and non-human world.
• Other principles and concerns arising from study of the chosen religion.
• These could include negative concerns, for example the anthropocentric basis for some religious teachings, and their apparent lack of concern for some aspects of environmental welfare; the complicity of religious leaders and movements in environmental destruction; the tendency of religious teachings to judge the worth of animals by anthropocentric criteria; environmentally destructive comments by religious leaders.

(30 marks)

‘Religious teachings are inadequate in dealing with threats to the environmenttoday.’ Assess this claim.

Agree

Some might argue that religious teachings must be inadequate in dealing with environmental threats because God does not exist, so all religious assumptions have no authority or compulsion.…