Creationism versus naturalism persists as a front in the cultural war over environmentalism

Evidence

With advances in scientific knowledge, most conservationists subscribe to the view that the intricately interdependent ecological systems evolved over eons. These systems’ nature and functioning, they contend, are governed by natural laws, not supernatural ones. John Dewey and Ernest Nagel provided the more contemporary philosophical foundation for naturalism in which knowledge is gained by scientific means (Papineu, 2009). The conflict between creationism and naturalism continues to be fought stridently in the culture war over environmentalism. Some seek to reconcile the conflict with the view that nature was created supernaturally but science can reveal how the ecological systems work. The supernatural cause, however, remains scientifically untestable. Large numbers of environmentalists subscribe to faiths that invest nature itself with divinity. In their worldview, it is sacrilegious to despoil nature. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2522

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Identity politics and poststructuralism delayed environmentalism’s entry into literary studies. — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 774