{"id":217,"date":"2005-05-02T12:14:44","date_gmt":"2005-05-02T17:14:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/?p=217"},"modified":"2007-11-09T10:31:45","modified_gmt":"2007-11-09T15:31:45","slug":"217","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/?p=217","title":{"rendered":"An eco-theological celebration"},"content":{"rendered":"

The recent article published in the peer-reviewed journal Science<\/em> reporting the sighting of a male Ivory-Billed Woodpecker, long thought to be extinct in the United States, is more than a feel-good story for eco-freaks. It’s also a religious story for some of us.<\/p>\n

First of all, how often do we get good news about ecology? Mostly the news brings us a litany of ecological disasters. I’m a Universalist, so I know everything is going to turn out all right in the long run — but it’s nice to know that good things are happening right now, as a little encouragement for those of us who are trying to make the world better now, rather than waiting for some kind of afterlife.<\/p>\n

There’s more theology than that involved. Those of us who are interested in ecological theology find a religious significance in bio-diversity. We ecological theologians hold that individual religion, individual salvation for individual human beings, is not enough. By extending religious principles to all species, and to eco-systems in general, we are saying that the category of evil also includes destruction of species and of eco-systems — that we can’t create the kingdom of heaven here on earth without rich bio-diversity. (For those of you who are theology geeks, yes, we stole most of this from the Social Gospelers.)<\/p>\n

But the heck with theology — let’s just celebrate. Check out the news coverage on NewScientist.com, which includes a copy of the primary evidence involved — the five-second blurry video showing an Ivory-Billed Woodpecker flying — http:\/\/www.newscientist.com\/article.ns?id=dn7319.<\/a> Yes, it’s a blurry video, but I’m just enough of a birder to know that ain’t no Pileated Woodpecker flying along through the swamp.<\/p>\n

It will take time for the scientific community to go over the data. In the mean time, the Nature Conservancy has received a multi-million dollar gift to protect more potential habitat of the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker. Check out their report of their efforts to save this habitat at http:\/\/www.nature.org\/ivorybill\/habitat\/saving.html<\/a> — and click on the link in the upper right=hand corner of this Web page to make your own contribution towards saving the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker’s habitat. Heck, you were just going to spend that money at the mall, anyway. Give it to the crazy-looking woodpecker instead. What better way to celebrate?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The recent article published in the peer-reviewed journal Science reporting the sighting of a male Ivory-Billed Woodpecker, long thought to be extinct in the United States, is more than a feel-good story for eco-freaks. It’s also a religious story for some of us. First of all, how often do we get good news about ecology? […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,60],"tags":[182],"class_list":["post-217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ecotheology","category-nature","tag-ivorybilled-woodpecker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}