The following essay is the introduction from a paper I wrote on Genes, Genesis and God by environmental philosopher Holmes Rolston. I’ll post subsequent sections over the next several days.
Introduction
In a 2003 interview on Radio National, environmental philosopher Holmes Rolston III stated that science and religion need to come together in dialogue. Each has its own integrity: science, he asserted, “gets at the causes of things,” while religion “gets at the meaning” (Kohn). But their concerns do overlap in that each has something to say about the natural world and the character of humanity. In Genes, Genesis and God, Rolston does not explicitly discuss how this dialogue might work. He does, however, suggest where the crossroads of conversation might be located.
Location is a core theme of this book. Rolston challenges readers to think carefully about where humanity stands in the story of the genesis of life on Earth. There’s an urgent reason for doing this: we are imperiling the planet. At first glance, the book might come off as a treatise against scientific reductionism, particularly against the pejorative metaphor of genetic selfishness. But such reductionism is merely symptomatic of our confusion about cultural and natural values. Instead, Rolston’s driving concern is that “the place of valuing in natural and cultural history has not yet been adequately interpreted” (xiv). Even more so, “it has too often been misinterpreted,” or misvalued, as humans tend largely to view nature in terms of cultural values and what value it has for them (xiv).
This book, then, is about getting the story of natural and cultural values straight so that humans understand what an appropriate and healthy relationship with nature looks like. What Rolston wants to tell us is the story of “the genesis of value,” (the “Earth story”) so that we might know “what is of value,” what value means, and how value is shared in the domains of nature and culture (xiv).
Science and religion enter this picture as realms of cultural genius that have emerged out the Earth narrative. They stand in relationship to nature and to each other. Before discussing this relationship and especially spaces for conversation, we need first to know something about the key dimensions of Rolston’s telling of the story. The next two essays in this series will provide this background. Those that follow will explore possible points of dialogue between science and religion and offer a critique of Rolston’s work.
Works Cited
Kohn, Rachel (2003, Dec. 14). Interview with Holmes Rolston III about Genesis, Genes, and God in “In the Spirit of Things.†Radio National. Retrieved June 20, 2007 from http://www.abc.net.au/rn/relig/spirit/stories/s1005831.htm
Rolston III, Holmes. Genes, Genesis and God, Values and their Origins in Natural and Human History. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1999.
Photo: My copy of Genes, Genesis and God. Note the damage. My dog chewed the binding and the upper right corner. The binding is held together by white duct tape. I call this photo, “Genes, Genesis, and Dog.”
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