”Observation of all aspects of the universe in which we live, entailing the judgement that there is a biologically and physically given pattern, which provides norms for behaviour, which can in turn be identified as morally acceptable or unacceptable. That there are such patterns, as for instance amongst animals, is not in contention. Whether they provide a basis for extrapolating to how human beings should behave is however very much in dispute. For instance, does the ‘survival of the fittest’, both between and within species, justify indifference towards the ‘weaker’ human beings on the part of the strong? That Nazi eugenic and extermination policies took this view, by no means makes them morally acceptable. Objections to homosexuality once found justification in the claim that this does not happen ‘in nature’. In fact, it is now well documented in other species besides humans, but that in itself is no guarantee of its morality or otherwise. By contrast, self-correcting ecosystems do provide a remarkable model of living harmony, and both birds and animals show a capacity for self-sacrifice in their behaviour, when their offspring are in danger.”
Illustrative Stories
As far back as we can tell from family stories, and from any written records I’ve been shown, the Cassons have always been in farming. It’s changed a lot in recent years, especially because of all the new machinery, which takes the place of farm hands. And also because of the techniques available now for selective breeding of cows. It’s always involved financial calculations, but now the scale of the business is greater than ever.
One thing I’ve always known and been grateful for is the natural rhythm of the year. As they say, there’s a time to sow and a time to harvest, a time to suckle lambs and a time to cut thistles. There’s a lot of rabbits in the fields this year. I’m shooting them, cos they breed like viagra – and their holes make a mess of the banks. And I don’t mind a bit of rabbit pie.
We’ve had some campers in one of the fields. Two of them heard the gun and came over. They said they thought I was wrong to be killing animals. This was a shock. It’s not easy to explain that this is nature’s way. Rabbits are fine, but not if you have too many of them; in any case we don’t deliberately breed them. Like the grass in the fields, there has to be some control. Sheep and cows are good in themselves, and also for their wool or milk, and eventually meat. We do breed these, and if we didn’t they wouldn’t live in the first place.
It’s important that campers and city folk learn more about the nature of farming and of food.
You might say that farming is cruel. I admit it has a cruel side. But this is the cruelty of nature and of life. In some respects, humans too are animals, and in the natural cycle just as they are interdependent, so are we with them. We depend on each other for sustenance. Take that away, and eventually we’ll become wary of breathing oxygen. Then we’ll stop altogether. And that wouldn’t be natural!
question: how consistent is the farmer’s perspective on what can be learned from nature?
Unnatural dying, unnatural healing?
As a young Dr he’d had no such worries. He took it for granted that the preservation of human life was his life’s vocation. Now, however, he was becoming daily more troubled. The range of available technologies and drugs on which he could draw was continuing to increase, and life expectancy was undoubtedly extending beyond the seventies. But the quality of that life, which he helped to preserve, wasn’t always great.
At the same time, he was more frequently being faced with requests, sometimes from the patients themselves, sometimes from their relatives or friends asking for assistance, not just to ease pain but to hasten death.
The argument he most frequently heard against any such easement of death, or euthanasia, was that it would be assisting suicide. That would be wrong - immoral, a criminal act – illegal, a religious offence – sinful, and against nature. Life is a gift from God; any voluntary shortening of it is ingratitude and unnatural.
Whilst he respected such views, he saw that they were flawed. Was there not much in life that involved natural illness – and does not that come as in some sense a gift – albeit a poisonous one. Medicine intervenes to defeat illness, and the techniques it uses often go way beyond the processes of natural healing. He’d no qualms about using them. They gave opportunities for giving life back to people who might otherwise be dead, or enabling them to function in ways that would have been impossible for previous generations. And in this they went beyond what was naturally given.
However, when someone really believed that they had come to the end of their tether, why should he not comply with their wishes for assistance with dying? It would be no more ‘unnatural’ than some of his other medical interventions. ‘Nature’ may contain moral pointers, but they may easily be ambiguous. And then again, even nature has within it a place for human intention and willing.
question: are appeals to nature at all relevant for medical care?
Biblical References
The entire natural order derives from God
You have made the moon to mark the seasons; the sun knows its time for setting. You make darkness, and it is night, when all the animals of the forest come creeping out. The young lions roar for their prey, seeking their food from God. When the sun rises, they withdraw and lie down in their dens. People go out to their work and to their labour until the evening. O Lord, how manifold are your works! In wisdom you have made them all; the earth is full of your creatures. Yonder is the sea, great and wide, creeping things innumerable are there, living things both small and great. There go the ships, and Leviathan that you formed to sport in it. These all look to you to give them their food in due season; when you give to them, they gather it up; when you open your hand, they are filled with good things. When you hide your face, they are dismayed; when you take away their breath, they die and return to their dust. When you send forth your spirit, they are created; and you renew the face of the ground. Psalm 104: 19-30
question: how reasonable is it to think that just as there is a given order in the natural world, that is also true for humankind?
Natural wisdom
Better off poor, healthy, and fit than rich and afflicted in body. Health and fitness are better than any gold, and a robust body than countless riches….Death is better than a life of misery, and eternal sleep than chronic sickness. Ecclesiasticus 30: 14,15,17
question: is health really more important than wealth?
Nature points beyond itself
For all people who were ignorant of God were foolish by nature; and they were unable from the good things that are seen to know the one who exists, nor did they recognize the artisan while paying heed to his works; but they supposed that either fire or wind or swift air, or the circle of the stars, or turbulent water, or the luminaries of heaven were the gods that rule the world. If through delight in the beauty of these things people assumed them to be gods, let them know how much better than these is their Lord, for the author of beauty created them. And if people were amazed at their power and working, let them perceive from them how much more powerful is the one who formed them. For from the greatness and beauty of created things comes a corresponding perception of their Creator. Wisdom 13:1-
question: aren’t fire, oceans and the stars powerful and wonderful enough in themselves without needing to think of God beyond them?
Natural wisdom reveals goodness and God
There is in [Wisdom] a spirit that is intelligent, holy, unique, manifold, subtle, mobile, clear, unpolluted, distinct, invulnerable, loving the good, keen, irresistible, beneficent, humane, steadfast, sure, free from anxiety, all-powerful, overseeing all, and penetrating through all spirits that are intelligent, pure, and altogether subtle. For wisdom is more mobile than any motion; because of her pureness she pervades and penetrates all things. For she is a breath of the power of God, and a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty; therefore nothing defiled gains entrance into her. For she is a reflection of eternal light, a spotless mirror of the working of God, and an image of his goodness. Although she is but one, she can do all things, and while remaining in herself, she renews all things; in every generation she passes into holy souls and makes them friends of God, and prophets; for God loves nothing so much as the person who lives with wisdom. She is more beautiful than the sun, and excels every constellation of the stars. Compared with the light she is found to be superior, for it is succeeded by the night, but against wisdom evil does not prevail. Wisdom 7: 17-
question: doesn’t more general experience suggest that wisdom is a combination of well-meaning clap-trap and sugary sentiment?
There’s so much moral sense in nature
Four things on earth are small, yet they are exceedingly wise: the ants are a people without strength, yet they provide their food in the summer; the badgers are a people without power, yet they make their homes in the rocks; the locusts have no king, yet all of them march in rank; the lizard can be grasped in the hand, yet it is found in kings’ palaces. Three things are stately in their stride; four are stately in their gait: the lion, which is mightiest among wild animals and does not turn back before any; the strutting rooster, the he-goat, and a king striding before his people. If you have been foolish, exalting yourself, or if you have been devising evil, put your hand on your mouth. For as pressing milk produces curds, and pressing the nose produces blood, so pressing anger produces strife. Proverbs 30: 24-33
question: what of benefit for our own behaviour can we really learn from observing the behaviour of animals?
Nature may sometimes be a better authority than special status
Therefore thus says the Lord: Ask among the nations: Who has heard the like of this? The virgin Israel has done a most horrible thing. Does the snow of Lebanon leave the crags of Sirion? Do the mountain waters run dry, the cold flowing streams? But my people have forgotten me, they burn offerings to a delusion; they have stumbled in their ways, in the ancient roads, and have gone into bypaths, not the highway. Jeremiah 18: 13-15
question: if this judgement can be made against Israel, is it not biblically reasonable to think that similar judgement might need to be made against Church? If so, who has the authority to play the prophet?
Learn from the birds and the flowers!
Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow and reap and store in barns, yet your heavenly father feeds them. Is there anyone among you who by anxious thought can add a foot to their height?…Consider how the lilies grow in the fields; they do not work, they do not spin; and yet, I tell you, even Solomon in all his splendour was not attired like one of these….Set your mind on God’s kingdom and his justice before everything else, and all the rest will come to you as well. So do not be anxious about tomorrow; tomorrow will look after itself. Each day has troubles enough of its own. Matthew 6:26-7,28-9,33-4.
question: is this an invitation to ecological indifference?
Parallels in other cultures
NATURE: Natural and Unnatural
Additional Religions
Native American Religion (Sioux)
The circle was indicative of life itself and was thus held to be sacred (wakan). "Everything", said Black Elk, "tries to be round - the world is round" (DeMallie:1985 p.291). The human body, the tree-trunk, the seasons. time (day, night, moon), a bird’s nest - all of these were circles. The Sioux imitated this natural order by configuring the camp in circles, by sitting in circles for ceremonial occasions, and also by constructing circular tepees. Metaphorically, the camp circle was the ’sacred hoop’, within which all was "safe, knowable, auspicious" (Powers:1982 p.41). So, the circle symbolizes wholeness and "helps us to remember Wakan Tanka, who, like the circle, has no end" (Black Elk quoted in Brown:1953 p.92).
http://philtar.ucsm.ac.uk/encyclopedia/nam/sioux.html ‘Sioux Religion.’
Taoism
One major goal of all the various schools and sects of Taoism was the quest for freedom. For some it was a freedom from the political and social constraints of the emerging Confucian state. For others it was the even more profound search for immortality. And for others it was the search for oneness with the Tao itself. This Tao was the sum total of all things which are and which change for change itself was a very important part of the Taoist view of reality. As the Chuang-tau [the Chuang-tzu] tells us, the Tao is ’complete, all-embracing, the whole: these are different names for the same reality denoting the One’.
This One, this totality of the Tao, worked as a liberating concept for the Taoists. Within the ceaseless flux of the Tao they found the power to live life in a spontaneous fashion. Probably the most famous statement of the freedom of the Taoist immortal is that of Lao-tzu where he says, ’The ways of men are conditioned by those of Heaven, the ways of Heaven by those of the Tao, and the Tao came into being by itself.’ The Tao is therefore the principle of the universe and is also a pattern for human behaviour, often called ’uncontrived action’ (wu-wei).
http://www.hope.edu/academic/religion/reader/china.html ‘Sages and Immortals: Chinese Religions,’ by John Berthrong. (An extract.) (Reproduced from R. Pierce Beaver’s et. al., Eerdman’s Handbook to the World Religions, 1982, First American Edition, William B. Eerdman’s Publishing Company. All rights reserved.)
Taoism
A key principle in realizing our oneness with the Tao is that of wu-wei, or "non-doing."… The principle of wu-wei contains certain implications. Foremost among these is the need to consciously experience ourselves as part of the unity of life that is the Tao. Lao Tzu writes that we must be quiet and watchful, learning to listen to both our own inner voices and to the voices of our environment in a non-interfering, receptive manner. In this way we also learn to rely on more than just our intellect and logical mind to gather and assess information. We develop and trust our intuition as our direct connection to the Tao. We heed the intelligence of our whole body, not only our brain. And we learn through our own experience. All of this allows us to respond readily to the needs of the environment, which of course includes ourselves. And just as the Tao functions in a manner to promote harmony and balance, our own actions, performed in the spirit of wu-wei, produce the same result.
http://www.jadedragon.com/archives/june98/tao.html ‘Taoism - the Wu-Wei Principle, Part 4.’
