Religion, Nature and the Future of Religion and Nature

Forthcoming, 2027

Ever since humans began perceiving and speculating about invisible divine beings and forces, religion has been an important variable in the evolution of Earth’s socioecogical systems. This book provides a fascinating, interdisciplinary exploration of the complex relationships between the emotional and spiritual dimensions of human experience and the habitats from which we have emerged and, in recent generations, have dramatically transformed.

Taylor begins by exploring scientific theories that purport to explain why humans came to believe in the existence and nature-influencing power of invisible divine beings. Then he explains how such beliefs sometimes lead to prosocial and proenvironmental behaviors, which help humans to adapt creatively to habitats to which they belong and upon which they depend. Turning to contemporary challenges, he examines whether and if so how, in an age of accelerating environmental decline, religionists can reform their traditions to inspire the kinds of behavioral changes that would halt negative, anthropogenic, environmental decline, and the threat such decline poses to humans and the rest of the living world. He concludes this fascinating work by considering the possibility that worldviews, decisively shaped by the environmental sciences, will erode traditional religious beliefs and lead to socially and ecologically adaptive values and behaviors. At stake is the answer to this question: Can religionists transform their worldviews, grafting scientific understandings onto them, or will religious worldviews be replaced by scientific understandings and by values surmised from them, enabling the Earthly life to flourish long into the planetary future?