On The Comparative Study Of Taoist And Christian Ecological Thoughts

Though religion and ecology fall into two different categories, there exists a certain kind of natural relation between them. Religion, as a social ideology, not only regulates the relations between god and man, between man and man but is also concerned about the relations between man and nature. This has given birth to religious natural culture. Ecology of modern sense came into existence in 1860s, while people's cognition of human's relation to nature has a long history. There is no lack of expressions of people's attitude toward all natural things and people on the earth in thinking and cultures (including religious culture) of countries of the world. Just as Holmes Rolston, the contemporary famous ecological moralist, pointed out that, though there is no ecology as a science in traditional cultures, the ecology in the sense of etymology is always there: the habitat logic with a global perspective. According to this perspective, they purposefully live in a purposeful world. The habitat logic is in essence a primitive intuitionistic ecology which encompasses the experience of the simple interactivity and mutual dependence among all living beings on earth through perceptual survival activities of matters. The ecological thoughts in this essay refers to the one in the sense of etymology and it aims at the discussion of the influence of Taoism and Christianity on deities, man and nature as well as the relationship among them. It also studies the relations (which will in-...