Trees in mythology

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The Bodhi Tree of Bodh Gaya is believed to be the Ficus religiosa under which Gautama Buddha attained enlightenment. It is worshipped by Buddhists. The sacred fig is also venerated in Hinduism and Jainism.

Trees are significant in many of the world's mythologies, and have been given deep and sacred meanings throughout the ages. Human beings, observing the growth and death of trees, and the annual death and revival of their foliage, have often seen them as powerful symbols of growth, death and rebirth. Evergreen trees, which largely stay green throughout these cycles, are sometimes considered symbols of the eternal, immortality or fertility. The image of the Tree of life or world tree occurs in many mythologies.

Examples include the banyan and the sacred fig (Ficus religiosa) in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil of Judaism and Christianity. In folk religion and folklore, trees are often said to be the homes of tree spirits. Germanic mythology as well as Celtic polytheism both appear to have involved cultic practice in sacred groves, especially grove of oak. The term druid itself possibly derives from the Celtic word for oak. The Egyptian Book of the Dead mentions sycamores as part of the scenery where the soul of the deceased finds blissful repose.

The presence of trees in myth sometimes occurs in connection to the concept of the sacred tree and the sacred grove. Trees are an attribute of the archetypical locus amoenus.

Wishing trees

Main article: Wish Tree

In many parts of the world travelers have observed the custom of hanging objects upon trees in order to establish some sort of a relationship between themselves and the tree. Throughout Europe, trees are known as sites of pilgrimages, ritual ambulation, and the recital of (Christian) prayers. Wreaths, ribbons or rags are suspended to win favor for sick humans or livestock, or merely for good luck. Popular belief associates the sites with healing, bewitching, or mere wishing.

In South America, Darwin recorded a tree honored by numerous offerings (rags, meat, cigars, etc.); libations were made to it, and horses were sacrificed.

World tree

Main article: World tree

Yggdrasil, the World Ash of Norse mythology

The world tree, with its branches reaching up into the sky, and roots deep into the earth, can be seen to dwell in three worlds - a link between heaven, the earth, and the underworld, uniting above and below. This great tree acts as an axis mundi, supporting or holding up the cosmos, and providing a link between the heavens, earth, and underworld. In European mythology, the best-known example is the tree Yggdrasil from Norse mythology.

Religion and folklore

Numerous popular stories throughout the world reflect a firmly-rooted belief in an intimate connection between a human being and a tree, plant or flower. Sometimes a man's life depends upon the tree and suffers when it withers or is injured, and we encounter the idea of the external soul, already found in the Ancient Egyptian Tale of Two Brothers from at least 3000 years ago. Here one of the brothers leaves his heart on the top of the flower of the acacia and falls dead when it is cut down. Sometimes, however, the tree is a mysterious token which shows its sympathy with an absent hero by weakening or dying, as the man becomes ill or loses his life. These two features very easily combine, and they agree in representing to us mysterious sympathy between tree and human life.

Sometimes the new-born child is associated with a newly planted tree with which its life is supposed to be bound up; or, on ceremonial occasions (betrothal, marriage, ascent to the throne), a personal relationship of this kind is instituted by planting trees, upon the fortunes of which the career of the individual depends. Sometimes, boughs or plants are selected and the individual draws omens of life and death. Again, a person will put themselves into relationship with a tree by depositing upon it something which has been in close contact with them, such as hair or clothing.

Often a tree will be associated with oracles. The oak of Dodona was tended by priests who slept on the ground. Forms of the tall oaks of the old Prussians were inhabited by gods who gave responses, and so numerous are the examples that the old Hebrew terebinth of the teacher, and the terebinth of the diviners may reasonably be placed in this category. In Greek myth, oak trees are said to be inhabited by spirits or nymphs called hamadryads, and if they were cut down by mortals, the gods punished them since the beings in the trees were believed to die. Important sacred trees are also the object of pilgrimage, one of the most noteworthy being the branch of the Bo tree at Sri Lanka brought thither before the Christian era. The tree spirits will hold sway over the surrounding forest or district, and the animals in the locality are often sacred and must not be harmed.

The custom of transferring disease or sickness from humans to trees is well known. Sometimes the hair, nails, clothing, etc. of a sickly person are fixed to a tree, or they are forcibly inserted in a hole in the trunk, or the tree is split and the patient passes through the aperture. Where the tree has been thus injured, its recovery and that of the patient are often associated. Different explanations may be found of such customs which naturally take rather different forms among peoples in different grades.

In Arab folklore, sacred trees are haunted by jinn; sacrifices are made, and the sick who sleep beneath them receive prescriptions in their dreams. Here, as frequently elsewhere, it is dangerous to pull a bough. This dread of damaging special trees is familiar: Cato instructed the woodman to sacrifice to the male or female deity before thinning a grove, while in the Homeric poem to Aphrodite the tree nymph is wounded when the tree is injured, and dies when the trunk falls.

Early Buddhism held that trees had neither mind nor feeling and might lawfully be cut; but it recognized that certain spirits might reside in them, such as Nang Takian in Thailand. Propitiation is made before the axe is laid to the holy trees; loss of life or of wealth and the failure of rain are feared should they be wantonly cut; there are even trees which it is dangerous to climb. The Talein of Burma prays to the tree before he cuts it down, and the African woodman will place a fresh sprig upon the tree. In Hawaiian tradition, a tree either located at the end of a valley or on a cliff near the sea, is used by the soul as a gateway to the Underworld (AKA Pit of Milu). Some Ancient Indian tree deities, such as Puliyidaivalaiyamman, the Tamil deity of the tamarind tree, or Kadambariyamman, associated with the kadamba tree were seen as manifestations of a goddess who offers her blessings by giving fruits in abundance.

In literature

A temple in India with the sacred banyan Tree

• In literature, a mythology was developed by J. R. R. Tolkien, his Two Trees of Valinor playing a central role in his mythopoeic cosmogony. Tolkien's 1964 Tree and Leaf combines the allegorical tale Leaf by Niggle and his essay On Fairy-Stories. In The Lord of the Rings, the White Tree of Gondor stands as a symbol of Gondor in the Court of the Fountain in Minas Tirith.
• W. B. Yeats describes a "holy tree" in his poem "The Two Trees" (1893).
• In George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, one of the main religions, that of "the old gods" or "the gods of the North", involves sacred groves of trees ("godswoods") with a white tree with red leaves at the center known as the "heart tree".
• In Leigh Bardugo's Six of Crows, the Fjerdans worship a god called Djel, symbolized as a white ash tree.

Tree worship at Kannur in India

In film and TV

In the third (sixth chronologically) Star Wars film, Return of the Jedi, the Ewoks worship trees on the forest moon of Endor.

In the fictional universe of the film Avatar, the Pandoran biosphere habitates trees, which are of fundamental importance for the Na'vi people, like the Hometrees, the Tree of Souls and the Tree of Voices as well as Woodsprites.

In the TV series Teen Wolf, an element of the plot is the Nemeton, a sacred tree from which druids draw power through human sacrifices, and which later acts as a beacon, drawing supernatural entities to the nearby town of Beacon Hills.

Plant rights

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_rights

Plant rights are rights to which certain plants may be entitled. Such issues are often raised in connection with discussions about human rights, animal rights, biocentrism, or sentiocentrism.

Philosophy

Samuel Butler's Erewhon contains a chapter, "The Views of an Erewhonian Philosopher Concerning the Rights of Vegetables".

On the question of whether animal rights can be extended to plants, animal rights philosopher Tom Regan argues that animals acquire rights due to being aware, what he calls "subjects-of-a-life". He argues that this does not apply to plants, and that even if plants did have rights, abstaining from eating meat would still be moral due to the use of plants to rear animals.

According to philosopher Michael Marder, the idea that plants should have rights derives from "plant subjectivity", which is distinct from human personhood. Paul W. Taylor holds that all life has inherent worth and argues for respect for plants, but does not assign them rights. Christopher D. Stone, the son of investigative journalist I. F. Stone, proposed in a 1972 paper titled "Should Trees Have Standing?" that, if corporations are assigned rights, so should natural objects such as trees. Citing the broadening of rights of blacks, Jews, women, and fetuses as examples, Stone explains that, throughout history, societies have been conferring rights to new "entities" which, at the time, people thought to be "unthinkable".

Whilst not appealing directly to "rights", Matthew Hall has argued that plants should be included within the realm of human moral consideration. His Plants as Persons: A Philosophical Botany discusses the moral background of plants in western philosophy and contrasts this with other traditions, including indigenous cultures, which recognise plants as persons—active, intelligent beings that are appropriate recipients of respect and care. Hall backs up his call for the ethical consideration of plants with arguments based on plant neurobiology, which says that plants are autonomous, perceptive organisms capable of complex, adaptive behaviours, including recognizing self/non-self.

Scientific perspective

In the study of plant physiology, plants are understood to have mechanisms by which they recognize environmental changes. This definition of plant perception differs from the notion that plants are capable of feeling emotions, an idea also called plant perception. The latter concept, along with plant intelligence, can be traced to 1848, when Gustav Theodor Fechner, a German experimental psychologist, suggested that plants are capable of emotions, and that one could promote healthy growth with talk, attention, and affection.

While plants, as living beings, can perceive and communicate physical stimuli and damage, they do not feel pain simply because of the lack of any pain receptors, nerves, and a brain, and, by extension, lack of consciousness. Many plants are known to perceive and respond to mechanical stimuli at a cellular level, and some plants such as the venus flytrap or touch-me-not, are known for their "obvious sensory abilities". Nevertheless, the plant kingdom as a whole do not feel pain notwithstanding their abilities to respond to sunlight, gravity, wind, and any external stimuli such as insect bites, since they lack any nervous system. The primary reason for this is that, unlike the members of the animal kingdom whose evolutionary successes and failures are shaped by suffering, the evolution of plants are simply shaped by life and death.

The Swiss Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology analyzed scientific data on plants, and concluded in 2009 that plants are entitled to a certain amount of "dignity", but "dignity of plants is not an absolute value."

The single-issue Party for Plants entered candidates in the 2010 parliamentary election in the Netherlands. It focuses on topics such as climate, biodiversity and sustainability in general. Such concerns have been criticized as evidence that modern culture is "causing us to lose the ability to think critically and distinguish serious from frivolous ethical concerns".

The prevailing scientific view today declares qualities such as sentience and consciousness as that which require specialized neural structures, chiefly neuroanatomical, neurochemical, and neurophysiological substrates, which manifests in more complex organisms as the central nervous system, to exhibit consciousness as stated in the Cambridge Declaration of Consciousness, which was publicly proclaimed on 7 July 2012 at Cambridge University. Accordingly, only organisms that possess these substrates, all within the animal kingdom, are said to be sentient or conscious so as to feel and experience pain. Sponges, placozoans, and mesozoans, with simple body plans and no nervous system, are the only members of the animal kingdom that possess no sentience.

Legal arguments

Justice William O. Douglas, author of a noted dissent about the legal standing of plants

In his dissent to the 1972 Sierra Club v. Morton decision by the United States Supreme Court, Justice William O. Douglas wrote about whether plants might have legal standing:

Inanimate objects are sometimes parties in litigation. A ship has a legal personality, a fiction found useful for maritime purposes... So it should be as respects valleys, alpine meadows, rivers, lakes, estuaries, beaches, ridges, groves of trees, swampland, or even air that feels the destructive pressures of modern technology and modern life... The voice of the inanimate object, therefore, should not be stilled.

The Swiss Constitution contains a provision requiring "account to be taken of the dignity of creation when handling animals, plants and other organisms", and the Swiss government has conducted ethical studies pertaining to how the dignity of plants is to be protected.

In 2012, a river in New Zealand, including the plants and other organisms contained within its boundaries, was legally declared a person with standing (via guardians) to bring legal actions to protect its interests.

European Research Area

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Research_Area

The European Research Area (ERA) is a system of scientific research programs integrating the scientific resources of the European Union (EU). Since its inception in 2000, the structure has been concentrated on European cooperation in the fields of medical, environmental, industrial, and socioeconomic research. The ERA can be likened to a research and innovation equivalent of the European "common market" for goods and services. Its purpose is to increase the competitiveness of European research institutions by bringing them together and encouraging a more inclusive way of work, similar to what already exists among institutions in North America and Japan. Increased mobility of knowledge workers and deepened multilateral cooperation among research institutions among the member states of the European Union are central goals of the ERA.

Section 1 in article 179 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union states the following:

The Union shall have the objective of strengthening its scientific and technological bases by achieving a European research area in which researchers, scientific knowledge and technology circulate freely, and encouraging it to become more competitive, including in its industry, while promoting all the research activities deemed necessary by virtue of other Chapters of the Treaties.

History

The creation of a European Research Area (ERA) was proposed by the European Commission in its communication Towards a European Research Area of January 2000. The objective of creating ERA was endorsed by the EU shortly afterwards at the March 2000 Lisbon European Council.

In 2002, the Barcelona European Council set a target for EU R&D investment intensity to approach 3% of GDP. Subsequently, the Commission proposed an extensive action plan to increase and improve R&D expenditure in Europe and all Member States set national R&D investment targets linked to the overall 3% objective.

Policy coordination in the ERA was addressed by The Spring European Council of March 2003 through the "open method of coordination", introduced by the Lisbon European Council in 2000, when it agreed to apply the OMC for policies related to investment in research, as well as to human resources and mobility of researchers.

In 2006, the EU adopted a broad-based innovation strategy aiming to improve the framework conditions for research and innovation. In this context, for example, a modernised Community framework for State aid for research and innovation was adopted in November 2006, and initiatives have been taken to support the emergence of European 'lead markets' in promising technology-intensive sectors.

Initiatives were launched to improve the coordination of research activities and programmes. They include the European Technology Platforms, through which industry and other stakeholders develop shared long-term visions and strategic research agendas in areas of business interest, and the bottom-up ERA-Net scheme which supports the coordination of national and regional programmes.

The EU Research Framework Programmes were explicitly designed to support the creation of ERA. New initiatives launched in conjunction with the 7th Framework Programme (2007-2013), such as the European Research Council, have an important impact on the European research landscape. The European Institute of Innovation and Technology should also play a substantial role in creating world-class "knowledge and innovation communities".

EU cohesion policy and its financial instruments – the Structural Funds – give strong priority to the development of research and innovation capacities, particularly in less developed regions. Together with the priority given in most Member States' internal policies, this can help the whole of Europe to participate in and derive full benefit from the European Research Area.

Instruments for public to public partnerships like Joint Programming Initiatives, the ERA-NET Scheme and Article 185 Initiatives have been developed to promote coordination between the national research funding organizations. This resulted in networking activities and the launch of transnational joint calls for research projects. In 2017 more than 100 countries participated in about 90 active P2P research networks.

The Commission decided to give renewed impetus to the construction of ERA in 2007. It published a Green Paper on ERA calling to end the fragmentation of the European research landscape. A wide public consultation confirmed the main policy orientations set out in the Green Paper.

Following this, in 2008 the Member States and the Commission launched a new political partnership, called the "Ljubljana Process", to overcome fragmentation and build a strong ERA. The ultimate aim of the Ljubljana Process was to establish "the fundamental role of ERA as a primary pillar for the Lisbon objectives and as an engine for driving the competitiveness of Europe". The adoption on 2 December 2008 of the European Research Area Vision 2020 by the Council marks a key milestone in the Ljubljana Process.

In its Resolution of 7 December 2009 on enhanced governance of the ERA the Council invited the Commission to continue and further develop systematic and structured consultations with Member States and other relevant stakeholders in a transparent manner and has launched the process of redefining the mission of CREST.

In parallel, following Commission proposals, the Member States launched "partnership" initiatives to increase cooperation in five areas the careers, working conditions and mobility of researchers; the joint design and operation of research programmes; the creation of world-class European research infrastructures; the transfer of knowledge and cooperation between public research and industry and international cooperation in science and technology.

Profane (religion)

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profane_(religion)

Profane, or profanity in religious use may refer to a lack of respect for things that are held to be sacred, which implies anything inspiring or deserving of reverence, as well as behaviour showing similar disrespect or causing religious offense. The word is also used in a neutral sense for things or people not related to the sacred; for example profane history, profane literature, etc. In this sense it is contrasted with "sacred", with meaning similar to "secular".

The distinction between the sacred and the profane was considered by Émile Durkheim to be central to the social reality of human religion.

Etymology

The term profane originates from classical Latin profanus, literally "before (outside) the temple", "pro" being outside and "fanum" being temple or sanctuary. It carried the meaning of either "desecrating what is holy" or "with a secular purpose" as early as the 1450s. Profanity represented secular indifference to religion or religious figures, while blasphemy was a more offensive attack on religion and religious figures, considered sinful, and a direct violation of The Ten Commandments. Moreover, many Bible verses speak against swearing. In some countries, profanity words often have pagan roots that after Christian influence were turned from names of deities and spirits to profanity and used as such, like famous Finnish profanity word perkele, which was believed to be an original name of the thunder god Ukko, the chief god of the Finnish pagan pantheon.

Profanities, in the original meaning of blasphemous profanity, are part of the ancient tradition of the comic cults which laughed and scoffed at the deity or deities: an example of this would be Lucian's Dialogues of the Gods satire.

Sacred–profane dichotomy

The sacred–profane dichotomy is a concept posited by the French sociologist Émile Durkheim in 1912, who considered it to be the central characteristic of religion: "religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden." In Durkheim's theory, the sacred represents the interests of the group, especially unity, which were embodied in sacred group symbols, or totems. The profane, however, involves mundane individual concerns. Durkheim explicitly stated that the sacred–profane dichotomy is not equivalent to good–evil, as the sacred could be either good or evil, and the profane could be either as well.

The profane world consists of all that people can know through their senses; it is the natural world of everyday life that people experience as either comprehensible or at least ultimately knowable — the Lebenswelt or lifeworld.

In contrast, the sacred, or sacrum in Latin, encompasses all that exists beyond the everyday, natural world that people experience with their senses. As such, the sacred or numinous can inspire feelings of awe, because it is regarded as ultimately unknowable and beyond limited human abilities to perceive and comprehend. Durkheim pointed out however that there are degrees of sacredness, so that an amulet for example may be sacred yet little respected.

Transitions

See also: Desecration and Deconsecration

Rites of passage represent movements from one state—the profane—to the other, the sacred; or back again to the profanum.

Religion is organized primarily around the sacred elements of human life and provides a collective attempt to bridge the gap between the sacred and the profane.

Profane progress

Modernization and the Enlightenment project have led to a secularisation of culture over the past few centuries – an extension of the profanum at the (often explicit) expense of the sacred. The predominant 21st-century global worldview is as a result empirical, sensate, contractual, this-worldly – in short profane.

Carl Jung expressed the same thought more subjectively when he wrote that "I know – and here I am expressing what countless other people know – that the present time is the time of God's disappearance and death".

Counter reaction

The advance of the profane has led to several countermovements, attempting to limit the scope of the profanum. Modernism set out to bring myth and a sense of the sacred back into secular reality — Wallace Stevens speaking for much of the movement when he wrote that "if nothing was divine then all things were, the world itself".

Fundamentalism – Christian, Muslim, or other – set its face against the profanum with a return to sacred writ.

Psychology too has set out to protect the boundaries of the individual self from profane intrusion, establishing ritual places for inward work in opposition to the postmodern loss of privacy.

Cultural examples

Seamus Heaney considered that "the desacralizing of space is something that my generation experienced in all kinds of ways".

Secularity

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secularity

Secularity, also the secular or secularness (from Latin saeculum, "worldly" or "of a generation"), is the state of being unrelated or neutral in regards to religion. Origins of secularity can be traced to the Bible itself and fleshed out through Christian history into the modern era. In the medieval period there were even secular clergy. Furthermore, secular and religious entities were not separated in the medieval period, but coexisted and interacted naturally. The word "secular" has a meaning very similar to profane as used in a religious context.

Today, anything that is not directly connected with religion may be considered secular. Secularity does not mean "anti-religious", but "unrelated to religion". Many activities in religious bodies are secular, and though there are multiple types of secularity or secularization, most do not lead to irreligiosity. Linguistically, a process by which anything becomes secular is named secularization, though the term is mainly reserved for the secularization of society; and any concept or ideology promoting the secular may be termed secularism, a term generally applied to the ideology dictating no religious influence on the public sphere. Scholars recognize that secularity is structured by Protestant models of Christianity, shares a parallel language to religion, and intensifies Protestant features such as iconoclasm, skepticism towards rituals, and emphasizes beliefs. In doing so, secularism perpetuates Christian traits under a different name.

Most cultures around the world do not have tension or dichotomous views of religion and secularity. Since religion and secular are both Western concepts that were formed under the influence of Christian theology, other cultures do not necessarily have words or concepts that resemble or are equivalent to them.

Definitions

Historically, the word secular was not related or linked to religion, but was a freestanding term in Latin that would relate to any mundane endeavour. However, the term, saecula saeculorum (saeculōrum being the genitive plural of saeculum) as found in the New Testament in the Vulgate translation (c. 410) of the original Koine Greek phrase εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας τῶν αἰώνων (eis toùs aionas ton aiṓnōn), e.g. at Galatians 1:5, was used in the early Christian church (and is still used today), in the doxologies, to denote the coming and going of the ages, the grant of eternal life, and the long duration of created things from their beginning to forever and ever. Secular and secularity derive from the Latin word saeculum which meant "of a generation, belonging to an age" or denoted a period of about one hundred years. The Christian doctrine that God exists outside time led medieval Western culture to use secular to indicate separation from specifically religious affairs and involvement in temporal ones.

Modern and historical understandings of the term

"Secular" does not necessarily imply hostility or rejection of God or religion, though some use the term this way (see "secularism", below); Martin Luther used to speak of "secular work" as a vocation from God for most Christians. "Secular" has been a part of the Christian church's history, which even developed in the medieval period secular clergy, priests who were defined as the Church's geographically-delimited diocesan clergy and not a part of the diasporal monastic orders. This arrangement continues today. The Waldensians advocated for secularity by separation of church and state. According to cultural anthropologists such as Jack David Eller, secularity is best understood, not as being "anti-religious", but as being "religiously neutral" since many activities in religious bodies are secular themselves, and most versions of secularity do not lead to irreligiosity.

The idea of a dichotomy between religion and the secular originated in the European Enlightenment. Furthermore, since religion and secular are both Western concepts that were formed under the influence of Christian theology, other cultures do not necessarily have words or concepts that resemble or are equivalent to them.

One can regard eating and bathing as examples of secular activities, because there may not be anything inherently religious about them. Nevertheless, some religious traditions see both eating and bathing as sacraments, therefore making them religious activities within those world views. Saying a prayer derived from religious text or doctrine, worshipping through the context of a religion, performing corporal and spiritual works of mercy, and attending a religious seminary school or monastery are examples of religious (non-secular) activities.

In many cultures, there is little dichotomy between "natural" and "supernatural", "religious" and "not-religious", especially since people have beliefs in other supernatural or spiritual things irrespective of belief in God or gods. Other cultures stress practice of ritual rather than belief. Conceptions of both "secular" and "religious", while sometimes having some parallels in local cultures, were generally imported along with Western worldviews, often in the context of colonialism. Attempts to define either the "secular" or the "religious" in non-Western societies, accompanying local modernization and Westernization processes, were often and still are fraught with tension. Due to all these factors, "secular" as a general term of reference was much deprecated in social sciences, and is used carefully and with qualifications.

Taylorian secularity

Philosopher Charles Taylor in his 2007 book A Secular Age understands and discusses the secularity of Western societies less in terms of how much of a role religion plays in public life (secularity 1), or how religious a society's individual members are (secularity 2), than as a "backdrop" or social context in which religious belief is no longer taken as a given (secularity 3). For Taylor, this third sense of secularity is the unique historical condition in which virtually all individuals – religious or not – have to contend with the fact that their values, morality, or sense of life's meaning are no longer underpinned by communally-accepted religious facts. All religious beliefs or irreligious philosophical positions are, in a secular society, held with an awareness that there are a wide range of other contradictory positions available to any individual; belief in general becomes a different type of experience when all particular beliefs are optional. A plethora of competing religious and irreligious worldviews open up, each rendering the other more "fragile". This condition in turn entails for Taylor that even clearly religious beliefs and practices are experienced in a qualitatively different way when they occur in a secular social context. In Taylor's sense of the term, a society could in theory be highly "secular" even if nearly all of its members believed in a deity or even subscribed to a particular religious creed; secularity here has to do with the conditions, not the prevalence, of belief, and these conditions are understood to be shared across a given society, irrespective of belief or lack thereof.

Taylor's thorough account of secularity as a socio-historical condition, rather than the absence or diminished importance of religion, has been highly influential in subsequent philosophy of religion and sociology of religion, particularly as older sociological narratives about secularisation, desecularisation, and disenchantment have come under increased criticism.

Irreligion in Australia

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreligion_in_Australia

The first systematic recording of the religious affiliation of non-aboriginal Australians took place in the 1901 census. Since the 1901 census, the percentage of the census population not aligned with a religion has grown from 0.4% to just over 30% of the population. The census question about religion has been clearly labelled as "optional" since 1933. In 1971 the census instructed, "If no religion, write none." This was followed by "a seven-fold increase" in the figures from previous years for those declaring lack of religious beliefs.

Melbourne hosted the 2010 Global Atheist Convention (branded as the largest event of its kind in the world), sponsored by the Atheist Foundation of Australia and Atheist Alliance International. It took place at the Melbourne Convention & Exhibition Centre from 12 to 14 March 2010. Over 2,000 delegates attended, with all available tickets selling out more than five weeks prior to the event.

In 2010 The Australian Book of Atheism was published as "the first collection to explore atheism from an Australian viewpoint". The book was prompted by the disparity between Australia's increasing secularism and the increasing political and educational influence and funding of religion in Australia and contains essays by 33 authors (including Leslie Cannold, Robyn Williams, Tim Minchin, Graham Oppy, Philip Nitschke, Ian Hunter, Lyn Allison, Russell Blackford and Ian Robinson) on atheism-related topics in areas including history, law, education, philosophy and neurobiology.

Irreligion in politics

Section 116 of the Constitution of Australia established Freedom of religion in 1901.

John Latham, who in the 1930s served as Deputy Prime Minister and later as Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia, was an atheist and early member of the Rationalist Society of Australia.

Australians tend to be very suspicious of religion being intertwined with politics. Critic and commentator Robert Hughes stated "Any Australian political candidate who declared their God was on their side would be laughed off the podium as an idiot or a wowser (prude, intrusive bluenose)." Conversely, Australia has had many openly atheist or agnostic political figures elected to high positions, including prime ministers Gough Whitlam (whose philosophical position has been called "post-Christian") John Curtin, John Gorton, Bob Hawke and Julia Gillard. Governor-General Bill Hayden was voted as the Australian Humanist of the Year by the Council of Australian Humanist Societies (although he subsequently converted to Catholicism in 2018, many years after leaving office). Politicians Gareth Evans, Olive Zakharov and Lionel Murphy have also received this award.

A 2010 survey by The Sunday Age asked all 30 members of the First Rudd Ministry about their religious beliefs. Fifteen declined to comment, ten said they were "Christian" and three stated that they were atheists: health minister Nicola Roxon, defence personnel minister Greg Combet and financial services minister Chris Bowen. The remaining two, finance minister Lindsay Tanner and treasurer Wayne Swan, both described themselves as agnostic Christians, with Swan believing that "values, rather than religion, are important in public life". Tanner added, "I doubt whether it would make much difference to a political career for someone to describe themselves as atheist."

According to a 2009 Nielsen survey, 84% of 1000 respondents agree that religion and politics should be separate.

The Fusion Party refers to itself as a secular humanist party. It supports the separation of church and state and removing religious prayers, rituals, and bias from government and public institutions and their documentation, and abolishing blasphemy laws.

The political party, Reason Australia, supports a secular Australia.

Polls, surveys and statistics

People who are affiliated with no religion as a percentage of the total population in Australia at the 2011 census, divided geographically by statistical local area

Although many Australians identify themselves as religious, the majority consider religion the least important aspect of their lives when compared with family, partners, work and career, leisure time and politics. This is reflected in Australia's church attendance rates, which are among the lowest in the world and in decline (reference from 2004). In explaining this phenomenon, writer and broadcaster Paul Collins said "Australians are quietly spiritual rather than explicitly religious" and the prominent historian Manning Clark defined Australian spirituality as "a shy hope in the heart ... understated, wary of enthusiasm, anti-authoritarian, optimistic, open to others, self-deprecating and ultimately characterized by a serious quiet reverence, a deliberate silence, an inarticulate awe and a serious distaste for glib wordiness."

Donald Horne, one of Australia's well-known public intellectuals, believed rising prosperity in post-war Australia influenced the decline in church-going and general lack of interest in religion. "Churches no longer matter very much to most Australians. If there is a happy eternal life it's for everyone ... For many Australians the pleasures of this life are sufficiently satisfying that religion offers nothing of great appeal", said Horne in his landmark work The Lucky Country (1964).

Males and females who claim no religion on the census from 1971 to 2011

The 2021 census found that 38.9% of Australian-born Australians claim no religion. In 2011 adults aged 18–34 were more than twice as likely as those in 1976 to have no religion (29% compared with 12%). The highest proportion of people who had no religion were young adults. The ABS has revealed that in 2011, the number of males claiming no religion was higher than females, that women claiming no religion were more likely to have no children, and that marriages were mostly performed by civil celebrants. Tasmania had the highest rate of citizens reporting no religion, at 50% while the rate was lowest in New South Wales (33%).

Census data

Irreligious declarations of Australians by State or Territory according to the censuses from 2001 to 2021

State/Territory	% 2021	% 2016	% 2011	% 2006	% 2001
Australian Capital Territory	44.2	36.2	28.9	23.4	19.6
New South Wales	33.2	25.1	17.9	14.3	11.7
Victoria	39.3	31.7	24.0	20.4	17.3
Tasmania	50.0	37.8	28.6	21.5	17.3
South Australia	45.8	35.4	28.1	24.2	20.6
Northern Territory	38.5	29.4	23.9	23.1	18.7
Western Australia	42.9	32.5	25.5	22.9	19.7
Queensland	41.2	29.2	22.1	18.6	14.8
Total	38.9	29.6	22.3	18.7	15.5

Marriage data

Irreligious marriages in Australia accounted for 80.3% of marriages in 2019 and 2020 slightly more than in England and Wales in 2017 (78 per cent). The Australian figure is up from 41.3% of marriages in 1988 and just over 50% in 1999. Secular funerals have also risen in popularity: in 2014 the Sydney Morning Herald surveyed 104 funeral directors and 514 people over 50, finding that 6 in 10 funerals were conducted by civil celebrants.

Belief

The proportion of Australian respondents to the World Values Survey saying religion is "Not at all important" to them has increased from 19% in 1994-98 to 37% in 2010-2014

A Roy Morgan survey of 4,840 Australians between October and December 2013 found that 52.6% of Australians were Christian, while 37.6% had no religion. Norman Morris, the company's communications director, noted that the change in religious affiliation could indicate a growth of atheism and agnosticism, or a move away from identification with organised Christianity by theistic believers. He identified possible causes for the change, including "morally conservative religious doctrines" contrasting with progressive attitudes on abortion, same-sex marriage, the use of condoms in the global fight against the HIV pandemic. He also noted the drop coincided with public media attention around alleged religious cover-ups of child sexual abuse in the Child Abuse Royal Commission.

A 2006 study by Monash University, the Australian Catholic University and the Christian Research Association found that 52 per cent of Australians born between 1976 and 1990 had no belief in a god.

A 2008 global Gallup poll found nearly 70% of Australians stated religion as having no importance, much higher than their American counterparts and on par with similarly secular countries such as Japan, the Netherlands, Finland and France. Only a few Scandinavian countries (Norway, Sweden, Denmark) and post-Soviet states (Estonia) are markedly less religious. A 2008 Christian Science Monitor survey of 17 countries reported that youth from Australia and the United Kingdom were the least likely to observe religious practice or see any "spiritual dimension" to life.

A 2002 study by Gregory Paul found that 24% of Australians are atheist or agnostic. A 2009 Nielsen survey of 1,000 respondents, found 68% of Australians believe in god and/or a "universal spirit", while 24% believe in neither. The survey found that 49% of respondents claimed religion was not important in their lives.^[21] A 2009 survey of 1,718 Australians conducted by NCLS research found that 61.5% say that "religious faith or spirituality" was of little or no importance to career and lifestyle decisions.^[42]

In 2011, an Ipsos MORI survey found that 32% claimed no religion, while a Galaxy poll found 43% claimed no religion. A 2011 report by the American Physical Society claimed that religion may die out in Australia and eight other Western world countries.

According to NORC of Chicago, 20.6% of Australians don't believe in God and never have, while 9.7% are "strong atheists". Of those aged under 28, 26.8% have never believed in God and just 14.7% are certain God exists. A 2012 poll by Win-Gallup International found that 48% of Australians were not religious; 37% were religious; 10% declared themselves "convinced atheists". Australia placed in the bottom 14 for religiosity and in the top 11 for atheism.

An October 2011 McCrindle survey polled 1,094 respondents on attitudes Christianity, finding 50% of the respondents did not identify with a religion, and 17% claimed Jesus did not exist. A follow-up survey that 30% claimed no religion, 64% identified with Christianity and 6% belonged to other religions. 9% of the Christians were actively practising and regularly attending.

A 2011 survey by McCrindle Research found that for Australians, Christmas is predominantly secular. 46% of respondents said the highlights of Christmas were celebrations with family and friends, 36% said gift giving, Christmas trees and the general Christmas spirit; and 15% said attending religious services, carol singing and nativity plays. 19% said they would "definitely" attend a religious service, while 38% have never attended. 87% of people who are not religious celebrated Christmas to some extent.

Religious attendance

According to the National Church Life Survey, between 1950 and 2007 monthly church attendance declined from 44% to 17%. A 2009 Christian Research Association survey of 1,718 Australians concurred, finding that 16% attended a religious service at least once a month, down from 23% in 1993. Subsequently, there have been claims that the rate of decline in church attendance has slowed; in 2016 there was a claim that monthly attendance at church was 16%. Yet, a 2013 survey by McCrindle Research found just 8% of Christians attend church at least once a month. The McCrindle survey also discovered that 47% of respondents do not go to church because it is "irrelevant to my life", 26% "don't accept how it's taught", while 19% "don't believe in the bible".

In 1996, 17.9% of Roman Catholics attended Mass on a typical Sunday, falling to 12.2% in 2011. In 2006, the median age of all Catholics aged 15 years and over was 44 years.  In 1996, 27% of Roman Catholics aged 50 to 54 years regularly attended Mass, falling to 15% in 2006. While 30% aged 55–59 years regularly attended in 1996, only 19% attended in 2006. From 1996 to 2006 Mass attendance for Roman Catholics aged between 15 and 34 declined by just over 38%, going from 136,000 to 83,760 attendees.

In 2009, more than 40% of those brought up as Anglicans or Lutherans, 36% of those brought up in the Uniting Church and 28% of those brought up as Roman Catholics described themselves as having no religion. 33% of 15- to 29-year-olds identified with a Christian denomination in 2009, down from 60% in 1993.

A study in 2011 by the Christian Research Association discovered that the attendance of Uniting churches has declined by 30% over the previous 10 years. The association's president, Philip Hughes, has predicted that the decline in church attendance would continue "at least for the next 20 years". The study also found that the average age of people attending Catholic and Anglican churches is around 60 years.

Eco-terrorism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eco-terrorism

Eco-terrorism is an act of violence which is committed in support of environmental causes, against people or property.

The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) defines eco-terrorism as "...the use or threatened use of violence of a criminal nature against innocent victims or their property by an environmentally oriented, subnational group for environmental-political reasons, or aimed at an audience beyond the target, often of a symbolic nature." The FBI attributed eco-terrorists to US $200 million in property damage between 2003 and 2008. A majority of states in the US have introduced laws aimed at penalizing eco-terrorism.

Eco-terrorism is a form of radical environmentalism that arose out of the same school of thought that brought about deep ecology, ecofeminism, social ecology, and bioregionalism.

History

The term ecoterrorism was not coined until the 1960s; however, the history of ecoterrorism precedes that time. Although not referred to as ecoterrorism at the time, there have been incidents in history of people using terror to protect or defend the environment. It can be seen in the War of Desmoiselles, or War of the Maidens. The War of the Demoiselles was a series of peasant revolts in response to the new forest codes implemented by the French government in 1827. In May 1829 groups of peasant men dressed in women's clothes terrorized forest guards and charcoal-makers who they felt had wrongfully taken the land to exploit it. The revolts persisted for four years until May 1832.

This particular instance is considered an act of eco-terrorism due to the fact that the peasants used tactics similar to modern day eco-terrorist groups. The peasants of Ariege masked their identities and committed acts of terror. They specifically targeted government officials who infringed on the rights of the forest; however, this is considered a pre-history rather than an actual act of eco-terrorism due to the fact that the peasants weren't environmentalist. The peasants committed their acts to protect the environment because they felt they had a claim to it due to it being their main source of income and way of life for generations.

Instances of pre-ecoterrorism can also be found in the age of colonialism and imperialism. Native and indigenous people didn't have the same view on land as property that Europeans did. When the Europeans colonized other foreign lands they believed that the natives were not using the land properly. Land was something that was meant to be profited and capitalized off of. Oftentimes natives would engage in warfare to protect their land. This is similar to the way that modern day environmentalists fight to protect land from major corporations aiming to deforest land to build factories. An example of Europeans infringing on the rights of natives can be found in the colonial administration of Algeria. When the French colonized Algeria they took the land from natives because they believed they were not using it properly, claiming that their nomadic lifestyle was damaging to the environment in order to justify their usurping of the land; however, the natives of Algeria engaged in battles in order to try and keep their land and lifestyle.

Eco-terrorism, civil disobedience, and sabotage

Eco-terrorism is often defined as the use of violence to further environmental policy change. Eco-terrorists are willing to inflict emotional and physical distress on their victims if they believe it will further their environmental goals. This more radical version of environmental action is illegal, as compared to its more moderate forerunner of eco-activism which is not illegal and would be classified as a form of civil disobedience and uses protests, sit ins and other civil actions to effect environmental change. Eco-terrorism can also include sabotage in the name of the environment, which is illegal as this includes crimes against property which could lead to harm to humans. In the United States, the FBI's definition of terrorism includes acts of violence against property, which makes most acts of sabotage fall in the realm of domestic terrorism.

Many radical environmentalists contest the FBI's definition of eco-terrorism for being inaccurate to other definitions of terrorism such as that of the International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism which states that acts of terrorism are only those purposely directed at civilians.  Radical environmentalists also criticize conflation of eco-terrorism with ecotage by governments and media as rhetorical tools to take advantage of preconceived notions about terrorism and apply them to acts which do not fit what terrorism really is.

Sabotage involves destroying, or threatening to destroy, property, and in this case is also known as monkeywrenching or ecotage. Many acts of sabotage involve the damage of equipment and unmanned facilities using arson.

Philosophy

The thought behind eco-terrorism rises from the radical environmentalism movement, which gained currency during the 1960s. Ideas that arose from radical environmentalism are "based on the belief that capitalism, patriarchal society, and the industrial revolution and its subsequent innovations were responsible for the despoliation of nature". Radical environmentalism is also characterized by the belief that human society is responsible for the depletion of the environment and, if current society is left unchecked, will lead to the ultimate complete degradation of the environment. Craig Rosebraugh, spokesperson of the Animal Liberation Front and Earth Liberation Front, justifies destructive or violent direct action as necessary evils in response to the lack of action regarding environmentalist efforts. Rosebraugh cites a "choice-of-evils defense" and asks whether it is a "greater evil to destroy this property of this corporation or to choose to allow these corporations to continue to destroy the environment" 

Many of the groups accused of eco-terrorism spawn from the radical environmentalist philosophy of deep ecology. Deep ecologists believe that human self-realization must come from identification with the greater environment. Deep ecology calls for complete solidarity with the environment and therefore categorizes many conservation groups as "shallow", encouraging more drastic approaches to environmental activism. Biocentrism is a central tenet of deep ecology which is described as "a belief that human beings are just an ordinary member of the biological community" and that all living things should have rights and deserve protection under the law. Other eco-terrorists are motivated by different aspects of deep ecology, like the goal to return the environment to its "natural", i.e., pre-industrial, state.

Examples of tactics

There are a wide variety of tactics used by eco-terrorists and groups associated with eco-terrorism. Examples include:

• Tree spiking is a common tactic that was first used by members of Earth First! in 1984. Tree spiking involves hammering small spikes into the trunk of a tree that may be logged with the intention of damaging the chainsaw or mill blades. This may also seriously injure the logger. Only one case of serious injury has been widely reported.
• Arson is a tactic most associated with recent activity in the Earth Liberation Front (ELF). The ELF has been attributed with arsons of sites such as housing developments, SUV dealerships, and chain stores.
• Bombing, while rare, has been used by eco-terrorists. For example, the Superphénix construction site was attacked with anti-tank rockets (RPG-7). While carried out by environmental activists, the status of the 1976 Bunbury bombing in Australia as an act of terrorism has been debated.
• Monkeywrenching is a tactic popularized by Edward Abbey in his book The Monkey Wrench Gang that involves sabotaging equipment that is environmentally damaging.

Notable individuals convicted of eco-terrorist crimes

• Tre Arrow
• Dave Foreman – arrested by the FBI for conspiracy to sabotage a powerline that fed a water pumping station
• James Lee
• Wiebo Ludwig – accused several times for sabotaging oil and gas wells in Alberta, Canada
• Ted Kaczynski
• Jeff Luers
• Marius Mason
• Daniel McGowan – convicted of participation in an arson at a lumber company

Groups accused

Organizations accused of eco-terrorism are generally grassroots organizations, do not have a hierarchal structure, and typically favor direct action approaches to their goals.

Stefan Leader characterizes these groups, namely ELF, with having "leaderless resistance" which he describes as "a technique by which terrorist groups can carry out violent acts while reducing the risk of infiltration by law enforcement elements. The basic principle of leaderless resistance is that there is no centralized authority or chain-of-command." Essentially this consists of independent cells which operate autonomously, sharing goals, but having no central leaders or formal organizational structure. Those who wish to join are typically encouraged to start their own cell, rather than seek out other members and jeopardize their secrecy.

Organizations in the United States

Organizations that have been accused of eco-terrorism in the United States include the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, Earth First!, The Coalition to Save the Preserves, and the Hardesty Avengers. In 2010, the FBI was criticized in U.S. Justice Department reports for unjustified surveillance (and placement on the Terrorism Watchlist) between 2001 and 2006 of members of animal-rights groups such as Greenpeace and PETA.

In a 2002 testimony to the US Congress, an FBI official mentioned the actions of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society in the context of eco-terrorism. The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society intervenes against whaling, seal hunting, and fishing operations with direct action tactics. In 1986, the group caused nearly US$1.8 million in damage to equipment used by Icelandic whalers. In 1992, they sabotaged two Japanese ships that were drift-net fishing for squid by cutting their nets and throwing stink bombs on board the boats.

Inspired by Edward Abbey, Earth First! began in 1980. Although the group has been credited with becoming more mainstream, its use of tree spiking during campaigns has been associated with the origins of eco-terrorism. In 1990, Earth First! organizers Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney were injured when a motion-detecting pipe bomb detonated beneath Bari's driver seat. Authorities alleged that the bomb was being transported and accidentally detonated. The pair sued investigators, alleging false arrest, illegal search, slanderous statements and conspiracy. In 2002, a jury found that FBI agents and Oakland police officers violated constitutional rights to free speech and protection from unlawful searches of Earth First! organizers.

The Earth Liberation Front, founded in 1992, joined with the Animal Liberation Front, which had its beginnings in England in 1979. They have been connected primarily with arson but claim that they work to harm neither human nor animal. A recent example of ELF arson was the March 2008 "torching of luxury homes in the swank Seattle suburb of Woodinville". A banner left at the scene claimed the housing development was not green as advertised, and was signed ELF. In September 2009 ELF claimed responsibility for the destruction of two radio towers in Seattle. The FBI in 2001 named the ELF as "one of the most active extremist elements in the United States", and a "terrorist threat." The Coalition to Save the Preserves was mentioned in FBI testimony as a group that was responsible for a series of arsons in Arizona. Using similar tactics to the ELF, they have caused more than US$5 million in damages.

Media reports have tied Ted Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber, to environmental activists, and say that the 23 injuries and three deaths through letter-bombs were the acts of an independent eco-terrorist. Among those making such accusations were ABC, The New York Times, Time magazine, and USA Today.

A number of "local" organizations have also been indicted under US Federal laws related to eco-terrorism. These include, among others, the group Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty. Another example is the Hardesty Avengers who spiked trees in the Hardesty Mountains in Willamette National Forest in 1984.

In 2008 the Federal Bureau of Investigation said eco-terrorists represented "one of the most serious domestic terrorism threats in the U.S. today" citing the sheer volume of their crimes (over 2,000 since 1979); the huge economic impact (losses of more than US$110 million since 1979); the wide range of victims (from international corporations to lumber companies to animal testing facilities to genetic research firms); and their increasingly violent rhetoric and tactics (one recent communiqué sent to a California product testing company said: "You might be able to protect your buildings, but can you protect the homes of every employee?").

Unclear, however, is the extent informants and controversial FBI entrapment operations play in creating eco-terrorist groups and furthering criminal acts. In 2015, so-called "green anarchist" Eric McDavid was freed from a 2007 conviction after it was disclosed the FBI operated a program to lure unsuspecting activists via "blatant entrapment." The 2007 conviction had been cited by the FBI in its 2008 claim eco-terrorism was a significant threat.

The National Animal Interest Alliance in their animal rights extremism archives compiled a comprehensive list of major animal rights extremist and eco-criminal acts of terrorism since 1983.

US governmental response

Spiking trees became a federal offense in the United States when it was added to the Drug Act in 1988.

Under the Animal Enterprise Protection Act of 1992 it became a federal crime to "cause more than $10,000 in damage while engaged in "physical disruption to the functioning of an animal enterprise by intentionally stealing, damaging, or causing the loss of any property […] used by the animal enterprise." In 2006, this was updated and renamed the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act by the 109th congress. The updated act included causing personal harm and the losses incurred on "secondary targets" as well as adding to the penalties for these crimes.

In 2003, a conservative legislative lobbying group, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), proposed the "Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act" which defined an "animal rights or ecological terrorist organization" as "two or more persons organized for the purpose of supporting any politically motivated activity intended to obstruct or deter any person from participating in an activity involving animals or an activity involving natural resources." The legislation was not enacted.

The FBI has stated that "since 2005…investigations have resulted in indictments against 30 individuals." In 2006, an FBI case labeled "Operation Backfire" brought charges of domestic terrorism to eleven people associated with the ELF and ALF. "The indictment includes charges related to arson, conspiracy, use of destructive devices, and destruction of an energy facility." Operation Backfire was a result of the 1998 burning of a ski resort in Vail, Colorado by the group, "The Family." The incident resulted in $26 million in damages. The FBI joined together with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to convict the individuals and any future eco-terrorist groups.

However, the Bush Justice Department, including the FBI, was criticized in 2010 for improper investigations and prosecutions of left-leaning US protest groups such as Greenpeace. The Washington Post reported that the "FBI improperly opened and extended investigations of some U.S. activist groups and put members of an environmental advocacy organization on a terrorist watch list, even though they were planning nonviolent civil disobedience, the Justice Department said Monday."

A report, filed by Inspector General Glenn A. Fine, found the FBI to be not guilty of the most serious charge — according to the Post — that "agents targeted domestic groups based on their exercise of First Amendment rights." The investigation was conducted in response to allegations that the FBI had targeted groups on such grounds during the Bush Administration. The Post continued:

But the report cited what it called other "troubling" FBI practices in its monitoring of domestic groups in the years between the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and 2006. In some cases, Fine said, agents began investigations of people affiliated with activist groups for 'factually weak' reasons and 'without adequate basis' and improperly kept information about activist groups in its files. Among the groups monitored were the Thomas Merton Center, a Pittsburgh peace group; People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals; and Greenpeace USA. Activists affiliated with Greenpeace were improperly put on a terrorist watch list, the report said.