Tennesseans Protecting Environment for Wrong Reasons
Natural beauty of Tennessee
One of the reasons Tennessee is such a great place to live and visit is its natural beauty. With its mountains, lakes, forests and large parks systems there is an abundance of outdoor activities and wildlife for residents and visitors to enjoy and admire.
The importance of the outdoor recreation to TN’s economy and state identity makes it vital to protect the environment for future generations to have the opportunity to appreciate all TN currently has to offer. Even so, this preservation needs to be done for the right reasons and not for the irrational belief in a god like what is recently being pushed for in the TN state legislature on banning surface coal mining.
Nashville – State lawmakers and religious leaders joined the faith-based Creation Care organization Lindquist Environmental Appalachian Fellowship (LEAF) today at a press conference at Legislative Plaza to launch “Only God Should Move Mountains,” a campaign to end the harmful practice of mountaintop removal coal mining in Tennessee.
A bill currently moving through the legislature, known as the Tennessee Scenic Vistas Protection Act, would prohibit surface coal mining that alters or disturbs ridgelines at elevations higher than 2,000 feet above sea level. High-elevation surface coal mining is a method of extracting coal from mountains by using explosives to provide easy access to coal seams, but irreparably damaging the mountain.
“Our message is simple,” said Dawn Coppock legislative director of LEAF. “As Christians, we are told through scripture to enjoy and respect God’s Creation. Blowing up mountains for an extremely small amount of coal forever damages God’s handiwork, and we must put an end to it. Man should not permanently alter Creation. Only God should move mountains.”………..
“Stewardship of the environment should be something all Christians are concerned with as it is an integral part of our faith,” Bennett said. “A disregard for the state of God’s creation shows a lack of love for the creator. We enjoy the majesty of God’s mountains so we take steps to prevent them from being blown up in the name of business. This earth is on loan from God so we are responsible to show our love of God by how we care for it.”
- Read the full article HERE.
- Ducktown Basin in Tennessee circa 1965
Stopping the harm that surface coal mining causes to the environment is very admirable goal and positive goal for the future of Tennessee and its residents. Just go and visit the area near Ducktown, TN where strip mining and smelting copper destroyed all vegetation and caused massive erosion during the early 1900’s that is only in the last few decades started to recover in order to see the consequences of not protecting the environment.
While important, this environmental conservation of Tennessee’s natural resources should be done not because of a belief it is a supernatural deity’s property and it would show a “lack of love” for this magical being but because of the many reasons it makes rational sense to. A much better reason to preserve the environment is the potential impact to tourism and the economy if it were destroyed and no longer desirable for outdoor recreation.
I appreciate what the organization mentioned in the article is doing to try to protect TN’s natural wonder even though I do not agree with their underlying motives in doing so. The way it is portrayed on their website the LEAF organization that christians and people of faith are the only ones that care about protecting the environment. Almost as if non-believers are the cause of pollution and the destruction of “god’s creation. They even have propaganda geared towards teaching kids that environmental conservation should be done because of beliefs the world is god’s creation rather than the true, rational reasons for doing so.
This is yet another example of how christianity and religion affect politics here in TN. Even though this is for a noble cause the reasons for the action is misguided and clouded with irrational beliefs. At least it will ultimately benefit the state.
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- TN County Faces $11M Suit for Denying Bible Theme Park
- Congressman Reads Bible During Hearing
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