An atheist writer is fed up with eco-correct clergymen and the New Atheists, who agree on one thing: that man is just another animal among the animals. I wonder whether he's seen Pope Benedict's words from the World Peace Day address:
7. The family needs a home, a fit environment in which to develop its proper relationships. For the human family, this home is the earth, the environment that God the Creator has given us to inhabit with creativity and responsibility. We need to care for the environment: it has been entrusted to men and women to be protected and cultivated with responsible freedom, with the good of all as a constant guiding criterion. Human beings, obviously, are of supreme worth vis-à-vis creation as a whole. Respecting the environment does not mean considering material or animal nature more important than man. Rather, it means not selfishly considering nature to be at the complete disposal of our own interests, for future generations also have the right to reap its benefits and to exhibit towards nature the same responsible freedom that we claim for ourselves.
(emphasis added)
Now that's a statement: not only is man in first place among the critters, he's of "supreme worth vis-a-vis creation as a whole."
