Religion and Agriculture. Sustainability in Christianity and Buddhism

Research Paper (postgraduate) from the year 2005 in the subject Sociology - Religion, language: English, abstract: Science and religion are natural bedfellows kept apart by the prissy maiden-aunt of modern convention to the detriment of the very culture of both. Nowhere is this more evident than in the long religious history of our self-understanding and the environmental manipulation that we term the science of agriculture. A means of redressing this is sometimes felt to exist in ‘sustainability’ - though we do not know what it really means. This book uses sustainability as the meeting point of science and religion. It does this by accepting that human knowledge is ontained in spiritual wisdom at least as much as in scientific insight and by using both to examine the elusive subject of sustainability. One purpose of this book is therefore to highlight forgotten human resources that are ever at our disposal. To this end, it brings Eastern and Western insights to the subject of science and sustainability through consideration of differen religious teachings. The approach of the book itself borrows from that Oriental discourse which treats a subject from multiple perspectives without dismissing conflicting views. From such an apporach, a higher level of understanding can be revealed - perhaps even truth - in which conflicts dissolve into unity.