Is Earth a Mother or rather a Sister to us?
The news , often prompted by comments of members of the scientific community, offer the rather consumed expression "mother Earth" when referring to naturally occurring events that involve the sciences of climate and ecology among others. Women images adored as Goddesses were very common in matriarcal pre-Judaico-Christian societies: Mother Earth was one of these.
The concept of Earth as a Mother, was virtually eradicated by the Judaic view of God Creator of Heaven and Earth and of Jesus' Our Father (the difference of gender is here irrelevant). God is the Creator of all things and creatures (hence the brotherhood) and all things and creatures need to adore. The Book of Daniel tells the story of the three young men who refuse to adore the golden statue erected by Nebuchadnezzar, and when threw in the furnace sing their song of praise:
Sun and moon, bless the Lord; Every shower and dew, All you winds, Fire and heat, Cold and chill, Everything growing from the earth, All you beasts, wild and tame, Holy men of humble heart, Hananiah, Azariah, Mishael, bless the Lord; praise and exalt him above all forever. For he has delivered us from the nether world, and saved us from the power of death; He has freed us from the raging flame and delivered us from the fire.
Famous is San Francis of Assisi Canticle of Creatures, a praise to the Lord in the brotherhood of the natural elements: brother sun and sister moon. It is interesting to see how San Francis refers to the Earth as a sister-mother (sora nostra matre terra) who nurtures and governs us. This is a a totally different concept from New Age's mother earth, Gaia, despite the recent ludicrous attempts from the environmentalist movement at appropriating for themselves the message of the poverello di Assisi. This New Age movements attempt thus a replacing God Father and Creator, with Lovelock's Gaia. Lovelock introduced Gaia as
... an active, adaptive control system able to maintain the physical, chemical, biological, and human components of the earth in homeostasis.It is interesting the usage of homeostatic ("to stand equally") union, as opposed to Christian's hypostatic ("to stand beneath") union (Latin's 'natura'), which is the basis of Christian's Trinitarian theology. As in a modern Eden, the creature substitutes itself for the Creator, and the original sin is passed from generation to generation.
This neopagan (from Latin paganus, "country dweller, rustic") view of nature wouldn't bother me if it would not reflect the pre-scientific and socially dangerous attitude (hubris) that characterizes great part of contemporary science.
