Religion and Ecology 2026

Joshua Lucas Reflections on Prehistoric Art           Hey reader! Ever thought about what it would be like to be half lion? Maybe ancient peoples did too. Let's take a look at a piece of art I encountered in my art history course here at CNU. It's called "The Lion-Human," coming from Hohlenstein Germany, c. 40,000-35,000 B.C. We can imagine a number of scenarios as to how its creator(s) came into contact with it. Maybe they stumbled across some dusty old bones, or perhaps this was a trophy from a hard-fought hunt. No matter the case this piece carved from a mammoth tusk is a testament to the interconnection between human and animal communities in prehistory. This is revealed to us on two levels in this piece. The first, being quite obvious, is that it is carved out of what was once a living creature's body part. Once an extension of a subject, the tusk becomes at once both an object and more than an object. It is an object insofar as it is a piece of art an...

     For my first reading journal, I have decided to discuss and reflect on the flim we watched over zoom,  called the "Cave of Dreams". In this film a cave in France called Shovi Cave was thourghly explored. The cave amoungst other things like animal bones, animal footprints and unique ice sickle like formations called stalactites, contains the oldest cave paintings discovered anywhere in the world. These paintings have been dated to be 32,000 years old. It was explained that the paintings in Shori Cave remain in such good condition due to the fact there was a massive rock slide around 20,000 years ago that sealed the orginal entrance of the cave, thus protecting the paintings from the elements. The paintings remain so pristine in fact, at one point scientist even questioned wether they were authentic pecies of cave art. The subject matter of most of the paintings in the cave contains ice age animals like wolly rinos, wolly mammoths, wild horses and cave lions with ...

This was not a part of our main lecture, but I still wanted to touch upon it, because I thought it was interesting. The idea is is that our guilty conscious is what separates us from God, not our wrong actions, thoughts or failures. Speaking from my own experience, I wish this was taught in Christian churches a lot more instead of the shaming or guilt-tripping others for doing wrong (which is something that everyone in the world does). I think this is a very human way of explaining the problem of sin. It is a lot more empathetic of one's feelings of guilt, which we have all experienced at least once in our life. Because of this, I think there's a kind of loneliness in sin. Its a hard kept secret that no one should hear lest they ridicule you and throw you in the pits of hell, lol. But, at the same time, that secret eats you up inside the longer you keep it in. In order to relieve yourself of this struggle, you have to confess your wrongdoing at some point. 

 If you had a wonderful 90’s childhood, like myself, then you have viewed FernGully: The Last Rainforest (1992) on more than one occasion in your youth (in my case, at least 10 times each summer until I was 12 years old). However, I recently rewatched this early 90’s classic on a whim (read: I was bored and not writing my blogs) to discover that it is heavily laden with deep ecological viewpoints and much of the same themes that we have covered in our class. If you had a horrible 90’s childhood (or just didn’t get to experience that golden age as a child), I’ll take a moment to catch you up on the plot. FernGully spins a tale of the magical inhabitants of the last rainforest on earth. The movie opens with the spiritual matriarch forest sprite, Magi Lune, telling the creation story of the rainforest. She states that once upon a time, the fairies and humans lived together in complete harmony, providing lovingly for each other’s needs… until bad weather (yes, seriously, jus...

 In postmodern philosophy, we studied Merleau-Ponty’s dialogue on the body, which was one I found fascinating and proved to be one of my favorites we studied all semester. I find his thoughts more concrete than that of others, which tend to be more abstract and not as easily apprehended. In the introduction to Eye and Mind, the author writes that Ponty declares that the facets of our being usually thought of as aphysical and abstract “can be shown to unfold from our condition as beings physically immersed in the world”. Ponty calls the body a “body schema” and describes it as a “framework of intentionality”. It is by means of this body schema that we open onto the world around us and engage with our surroundings. The author goes so far as to say “the body is my very means of entering into relation with all things”. He then brings up the reciprocal nature of flesh, writing that it is “the mutual application of seeing upon being seen” and this, he interestingly submits,...

Welcome to the Religion and Ecology blog for 2026. Make sure to start the blog with your name and the subject of the entry (Just as I have done with this post). Blog entries will be considered informal writing assignments and as such will be graded more in relation to content than style. Blog entries will contain questions and answers to questions, as well as reflections which relate to daily classroom discussions, completion of exercises, and reading assignments. Any questions the student has when reading or completing assignments should be written in their blog. Reflections may relate to connections the student makes between discussions in this class and those in other classes, between arguments raised in the readings in this class and those raised in other classes or in informal conversations. Students are encouraged to apply the ideas learned in this class to activities that take place outside of the class. These applications make great reflections. The student s...