Paper Title: Today’s Western Ecocrisis and the Deity Responsible

Author: Matthew Bellas

Email: MBellas@honorscollege.cuny.edu

"Mankind’s most basic solution to any seemingly insurmountable problem has been the same for several millennia: that is, point and blame. In the case of the increasingly worsening ecocritical backlash that the world has begun waking up to in recent years, many critics and scholars have begun to finger two of the world’s oldest and most widespread cultures as the most prominent culprits behind this irresponsible behavior: that is, the followers of Judaism and of Christianity. Controversial though this claim may be, there has actually been collected a substantial body of evidence that supports this theory. However the abandonment of two of these very influential religions for the sake of a more eco-friendly world culture is not only wholly impractical, but downright impossible. In my thesis, I examine the text that most critics point to as the epicenter of this detrimental ideology, the Book of Genesis, and through the study of and comparison to Greco-Roman and Mesopotamian creation texts which have been proven to have influenced and been influenced by the Judeo-Christian story, I have identified several themes that may be altered in order to promote a view of the environment more befitting of an eco-conscious twenty-first century world. After all, to err is human…"