God made humans superior

The argument

For Christians, humans are the culmination of creation, and this argument draws a practical conclusion about the environment from that position in the created order. The textual case is made in two steps. The first is a change of wording. In Genesis 1:31, God switches from seeing the things he has made as merely "good" to seeing them as "very good" — a shift that occurs only once humans are present, and which is read here as showing how beneficial humans are to the universe. The creation is not pronounced complete until they arrive, so on this reading their value is not one item among the rest but the thing that raises the whole. The second step concerns authority rather than worth. Aside from the superiority this implies, Genesis is also taken to be clear that humans have been given dominion — Genesis 1:36: "Then God said, 'Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.'" The grant is comprehensive: it names sea, air, land and every category of living thing, leaving nothing outside its scope. The conclusion drawn by extension is that humans have no obligation to protect the environment and may use it only for its instrumental value, disregarding any intrinsic value it might be thought to have. If the natural world was placed under human authority, then its worth on this account is the worth it has for the beings it was given to, and questions of care become questions of use.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Critics note that within Christianity the dominant reading of Genesis is stewardship, not licence: 'dominion' (Genesis 1:26) is widely interpreted alongside 2:15's charge to 'till and keep' the garden, implying responsible care rather than freedom to exploit. Major churches, and Pope Francis's encyclical Laudato Si', teach that humanity holds creation in trust before God. On this reading 'no obligation to protect the environment' simply does not follow from the texts — and the passage also miscites the dominion verse as Genesis 1:36, which does not exist (dominion is 1:26). So even granting humans a special place in creation, the theological basis for treating nature as merely instrumental is contested on its own terms.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Even granting humans a special place in creation, the dominant Christian reading pairs 'dominion' (Genesis 1:26) with the charge to 'till and keep' (2:15) — stewardship, not licence to exploit. [Rejecting P2] Major churches and Pope Francis's Laudato Si' teach that humanity holds creation in trust before God, so 'human superiority' does not entail freedom to disregard the environment. [Rejecting P3] 'No obligation to protect the environment' does not follow from the texts cited — which are also miscited (dominion is Genesis 1:26, not the non-existent 1:36) — so the theological basis is contested on its own terms.