Does mankind have the right to assume ownership of the earth?

Question

Do people have the right to pilage the resources of the earth for his/her desire's?

Answer 1

no..not only mankind..ther are so many other sepcies like animals..plants...trees..nd may be other species we are un aware of

Answer 2

It isn’t a matter of ownership, Katrina and other natural disasters prove the futility of such belief. Rather, it is a matter of species attributes. Each species has natural attributes which define how they live and interface with the total environment. Homo Sapiens Sapiens are no different.

Homo Sapiens Sapiens use the resources around them. While you may not agree with the way they are used, I suspect that you too use resources, if not directly, then indirectly. The shoes you wear likely come from petroleum sourced plastics. The house you live in has wood, various metals, plastics. The food you eat is grown on farms fertilizers and insecticides, from petroleum and tilled, sown, and harvested, by equipment which is built from resources mined around the world.

What would like to give up? Or, would you consider that technological development will both protect those natural resources and produce the products need by all of us?

“Few enjoyments are given us from the open and liberal hand of nature; but by art, labor and industry we can extract them in great abundance. Hence the odeas of property become necessary in all civil society.”
David Hume: An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, III, 1751.

“Property is desirable as the ground work of moral independence, as a means of improving the faculties, and of doing good to others, and as the agent in all that distinguishes the civilized man from the savage.”
James Fenimore Cooper: The American Democrat, XXVIII, 1838..

Answer 3

No, but we assume that and do it anyway; that's mankind's basic nature, unfortunately. Primal, negative emotions and natures drive our lives and influence our very thoughts, words, and actions. According to Genesis, we have these rights, but who believes that stuff nowadays (setting aside fundamentalists and Bible-extremists)? In the Dead Sea Scrolls, there is a passage that defines the ultimate choice we have in life. It goes something like this: "God created man to govern the world, and until the time of his visitation, He gave man two spirits in which to walk." These are the spirits of truth and injustice, of wickedness and righteousness, of light and darkness. We have a choice in life whether to follow a good or bad path, and unfortunately, bad decisions are made by the higher-ups, which influence the Earth far greater than the innocent mind of a child. What I'm trying to say is that we all know deep inside (or should know) that we have no right to totally make the Earth our personal resource slave, but we do. We haven't the right to assume ownership of the Earth, for that is like a larger foreign body coming to America and assuming ownership of the country, just on a smaller scale. We THINK we have these rights because we "are" far more superior and more intelligent than every other life form on this planet. But in truth, typical human nature defines us as no better than the ground on which we walk, no more superior or intelligent than the animals or the plants. Do animals kill each other for money or a percentage? Do animals kill just because it doesn't like a fellow of its species? No. Thus, the answer to your question is no, but that's not what everyone else thinks, and what everyone thinks and believes nowadays is considered to be the truth.

Answer 4

I think we have the right to claim dominion over the earth. However, let me offer a caveat to that assertion. The reason why I state that we rightly can claim dominion over the world is because we are the most intelligent and resourceful of all creatures. Secondly, we have a moral compass, therefore it naturally follows that we should be endowed with the responsibility to be stewards to our planet. As stewards, we have the right to use the land to benefit us, but as stewards we also have a responsibility to take care of our resources. Hence, we must refrain from being wasteful and excessively abusive to our environment.

Answer 5

God gave us the right to eat animals, as long as you cook it and eat because you where hungry. But it's also about taking care of it, not just throwing garbage around.

Answer 6

Yes

Answer 7

Ahhh. A man with a sharp wit. Someone ought to take it away from him before he cuts himself.

Answer 8

Uhhhh yeah, we like to call that SURVIVAL. And besides the animals aren't doing much with it , we may as well.

Answer 9

No, but God is supposed to be the ruler of the world.

Answer 10

Well God's not pulling her weight so what are we supposed to do?