Paul Watson

Environmentalist

From an April 5, 1995 profile by Heather Ramsay: Later when I asked him about whether he had any personal relationship with a spiritual being, he said he was not spiritual at all. I wanted to know where he got his morality from, his sense of purpose.

"I have an understanding of who and what I am, which is a part of the earth. So that's what I identify with, is the planet as a whole.

We come out of the earth and go back into the earth. What gives me great joy is knowing that everything around; rivers, mountains... is a part of my body.

Almost all theological thought is anthropocentric and I just cannot buy into the anthropocentric ideology. Basically we're a bunch of conceited apes."

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Ed. Watson has been provisionally 'demoted' to the agnostics/ambiguous section because his use of religious terms when speaking of nature suggests he worships the earth as a god. Thanks to KK for pointing this out. Here's a Watson quote:

"To be responsible for an extinction [of a species] is to commit blasphemy against the divine. It is the greatest of all possible crimes, more evil than murder, more appalling than genocide, more monstrous than even the apparent unlimited perversities of the human mind. To be responsible for the complete and utter destruction of a unique and sacred life form is arrogance that seethes with evil, for the very opposite of evil is live. It is no accident that these two words spell out each other in reverse."