Are Scientific And Religious Explanations Incompatible?

[Binkie The Clown]

16. In the long run

human caused extinction is a symptom of ecological degradation that could also cause human extinction. In small bands of humans, those bands whose members recognized that fact would behave in a more "ethical" manner, which is to say, a manner more likely to insure their own long-term survival as a species.

The survival of a species requires that the species not overshoot the carrying capacity of its environment. The problem today is that the choices and the effects are global in nature, and natural selection has no scope for action upon isolated groups. Selecting for "ethics" in an isolated group does not enhance the survival of that group if the global effects of other groups' "unethical" behavior cancels out the "ethical" behavior of the isolated group. Our own "unethical" behavior (i.e. behavior inimical to the long term survival of the species) has swamped the power of natural selection to correct. There remains, however, the possibility that man might consciously select "ethical" behavior, although that possibility is remote in the extreme.

And, for the record, "maximizing population" and "long term survival of the species" should not be conflated as you have done. Nowhere did I mention unrestrained growth as a symptom of "ethical" behavior. That's a straw man of your own invention.