Nothing in the Middle

It seems to me that there is one mistake: a belief in human dominion as ordained by a divine creator.

All catastrophe not borne of weather or plate tectonics or volcanic fire seems due to this.

If a god creates all for one being to use then all must be allowed in this use.  Some would argue that this is the very place where "law" and "morality" become our very reason for being.  That is, we are creatures given dominion but limited in understanding and that humility is the path to harmony; that the battle between heaven and hell is this space of humility--heaven is being humble, hell is being arrogant. That is we are beings existing only as "test lepers"--we exist to give the right answer to the question of belief and to show our humility.

Or, (and I'll confess this seems the best we can do if there is a divine being that began everything and is then an All in Nothing), we are simply another one among many and the mighty self-reflection that leads to this conjecture is simply one instance of an unknowable and mysterious fact that passeth all understanding.

In the one, we believe we are attempting to pass a test.  But we are very unclear about how to pass it.  There are several ways to succeed through the history of the text that creates this being and this test--but these successes are narrative reflections and are often extremely fictive descriptions of the past (though there may not be any other way to conceive of history).  There is the "way" of the Torah, the "way" of St. Paul, the "way" of Allah, to only mention one strand of the "wonderworking."

That is to say, it seems, anything goes.  But at base there is this: man is in charge.  Second to this is THE man in charge is in charge of all deemed divine (ordained).  In essence, believing in dominion means there is a belief in the dominion OVER the creator of the law of dominion.  That is, interpretation by power.  This seems to me to be at base an IRREVERENCE.  And if there is an evil counterpart to the divine being THIS world represents that vision.

And this is why I'd prefer the second; there is no dominion, there is no knowing the "mind" of a creator; there is no "my mind is the mind of the creator."  There is only mystery.  There is only what we are as collections of a particular kind of being.

This is humility.  And it CAN be reverence.  If we imbue ALL creatures, as creatures of unique forms of interconnectedness, and as creatures as beholden to a divine creator AS creations, and thus ALL as forms of the divine impetus, with divinity, then there can be no dominion without irreverence.

That is to say, the belief that all creatures, all life, is "holy," must lead to humility and gratitude.

There is no middle ground.  There is reverence or irreverence.

I see no proof of reverence in Western culture.