Mainly, though, extinctions have averaged a steady one species every year, for billions of years now. As Naturalists keep this history in mind, for some of them, human life is regarded with intrinsic value than one would like to think. Today there is a popular Gaia movement, with both scientific and spiritual aspects. Its scientists see the Earth's biosphere as an interlinked whole, dynamically balanced and self-healing. Its spiritualists see Gaia as the embodiment of nature, an actual goddess with three aspects.
Humanists are all too eagerly in favor of science.
Witness the recent Attack of the Killer Gene-Altered Tomatoes, an outcry which might have been funny if it hadn't revealed so much sheer ignorance. In reality, domestic dogs, cattle and many others have been genetically altered, just more slowly. Extreme Naturalists, such as PETA, even reject the keeping of pets or livestock. Self-proclaimed specialists will testify eruditely to any scare du jour . NASA has actually fired staffers who questioned their dire conclusions, including one man who merely proposed tests which would have verified them-or not.