A Christian would say yes, I am uttering something false, if for no other reason than that the God of the Old Testament willed that humankind, “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” In other words, he willed that we do something, which was, if nothing else, to allow the procreative urges by which we have evolved to sustain our presence in creation, at least as the ‘highest’ (or most complex) of the beasts, if not as a civilization. This does not mean, incidentally, that the Judeo-Christian perspective, with regard to nature as a habitat, and to other creatures in their relation to humankind, is anything but reverent. For the phrase “to subdue, and have dominion over,” in this context, means something akin to stewardship, or the care that a custodian would bring to whatever is in his charge. We are to bring order to chaos — lovingly, not tyrannically.