So what about overpopulation?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Lethe
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
Brendan said:
What, they would have disagreed that humans are part of nature??
Click to expand...
That’s not what I meant, but it could be positively argued, at least by an insurance adjuster. If this logic was applied, there would only be *natural *disasters. War, pollution, and other man-made catastrophes would be simply natural, since as you point out, humans are part of nature.
Well, extinction is part of nature, it happens. How many 'T-rex’es have you met recently?
Click to expand...
This sixth mass extinction can clearly be laid at the footsteps of humans, mainly though over-hunting/fishing, habitat loss, and pollution.

Again, you could say that since humans are part of nature, these are all natural events. But that doesn’t lessen the culpability. After all, we’re supposed to be homo sapiens, the thinking man. If you think this massive loss of biodiversity is of no consequence, think again.
 
hummm?

Wonder why God put us here in the 1st.place, and what He said we were suppose to do?🤷

Was it something about populate?

Does anyone remember any of this?
 
Like said:
hummm?

Wonder why God put us here in the 1st.place, and what He said we were suppose to do?🤷

Was it something about populate?

Does anyone remember any of this?
Click to expand...
I think close to 7 billion people and still rising is doing a awesome job of populating.
 
JimG said:
What about the problem of underpopulation and demographic suicide that is occurring in the western nations?
Click to expand...
There is no such problem. “Demographic suicide” is a euphemism for “race suicide.” You don’t dare use that term. But you’re saying the same thing. Why is it a problem? I wouldn’t like my bloodline to die out, but that’s not quite the same thing. I have no problem with the thought that my descendants in a few hundred years will be darker skinned than I am.
Some countries are only able to maintain their population through immigration.
Click to expand...
Why is that bad?
If other countries follow the depopulation route of the west, that source will dry up as well, and the globe will enter a depopulation spiral.
Click to expand...
I think that’s even more ludicrous than some of the more alarmist things that have been said by the “population bomb” folks.

Edwin
 
Lethe said:
This is all very interesting and taught me a lot of new stuff - I didnt know that the US has so many unpopulated/less populated areas. I live in the UK, which, just by having travelled a lot of it, I would hasten to say is overpopulated. There is really very little in the way of wildlife anymore that hasnt had to be specially protected in parks etc. There are still some areas ‘up for grabs’ but I think it’d be a huge shame to populate these areas since theyre usually what th govmt calls ‘areas of outstanding national beauty’
Click to expand...
Right. The Highlands, for instance. Although the fact is that the Highlands once supported a much more sizable population, which was forcibly removed in an act of what we’d now call “ethnic cleansing.”

Both these things (that the really unpopulated areas are very beautiful, and that in many cases indigenous people once lived there) are also true in the U.S. However, the big difference is that there are large stretches of *relatively *thinly populated areas, or even in the Great Plains *very *thinly populated, which are not considered areas of outstanding natural beauty, although they do have their own kind of grandeur. I live in Indiana. There are a lot of corn fields.

Edwin
 
Bob_Crowley said:
Well, I’m CAtholic and you’re agnostic, but I’m afraid the only demographic advice you’ll get from the Catholic Church is not to use artificial contraceptives, so that you can overpopulate the rest of the UK as well.
Click to expand...
Actually, it’s quite a myth so say that offical catholic teaching requires people to have as many kids as they possibly can. Contrary to modern propaganda, contraception/abortion is NOT the only way to limit family sizes. Contraception only became widely practiced in the 20th century in western civilization. Far before that, the industrial revolution was resulting in urban populations with substantially smaller family sizes than rural populations. This is a demonstration of the economic benefit/cost differences in urban/rural life. In rural life, a large labor force typically meant more food production and income. It was a win/win to have a big family. In urban situations, larger families are harder to maintain since wages are independent of family size. A healthy catholic community historically also doesn’t explode in population because it invests a good portion of those kids into the priesthood and religious life.

Again contrary to popular belief, it isn’t really all that hard to discern when a healthy woman is fertile or not, especially if she hasn’t messed up her system with all kinds of hormonal meds over the years! Family size can be regulated according to the discernment of families without needing contraceptives. I’m exhibit A.

The population growth of earth today is concentrated in the third world nations. Nearly every stable industrialized nation on earth today has a NEGATIVE reproduction rate. They only grow because of immigration.

In short, contraception is a lazy cheater’s way of dealing with population growth, and like all shortcuts it has bad consequences (impending population IMPLOSION and rapid loss of cultural distinctiveness due to resulting immigration patterns). The RIGHT way is to work as a global community to bring stable and just governance to the third world nations which almost universally lack it. When they get that, they will prosper and they will develop stable populations on their own (like all such nations have over histoy, even before widespread contraception). Not coincidentally, this is the policy and approach of the Catholic Church.
 
Contarini said:
There is no such problem. “Demographic suicide” is a euphemism for “race suicide.” You don’t dare use that term. But you’re saying the same thing. Why is it a problem? I wouldn’t like my bloodline to die out, but that’s not quite the same thing. I have no problem with the thought that my descendants in a few hundred years will be darker skinned than I am.

Why is that bad?

I think that’s even more ludicrous than some of the more alarmist things that have been said by the “population bomb” folks.

Edwin
Click to expand...
Underpopulation affects more than just one race. It affects any region that reaches a below replacement level birthrate. A number of nations are already there.

As for immigration, it’s not a bad thing. For example, because the U.S. is right at the replacement level birthrate, it needs more immigration if it is to sustain economic growth. I for one favor more liberal immigration policies.

youtube.com/watch?v=otGI6nEPD2g&feature=related
 
Calliso said:
I think close to 7 billion people and still rising is doing a awesome job of populating.
Click to expand...
Yes, but God is unchanging and for all times…meaning that, because the bible is the Word of God that it is for all times…that bible verse does not say be fruitful and multipy until you reach 7 billion people. We need to trust God and just live according to his Word, and the rest will fall into place.

I feel that the majority of the problems the world has with starvation and lack of resources is based on political issues and selfishness, not from overpopulation.

The people who mentioned that the Catholic Church needs to change their teaching on contraception have no idea what they are saying. They just don’t have a complete understanding of the Catholic teaching. The 4000 babies that are killed each day by abortion in the U.S. alone had parents that had full access to or had used at the time, contraception. It doesn’t seem to be helping them does it? The other problem people seem to have is that they don’t understand that most Catholics who have large families don’t have large families, because they are just blindly following the Catholic Church. They have them, because they are wanted. They see the beauty in human life. It is eternal… For the glory of God.

We DO need more people in this world. How does anyone know what God has planned for the people that are to be born. Only God should have the say in when we should stop having children. Only PEOPLE can make this world a better place…that is our job. God made this world for PEOPLE. We may be doing things all wrong down here, but our job is to get it right.
 
What I can’t unerstand is how anyone could deny that human overpopulation is a problem.

The fact that the whole human population could physically inhabit the land area of Texas is irrelevant. What about the extent of arable land and potable water needed to support the requirements of such a population? Think about this for a second. India supports far more people, but in a much, much poorer state than any Western nation. Our use of resources is vast compared to less developed nations. If the Earth were to support its current population at the level of prosperity of the West, the entirety of the Earth’s arable land - at least - would be taken up with catering to human desires. And furthermore, there is climate change to consider - whether it is the result of human activity or merely the cycle of geological time, it is still a phenomenon we need to take into account and deal with.

And what about the needs of every single other species on the planet? Are they irrelevant to human experience? Apparently so, to some posters here. It is insufferably arrogant for humans to assume that we are somehow more important than every other organism on the planet. Yet there are many, it seems, who think that every other organism, humans excepted, is expendable.

I am not advocating that humans should be forcibly restricted in their reproductive choices - only that we make use of the means available to limit the growth of the human population, for the sake of the rest of the world’s inhabitants, to say nothing of future generations of humans - who, if we continue the way we are going, will be condemmed to an existence in concrete jungles, denied any experience of the natural world.

What arguments focussing on the “go forth and multiply” imperative supposedly imparted by God always seem to miss is that the Earth’s capacity is limited - certainly if quality of life is to be afforded any consideration. By all means, advocate human saturation if you want to live a short, miserable, disease-ridden exitence, devoid of any awareness of other species - I, for one, would prefer some balance.
 
manualman said:
Actually, it’s quite a myth so say that offical catholic teaching requires people to have as many kids as they possibly can. Contrary to modern propaganda, contraception/abortion is NOT the only way to limit family sizes. Contraception only became widely practiced in the 20th century in western civilization. Far before that, the industrial revolution was resulting in urban populations with substantially smaller family sizes than rural populations. This is a demonstration of the economic benefit/cost differences in urban/rural life. In rural life, a large labor force typically meant more food production and income. It was a win/win to have a big family. In urban situations, larger families are harder to maintain since wages are independent of family size. A healthy catholic community historically also doesn’t explode in population because it invests a good portion of those kids into the priesthood and religious life.
Click to expand...
It’s interesting that you make no mention of the number of infants, young children and even adults who died as a result of the conditions brought about by the industrial revolution - I suspect that had a large part to play in the reduction of family size.

Contraception has been practiced in one form or another throughout human history, with varying levels of success - it was only in the 20th century that technology caught up and created reliable contraceptive methods.
 
Bob_Crowley said:
These statistics are misleading. What about the food, roads, buildings, infrastructure, energy, pollution etc? What about the non-arable land eg. the Sahara desert, more than half of Australia, much of highland Asia, mountainous areas which do produce crops.

What about the stresses on areas such as Bangladesh subject to regular Monsoons and massive flooding?

If it was that simple why do so many people live in poverty? From Poverty.com …

"About 25,000 people die every day of hunger or hunger-related causes, according to the United Nations. This is one person every three and a half seconds, as you can see on this display. Unfortunately, it is children who die most often.

And I might ask, do you live on a rubbish tip in the Phillippines or Mexico City? Or do you live in one of the more comfortable Western societies, consuming more than your fair share of the world’s goods and energy, and contribute more than your fair share to greenhouse gases, pollution and consume more than your fair share of non-renewable energy resources?

If you do, then to say that there are no population pressures is a load of bunkum.

I personally think the church’s ruling on the contraceptive pill is rubbish.
Click to expand...
Hear, hear, sir. It is far too easy for we in the West to gloss over the problems experienced by the rest of the world, and to think that the occasional charitable donation is enough to overcome the deep-seated problems experienced by those in less fortunate circumstances. We all need to think more deeply about issues of poverty and of quality of life, and act accordingly.
 
redhen said:
That’s not what I meant, but it could be positively argued, at least by an insurance adjuster. If this logic was applied, there would only be *natural *disasters. War, pollution, and other man-made catastrophes would be simply natural, since as you point out, humans are part of nature.

This sixth mass extinction can clearly be laid at the footsteps of humans, mainly though over-hunting/fishing, habitat loss, and pollution.

Again, you could say that since humans are part of nature, these are all natural events. But that doesn’t lessen the culpability. After all, we’re supposed to be homo sapiens, the thinking man. If you think this massive loss of biodiversity is of no consequence, think again.
Click to expand...
If only it were true that humans are part of nature. We used to be.

How many of us, particularly those of us who live in cities, can claim to be attuned to the rhythms of the natural world, the turning of the seasons and the habits of local wildlife?

So much for that.

As for extinction of species, it is believed that we are currently experiencing extinction levels comparable to those at the end of the Permian era - only we don’t have the excuse of a vast desert in the midst of the Pangaean supercontinent to account for it anymore.
 
luvmykids said:
I feel that the majority of the problems the world has with starvation and lack of resources is based on political issues and selfishness, not from overpopulation.

The people who mentioned that the Catholic Church needs to change their teaching on contraception have no idea what they are saying. They just don’t have a complete understanding of the Catholic teaching. The 4000 babies that are killed each day by abortion in the U.S. alone had parents that had full access to or had used at the time, contraception. It doesn’t seem to be helping them does it? The other problem people seem to have is that they don’t understand that most Catholics who have large families don’t have large families, because they are just blindly following the Catholic Church. They have them, because they are wanted. They see the beauty in human life. It is eternal… For the glory of God.

We DO need more people in this world. How does anyone know what God has planned for the people that are to be born. Only God should have the say in when we should stop having children. Only PEOPLE can make this world a better place…that is our job. God made this world for PEOPLE. We may be doing things all wrong down here, but our job is to get it right.
Click to expand...
People are a natural resource. The only natural resource that is creative, productive, and renewable.

Anyone in the year 900 A.D. could have looked around and said, ‘we are running out of resources, there are too many people.’ Perhaps they would have been right, given the conditions of the time. But people–the renewable resource–proved them wrong through creativity and productivity.
 
Resources, resources, do i have to say it again RESOURCES. Water is a renewable resource, but it’s running out in so many places. What does that tell you???
If the population keeps increasing then welll, bad things will follow. All becuase something is renewable doesn’t mean you can make more of it. Its about changing the chemical make up, of other resources to make more of what is needed. You just lost the resources that made up what you needed. Sorry, but i truly don’t know how to make matter appear. And, people are a resource, but for that resource to stay alive or even be created. Other resources are lost. So, sooner or later if the population keeps going up it’s going to be physically impossible to sustain. Sadly what most people don’t understand is that the creative persons made more of the needed resource available, by converting other available/(previously unavailable) resources. You can’t make matter!!! If you can please tell me, please. Just tell me how to make something out of nothing. Energy, is something so don’t even go there. Make something out of nothing THEN I will support the whole have large families thing. Second, I don’t think God will bail us out on something we know is coming.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top