Yes, those who want population control are saying they know better than God because they’re saying God didn’t create enough resources in this world to sustain population growth, God screwed up, and therefore man needs to step in and regulate people being born.
I have shown over and over again that this is logically and theologically flawed, because it presupposes that if humans are capable of bringing about bad results through foolish actions then God is responsible for those results.
God gave us minds to make prudent decisions regarding the stewardship of the earth. For some parents that may mean having fewer children. For others it may mean having a large family but living very simply. I am not the one making dogmatic pronouncements about what it means to follow God’s will. You are.
I don’t see any verse in the Bible saying stop populating when the earth is “full.” You must use a different Bible than I do.
It doesn’t say “stop populating when the earth is full.” But it gives filling the earth as the reason for multiplying. Doesn’t your Bible say this?
Hebrew: “Peru urebhu umil’u et-ha’aretz.”
Vulgate: “crescite et multiplicamini et replete terram.”
KJV: “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth”
NIV: “Be fruitful and increase in number: fill the earth.”
Douay-Rheims: “Increase and multiply, and fill the earth.”
RSV: “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth.”
NAB: “Be fruitful and multiply: fill the earth.”
Filling (and subduing) the earth is the purpose given for human fruitfulness. Our fruitfulness is therefore tied to a prudential decision as to how we can best fulfill the “cultural mandate” of Genesis 1:28.
I don’t object to parents who decide that they need to have large families in order to fulfill this mandate. I don’t object to the Catholic Church decreeing that all Catholics should do so (though in fact, as I understand it, the Catholic Church does not do this). I object to arguments claiming that Genesis 1:28 necessarily mandates an infinite increase in numbers and that God is somehow obligated to make the earth’s resources accommodate the results of your bad Scriptural interpretation. I object even more strongly to the argument that we should go on multiplying infinitely because God may not want us to go on existing much longer anyway. (That may well be true, but it is our responsibility to preserve the human race as long as possible unless that would require us to act immorally.)
You really like the term “straw man argument”, don’t you?
I like the name only as well as you like the reality.
Well, this doesn’t fit the criteria, either. Scourge means: “a cause of affliction or calamity: Disease and famine are scourges of humanity” Man is considered a scourge on the earth when his numbers are too big because it is destructive to the earth.
No, that doesn’t make human beings in and of themselves scourges. It makes our foolish actions a scourge. And I am not sure that our numbers are too big, anyway.
You agree that the real scourge of the earth is sin
And folly.
not man. So why do you want to see human populations limited?
Because an
infinitely increasing population is obviously a bad thing as long as we remain confined to one planet. I think that we have probably not got anywhere near the limit of what the earth can support. And space colonization is always an option. But there will come a limit some day to the numbers that one planet can support. And already human numbers have radically changed our way of life in both good and bad ways. At some point–long before we reach the actual limit–it is likely that the bad effects of population growth will outweigh the good.
So again, all I’m saying is that these factors need to be weighed.
If you don’t have strong feelings one way or another about population growth, why in the world are you fighting with me?
Because your arguments are bad. I want to hear a rational discussion of this important subject. You are making that impossible by your claims that any consideration of any kind of limitation of population is inspired by Satan and reflects a lack of trust in God.
I remain baffled by the way folks on this forum think that all posts must be partisan. If I criticize your bad arguments against population limitation, I must be some kind of ZPG fanatic. Well, I’m not, though you are admittedly pushing me more in that direction by your inability to mount a rational case on the other side.
I think you just put up a “straw man argument.” Is man populating in large numbers “irresponsible stewardship?”
I have not said that. It may or may not be, depending on what alternatives to limiting population we can come up with. But "just keep procreating and trust in God’ is not an alternative. *That *really is bad stewardship. Again, my problem is with your rejection of reason and prudence and your theologically flawed claim that the choice to procreate infinitely cannot possibly be against God’s will. You would like me to be a strong proponent of population control. But the truth is that I’m not.
To “arrest population growth” means telling people not to have children who can one day become members of the Kingdom of God. That is just what Satan wants, to eliminate as many people as possible.
You persist in treating the as-yet-nonexistent as people. You are the one “playing God” here. You and I are not outside of time. We cannot see what has not yet happened. From our perspective, those who have not yet been conceived do not exist. It is sheer nonsense to speak of “eliminating” them. And as I keep saying (and you keep ignoring), it seriously weakens the prolife case by blurring the line between the unborn (who are already existing human beings) and the unconceived (who are not).
