Posted on 06/14/2011 10:44:04 PM PDT by TheDingoAteMyBaby
Perhaps one of the most persistent and pervasive myths that have shaped the thinking of many people and, subsequently, public policy is the myth that the world’s population is spiraling out of control and that it will ultimately lead to catastrophic shortages of the essential resources necessary to sustain life.
This whole concept of “overpopulation” can be traced to Thomas Malthus, the British scholar and Anglican clergyman (albeit a very misguided one) who, without any specific knowledge other than his own speculations, predicted in 1789 that the planet’s rapid increase in population would soon outstrip the planet’s ability to produce food, resulting in massive worldwide starvation.
Malthus’s predicted famine never materialized, of course; he could not have predicted the industrial revolution or the enormous impact subsequent technological innovations would have on our ability to produce food. Recall that today our federal government actually pays farmers not to grow crops due to the abundance of food produced on considerably less farmland than existed just a century ago.
Even the United Nations, historically a rabid advocate of population control, has conceded that the world’s current infrastructure is capable of supporting a worldwide population of more than 9 billion people.
Furthermore, according to the most recent estimates, the planet’s population will most likely continue to climb from its current level until 2050, when it will peak at 9 billion; other predictions have the world’s population peaking at 7.5 billion in 2040. In either case, global population levels will begin a sharp decline sometime during the middle of the twenty-first century. Present fertility rates actually indicate a massive underpopulation crisis is coming, particularly among Western nations.
The question of overpopulation is not merely a topic for conversation; it is a burning matter of policy and action at the local, national, and international levels. Our national government is actually committed by law and by international agreement to reducing the worldwide rate of population growth.
Government officials, such as former Assistant Secretary of State for Global Affairs in the Clinton administration, Timothy Wirth, insist that this effort must also apply to the population of the United States. Wirth, as you may recall, was at the center of controversy when the Clinton administration decided to deport 13 Chinese women who sought asylum in the United States to avoid forced abortion under communist China’s notorious one-child policy.
By offering asylum to these women, Wirth explained, “we could potentially open ourselves up to just about everybody in the world saying ‘I don't want to plan my family, therefore I deserve political asylum.’” Apparently, Wirth believes government-forced abortions and sterilization constitutes “family planning.”
Today, there are governments that compel their citizens to undergo sterilization and abortions, often with financial help from the United Nations and U.S. government-supported private agencies such as Planned Parenthood.
Motivated in part by the overpopulation myth coupled with Darwinism, Margaret Sanger, who in 1934 was the founder of the American Birth Control League (which later became Planned Parenthood), advocated contraception and abortion as means of “negative eugenics” in order to limit the population of what she termed “the lower races.” (Positive eugenics was the form employed by the Nazis in their attempt to eradicate the Jewish people.)
For this reason Sanger opposed helping the poor. Humanitarianism and philanthropy, she wrote merely “perpetuate constantly increasing numbers of defectives, delinquents, and dependents.… These dangers are inherent in the very idea of humanitarianism and altruism, dangers which have today produced their full harvest of human waste.” This same sentiment was common to Darwin and his early advocates, who saw Christian compassion as counterproductive to “natural selection” and human evolution. Recall the original full title of Darwin’s now-famous work, On the Origin of the Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.
Frankly, if one wants to be consistent with evolutionary theory, one is compelled to think this same way and not borrow from Christian morality and ethics, as these have no logical place in the naturalistic worldview. Darwin very clearly understood this fact.
Ironically it was Thomas Malthus’s An Essay on the Principle of Population that had a profound impact on Charles Darwin and proved instrumental in the development of his theory of evolution. Darwin attests to this in his autobiography:
In October 1838, that is, fifteen months after I had begun my systematic inquiry, I happened to read for amusement Malthus on Population, and being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence which everywhere goes on from long-continued observation of the habits of animals and plants, it at once struck me that under these circumstances favourable variations would tend to be preserved, and unfavourable ones to be destroyed. The results of this would be the formation of a new species. Here, then I had at last got a theory by which to work.
The myth of overpopulation first put forth by Malthus, coupled with Darwinian theories that promote propagation of the “fit” and reduction of the “unfit,” has been instrumental in legitimizing abortion, forced sterilization, government subsidized contraception, and, in the most extreme cases, eugenics as practiced by the Nazis and others. (The term eugenics-meaning “good births”-was coined by Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin. Eugenics, he believed, would encourage more children from the fit, and fewer or no children from the unfit, with the ultimate goal of engineering the evolutionary ascent of man.)
In every case these false notions undermine God’s commandment to “multiply” and further serve to undermine the intrinsic value of every human as being made in the image of God.
No, even in that post I told you that I am a Texan, you just haven’t read the thread and you jumped up with the first silly cliche that people grab when confronted with an opponent of non ending population growth for America, the cliche is to that those people for some strange reason must to have never left the city during their lives and seen the countryside.
If you don’t want to look like a fool then look at the thread before you post.
What is the use of that useless and meaningless information?
That with proper technology and government control of our lives, and being assigned where we live, that we can survive as a species? I like my idea better, end immigration, and try and stabilize our population explosion, and work on our quality of life and nation.
It’s not useless and meaningless. It reinforces the title of the thread.
From your post 36.
“There will always be enough land, food and water, but that doesn’t mean that there are not too many people.”
Talk about a useless and meaningless statement.
And I supposed you will want to be in charge of who lives and who dies, in your BRAVE NEW WORLD.
I don’t have any connection to the case, I just like the movie.
What does that mean?
It is you that wants a scientifically arranged, crowded, human farming, like world. I don’t know if you have noticed, but the more over populated we become, the more powerful our government grows, and the more control it takes over our lives, and even personal habits and activities.
Why would people choose to live like crowded lab rats merely because science and government can crunch the numbers and prove that we can survive that way.
That post closed with this:
Now even traveling from city to city is like commuting on a long urban route of non stop humanity and development.
Which says there’s no open space, at least in your opinion. If you don’t want people thinking you think there’s no open space then don’t include sentences that say you think there’s no open space. If there’s somebody here that looks like a fool it’s the one that said there’s no open space then got huffy with people for pointing out there is.
By not reading the thread and also jumping to conclusions, you were totally off base in your post to me, now you want to double down and fight reality, just read my posts.
I didn’t jump to conclusion, I reacted to EXACTLY what you wrote. I’m not fighting reality, you’re fighting reality. You said there was no open space and now you’re pissed that so many people pointed out to you there’s plenty of open space. When multiple people “misread” what you wrote it’s not them it’s you. That’s reality. I have read your posts, every one of them is complaining about the person you’re replying to. Talk about wanting to fight reality.
LOL, read my posts, evidently you were incredibly wrong, and you still can’t seem to understand them.
Is it your opinion that there are too many immigrants, or too many human beings regardless of origin?
Here’s what you said:
Now even traveling from city to city is like commuting on a long urban route of non stop humanity and development.
Now you’re back tracking. I understand EXACTLY what you ACTUALLY said, I also understand that’s not what you WANTED to say, and that you’re not man enough to admit your mistake. So instead you’re insulting everybody else for the fact that you can’t put together a sentence that says what you want it to mean.
Haven’t I been talking about overpopulation?
How long will you keep making the same stupid post over and over, you drew a wrong conclusion and I posted to you to correct you.
Clinging to that sentence which is accurate, doesn’t bolster you at all, just read the rest of my posts and learn something and hopefully gain a fresh view of over crowding.
Frankly you sound like an urban dweller that isn’t bothered by what you never had and doesn’t see it’s value.
What policies do you propose in regards to population?
I don’t know, what do you think?
Get off the freeways and highways and this country has huge wide open spaces and farmland.
Get away from the coast and in to flyover country. Learn to breath free again.
I’ll keep pointing out that the error was yours as long as you continue to feel the need to throw insults. That proves you know the facts don’t back you.
Here’s what you said, again:
Now even traveling from city to city is like commuting on a long urban route of non stop humanity and development.
That means you think there’s no open space. That’s what I replied to. It’s not my fault you can’t construct a sentence that says what you want it to.
And no that sentence is not accurate. Like I said in my first post to you, which you ignored so you could go on your insulting and pointless rant, 80 of the 100 miles between Tucson and Phoenix is NOTHING, not an urban route, not non stop humanity and development. And you get similar lack of stuff going in any other direction out of Tucson, or out of Phoenix.
Keep throwing the insults. Go ahead, they just prove you wrong. I think it’s funny. People that can’t man up to their mistakes and instead try to turn it on the other person are freaking hilarious, but in the laugh AT way, not the laugh with.
Try reading post 34 and 38.
So many people’s first reaction is to think that they are the only one that has seen the countryside when over population comes up.
Except there won’t be anyone there to do those things because everyone is in Texas living the high life. ;)
In spite of our sense of superiority; Western civilization has promoted medical manipulation of, for and against child bearing.
#1. IVF,sperm banks and rented wombs.
#2. Homosexuality (which does not create life) is being subsidized by #1.
#3. Contraception before, during and after productive heterosexual intercourse.
Western societies have also devalued children, mothers, fathers and Christian moral standards. i.e. sex as recreation NOT procreation see #2.
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