Posted on 11/14/2019 8:32:56 PM PST by Morgana
A recent open letter from the Alliance of World Scientists began this way: “We declare, with more than 11,000 scientist signatories from around the world…that planet Earth is facing a climate emergency.”
The letter is filled with urgent language and what the authors consider irrefutable proof that human beings are destroying the planet.
And, they offer their prescription. In addition to emissions reductions, renewable energy, and carbon taxes, the authors think it’s time to say “no” to children.
World population, they write, “must be stabilized—and ideally, gradually reduced…” To this end, they urge governments and international bodies to make “family-planning services”—including abortion—“available to all people…”
If that sounds like a call for state-run population control, it is.
Ironically, the call comes at a time when developed nations are already saying “no” to children at an unprecedented rate, and not for environmental reasons. In fact, an increasing number of demographers are now convinced that we’re on the brink of a global population bust. As we’ve pointed out many times on BreakPoint, a childless society brings devastating economic, social, and spiritual consequences.
In a survey reported last year in the New York Times, one of the main reasons young respondents give for wanting fewer children (or none at all) was a desire for more leisure time. As one young woman put it, she’d rather be traveling with her fiance, focusing on her job and education, and “playing with her cats,” than having kids.
Increasingly in a culture habituated toward self-interest and sexual freedom, children are viewed as curses rather than blessings, as obstacles to achieving dreams, finding happiness, and even to keeping the planet cool.
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Against this backdrop, the Christian view of children as gifts from God is as counter-cultural as it gets. Yet counter-cultural is exactly what the Church is called to be right now, especially in how we welcome and talk about the next generation.
The newest statement from Evangelicals and Catholics Together—an initiative Chuck Colson co-founded with Fr. Richard John Neuhaus years ago—points the way forward. It’s called “The Gift of Children,” and it’s a bold and detailed reminder of how God views little ones. It’s also the kind of statement that’s bound to offend modern sensibilities:
“As Evangelicals and Catholics,” the statement reads, “we agree that a society in which nearly all fertile women are, in one form or another, rendered infertile by contraceptive technologies…reflects a profoundly disordered view of sex, children, human nature, and environmental responsibility.”
Increasingly today, couples are forced to justify their desire to have children, but this statement insists that parenthood is “the most natural of things.” It’s also worth sacrifices—even if it means fewer zeros on a paycheck, less square footage in a house, or fewer cars in the garage.
More fundamentally, the statement proclaims, the birth of a child is “charged with transcendent meaning.” Children are living affirmations that God’s creation is good, and they compel us, like nothing else in life, “to serve a future we cannot control” and to trust that God is not yet finished with this world.
“The Gift of Children” offers the radically counter-cultural understanding of children that is needed right now. More importantly, it’s a challenge to the Church, to conform ourselves to our professed beliefs—to bear witness, through welcoming new life, to the love of the God who gave us life.
I hope you’ll read it in full and share it with your friends, your family, and your pastor, and use it to spark a long overdue discussion.
Perhaps we need more babies and less scientists?
Wouldn’t killing animals have the same effect. And we could eat them while we’re at it.
Send teams of doctors to high birthrate regions to provide free sterilizations. Heck, give the men $50 and the women $100 bucks for their trouble.
“Babies say we have to kill more scientists in order to save the planet.”
Makes as much sense.
i blame it on spotted owls and polar bears- can’t we abort spotted owl and polar bear embryos to save the planet?
Mass Murders postings as scientists. I thought you need to get a degree to be a scientist, but I guess they got theirs from the back of a matchbook...
Makes as much sense.
It might make more sense.
But obviously we need more people from the third world here to work and vote democrats to keep their welfare schemes working too...
NAZI Germany claimed their ideals were grounded in science.
Wasn’t the Unabomber a scientist?
We could get a petition for the babies to make their mark on reversing what the scientists said. After all, the scientists had their shot at life now it’s time to make room for our future.
Doom. Gloom. Morons
Wasn’t it William Shakespeare that said kill all the lawyers? Maybe we should add all the scientists too. It’s only fair.
Monsters.
There was a recent Climate Change signing of thousands of “scientists.” They had all kind of odd names on the list including Mickey Mouse.
“the authors think it’s time to say “no” to children. World population, they write, “must be stabilized—and ideally, gradually reduced”
For some reason with these people, advanced, modern countries have to go first, while the primitive ones keep breeding like rabbits. And then all those rabbits get to flood the advanced countries by the millions. It’s kind of like national genocide.
Settled Science...
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