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By what stroke of "sacred belief" could a reasonable person hold that six and half billion people are not enough? It is time for genetic greed to end and for people to act reasonably and compassionately. If 9/11 taught us nothing else, it should have taught us that irrational and destructive doctrine -- no matter how sacred to those who hold it -- must be opposed by people of good conscience. The days of "anything goes if your holy writ endorses it" are gone.
Ah, the “reasonable person” standard, which leads to the question of who is reasonable? It also compels one to ask what the "reasonable," "compassionate," and person of "good conscience" will do about those people who refuse to stop producing too many children.
By what stroke of "sacred belief" could a reasonable person hold that six and half billion people is not enough? Polygamy used to be one of those sacred beliefs too, remember? It is time for genetic greed to end and for people to act reasonably and compassionately. If 9/11 taught us nothing else, it should have taught us that irrational and destructive doctrine -- no matter how sacred to those who hold it -- must be opposed by people of good conscience. The days of "anything goes if your holy writ endorses it" are gone.
Therein lies the problem -- you are dealing with "sacred beliefs" You have sacred beliefs also -- namely that the earth is overpopulated and this overpopulation is destroying the earth.
What is the origin of your sacred belief? Somewhere along the line you accepted the theories and conclusions of someone other than youself as the truth, and you placed your faith in these ideas. You may say that there is scientific basis to back up your ideas, but you are still showing faith in the work and conclusions of others.
Then you may encounter others who have "sacred beliefs" different than yours. Of course you believe they are wrong, because you have examined your position and found it to be sound and in accordance with your own conscience. But how are you going to prove you are right to others who have placed their faith in another system and have found it to be sound and in accordance with their own consciences?
In saying this, I am not discounting your environmental views entirely. I believe we have a responsibility to be good stewards of the Earth that God provided. I'm trying to point out that trying to change other people's sacred beliefs is as futile as someone trying to change yours.
Ah, the “reasonable person” standard, which leads to the question of who is reasonable?
That question is easily answered by examining what it would take to change someone's belief. If evidence contravening one's existing belief would cause them to change the belief, then their belief system is reasonable. The conclusions of reasonable inquiry are always mutable.
There are six basic epistemologies that underlie human belief:
rationalism - belief based on independently confirmable evidence authoritarianism - belief based on writings or teachings believed to be inerrant by their adherents. emotionalism - a propensity to disbelieve conclusions that one finds distasteful intuition - belief based on gut feeling experientialism - belief based on personal involvement assimilation - tendency to adopt the prevailing beliefs of one's social environment - the "mind virus syndrome"
Now, how about the circular-reasoning argument that reason, too, is a kind of faith? That very argument presupposes an authoritarianist view, so will not likely be defeated by reason. But consider this: what is it that has changed society so drastically since the time of the Renaissance? 15th Century society wasn't all that much different from 5th Century society despite having the same sources of authority to guide them. What brought about the Industrial Revolution, the miracles of medicine, the Information Age? Intuition? Emotional thinking? No, it was reason. And reason is telling us that overpopulation is killing us. It is much the same as what has happened with food. Over a very short span of history, we have gone from a society where calorie-dense foods were uncommon and humans expended great amounts of energy over the course of a work day to one where calorie-dense foods are ubiquitous and humans are sedentary. Type 2 diabetes is rampant because we haven't adjusted our eating attitudes to the new reality. Over a very short span of history we have gone from a situation where infant mortality was high and most people died from infectious diseases to one where infant mortality is extremely low and longevity has more than doubled. Maintaining the attitudes about reproduction that were forged in the high mortality days will be the end of us. It is up to reasoned minds to help the authoritarianists and emotionalists to make the paradigm shift.
95% of this website is devoted to people who are looking to become refugees from a home city that has lost its liveability: urban congestion, high housing density, bumper-to-bumper traffic, brown air, high crime, high taxes...how did it all come about? It happened because the number of inhabitants exceeded the healthy carrying capacity of the land. We're just playing Hometown Musical Chairs -- shuffling around to less-damaged areas so we can start the cycle of decay all over again. That isn't the answer. We've got to be more conscientious and less greedy about how we live. And reigning in genetic greed is where it all starts.
That question is easily answered by examining what it would take to change someone's belief. If evidence contravening one's existing belief would cause them to change the belief, then their belief system is reasonable.
Evidence is evaluated and weighed and people will disagree over its value. We see this in courts of law all of the time. Evidence that appears conclusive may be rejected yet the evaluator is no less rational or reasonable. Attempting to enforce a strict calculus of rationalism as a measure of reasonableness is impossible when dealing with humans, which brings me back to my second question.
After you have applied all of your “rational” and irrefutable arguments in an attempt to convince people not to have more than 1.1 children and it is rejected, what can you do? I believe the answer is obvious. One cannot sway the faith of the truly faithful; Rome found that out. Seems no matter how many Christians Caesar fed to the lions, the faithful continued to believe.
Rather than worrying about too many people, we need to get busy on finding ways of increasing crop yields and finding clean and renewable energy sources, amongst other things. I also suspect there are sufficient people who firmly believe that overpopulation is a new plague on the land, who will voluntarily not produce any children and offset any damage done by those crazy religious folks.
"senseless dogma"
"genetic greed"
"irrational and destructive doctrine"
As a self-styled intellectual with high reasoning and critical thinking skills, you probably see where you went wrong.
No? Allow me to enlighten you. People don't choose to refrain from having children because someone comes along and calls them selfish idiots for believing in religious superstition. Those who are truly too stupid to understand your meaning will go on their merry way, oblivious. Those who do understand your meaning will write you off as a bigoted, offensive boor, and will go on their merry way, children in tow. Furthermore, most people do not respond favorably to being compared to a terrorist.
If there's anything more appalling than your assumption of superior intellect, it's your arrogance in believing you, or anyone, should get to decide how many children other people have. Perhaps you haven't thought through the consequences. Are you advocating forced sterilization, forced abortion, or forced genocide? Those are your three options. Nice, aren't they? Or maybe penalties are more your cup of tea. Don't make it illegal, exactly, just make it socially and economically impossible to have more children. Perhaps you should check out the effects that population control is having in China, with its aging population, and not enough young workers to support them.
Small voice crying from the wilderness: perhaps the real problem is not that some people still fill that children are a treasure (rather than a drain on resources), but that some of us control too much of those resources, based mainly on greed, and do not share with the rest. Surely there is enough, and more, for all--providing a way can be found to conserve, develop, and share. It's not that there are too many mouths, it's that the food is not finding it's way to those in need, nor are the new beings on this earth always given a chance to develop their skills and intellect. By the way, Steve, have you noticed that Europe is in trouble (like China) because there are soon to be only old people, with no young ones to provide care; their economies may soon be in deep trouble, so what has that accomplised?
By the way, why was this post, regarding not being afraid to move to Utah, hijacked as a forum against bringing children into the world? Cannot wait for your next rant, Steve, as it's interesting to watch your vaulted intellect working
One cannot sway the faith of the truly faithful; Rome found that out. Seems no matter how many Christians Caesar fed to the lions, the faithful continued to believe.
It is certainly true that people's beliefs are not revised in an instant, nor reversed on the basis of verbal argument. Yet a grain of logic that has lodged in the mind can work wonders over a number of years. As the intellect matures, doubts will form. Sooner or later everyone realizes his construction of divinity is largely an accident of geography. Were he born in Pakistan or India he would just as assuredly be convinced of the inerrancy and exclusive Truth of the Islamic or Hindu doctrine he has picked up in that regional cosmology. But reason and compassion speak the same language to all peoples. That mote of reason that persists in the mind over the years generates the sunshine of doubt...the doubt of reason that softens those inherited teachings that chafe the conscience. And -- where personal experience vindicates the validity of its conclusions -- reason may prevail even against the most dogged cognitive resistance. The smoker who scoffed at statistical risks of emphysema or congestive heart failure at a young age may incline his ear more readily when he runs short of breath at age 40. The hardcore skeptic of global climate change may have his cognitive resistance worn down by a Cat-5 hurricane that destroys his home town. And I believe that many Mormons of conscience have already questioned the theological permissivity of unbridled fertility in the consequences they have witnessed in their home towns: God's wild creatures displaced, the air made unbreathable, potable water in frightfully short supply. Reason coupled with experience is powerfully durable and intensifies with repeated exposure.
Even the hardest heart can be softened; there would be no leagues of white-shirted missionaries on bicycles if it weren't believed to be so. No plea for social justice is ever futile. Religious reform is a slow and arduous process, but is also constant and assured. The Church of LDS is a trailer, not a leader, in social justice reforms, but they will happen eventually if the leadership comes from the grassroots. Throughout my entire childhood and well into adulthood, persons of color -- being "descendents of Cain" -- were not allowed into the LDS priesthood because they were "marked" and "unworthy". After tremendous pressure from social justice advocates throughtout the 60's and 70's, the LDS elders belatedly relented with Official Declaration no. 2 in 1978, and it was finally okay to be black or brown. Religious reforms do happen, though it takes time and relentless activism from committed believers. There are already thousands of Mormons of good faith who have privately realized that reckless fecundity should be placed alongside of polygamy and the racist view of inheritance and lineage -- on the scrap heap of sacred beliefs that aren't. Let's join them.
Last edited by Steve97415; 01-02-2007 at 12:32 AM..
Small voice crying from the wilderness: perhaps the real problem is not that some people still fill that children are a treasure (rather than a drain on resources), but that some of us control too much of those resources, based mainly on greed, and do not share with the rest. Surely there is enough, and more, for all--providing a way can be found to conserve, develop, and share. It's not that there are too many mouths, it's that the food is not finding it's way to those in need, nor are the new beings on this earth always given a chance to develop their skills and intellect.
My old botany professor used to have a pet saying: "Mathematics will always have its way, no matter what we believe." That's now one of my pet sayings because personal experience has repeatedly verified its truth without exception. If I eat too many calories, I get fat (of this I can provide recent empirical evidence). I may believe that food is good, and we need it to survive, but no personal credo or hopeful world view will make me a thin overeater.
One of the associated principles is a major law that governs the behavior of the universe. Its called the Law of Conservation of Matter and Energy. It holds, in part, that matter cannot be either created or destroyed, it can only be redistributed. Biomass -the stuff that living organisms are made of - is matter. So now we have a beautiful little eight-pound bundle of joy. Where was that eight pounds of biomass borrowed from? A desert tortoise? A flamingo? An oak sapling? It didn't come out of thin air. At any given time, the earth is running at maximum sustainable biomass - the fecundity of life is limited by the amount of solar energy the earth receives. New human increase is like pouring wine into a glass that is already full of water: any wine that gets in does so by displacing water that was already there. So the question is how much wine is a conscienable amount? How many billions of high-consumer hominids can a fragile biosphere tolerate? Do we have an obligation to respect Creation and preserve nonhuman biodiversity? Or does their creator secretly despise all the insects, fish, reptiles, birds and mammals on the planet? Perhaps he want us to usurp the resources that keep them alive and reallocate them for human increase...seeing as how we're somewhat of an endangered species now at only six and a half billion of us. Well...that's what we're doing right now whether or not we've given it much thought. Yes, we can continue to expand the capacity of our human support system...by whittling away at the Web of Life through land and resource conversion. Whether or not it is ethically permissible to do so is not a question that should be taken lightly or brushed aside with fiat assumptions.
Quote:
Originally Posted by LlasaLost
By the way, Steve, have you noticed that Europe is in trouble (like China) because there are soon to be only old people, with no young ones to provide care; their economies may soon be in deep trouble, so what has that accomplised?
So what would you propose? That we treat each aging generation like some reproductive pyramid scheme? Pump new meat into the bottom tier to subsidize the one above it while creating an even more unsustainable population bubble that will break the system in another 70 years? Europe knew that the population flywheel would slow down in the early 21st Century. Given the options -- increasing the severity of population density or negative population growth, it's certainly the lesser of the two "problems" they'd have to face. Incidentally, we're next - 25 to 30 years off.
Quote:
Originally Posted by LlasaLost
By the way, why was this post, regarding not being afraid to move to Utah, hijacked as a forum against bringing children into the world? Cannot wait for your next rant, Steve, as it's interesting to watch your vaulted intellect working
Well it's not a rant against bringing children into the world, but about ignoring the moral consequences of reallocating the resources that the health of the biosphere depends on for further human population increase...and the ideo-political culture that might reinforce such a view. I have a final point post that pertains exactly to Michelle's initiating post wherein she voices worries about moving to a geographic territory where a particular religion and its associated world view predominate. But I need to draw a few more responses to do that...don't worry I'm almost there.
And I believe that many Mormons of conscience have already questioned the theological permissivity of unbridled fertility... Let's join them.
Uh, no, Steve, I have to respectfully decline. As you point out, the rational evaluation of evidence in the changing of one's belief system is the measure of reasonableness. I applied rational evaluation to the evidence before me and came to the absolute certainty that LDS "dogma" is true, so I converted.
Sorry, but after 32 years in law enforcement, I have become somewhat skilled at evaluating evidence.
As the intellect matures, doubts will form. Sooner or later everyone realizes his construction of divinity is largely an accident of geography.
Steve -- you aren't stupid, but really smart people realize they don't have all the answers, they certainly avoid alienating the very people they are trying to convince, and they don't speak in the absolute terms that you do.
I guess I haven't come around to your way of thinking, so I'll just keep on waiting for my intellect to mature. When do you think everyone will realize this divinity bit is just a bunch of nonsense?
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