Claire brings up a good, thought-provoking discussion…one we ought to follow through to an answer.
“Be fruitful and multiply”…no wait, overpopulation.
This subject, for me, is one more reason to trust the sovereignty of God. Why? Just like other variables (affording children, health, etc.), our limited wisdom insufficient to make life-altering decisions based on circumstances far beyond our ability to know.
The terrorist attacks wiped out over 3,000 people in one day; tsunamis have taken the lives of over 20,000 each hit, in a matter of minutes. Can we predict population variables enough to overturn the command to “multiply”?
Here is an excerpt from an article suggesting the OPPOSITE problem of the loudly-touted overpopulation…thought it was very helpful. (Link to entire article is below.)
“The world is over-populated and heading towards demographic catastrophe, right?
Wrong. According to Max Singer, writing in The Atlantic Monthly of August 1999, “Unless people’s values change greatly, several centuries from now there could be fewer people living in the entire world than live in the United States today.” How does he come to this startling and unorthodox view? Simply because no demographer predicted that when fertility dropped to replacement level – which is 2.1 child per woman per lifetime – it would keep falling. But it has. In Western Europe, Japan and the East Asian tiger economies, the total fertility rate (TFR) is 1.5. and falling. Italy’s has fallen to a national suicidal 1.2. North African immigrants look like inheriting Italy.”
http://www.enterstageright.com/archive/articles/0500overpopulation.htm
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Today my husband and I read this article by Michael Crichton “Enviromentalism as Religion.” Here is a quote from that article,
…”Well, it’s interesting. You may have noticed that something has been left off the doomsday list, lately. Although the preachers of environmentalism have been yelling about population for fifty years, over the last decade world population seems to be taking an unexpected turn. Fertility rates are falling almost everywhere. As a result, over the course of my lifetime the thoughtful predictions for total world population have gone from a high of 20 billion, to 15 billion, to 11 billion (which was the UN estimate around 1990) to now 9 billion, and soon, perhaps less. There are some who think that world population will peak in 2050 and then start to decline. There are some who predict we will have fewer people in 2100 than we do today. Is this a reason to rejoice, to say halleluiah? Certainly not. Without a pause, we now hear about the coming crisis of world economy from a shrinking population. We hear about the impending crisis of an aging population. Nobody anywhere will say that the core fears expressed for most of my life have turned out not to be true. As we have moved into the future, these doomsday visions vanished, like a mirage in the desert. They were never there—though they still appear, in the future. As mirages do.”
My mom found an article about the second website below a few months ago. It’s a site from Australia geared for children where they answer questions about their lifestyle and are depicted as a growing or shrinking pig based upon things they (or actually their parents) do or don’t do for the environment. At the end of the quiz, the cartoon pig explodes into a bloody mess and you are told when you have exhausted your share of the planets resources. As a fairly average person, I should have died by age 3!
You can read about it here:
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/jun/08060609.html
Or take the quiz here:
http://www.abc.net.au/science/planetslayer/greenhouse_calc.htm
Another interesting thought – a lot of couples, most of them in the U.S., if they even have any children, will “max out” at two or MAYBE three.
However, if we want to even make up for the rest of the population that is currently here, we have to also take into consideration singles that never conceived, couples that did not/could not, etc.
Because, at a “2 per family” ratio, families only bring forth enough people to “cover” the two parents. With a third child, they extend to “cover” only one other human.
The reality of this being that in the U.S., not taking illegal immigrants into consideration (which can be totaled, but it is harder to), our nation will not repopulate its current balance, but will actually dwindle.
This leaves things like the “concept” of Social Security (I don’t agree with forced help, but the general idea of giving help willingly to the elderly is important) slimmer and slimmer, as there are far more older people to take care of than there are younger to care for them, financially and emotionally. Not enough “resources” to cover the older generation, because they chose to limit the younger coming to begin with.
We recently watched a chilling documentary called Demographic Winter (www.DemographicWinter.com). Compelling!
Jill