various #fundie

various #fundie rr-bb.com

[[I dont think there should be legislation controling how many children we should have. On the other hand, its pretty hard to denie that over population is becoming a vey big problem. I dont know what the answer is.]]

scapegoat: "I deny it."

antitox: "It's not "becoming a very big problem." There is still lotsa room for everybody.

There have been examples given how you could fit the world's population in a fraction of the earth's square footage; possibly in the state of Texas, but it would be a tight fit."

Mezuzas: "How is overpopulation a problem? Didn't Jesus feed five thousand people with just five loaves of bread and two small fish?

So I DENY that there is a problem."

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old comment by GigaGuess

scapegoat: "I deny it."
Surprise surprise. God forbid anyone tell you spawning a fucking FOOTBALL team is a bad idea.

antitox: "It's not "becoming a very big problem." There is still lotsa room for everybody.
So long as people don't mind living in generally uninhabitable areas, we eradicate vital rainforests, and don't feel any pressing need for farmland.

There have been examples given how you could fit the world's population in a fraction of the earth's square footage; possibly in the state of Texas, but it would be a tight fit."
Tight fit is an understatement. Unlivable. And again, you fail to account for little things like hostile terrain (Mountains, marshlands, the likes) that are unlivable, difficult to develop, or are ecologically vital.

Mezuzas: "How is overpopulation a problem? Didn't Jesus feed five thousand people with just five loaves of bread and two small fish?
Ask the people of Ethiopia how that theory is working out. You completely missed the point of that parable, didn't you. He didn't "make" the extra food. He got the people in attendance, who snuck food in to cough up, and like a good little socialist, redistributed the food.

So I DENY that there is a problem."
You do that...but statistics don't lie, and if the trends continue as they are, sooner or later, were going to encounter BIG problems. And God and Jesus don't seem to be willing to step in and help out, what makes you think they will later?

old comment by Zabimaru

Yes, it's hard for us living in luxury in rich nations to understand how much of an overpopulation problem there is in the world. But if you TRY to look outside of your own little group of people, to the starving masses, you'll see that space is far from the problem.

And it isn't even just about food. We are running out of other precious resources too; no one knows how much oil, coal and uranium there is, and we are running out of things like zinc, which is very important to our entire industry.
Sure, environmentalism, recycling, alternative power sources and so on can stave off those problems for a while yet, but if we keep doubling our population every couple of generations we are in big trouble.

old comment by Brain_In_A_Jar

It's a ghastly problem, one that basically boils down, assuming that enough people cannot be persuaded to voluntarily control their reproductive rate, to this: would you rather have a government force birth control on the general population, or have it simply wait until resources fall below the minimal level to sustain the lives of all citizens and have the population then fall back to sustainable levels via mass starvation, exposure, overcrowding, disease, suffering and death of the excess? The former is a mass human rights violation, but the latter seems awfully close to mass manslaughter by negligence.

Should one violate another's rights in order to save them from pain or even death brought about by their own negligence? Some would say yes, on compassionate grounds, but compassionate arguments can also be made against intervention because it robs them of self determination. What if said negligence, by depleting shared resources, brought hardship equally upon both the negligent and those who recognised the threat and exercised appropriate self restraint?

old comment by Zoo

You don't even begin to understand what the problem is.

1) Jesus is not here. He is not feeding all of the people that are going hungry. Perhaps fewer people would be hungry if corrupt governments didn't take aid money for themselves. That would not solve the problem completely though.

2) Biodiversity is measurably decreasing worldwide. A small reduction in biodiversity results in both destabilizing ecosystems and a further decrease in biodiversity. It's going to get to a point where everything's going to collapse and we're going to have involuntary population control, enough food or not.

3) It's NOT about physical space taken up by people. We could allow each person half a square kilometer, which would put about 298 billion people on the earth. They still have plenty of space! Unless, of course they want to eat or breathe oxygen.

I'm not saying I agree or disagree with official policies regarding population control, but it IS a problem, and if we can do something voluntarily (through education of the public), all the better.

old comment by dg

@Newton's Bitch, Mister Spak: The point definitely still holds (that the Texas argument is stupid), but it actually comes out to about 1118 square feet/103 square meters per person (for 6.7 billion people). That's the size of a small house - leaving no room for farmland, waste disposal, etc.

Still, in all fairness, there's enough food grown to feed everyone on Earth, and this is unlikely to change soon (in the US, farmers get paid not to grow crops, because if everyone in the Great Plains farmed their land to its full efficiency, food would be too cheap to make a living as a farmer.) World hunger is basically because it doesn't get where it's needed. There are large, poor populations in areas marginal for farming, like tropical Africa and certain parts of south Asia, while the best areas for farming - the temperate grasslands and woodlands - are far from the areas with large numbers of poor people.

The real problems with overpopulation have to do with environmental degradation, pollution, and the like - not starvation, directly. (They used to project apocalyptic starvation and the collapse of civilization at the current population or below.) The problem is, the emphasis on "overpopulation = starvation" tends to make people who realize that it's not strictly true throw out environmental issues in general.

Oh, and while it might be pragmatic, I *really* think official limitations on number of children is way into unacceptable territory.

Sorry for the tl;dr

various #fundie rr-bb.com

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