So material things and how much of these material things you can provide to one or two kids is more important than having a large family that God has blessed you with? I'm sorry, Lori, but your attitude is exactly what is wrong with society today.... Who cares if they can't send their 15 children to montessori school, girl (and boy) scouts, summer camp, have math tutors, dance lessons, and whatever other materialistic things that other people think are so important and that their children just have to have. Huge families like this used to be the norm.
26 comments
Huge numbers of births used to be the norm, but families usually weren't much larger on average than they are now, partly because the mortality rate for infants and children was nearly as huge.
Crosis, I'm glad that your dad's group came out all right. I don't mean to say that a condition of abject squalor and misery is a definite outcome of having a large family; however, because resources are inevitably stretched much thinner, it becomes a much stronger possibility, and I just see no need to deliberately increase the odds in that direction (especially in today's economy, as opposed to that when your dad's generation was growing up).
Many if not most civilized countries are below replacement level with births.
The population is too large already. We need to reduce the birth rate or we will run out of room and food in a few generations. But then, you lot figure the world is going to end, so I guess you don't care about little things like that.
Actually, Paul Ehrlich in the Population Bomb assured us that there would be mass starvation due to overpopulation by the 70s or 80s. Oopsie! Malthus said pretty much the same in 1798. Oopsie! Both discredited.http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=19076
By the way, "and that is why" - your conclusion does not follow from the facts or assertions preceding it. The rapture teaching may or may not be nonsense, but what you said does not lead to that conclusion, logically.
Skeptical:
David DG:
That is hardly the only source, Brian; just the first I came across. Do some research; I promise they are both discredited by facts.
Huge illiterate, innumerate, ignorant families like this used to be the norm, with just enough income to stay alive in poor health, malnourishment and misery; their only tiny moments of happiness brought by being told fairy tales about eternal paradise after their early, agonising death from overwork and exhaustion.
//Fixed.
15 kids = 1 slave-labour squad
PS @skeptical
15 fundie kids per fundie family will soon outbreed the on-fundies. If they get theeir hands on power they'll never relinquish it - hell they'd change the US constitution to enshrine their power structure if they could!
My dad was the youngest of 10 kids (5 boys, 5 girls). To survive, he had to get a job on a market stall, and get up hideously early to do his work before school. He was lucky he got to uni and met my mother.
@Skeptical: you can thank Norman Borlaugh and the Green Revolution for there not being any Malthusian crisis in the 20th century. But genetic engineering of crops can only go so far. That food for 30 billion statement that you quoted makes very specific assumptions about what people are eating - do you think that everyone will agree to become vegetarian?
If everyone keeps having lots of kids and those kids all live to have kids of their own, we will eventually run out of resources. That is inevitable. Malthus got that one right: a exponential process, like population growth, will eventually overrun a limited resource base.
>>Many if not most civilized countries are below replacement level with births.<<
Is China 'civilized'? Is India? That is not a helpful definition. Yes, the rate of population growth has slowed overall. But that isn't anywhere near the world population being stable or decreasing.
Fortunately, all of the evidence says that increased education for both men and women and equal rights for women and men leads to a lower birthrate and a much better quality of life for the children that are born. If public education programs worldwide continue as they have been for the next few decades, the population should eventually plateau - the UN mid-range estimate is about 9.5 billion in 2070 or so, followed by a slow decrease. That is going to be hard to manage without a lot of misery for the poorest half of humanity, but it is better than it could be.
SapphireGirl is a member of a thankfully small and shrinking minority.
Yes, huge families used to be the norm, and if you were lucky most of the kids survived their fifth birthday. That's why you had so many; to insure that you had at least one male heir to take over when you died of old age, at age 45.
My parents gave us time, love, respect and a love for knowledge.
Home education, as in parents teaching their children, can never be as specific or as diversified as in a school with many teachers, each an expert in her/his field. It takes years to become a good Biology teacher or a good Home Economics teacher or a good Astronomy teacher or a good English teacher. A parent can't be as knowledgeable in all these and 10-20 more subjects as all these teachers are, combined.
Owning people and castrating all but the eldest son to make sure you had a direct and single heir also used to be the norm. We stopped having twenty kids the minute we stopped needing free labour down on the farm.
Having lots of kids puts a big strain on finances and resources- unless you can breed photosynthetic kids, you're gonna have to feed them. Then there's the emotional toll. The elder kids will most likely turn out to be assholes, since they'll have gotten the most attention, while the younger ones will be mostly left to the whims of their elder siblings, if not outright forgotten.
My mother was the 13th out of 14 kids, and I'm something like 28 grandkid out of fifty-something, so I kinda know what I'm talking about.
Brian X:
"We don't need no education"
Obviously you do. You used a double negative. (Yes, I get the point is to stick it to the man/teacher by using double negatives, but if you do that, at least try to prove you won't be living in a box behind Arby's or something.
"It takes years to become a good Biology teacher or a good Home Economics teacher or a good Astronomy teacher or a good English teacher. A parent can't be as knowledgeable in all these and 10-20 more subjects as all these teachers are, combined."
I love to introduce new employees into the workplace and teach them how our systems work. I learned that at McDonald's, were there were an enormous amount of new employees. I must be fairly good at it, because people praise my teaching skills, and manager after manager lets me teach new employees.
Sadly enough, my family consists of only two people and two cats. I have not been able to produce any kids. But, my family is still a close-knit unit who love each other, and often spend evenings together in the sofa in front of the TV, whether out on the porch or indoors in the living-room.
Well, what about those children when they grow up?, without education, how are they supposed to take care of themselves?
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
To post a comment, you'll need to Sign in or Register . Making an account also allows you to claim credit for submitting quotes, and to vote on quotes and comments. You don't even need to give us your email address.
