Be fruitful and multiply,” says the book of Genesis, and Lord knows we have. To the tune of more than 300 million at home and more than 6 billion abroad. But as we go about the heavenly task of multiplying, a poignant question arises: Might our religion be killing us?
We all remember the Aztecs. Some say their religion, with its penchant for violence and human sacrifice, played a critical role in the destruction of their civilization. We moderns are far more sophisticated, of course, but if we persist with some of our religious practices, we could be heading down the same disastrous dog trot. Sort of a reverse Noah story. Noah is credited with saving humanity during the big flood. We could be the ones who get blamed for destroying it.
Here’s why. The hundreds of scientists who make up the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned recently that the environmental crisis is more dire than originally believed. We might have reached a tipping point. Even if we stop producing harmful greenhouse gases immediately, temperatures could continue to rise and ocean levels along with them for the next 1,000 years. How much? The IPPC says by as much as 11 degrees this century with a corresponding rise in ocean levels of nearly 2 feet. Other scientists, such as Britain’s James Lovelock (who is credited with discovering that chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, were polluting the atmosphere), say it will be far worse and happen sooner. Both predictions portend drought, starvation and species extinction.
Huh. I thought Europe and the U.S. were experiencing low-to-negative population growth. Anybody have stats?
and this guy is right, whereas Paul “Population Bomb” Ehrlich was wrong, for what reason? Will the doom and gloom crowd ever learn? Not as long as they can get their message out via the ever fawning MSM…..
There is more about the author here:
http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/biography.aspx?name=o_thomas
With apologies beforehand, I think the article is a complete load of steaming manure. Starting with the Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc herring of religion as the cause of environmental stress, the author uses that shaky platform to assail the Catholic Church about birth control, abortion, women’s ordination, and gay rights. No actual causal link between population and pollution is made, other than in the opinions of the author.
Something to consider: Maybe it’s not the population that’s the problem, but certain portions of the population, and their consumption habits, that are the real culprit. In certain parts of the world, hunger and poverty aren’t a function of population, but of political corruption, ethnic strife, and economic instability.
The author could have gone that route, but with all the recent attention on the Catholic church, with the Pope’s visit to the USA, the swipe at the Church was more timely.
“Something to consider: Maybe it’s not the population that’s the problem, but certain portions of the population, and their consumption habits, that are the real culprit. ”
Yup, that and SUVs, industrial factories with little or weak environmental controls, etc. etc. I suspect that blaming “overpopulation” on possibly climate change is bunk.
This essay is simply 5th rate. Scant evidence follows scaremongering in order to whip the religious – pretty pathetic really.
And when you conisder they skated on the Thames in victorian England and grew Vines in Roman Britain – you start to ask if the ‘science’ surrounding climate change- is not merely observation on a very normal phenomenon
Wasn’t there an ice age some 10,000 years ago? If so, how did it melt? The earth warmed up…? Hum. Now, I am not person who thinks the earth is here for people to exploit, but ice melts, plain and simple. I like glaciers and the arctic. But the earth moves around the sun. Add time, and factors way off our scientific radar (like 10’s of thousands of years of solar system history), and it could simply be a natural warming pattern.
Also, I found it odd that Buzz evokes Aztecs and human sacrifice as the downfall of their civilization, and then seems to imply that abortion is an important ally in the quest to downsize the human population when he says, [i]”I am quite certain that God is not the author of human misery, but by preaching against birth control at the same time we are preaching against abortion, it seems that we’re making God out as cruel, a buffoon, or both.”[/i]
I am tired of conservative Christian folks being everybody’s favorite target for every problem.
You know, the climate changes with or without us. This is about as alarming as saying the tide comes in.
Even if one were to accept his proposition that it’s the Roman Catholic ban on birth control and encouragement of large families that is directly responsible for overpopulation, one would have to observe that by and large U.S. Roman Catholics don’t appear to be listening very well. Getting American RC preachers to change their tune probably wouldn’t help his cause much, even if he could do it.
Historically, places that experience increasing prosperity have tended to observe a natural decline in birthrate. This would seem to suggest that if we focus on alleviating poverty around the world — which we ought to be doing anyway, regardless of other considerations — then any overpopulation problems will likely take care of themselves.
“Even if we stop producing harmful greenhouse gases immediately, temperatures could continue to rise and ocean levels along with them for the next 1,000 years. How much? The IPPC says by as much as 11 degrees this century with a corresponding rise in ocean levels of nearly 2 feet.” …
Except that that’s not happening. At present the antarctic ice cap is thicker than it’s ever been since science has been keeping track, and temperatures have not risen as CO2 emissions have risen. In fact, temps dropped at the highest measure of CO2 a few years ago. As far as sea temps go, NASA recently sent probes to measure them, and the global warming alarmists ended up with egg on their face … not that they’re willing to admit it, of course. Simply put, scientific fact does not support human opinion on the subject of global warming due to CO2 emissions. Nature, it seems, is simply doing its thing. These things don’t seem to get much play on the mainline news programs, but they have been given mention from time to time. Glenn Beck of Headline News seems the best at putting it all out front thus far.
As far as the “be fruitful and multiply” goes, we do need to take heed there. Islam is out-birthing us, and deliberately at that. They have a plan, and part of it is to out-populate the infidels.
T
What an absolute crock. The most Roman Catholic nation in the world, Italy, already has a birth rate so low its population is expected to halve by mid-century. Spain and Portugal, also strongly Catholic, are in the same situation.
Let’s look at this cretin’s reasoning:
This piece of utter nonsense should not even receive a passing mark for a Grade 10 science paper.
Excellent statistics of world demographics are available in Ben Wattenberg’s book [url=http://www.amazon.com/Fewer-Demogrpahy-Depopulation-Shape-Future/dp/156663606X]’Fewer'[/url].
Serious demographers are already concerned about population [i]decline[/i]. Solar physicists, especially in places like Canada, are already concerned about global [i]cooling[/i].
Remember ‘Famine 1975’? These folks have been wrong for forty years. Learning disabled, it would appear.
The informtion about the author states he is a minister. I bet KJS is watching her heels as this guy comes so close to overtaking her. I mean this is the Easter Sermon, she no doubt wishes she had given. What a splendid rallying call it would have been with the finer points of KJS own sermon worked into it.
Why he even mentions the fecundity of those rabbit like Catholics and Mormons, as well as their misogyny and homophobia. One is forced to ask how, if they are so busy making babies at every opportunity, do these people have time for carrying the world to hell in a nonrecycled handbasket ? It must be during infertile times they and their 47 offspring romp merrily about cutting down old growth forests, indiscrimately burning fossil fuels and hunting endangered species to extinction.
I bet they are also the ones hoarding important food crops in order to jack up the prices and precipitate instability thereby opening the doors to totalitarian regimes. The poor do but a tarnish on the tourist trade, can’t we do something about them?
The author no doubt will do his part for the greening of the world by recalling the human body once deceased is a feast for those insects and bacteria which are so important to the ecosystem.
Ok the end is nigh. The author is a Southern Baptist Minister. I never would have guessed that.
Oliver “Buzz” Thomas is a minister, lawyer, and author according to the info at the end of the article. For his sake, let’s hope he is at least a competent lawyer…
If any religion is killing anyone, vis-a-vis over population, perhaps the culprits are Hinduism, Buddhism, and Chinese Communism [secular humanists]. If memory serves, India and China are leading the way in overpopulation. The “Christian” West is either barely sustaining population [North America] or losing population [Europe]. If it were not for immigration, the West would be declining in overall population. BTW, Islam is pretty close to the leaders in the overpopulation blame game.
This article is rubbish.
I’m particularly fond of this remark: “All this is to say that religion often comes late to the party . . .”
#12 may indeed be right. In the end times, the finger gets pointed at religion as the culprit in just about everything. Now, if it weren’t for religion and all its anachronisms, the polar ice caps would be growing, not shrinking and the earth would be a veritable Garden of Eden. (wink)
“Climate Change” is code for “go for their wallet.”
Buzz sounds like a Jimmy Carter Baptist.
I think the “money” quote from his little essay is
[blockquote]”There’s little doubt that the human species has the ability to survive what lies ahead. There is considerable doubt, however, as to whether we have the ability to rise above our personal and tribal interests to earnestly seek the common good.”[/blockquote]
Humanity has all we need within ourselves and if we just appoint intellectual, liberal elites like Buzz, who know what’s best for us, to tell us what we have to do, everything will be just peachy. Also, Buzz and his buddies will have bureaucratic sinecures for life, while the rest of us are taxed to death to support them telling us what we have to do.
Oliver Thomas taught at Georgetown University, a Jesuit-founded school (that would be the Roman Catholic Jesuits!). He is a perfect example of the concerns that Pope Benedict XVI expressed about the state of some of the Catholic colleges and universities.
Added to my comment above: I don’t know whether to be more disgusted by the moral point of view or the shoddy thinking.
RCC the two are often interwined.
If I may offer a [url=http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/ice_ages.html]quote[/url]:
[blockquote]We have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we may have. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.”
–Stephen Schneider (leading advocate of the global warming theory), [i]Discover Magazine[/i], Oct 1989 [/blockquote]
#14 – the Chinese government’s commitment to reducing population growth is undoubted and quite inhumane and bloody. The one-child policy is well enforced, “by any means necessary”.
The premise that the earth is warming is not terribly hard to believe. I am not a believer in a young earth, so I can believe that the earth has warmed and cooled dozens, nay hundreds, perhaps thousands of times. And you have about a fifty-fifty chance of hitting it right in any cycle.
But even the global warming proponents have to admit that human-cause global warming has never happened before in the history of the entire universe. I think the burden of proof on this point is many orders of magnitude higher than the proof of global warming. Similarly, there is no precedent for human activity cooling the planet in the slightest. It is far easier to believe that any particular named person will rise from the dead. At least that sort of thing has happened before.
Religion is simply a stalking horse here, and the essay’s anti-religious bias should cause no one any concern. We have seen all this over and over.
Global warming is a different matter. The evidence here is very clear. The polar ice sheets are melting at an increasing rate. One need only look at the aerial photos over the last ten years. The production of carbon dioxide (and its kin) as the result of industrialization is also incontrovertible. Its effects also incontrovertible: Go to Beijing, breathe the air, drink the water, and
eat the food that has formaldehyde in it, then look at the throat and cancer stomach rates. (My son has been t here all year, and his reports are hair-raising – or maybe hair-falling-out) Will food production be altered as t he climate changes (for whatever cause)? It already is.
Even here in central Maine, one can see the changes over the last twenty years. For example, dog ticks, once rare here because the winters were so cold, are now a constant pain, there are so many. Even the trees in the forests are changing common species, and farmers are growing peaches (as I am) which were utterly impossible to grow here until 20 years ago. It is worth noting therefore that the cold has not hit -20 in fifteen years, and -20 was common enough so no one noticed much until one saw -30.
Is mankind the cause of all of this? Clearly, we are the cause of some of it.
Is the population falling in developed countries? Yes, but is it falling world wide? No indeed, humanity is multiplying steadily.
Larry
#22
In 2001, the Chinese population had grown by 132.2 million since 1990, an increase of 11.7%…even with the official “one-child” policy.
Some analysts believed that figure underestimated the population growth. It is believed that tens of millions of people with extra children had hidden them from the census takers for fear of being punished.
The people’s paradise is still a significant part of the overpopulation equation.
Check my facts:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/1246731.stm
Larry ~ “The polar ice sheets are melting at an increasing rate. One need only look at the aerial photos over the last ten years. ”
I may be picking nits here, but the southern pole is not, I repeat not, melting. Ice has broken off, thus making it look smaller, but the polar ice is thicker than it has ever been since NASA et al have been measuring it. Also, sea temps have not risen, as mentioned before in an earlier post. There is more going on here than carbon emissions. None-the-less, there is a change going on, and I doubt anyone would argue to continue ‘business as usual’. The question is, what is the real cause, and how much is simply nature at its best?
T
#24 You say that clearly we humans are the cause of some of the global warming. I’m afraid its not all that clear to me but maybe I’ve missed something. I have seen no science that demonstrates this. Do you have evidence I haven’t seen?
Last I read there has not been any significant warming in the last 10 years, and the trend may be going in the other direction. Does anyone besides me have the feeling the church in general latches on to cultural ideas and concepts at just about the time those ideas are increasingly being shown as unsupported or counter productive or even dangerous? Meanwhile, clerics who really know nothing about the issues except what the popular media promotes, seem to think they are on the cutting edge of modern thought!