Human intelligence is a recent development as far as the time that things have been evolving goes. The drive to procreate existed long before our brains developed the complexity to conceive strategies such as, well, putting off conceiving.

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How do you define success?

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There's the problem. Smart, hard working people are not the ones who seem to be as "successful" in having children as the... others. Just look at our own little love section. Most of those geeks are having problems just finding a girl/guy. Just check the court system and you'll find plenty of idiots with children.

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We probably don't deserve to exist.

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Originally posted by Avatar:
Most people don't. I do. Many people on this forum do. That's why we should all write to our congress people and ask to make neutering an acceptable alternative to jail or fines. Helps the gene pool, helps overpopulation, and is much more frightening to crooks than jail. Plus, according to my vet, it decreases aggressiveness in males, so it may even prevent future crimes! There's no downside!

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Probably wont happen in the U.S. it would be considered cruel and unusual punishment.

Interesting idea though...although what if they make a law where geeks become criminals just by linking to some site?

On the lighter side, think there are theories stating that evolution in the human species is becoming more of an evolution of ideas which i think they deem memes.

You also have to consider that having lots of offspring does not necessarily mean evolutionary success for a member of as species. There are factors such as intelligence, strength (of character and of body), adaptability that play a role.

Sure normally more offspring == better chance of success, but I think some of us would like to make our own luck. Here is where intelligence plays a part.

If I make no sense is probably because of lack of sleep and boredom at work....

A few million years ago, people with poor eyesight or teeth, a propensity towards diabetes, cancer or obesity or poor disease resistance would have been "selected out" by a germ or a sabre-toothed tiger before they reached breeding age. Now they quite happily pass these traits on to their children with the aid of antibiotics, insulin, and a lack of tigers.

Presumably the race will make use of genetic engineering to correct some of these problems, but that's only going to happen among those who can afford it, and the idea completely breaks down if there's not an infrastructure to support it. In other words, when Black Friday comes we're no longer viable. The species is especially vulnerable at this point when the flaws are at their full expression but the fixes haven't started yet.

The people who are breeding the most are the ones who practice polygamy and / or eschew birth control.

In my personal opinion (and this is just opinion, please treat it as such) the Catholic Church should be hauled into a world court for crimes against humanity. I'm sure they mean well, but...

I'm not kidding there... Their stance against birth control has caused more poverty, misery and outright damage in this world than Stalin or Mao ever could have hoped for.

More like wildly incorrect, if you ask me.

The people who are breeding the most are the ones who practice polygamy and / or eschew birth control.

Polygamy probably doesn't account for much. It can't be widely practiced unless women take up polyandry to even things back out. Other than that, eschewing birth control is a necessary step in the breeding process.

I'm not kidding there... Their stance against birth control has caused more poverty, misery and outright damage in this world than Stalin or Mao ever could have hoped for.

Um, poverty is caused by a scarcity of resources, not an excess of children. People who live in impoverished conditions are probably going to be poor whether they have children or not. Apart from money, how are poor people different from middle class or rich people?

Having children can't be all that miserable or more people would quit doing it.

So, I remain utterly unconvinced that the Catholic Church (even with the current scandal) has done more damage than Stalin (20 million of his own countrymen?) or Mao (ask the Chinese how they feel about state-mandated birth control!).

Probably the strongest link, however, is the education level of women in a society. Places where women are educated outside the home have lower birth rates than places where women have only domestic roles.

So one way to control the world's population is to support educational initiatives in developing nations, particularly for girls, and to find a way to distribute the world's food more equitably.

Ultimately capping the world's human population before we ravage the entire planet is simple. Delay breeding. The math...

If a society typically produces its first children at age 20, there will be 60 year old great grandparents. If the first children are delayed until 25 those people will have to live to 75 to become great grandparents. In some parts of North America and western Europe the average age for a first child is approaching 30. With a life expectancy of less than 90, most people will never become great grandparents.

So if we use North American life expectancies of roughly 80, the society that starts a family at 20 will have 4 full generations and a small 5th generation alive at once. The society waiting until 25 will only have 3 full generations plus a moderately sized 4th generation and the society waiting until 30 will only have 3 generations alive at any given time.

Delaying the first child also has the effect of reducing average family size thus killing two birds with one stone so to speak.

Is it better to use birth control/abortions and "take a life" as the church would say

OR

Have the baby, knowing full well you can't support it, end up being even more poor, because you don't have the income for another person, possibly have it grow up in an abusive or majorly screwed up family, thus making the child unhappy and screwed up with a horrible life, until one day it has kids too.

Obviously, the best solution is to not get into that situation in the first place, but people do. So which is better? I go with #1.

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I'm smart, let's have sex to save the species!

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Originally posted by macadddikt18:
why don't we just genticly engineer the new babies so they are smart? or is there some sort of moral problem with that?
Nayt

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You're deeply religious. You tell me.
Mucking around with the germline is dangerous. We don't know enough about how our genes work in orer to do it safely and developmental mistakes are sad, disgusting, and lethal.
Anyway, we still haven't established how much of smart is nature and how much is nurture.

Smart people don't breed.

Stupid (or more politically correct, average) people do in huge numbers.

Think of an ant colony -- or something blatantly fictional like I'm doing right now because I'm making this theory up as I go along:

There are always more workers than there are care-takers and warriors and such. Somewhere in some tiny little tunnel there are a few little big-headed engineer ants trying to figure out how to make everything more efficient. They need those armies of marching workers to build the tunnels and read the blueprints. And the Queen surely has a few formic friends in the shadows whispering little formic ideas into her head. If there were too many of those little fellas, well... wouldn't the little system break down? They say leaders are generally not intelligent, just charismatic. They just surround themselves with brilliant people and take credit for their work.

It's a control issue. By natural or at least unconsciously unnatural design -- If the world were overcome by super-smart thinkers, I would imagine by my experience with my own brainy friends, that there would be dirty dishes and snickers wrappers everywhere, and no Jocko to pick it all up. And who would stand at the assembly line and plug cards into the motherboards?

Besides: Who's to say that if there were more smart people about that they wouldn't get together and go all 'Pinky and the Brain' on the world? Heh heh.

Well, that'll do for my randomness this time. Maybe I should get some sleep.

Natural selection isn't unrecognizable in humans it still drives everything we do. We are programed beyond what our "free will" will allow us to over come, and these three unsurmountable directives are:
1. survival of the fittest
2. preservation of the self
3. contiuation of the "speicies"

Seeming eveations from these are typically caused by conflict between them, but these are the reasons we make love, war and push for advancement in all our technology. Try as we might to claim our supiriority to the "lesser animials" we are still just as primitive. As douglas adams said: (sorry I don't have it in front of me so I'm going to mess up) "Man thinks that he is the smartest animal on the face of the earth, because of the things that he has created cities and war while dolphines happily muck about in the sea. Conversly dolphines think that they are the smartest for exsactly the same reason."

As for abortion and birth control: in order to make a stand on either postion, wou need to ask when life begins. It isn't a moral question at all, it's a scientific/dogma question... It is immoral to kill, but when is it alive to kill? Likewise, I believe life should always have a chance. A child born in poverty, could strugle to survive, and become the greatest writer/poet/scientist/philosopher that ever exsisted. As for living wills and the like, that is really an individual thing, and I think we should have to make that call in advance so as not to make our families fight over it when the times comes.

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Originally posted by Bregalad:
Across the world there is a strong statistical link between availability of food and average number of children. Poor, starving people have more children than well fed people. No it doesn't make any sense to me either, but that's how it goes.

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This is a rather simplistic analysis, but I think it works out like this: in many countries where there is no welfare system to look after people when they are too old or infirm to support themselves, then parents rely on their offspring to take care of them.

If infant mortality is high, then the more children you have the better the odds that at least some of them will survive to adulthood to support you when you are old.

Correct me if I'm wrong:

Certain belief systems (including Catholocism) state that any form of birth control other than the extremely unreliable "Rhythm method" are sinful and therefore will jepordize your future in said belief systems.

These proclamations put people off of using real birth control.

Millions to billions of people follow these proclamations, and therefore...

Millions to billions of people have unplanned children.

Here's the real crux of the biscuit, to quote Zappa. Take exception where you will:

If you do not have the wherewithal to support and educate a child, then you are setting them up for a pretty miserable life.

If you do not plan for the support of a child, then they have a pretty poor chance of doing better than yourself.

This all adds up to a cycle, and a nasty one at that. Yes, poverty tends to be a part of that.

I have no problem with the Catholic Church per se, their intentions are nothing but good. Their implementations however....

Yes. I do think that it's several orders of magnitude worse than Stalin or Mao. I see that they influence far more people in far worse ways.

Again, this is just opinion, but it is informed opinon.

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These proclamations put people off of using real birth control.

Millions to billions of people follow these proclamations, and therefore...

Millions to billions of people have unplanned children.

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This is:

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If you do not have the wherewithal to support and educate a child, then you are setting them up for a pretty miserable life.

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If you do not plan for the support of a child, then they have a pretty poor chance of doing better than yourself.

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This all adds up to a cycle, and a nasty one at that. Yes, poverty tends to be a part of that.

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I was the product of two teenager's passion. I was not planned, and my mother didn't have the resources to support me and my brother, especially after she kick my dead beat dad out. Today, I am a college student with plenty of resources at my finger tips. My mother, born in the same type of teenage passion, is an engineer with a large firm and is moving up in the company quite quickly. I am 21, and have no children... You mean that "nasty Cycle?"

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I have no problem with the Catholic Church per se, their intentions are nothing but good. Their implementations however....

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Catholic Church should be hauled into a world court for crimes against humanity. I'm sure they mean well, but...

I'm not kidding there... Their stance against birth control has caused more poverty, misery and outright damage in this world than Stalin or Mao ever could have hoped for.

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Again, this is just opinion, but it is informed opinon

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Granted that a lot (millions/billions) of people do bend and break the taboos about having to be married and not for pleasure, but then is it really the church that is the problem there?

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Originally posted by Max Heck:
Correct me if I'm wrong:

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Well, if you insist.

Your argument that the Catholic Church's birth control policies lead inescapably to human misery is fallacious.

Let's compare Bulgaria to Brazil, since they both start with "B" and I won't need to dig real far for this in the CIA World Factbook. 80% of Brazil's population is Catholic, and 17.4% of the population live below the poverty line. Bulgaria is 1.5% Catholic, and 35% live below the poverty line. For kicks, the U.S.A. is 28% Catholic, and 12.7% of us live below the poverty line. Italy is predominantly Catholic (no percentage listed in the Factbook, but this is the country which hosts the Vatican after all), with 12% below the poverty line

Though the Factbook is missing poverty line data on a number of countries, the lack of correlation between religion and poverty continues where there are data.

Also, you changed from "Catholicism's stance on birth control...crimes against humanity..." to "Certain belief systems' (including Catholicism's) stance on birth control...)". Don't wuss out on me now!

SupaBoy:

"Also, you changed from "Catholicism's stance on birth control...crimes against humanity..." to "Certain belief systems' (including Catholicism's) stance on birth control...)". Don't wuss out on me now!"

No wussing, just being inclusive. I never said that it's the only system that leads to unwanted births, but I will say right now that it is in fact one of the largest, and it is certainly the most publicly formalized about it.

Other examples abound. Pretty much any agrarian society (read: just about everyone on the planet prior to the 20th century) measured their wealth in children (so long as they are male, but that's another story for another post.) There's this mindset that more children = better that really hasn't kept up with the changes that have happened in the last 2-3 generations. But that's not the sort of thing that's stated in terms of eternal bliss or damnation. The reason I did mention the Catholic church is that they DO state things in those terms... In other words, if that's your belief system, then there's no wiggle room.

Bulgaria and Brazil:

I like the idea of choosing samples on random things like first letters. Really... I thought that was pretty clever, since it does eliminate any sort of "well, I'll pick this example against that example to make my stats look good" sort of bias. Kudos.

BUT....

Again... I think you're assuming that I said "Catholicism = poverty" which is not the case. Afghanistan and Nepal have quite a few people below the poverty line at the moment, which has nothing to do with Catholicism. But it might, it just might have something to do with too many people and too few resources, and the systems that produce those conditions.

GameMaster, please forgive me, but I couldn't make sense of your last post.

But before that... posted April 17, 2002 10:37

Excellent post, good questions. Lemme see what I can do to clarify what I think about them...

"remember that the stance against birthcontrol is only part of their taboo... Isn't it also wrong, according to their faith, to have intercourse only for procreation and in the convenant of marraige?
This begs to ask, wouldn't these practices lower the teen pregency rate in devoloped countries"

It would, were it not for human nature. Me, I am a pessimist (gee, didja guess that?) I think (again, opinion) that the prohibitions against using birth control get invoked FAR more than the ones against premarital or non-reproductive sex.

Kids screw when the moments take them, when their hormones override their common sense. I did it, I am pretty sure that you did it. For that matter, Adults screw when the Cable-TV channel goes out. Look up the NYC blackout for evidence of that.

Very few people, given a choice, happen to like using condoms, foams, etcetera. Don't even ask about the pill, because that's barred forever.

Ok... Do you think people will use that to their advantage? As in "Wow... I really want to make love w/ you, but...."

I do not think that the Catholic church has policies that are in line with reality, and I think that's why they end up being destructive overall.

And I really do not think anyone has figured out that the policy of Celibacy happens to be an enforced sexual perversion.

If people were angels, then perhaps they have the right idea.

In my experience, people are not angels. I have no clue if there's a birth-control problem with angels.

Again... Noble ideas, but the implementations come from the ideas of people from the 13th century who have never even had sex or married. These are hardly the people I would recommend as family or relationship counselors.

Gotta go.

Max.

The other major issue that I have is that most people who chose not to use birth control do it because they don't like the way it feels, as you said: "Very few people, given a choice, happen to like using condoms, foams, etcetera." Which means that they don't use it because they chose not to, not because of moral or religous reasons. Perhaps there is a minority of unwed couples who didn't use it based on the religon's tabboo, but I do think it is a minority. Like a great man once said, "there are often two reasons why we do things: the real reason and the one that sounds good." We often convince ourselves and/or others that our motives are these nobler ideals, when they are really just what we WANT to do.

I'll go so far as to say that it's a major propigator (sp?) of poverty, though.

I'm pretty sure about the idea that if a parent is not ready to do better for their children, then said children are not as likely to do better than the parent.

I mean, that seems straightforward. For every Andrew Carnigie, there's scores of otherwise well-situated children who simply crashed and burned. I don't consider that to be an example of how to plan for children.

"The other major issue that I have is that most people who chose not to use birth control do it because they don't like the way it feels, as you said: "Very few people, given a choice, happen to like using condoms, foams, etcetera." Which means that they don't use it because they chose not to, not because of moral or religous reasons."

True... But... where moral / religious issues from my original post DO intrude (about 1 / 6 billion, minus those who don't buy into it entirely, who happen to be more along my lines of thinking) it is an issue, and it does lead to... well?

Max.

I have nothing against orginized religon(s), but I have a problem with "blind" faith. If you chose to belong to a religon and accept the teachings, and you believe the writings or the words of anyman to be infalable, you MUST then doubt every part of that infalable source when one part of the sorce proves false. I believe joe is infalible, and joe says X, Y, and Z. Because joe is infalable X, Y and Z MUST be true in all cases at all times no matter what else happens. Z gets proven false, so I now know that joe can make a mistake OR I don't accept Z becasue it doesn't work for me personally, thus joe can lead me astray; then, I must reconsider X and Y based on their own merits.

I blame peoples reason, or lack of, that they see themselves as logical claiming infalible belief in a thing, but not following all of the guidelines it sets forth. I blame peoples reason, or lack there of, for there ability to put faith in a teaching simply because it comes from a source that is infalible, but admitedly have problems with other passages. If you take a thing to be indefaitigibly true than you must take all things from that source to be true, else if any part of it proves false then you have proved the omniknowing source to be not omiknowing and must prove by other method the other parts of the source, in order for those parts to be true.

Notice that above I don't even question all "blind faith, just blind faith in sources that have been wrong, therefore if you believe the Bible, the Gita, the Tao, ect. and you believe in all the teaching contained in it, then I have no problem with your beliefs. Likewise if you believe in X, Y becasue you can prove them by other methods, and you no longer hang on every word of joe, I have no problem with that either.

So, I guess what I am saying is that I don't blame the chruch in this instance I blame people have bastardized the faith and can't backup their mores with anything other than the faith they bastardized. Sotra like "guns don't kill people, people don't kill people bad people kill people." I have rambled a bit here, and thus I must digress.