Christians Are Not to be Malthusians
This is an excerpt of an article that Laigle’s Forum staff writer, Anthony Horvath, had published at Worldnetdaily.com last week.
Jesus said, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”
Thomas Robert Malthus would have disagreed. The philosophical forerunner to Darwin, Malthus argued that there are limited resources, and competition for them is intense. When there are too many people competing for those resources, you have war, famine and a continual threat to civilization itself.
For Malthus, the pie is only so big: We must reduce the number of people who want a share of it.
Christianity embodies another solution: Make a bigger pie.
In Christianity, God takes a few loaves and feeds thousands with them. Entrance to heaven is not contingent on space available. Jesus came that we would have life, and life to the fullest. Not just for some, but all.
None of what follows is an argument for Christian indifference to the plight of other people. However, Christians should not advocate “solutions” that repress human liberty, dignity and freedom. For some reason, all of the Malthusian’s solutions do just that.
To read the whole article click here.
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October 4th, 2009 at 8:25 pm
Quote: “Christianity embodies another solution: Make a bigger pie.”
Easier said than done.
Why don’t you just give everybody a perpetual motion machine that produces energy out of nothing (or out of slick invention) and we will happily live and multiply thereafter? Well, you would have to violate laws of physics to do so.
Until you actually make the pie bigger, please, stop multiplying!
Here is a link to some insightful details what Malthus does to us these days:
http://geocities.com/readerswrite/commentaries/Sponsored_speculation.htm#AddOct3
October 5th, 2009 at 7:48 pm
Hello “Reader”: If you are suggesting that the individual can decide to “save the planet” by keeping his own family size small, then there is nothing the Christian can object to, really. It is YOUR decision, and Jesus made it clear that Christianity is an individual choice. HOWEVER, that idea is being replaced by an insidious new Utopian one, namely, that the GOVERNMENT can and should make these decisions (BTW, One of Obama’s advisors has written a book suggesting that forced abortions may be necessary! We have never been closer to the USSR in America). That is a dangerous idea, as attested by the history of the 20th century. Over 100 MILLION people died when far-left governments took such decisions on themselves.
America cannot be another laboratory for such high-risk, low gain experiments. So far governments all over the world have a HORRIBLE track record in such family-planning policies and China leads the pack with draconian punishments meted out to those who dare to have more than one child. In some cases, officials have even brutally murdered newborns.
Personally, I trust Americans to make the right decisions far more than I trust government.
Europe too is giving its governments unprecedented power and as a result, individual freedom is almost a thing of the past (with people going to jail just for forwarding emails in some cases!).
What do you think about it from this perspective?
October 5th, 2009 at 9:12 pm
Easier said than done? I don’t see how the ‘ease’ has anything to do with it, nor how it is reasonable to ’stop multiplying’ until finally the ‘pie is bigger.’ There is a reason why the article goes on and mentions Norman Borlaug- who, while the Malthusians were bemoaning the end of the world on account of alleged food shortages- found a way to feed them!
I dare say your comment is a perfect illustration of the ‘Malthusian Mind’ which views every crisis as a reason to call for the curtailing of the population.
Why not, “Keep multiplying; When this occasionally raises problems, we will solve them.”
October 6th, 2009 at 1:04 am
You gentlemen can call me what you want, “Malthusian Mind” or whatever label you can come up with, but the bottom line is that until you make the pie bigger, multiplying is inviting either impoverishment (up to the point when the bare subsistence level has been reached, at which point brutal elimination begins) or elimination.
I can understand your frustration with laws of nature (Malthus law being one of), but your noble intentions, or condemnation of those who understand the mathematics of population growth in a three dimensional world, or your strong feelings above all these are not going to change the reality.
If you would like to play ostrich, I am sure you will find enough sand around. But look at overpopulated places like Calcutta to see the consequences of people not learning when to stop multiplying. (And it doesn’t really matter that they did not see a “good” way to restrain their growth.) This may give you an idea of a disaster that your good intensions are going to bring on heads of your children and grandchildren.
Also, you seem to confuse two separate problems here: what to accomplish and how to accomplish. You are telling me that population should grow because limitations on that growth lead to oppressive, totalitarioan, or otherwise undesirable government.
Unfortunately, its a fallacy because your conclusion about what to accomplish (e.g., maintaining population growth) doesn’t follow from your questionable assertion how to accomplish population stabilization (by government control). Fact that you cannot see how something can be done doesn’t mean that it cannot be done.
So, a bucket of sand, anyone?
October 6th, 2009 at 1:15 am
P.S. “Keep multiplying; When this occasionally raises problems, we will solve them.”
I an sure it wasn’t your intention, but it’s a very arrogant statement. It overestimates one’s ability to solve problems.
Let me test yours on a simpler problem (much easier then many problems caused by the excessive population growth).
A whole number greater than 1 is called prime if, and only if, it is divisible only by 1 and itself. For instance, 2, 3, 5, and 7 are prime while 4, 6, and 8 are not.
Now, tell me please, does there exist an even (divisible by 2, that is) positive number greater than 2 that cannot be presented as a sum of two primes? (For example, 4 = 2 + 2, 6 = 3 + 3, 8 = 3 + 5, etc.)
Until you can answer this simple I will remain very skeptical about your ability to solve the overpopulation problems “when they occasionally raise”.
October 6th, 2009 at 1:31 am
“You gentlemen can call me what you want,”
Come on, chap, be a man. You cannot simultaneously wave away my characterization of your views while proceeding to embrace them. Be a man: own up to the label.
“but the bottom line is that until you make the pie bigger, multiplying is inviting either impoverishment”
Nonsense. I reject your premise.
Having said that, once again- now making three times- examples such as the accomplishments of Norman Borlaug show that that there are other avenues for solving ‘population problems.’
You seem to miss the point as to what the ‘Malthusian Mind’ is all about. I’ll put it bluntly: For any given problem or crisis, the Malthusian Mind thinks immediately of population controls; it is ignorant of other possible solutions because it never crosses his mind to look for them.
“Also, you seem to confuse two separate problems here: what to accomplish and how to accomplish.”
No, I think it is you confusing the problems here.
I am more than willing to allow that there can be at times a scarcity of resources or whatever other scenario you might propose requires action. However, I don’t jump first to population controls as the primary, or only, solution to those problems.
You apparently do. Watch:
“Unfortunately, its a fallacy because your conclusion about what to accomplish (e.g., maintaining population growth)”
See? You leap immediately to a need to ‘accomplish’ ‘maintaining population growth’ and assume that this is my solution. But this is an invention of your (Malthusian) mind. People with a broader perspective than the myopic Darwinian point of view may possibly, as a last resort, begin to think in such terms.
I believe that in most scenarios it is entirely possible to deal with the problems of the world without being forced to examine draconian measures. I say that because it is worth mentioning that if I were to turn my attention to a given ‘problem’ I would include the clause, “…. and preserve human dignity, human rights, and individual liberties…” as a component of the problem that I could not dispense with.
Contrast with Holdren and Ehrlich who were quite comfortable with the notion that one could dispense with such trifles- and be consistent with the Constitution!- in their quest to ’solve the problem.’
“doesn’t follow from your questionable assertion how to accomplish population stabilization (by government control).”
And here I am confused, because I seem to be coming down pretty firmly against the idea that we should ‘accomplish population stabilization (by government control).’
October 6th, 2009 at 1:34 am
“I an sure it wasn’t your intention, but it’s a very arrogant statement. It overestimates one’s ability to solve problems.”
Hypocrisy. Your own perspective embodies a solution to the problem. Population control is in fact a proposed solution. If you get to come up with solutions as a Malthusian why can’t the rest of us?
“Until you can answer this simple I will remain very skeptical about your ability to solve the overpopulation problems “when they occasionally raise”.”
My estimation of your maturity has now been revised. I will refrain from sharing with you another label which I think adequately describes you, but here I think you will not find it so pleasant. But I do not invest my time talking with such people. So, toodles.
October 6th, 2009 at 3:50 am
Quasi-coherent words, no meaning, labels and insults, that’s all that you apparently are capable of producing in a “rational” discussion. I tell you what: every moron can do that.
You are so confident that you will solve all the future problems of overpopulation but you cannot answer a simple question about numbers that I gave you.
What are you waiting for? Go to India and Sun-Saharan Africa and make these sorry overpopulated places a paradise on Earth.
Or make the pie bigger right now without waiting for further population growth.
You are just bragging that you can handle that, but there is absolutely no evidence that you can. That’s arrogance. You seem like a typical product of American public “education” system; your overblown self-esteem is the main, perhaps only, reason of your (overblown) self-esteem. When the Supreme Court deemed IQ tests “discriminatory” in 1970 I knew that this country will pay dearly for that mistake. And it does, now.
Future generations will hate you for your stubborn shortsidedness (mildly speaking). That’s all I have to say to you.
October 6th, 2009 at 4:13 am
Listen “Mark,”
Against my better judgment, I am going to try to make some things clear and hope that what we have here are just some misunderstandings.
First of all, your stupid little mathematical gauntlet was asinine and childish. As I read your current reply, however, I understand why you degenerated into it. I said, “…we will solve them…” and this prompted you to throw down your challenge.
It would appear that when I said that, you took the word ‘we’ and inserted in your mind the word ‘I.’ On a strictly literary level, this was absurd of you to do, and I think if you desist from your hyperventilating and re-read the passage, it was clear that I was not in the slightest saying that I, personally, me, plan on solving the world’s problems.
By ‘we’ it should have been evident that I meant ‘we the human race.’ I don’t understand how you could possibly have gotten ‘I’ from the text. I don’t know if that removes the chip from your shoulder or not but if so, I would be happy to continue.
I would also be happy to know if I am speaking to a Christian. If you are not a Christian, then that changes the dimensions of the conversation because my intended audience was Christians. If I am in fact debating with a Darwinian evolutionary atheist of some sort, that would help me understand where you’re coming from.
Finally, you might do well to remember the old slogan about the dangers of assuming, for you could not be more wrong in your haughty calculation, “You seem like a typical product of American public “education” system;”
But anyone who reads ‘we’ as ‘I’ can be expected to assume anything.