May Allah forgive her and all of us.

[Goldstone Rapper]

Actually, no, I was not being flippant. Overpopulation is the biggest threat to the world. Period.

It occurs to me that lack of acceptance of other people, and other people's ways of doing things, of which yours is a perfect example, is a much bigger threat to the world rather than whether the world currently exceeds a fixed idea of population levels. Believe it or not, there is probably enough food, space and resources to go round. It may be that the way it gets allocated is not very smart.

On the other hand, people fight wars on behalf of both secularity and religion and all because they think their way is the best way, or the only way. You clearly think yours is the best way.

You're not religious - I get that. Me neither. However, your colleague is simply expressing a sense of relatedness to you from his cherished beliefs. It is possible that it doesn't mean all the things you are making it mean and you are merely using it as you have an axe to grind.

 

[goldstone]

Believe it or not, there is probably enough food, space and resources to go round. It may be that the way it gets allocated is not very smart.

So in your opinion it's quite OK for starving people in Africa, the Indian sub-continent and elsewhere who have great trouble feeding themselves to keep breeding children who will also starve. And OK for them to expect the rest of the world, where more sensible people limit themselves to an average of two kids, to go on sending them food.

These people need to live to live within their resources. If they do not have enough food figure out a way to feed themselves first. When they've done that start thinking about bringing more hungry mouths into the world.

I have figured out that it's best to live an affordable lifestyle. My wife and I decided that we could afford to raise two kids (without asking for handouts from neighbours, other countries, charities) and that's what we did.

If those in the poorer parts of the world lived within their means they might just accumulate some wealth so they no longer had to be supported by the West.

 

[BadFish]

Personally if I got an email like that I'd think, nice of him to thank us, don't care for the last bit, and then I'd probably file or delete and move on.

As for religion, I was raised very much so Church of England. I'm at the stage now after 30 odd years where I've come to the conclusion that a very long time ago, someone wrote about some curious events involving a man and a group of his friends. Those writings, have been interpreted, re-interpreted, mis-interpreted, transcribed, re-transcribed, guessed as to their meaning, and so on. Take that as you will, but what I've taken from it are the bits that say, don't kill, adulter, steal, lie or covet your neighbours donkey.

Where I have problems with religion is if someone declares themself a christian but then goes about murdering in the name of their religion. That I cannot abide.

Stop watching Eastenders!

 

[Lord Bracknell]

goldstone ...

If you were a subsistence farmer, struggling to make a living for your family from the small patch of land that you rent from a landlord - without the cash income to hire in or own the machinery that would increase your output - I think you'd find that a family limited to two children was nowhere big enough to sustain production at the level you need to reach.

It's a paradox, but millions of impoverished people NEED large families.

 

[ROKERITE]

goldstone ...

If you were a subsistence farmer, struggling to make a living for your family from the small patch of land that you rent from a landlord - without the cash income to hire in or own the machinery that would increase your output - I think you'd find that a family limited to two children was nowhere big enough to sustain production at the level you need to reach.

It's a paradox, but millions of impoverished people NEED large families.

I appreciate the point you're making, but I disagree with you completely. Nobody NEEDS to breed lots of children. Unfortunately, despite the best efforts of Marie Stopes and others, hundreds of millions of men, and more importantly women, have no access to birth control; and even more are instructed by their religious leaders not to use birth control.

 

[ROKERITE]

It occurs to me that lack of acceptance of other people, and other people's ways of doing things, of which yours is a perfect example, is a much bigger threat to the world rather than whether the world currently exceeds a fixed idea of population levels. Believe it or not, there is probably enough food, space and resources to go round. It may be that the way it gets allocated is not very smart.

On the other hand, people fight wars on behalf of both secularity and religion and all because they think their way is the best way, or the only way. You clearly think yours is the best way.

You're not religious - I get that. Me neither. However, your colleague is simply expressing a sense of relatedness to you from his cherished beliefs. It is possible that it doesn't mean all the things you are making it mean and you are merely using it as you have an axe to grind.

I agree with your final paragraph; it is preposterous for anyone to take offence at the note from Goldstone's colleague.
I disagree with your first paragraph. There may be enough food to feed the world's current population, but there's barely enough room and certainly not enough resources. People talk a lot about oil, but the scarcity of oil is nothing compared to a much more vital substance, water. Australia is a large country with a comparatively small population, but they're already experiencing water shortages in some areas. Large parts of the U.S. have real problems with water supplies. All of us, from billionaire to pauper, need water.
Even seventy years ago, the desire for living space for their booming populations was leading Germany and Japan to invade other nations for land and raw materials. Obviously, other motives were involved in those extremely nasty regimes doing what they did, but don't ignore the population factor.
Mankind has always found reasons to go to war. However, overpopulation and the consequent shortage of everything but people, is the most likely cause of massive conflict in the twenty-first century.

 

[NMH]

A German friend of mine has just had to DIVORCE from the Catholic church, because over there they automatically take religious-tax out of their wages if they're of Catholic or Christian denomination!
He was baptized a Catholic, so that's how they originally got his payments.

 

[Dick Knights Mumm]

What is wrong with:

May the seeds of your loins be fruitful in the womb of your loved one.

 

[bhaexpress]

I appreciate the point you're making, but I disagree with you completely. Nobody NEEDS to breed lots of children. Unfortunately, despite the best efforts of Marie Stopes and others, hundreds of millions of men, and more importantly women, have no access to birth control; and even more are instructed by their religious leaders not to use birth control.

Actually they do, and not just to sustain their income. Give the far higher death rate they expect a number of the progeny not to reach adulthood. They also need somebody to look after them in their old age. I can guarantee that these people are not Catholics. (Catholics are the only sect that advocates no birth control and in fact a lot of that is based in what has already been said.

There are enough myths about religion without people like you thinking that what suits you suits the rest of the World.

 

[DJ Leon]

As an athiest, I'm not in the least bit bothered about that e-mail. Is the fact that this person is a Muslim important? This view of God and the individual's relationship with Him is hardly unique of Islam. Anyways, he hopes his God forgives his mother and you? Good news. Move on.

 

[Don Quixote]

No, no, not at all. I want to attack all religions.

They are all examples of mass delusion.

Aren't you an example of mass delusion too? Lots of people are atheist these days.

 

[ATFC Seagull]

As an athiest, I'm not in the least bit bothered about that e-mail. Is the fact that this person is a Muslim important? This view of God and the individual's relationship with Him is hardly unique of Islam. Anyways, he hopes his God forgives his mother and you? Good news. Move on.

 

[Lord Bracknell]

I've often bored the pants off people on NSC by banging on about my time in Italy and given the impression that I was only there for the football, the food and the wine. But the real reason I was there was to work on a research project that was going on across southern Europe to study the social effects of the agricultural modernisation that had been going on since the end of the second world war.

In 'my' part of southern Tuscany, the biggest change was the abolition, by the Italian government, of a sharecropping system that had been in place for centuries. Sharecropping (mezzadria) was a system in which land was owned by (mostly absentee) landlords and rented out to farming families on annual tenancies that were managed by local agents of the landlord. The deal was that the landlord supplied the equipment to do the farming (which was usually nothing more than a plough that was worked by oxen) and the farmer's family provided the labour. The farmer was allowed to keep half the crop. The rest went to the landlord. The agents controlled the markets, so everything had to be sold through them.

If a family failed to achieve the production targets, the agent would evict them at the end of the annual tenancy and replace them with a family that was considered harder working and more reliable.

To make this system work, families had to be huge. The average size of a household in the Tuscan countryside at the 1951 census was around 20 people - typically grandparents, a couple of grown up sons, their wives and a large supply of young people who would contribute a significant amount of the labour needed to produce the crop and hang on to the tenancy. 20 is an average. Some households were bigger.

When the system of annual tenancies was abolished (by government decree) and farming families were given rights to stay on their land and sell their own produce, it became possible to invest in the future. European agricultural subsidies for tractors became accessible. And, by 1971, household sizes had dropped to something like 5 or 6 people.

Despite the general non-availability of contraception in a Catholic country, once sharecropping was abolished, women simply had fewer children. They didn't need them. Anyone who claims that "The Pope instructed Catholics to have large families" is missing the point completely. The hierarchy of the Catholic Church was undoubtedly part of the control mechanism that kept the landlords rich and the agents powerful, but it would be completely wrong to see the driving mechanism of this system as "religious teaching". It wasn't. It was politics and economics. Unsurprisingly, when southern Tuscan sharecroppers were given the vote (only in 1946), they overwhelmingly voted communist.

If anyone wants to get a flavour of how the system worked, particularly during the fascist era, take a look at Bernardo Bertolucci's epic film, 1900 (Novecento).

 

[Don Quixote]

I've often bored the pants off people on NSC by banging on about my time in Italy and given the impression that I was only there for the football, the food and the wine. But the real reason I was there was to work on a research project that was going on across southern Europe to study the social effects of the agricultural modernisation that had been going on since the end of the second world war.

In 'my' part of southern Tuscany, the biggest change was the abolition, by the Italian government, of a sharecropping system that had been in place for centuries. Sharecropping (mezzadria) was a system in which land was owned by (mostly absentee) landlords and rented out to farming families on annual tenancies that were managed by local agents of the landlord. The deal was that the landlord supplied the equipment to do the farming (which was usually nothing more than a plough that was worked by oxen) and the farmer's family provided the labour. The farmer was allowed to keep half the crop. The rest went to the landlord. The agents controlled the markets, so everything had to be sold through them.

If a family failed to achieve the production targets, the agent would evict them at the end of the annual tenancy and replace them with a family that was considered harder working and more reliable.

To make this system work, families had to be huge. The average size of a household in the Tuscan countryside at the 1951 census was around 20 people - typically grandparents, a couple of grown up sons, their wives and a large supply of young people who would contribute a significant amount of the labour needed to produce the crop and hang on to the tenancy. 20 is an average. Some households were bigger.

When the system of annual tenancies was abolished (by government decree) and farming families were given rights to stay on their land and sell their own produce, it became possible to invest in the future. European agricultural subsidies for tractors became accessible. And, by 1971, household sizes had dropped to something like 5 or 6 people.

Despite the general non-availability of contraception in a Catholic country, once sharecropping was abolished, women simply had fewer children. They didn't need them. Anyone who claims that "The Pope instructed Catholics to have large families" is missing the point completely. The hierarchy of the Catholic Church was undoubtedly part of the control mechanism that kept the landlords rich and the agents powerful, but it would be completely wrong to see the driving mechanism of this system as "religious teaching". It wasn't. It was politics and economics. Unsurprisingly, when southern Tuscan sharecroppers were given the vote (only in 1946), they overwhelmingly voted communist.

If anyone wants to get a flavour of how the system worked, particularly during the fascist era, take a look at Bernardo Bertolucci's epic film, 1900 (Novecento).

My family had to leave Italy due to not having enough land. Thought i'd mention it.

 

[bhaexpress]

Both the previous two posts should make people realise that overpopulation as some call it is not just about religion. It's another myth that fundamentalist atheists like to bandy about.

 

[Lord Bracknell]

My family had to leave Italy due to not having enough land. Thought i'd mention it.

Along with millions of other Italians. In a peculiar sort of way, it was the Italian agricultural system of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that fuelled the growth of industry in both north and south America (and in northern Italy). Without emigration, it was simply impossible for rural southern and central Italy to absorb the numbers of children that were born into farming families who did not control their own land.

This is a process that continues to this day, of course, with other countries now supplying the emigrants.

 

[Scampi]

Both the previous two posts should make people realise that overpopulation as some call it is not just about religion. It's another myth that fundamentalist atheists like to bandy about.

Yeah of course they do. I hear they speak of little else.

 

[beorhthelm]

Aren't you an example of mass delusion too? Lots of people are atheist these days.

where's the delusion in atheism?

 

[Goldstone Rapper]

where's the delusion in atheism?

That anyone could possibly know.

 

[cunning fergus]

where's the delusion in atheism?

Has anyone irrefutably proved that God doesn't exist?

I may have missed a meeting of course, but I have only seen theories and suposition from academics.