Headline: "Canadian Woman Gives Birth to 18th Child." Explanation (from the father): "We never planned how many children to have. We just let God guide our lives, you know, because we strongly believe life comes from God and that's the reason we did not stop the life." See post below.
Added July 30th: Yet another example of utter stupidity.
Monday, July 28, 2008
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3 comments:
God created man with the procreative capacity to sustain the species in the early years when the death rate was astronomical. He also blessed us with the intellectual capacity to conquer all of those elements contributing to that high death rate.
I believe He also expects us to use that intellect to rein in our reproductive capacity now that it's no longer needed. He may forgive those of us who are blissfully ignorant of the overpopulation problem. But He may take a much dimmer view of those who recognize it but choose to ignore it.
I don't criticize anyone for the number of children they choose to have. I levy my criticism at government for failing to implement policies to stabilize our population, policies like economic (tax) incentives to encourage people to choose smaller families. If the overall birth rate is reduced to a replacement level (or less for a while?), I don't really care about individual families.
Pete Murphy
Author, Five Short Blasts
Pete: First of all, God (whoever that is) didn't create humans, nor did he "bless us with the intellectual capacity" needed to survive. All the empirical evidence points to a completely different, evolutionary account. For example, humans are smart partly because of “primitive” (Oldowan) tools, which put new evolutionary pressure on hominids such that those with more developed cerebral cortices tended to procreate more than those with less developed brains. If you don't care about the facts, fine. It's your prerogative not to (just as it's the prerogative of Flat Earth-ers to ignore the overwhelming evidence that the earth is spheroid). But a position that doesn't care about the facts isn't one to brag about. Furthermore, you've got your anthropology wrong. "Man," to use your sexist language, was not subject to a "death rate [that] was astronomical." This is completely incorrect: Pre-agriculture humans were, in fact, low mortality, virtually disease-free, and indeed much healthier than their agriculturalist descendents. Again, this is a fact—check an anthropology textbook if you don't believe me. In addition, breast feeding releases a hormone called progesterone, which prevents pregnancy, and therefore women in hunter-gatherer tribes only had/have children every 3-4 years, despite copulating frequently.
"All the empirical evidence points to a completely different, evolutionary account. For example, humans are smart partly because of “primitive” (Oldowan) tools, which put new evolutionary pressure on hominids such that those with more developed cerebral cortices tended to procreate more than those with less developed brains."
Phillip, there exists no empirical evidence for an evolutionary account. The empirical evidence points to a myriad of prehistorical origin theories based upon an individual's subjective interpretation. For example, the order and complexity that is found in the universe points to that validity of the age-old teleological argument.
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