The Links Between Religion And Babies

"Family Planning". Is that talking about abortions?

We have aborted over 40 million children since Wade vs Roe back in the 70's.

Basically Canada wouldn't exist today.

That's family planning?

Really excellent lecture and analysis. Thanks.

Fascinating! Have to think about this before making a comment.

Hmmm...very interesting, but...

Mark Steyn in his book "America Alone" would beg to differ.

In his analysis, it is the "Christian" Western nations that are below the 2.1 child per family that will not be able to sustain their population presence/ratio in their own countries.

Just from observation, I would concur with him that the demographic shift in well on its way here in Canada. Our replacement rate is 1.48 child per family, if I remember correctly.

If religion has nothing to do with it, then why are a lot of those Christian countries that he was talking about going to be Muslim countries before we hit 10 Billion?

frank q- I think the fertility rate per woman is 1.6 children. That's essentially 2, and statistically deals with those women who have no, one, three or more children.

What is interesting about the argument is that, apart from the view that religion has no bearing on demographics, is that the economy is the key factor in family size. When children are no longer malnourished and will survive, when they are no longer used as basic labour in peasant farming then birth rates drop. And when women gain the freedom of education and allowed to enter the industrial work force - then birth rates drop.

I thought that one (1) person in the first world was supposed to use the resources and pollute the environment like an entire small village in the third world.

Now they want to take the bulk of the world’s population which is poor and develop them into first world eaters and polluters, an exponential increase in resource usage and pollution.

Allot of hypocritical mixed messages me thinks.

One of the factors frequently overlooked is that probably muslim fertility in Eurabia is an aberation.

IMHO the main driver for Iran's ambition to get nuclear weapons is fear not aggression....Iran's fertility rate has long since dropped below the replacement rate. They deem nukes necessary just to survive. They look about and think "enemies, enemies everywhere"...perhaps justifiably........

IMHO anybody who thinks they understand has not been properly briefed.......

Hi there ET.

I do not disagree with your thoughts about children being used as basic labour and the effect of the economy on the rate of birth etc.

You may also be correct about the birth rate in Canada being 1.6 however, Steyn's point is that anything less than 2.1 will result in a decline of that groups ratio in the total, within 2 generations.

There are certain parts of the general population in Canada, whose rates are over 3 and 4 children per family and those groups can quickly become the dominant demographic within the same period as the Western groups decline.

That's my understanding of what he says, for what it's worth.

Couple of things:

Family planning is not code for abortion - it means access to contraception, not always easy in the 3rd world.

Replacement rate is usually considered about 2.1 babies per woman (this replaces mommy, daddy, and a bit left over to account for barren, unmarried, or gay women, and all the kids who die before they are able to have children); many Western countries' white populations are below this level, hence Steyn's American Alone.

As Rosling mentioned, the keys to lower birthrates are increased income overall, and increased education for women in particular. Twain noted "Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run." That is why demographic trends need to be considered carefully.

Quebec is the perfect example. From the 20's to early 60's, it wasn't unusual for French (i.e. Catholic) Quebeckers to have 5,6, or more children. (My dad worked summers for a French farming family in the Eastern Townships; they had 11 kids.) English (i.e. Protestant) families were much smaller. Dubbed by some la revanche de la chreche, this trend over two generations gave the French political superiority in Quebec. But once that was achieved (and the twin effects of greater access to education and the Church's diminished influence), what happened to French birthrates in Quebec? They plummeted to the lowest in Canada.

I suspect, as their daughters are assimilated into Canadian society, we will see a similar decline in muslim birthrates in Canada (and other Western countries). Steyn makes the common mistake of projecting a trend indefinitely into the future; the 3% of Canada's population that is Muslim today may reach 6% (depending on immigration policy), but I don't think we have to worry about becoming a Sharia state.

Most interesting, I thought, was the idea that the world's population would plateau around 10 billion. Of course, that has Fruitfly frothing, but could the world support that many? I suspect it can.

And I still think the animated chart showing birthrate, country, religion, and income level versus time was brilliant!

Interesting topic and interesting TED presentation. I agree with Kevin B's post about "the common mistake of projecting a trend indefinitely into the future". In the macro level the impact of religious groups who have even 2-3x the average family size will have very little impact because these religious groups comprise a low percentage of the population as a whole. But there is another dynamic - the micro level effects of more fertile religious groups. One group can have a disproportionate effect on a local community.

For instance, the small community I live in has a fertility cult masquerading as fundamentalist sect of a mainstream Christian religion. They take to "go forth and multiply" advice very seriously, families with kids in the double-digits are not unusual.

Now, in just two or three generation this has made a substantial difference in the community, especially the school. It is common for this group's children to be a third or more of each classroom. As they grow up they will have significant voting power and, theoretically, be able to control the town council. Fortunately, they are a very mild-mannered group so, except for the occasional Children of the Corn(ish) preaching to fellow students about evolution, they are not a radical bunch. But if I begin to see strange movement in the grain fields, I am so outta here.

Review this video. China drops like a stone without added income. Just a birth policy with labor camps. They're big on women's rights too. The right to be thrown right in the trash before taking a first breath.

This is a 'just so' story. Lots of inconvenient truths overlooked here. The video also fails to appreciate the effect of secularization within the dominant religion. Qatar is a good example.

Interesting refutation here: http://www.d.umn.edu/~okuhlke/Fall%202006%20Classes/GEOG%203762%20Europe/Readings/Week%2013%20-%20Demography/EUdemogr1.pdf

The audience's entertained response was weird. Grinning idiots, or, more than likely, manipulated sound and footage sequencing.

In short... snake oil sociology.

I would like to see the relative size of the countries change as the population changes. Relition may not determine number of babies, but the size of the country at the start of the measured period will change over time and the relative mix of populations with a given religion has changed in the last 50 years and will change during the "great fill up" too.

What will be the relative size of the religions when there are 10 Billion people? What will be their share of the wealth?

"The audience's entertained response was weird."

yeah, it was a little odd. Was an interesting short lecture but didn't find myself getting all giddy like that at any point.

infinity - what are the 'inconvenient truths' that were overlooked?

The basic variables were two, in the form of a question: does religion affect birth rate? Answer - does not seem to do so.

The variables he was positing are economic: movement out of peasant economic sustenance into a modern economy reduces the birth rate.

Now, this might also affect the nature of the religion (fundamental vs reform) but this was not the focus of his analysis.

He does not take into consideration social movements , Political movements or the like. Disease which have become antibiotic Resistant that are re-emerging with a vengeance.Nor does he include World wars.
Major catastrophes as well.
Its a paper calculation. We all know how those turn out. That population is going down is a sound premise,but for how long, with what consequences?

I agree. I found the audiences response creepy.

The appeal to religion in reference to these issues is a bit of a red herring -- a way for the Left to exclusively blame religion for all of the "social ills" that the Left perceives. Or conversely for religious people, it's a way of attributing all correct moral behaviour to religion.

Humans established big families long before institutionalized religion came on the scene. They also established natural social-biological families (e.g. versus “Gay” political-ideological families) long before religion. And except under extreme environmental conditions they normally didn’t abort babies or euthanize the elderly -- a million years before organized religion could have the slightest influence on these decisions.

Organized religion later simply codified and built on moral practices that were already part of the natural condition of human survival and functional human society. The Left's idea that "a bunch of misogynistic old men" sat down one day and decided to invent religious rules so they could "oppress" everyone is utter nonsense, and is not borne out by the anthropological record of human history.

Religion should neither shoulder all the blame, nor take all the credit, for a moral code that has been written on "the tablets of our hearts" or our consciences from when humans first appeared on earth. When societies have departed from that naturally intuitive moral code, they have failed-- with or without the presence of a religion that interprets the code.

Interesting analysis, but he doesn't deal with the issue of subgroups within the religions. in Israel, Orthodox Jews have far more babies than Reform Jews. In North America, he calls everyone a Christian. Yet Evangelical Christians have more babies than Mainline Christians or the truly non-Christians. Lumped together, things may net out, but there is a lot more to consider yet.

Evidence seems to indicate that the closer you feel to the Life Giver the more likely you are to pass along life. The farther you feel from the Life Giver the less likely you are to pass on life. Thus Fundamentalist Christians have more children than Evangelical Christians who have larger families than mainline Christians who have more children than secular humanists who have more children than rabid atheists.

ricardo - very nice analysis. I fully agree with you that we do not need religion to develop moral codes. I consider that these are, as you point out, natural to our nature as a species with the capacity for reason, for emotion, for analysis, for imagination.

And yes, organized religion simply built on the earlier small-group moral codes.

Michael - he wasn't dealing with the ratio of children to subgroups in religions though that's interesting in itself; and as you point out, it would probably average out anyway.

His key point, to my understanding, was to remove religion as a causal factor in large families and to insert economics instead. I consider this, ie, a removal of ideology, to be a valid analysis - and his graphs were excellent.

Hi ET.

First, look at it empirically. If in your own life experiences you do not see a direct relation between religiosity and family size, then I am surprised. If I assume that you can make such observations, I would ask why allow a guy with a mike, an audience, and a PowerPoint presentation to refute the solid evidence of your own life experience and invite you to ponder the reason.

Next; this type of analysis is purely statistically based or "normal type", and shows no influence of "ideal type" analysis. Wiki does a fair job of describing this dichotomy and the work of Ferdinand Tönnies which I would recommend.

The literature I would point you toward looks at the necessity of secularization for a successful transformation to a "Gesellschaft" society. In fact this video, in its manipulated format, is a tool of social engineering toward that end.

Examine the video, the overt footage of grinning and apparently accepting Arabic men. It is a construct. The video is laugh tracked. Why? Because this gentleman is going about the work of social engineering. The idea is to garner acceptance of the concept that not having many children has nothing to do with your religion and to offer "society based absolution" in that regard. Pretty slick huh?

I pointed out the great oversight in regards to the real story about the birth rate in China. Statistically, my refutation should stand on that basis alone.

In the last sentence you have answered your own question. The change in the "nature" of religion was not the focus of the analysis, it was the purpose. That might just be the biggest inconvenient truth of all.

ricardo, very true. However I should point out that did not each of the ancient groups followed a religion of some kind and then as you say, "Organized religion later simply codified and built on moral practices that were already part of the natural condition of human survival and functional human society."

I have to agree with Joe, as the area we live is considered to be a Bible belt area in Saskatchewan and, as Joe says, generally the Fundamentalist Christians have the most children, and Evangelical Christians have more children than the mainline Christians. The same would hold true in a few other locations in Saskatchewan, in southern Manitoba and parts of Alberta. It seems that as Christians become too comfortable with the secular world and adopt more of the comfortable lifestyle available to them they begin to loose these moral codes and have fewer children.

ET,

Yep, economics is a valid analysis. Although I don't know how it applies in the post-modern West -- we seem to do everything counter-intuitive where the family is concerned that cannot be explained by economics, or any heuristic for that matter (unless economics is equated to self-absorbed avarice). I think we've come full circle back to ideology -- but an ideology that is intuitively dysfunctional and socially incoherent.

ET,

Yep, economics is a valid analysis. Although I don't know how it applies in the post-modern West -- we seem to do everything counter-intuitive where the family is concerned that cannot be explained by economics, or any heuristic for that matter (unless economics is equated to self-absorbed avarice). I think we've come full circle back to ideology -- but an ideology that is intuitively dysfunctional and socially incoherent.

Of course ET chooses to overlook the obvious. One can not create moral codes without religion because the new moral code springs from your belief system (religion). Of course she also fails to admit that there really are no new moral codes. They have all been tried in the past and with a bit of historical knowledge you can predict the resultant society.

Ken (Kulak): "did not each of the ancient groups followed a religion of some kind"?

Maybe I should have said "civilized" religion to distinguish (although that doesn't mean we've always been more "civil" -- e.g. the Inquisition).

But you are right, belief in a higher power has always been with us. I hope I wasn't arguing in favour of atheism -- I think it makes more sense to believe in God. Besides, it keeps us humble. ;-)

Joe you have made the best point in here!

As for ricardo , that "oral code" you speak of is written on our heards and our minds .

I don't wantto get off on a rant here ,but if you think that christianity has done nothing to bring morality to the forfront of human survival your wrong .

Before jesus came , the assyrians were slaughtering and raping and plundering as they wished , and druid would burn people to keep warm and there was nothing worng with it , they felt it was acceptable to do this , as though they had some sort of right to do so . They had no moral code ...if you killed someone chances are you and any offspring or friends in the area would have been killed as well ...it was brutal and savage. It was athiesm,and paganism. It was humanity before jesus and yes that included christians and ajews alike as well the world was and is full of sin there is nothing we can do to hide from it.

Adam and eve broke the relationship with god , and thus broke our relationships , with each other, man to man ,man to woman,man and woman to animals,animals to other anmals, so on and so forth ...when jesus came he came to restore , and in order to restore he had to make one last sacrifice wich he did ...from then on my friend the healing has begun , it was largly (not only) christianity that has brought the world to where it is today.

It all started with humility, serving christ , loving our nieghbours as ourselves, and loving god with all of your heart ,mind,and soul.

unfortunatley like the isrieliteso f the scriptures they trun from god , become selfrighteous turn form him and suffer and then beg him to save them ..when he does they become great ..then become selfrighteous they turn from him and suffer and then beg him to save them when he does they become selfrighteous turn form him and suffer...lol ...and theb eat goes on this is across all of humanity and although athiest's laugh ...they are still part of our family ...anyway that is my two cent's as for babies read what joe said .

infinity - hmm. First, I don't accept my own life experiences as valid evidence of a collective or normative data base. That would be very unscientific!

And no, I don't see any direct relation between religiosity and family size. That's because I consider religious beliefs embedded within the economic reality. So, I don't consider the presentation to be a refutation of my own views.

And after all, his data wasn't 'a mike, an audience, and a PowerPoint presentation'. His data was the statistics he presented. I could hardly claim that my own singular personal experiences have greater empirical validity than a host of statistics!

I don't see the relevance of an 'ideal type' analysis in this argument; it's purely statistical.

Equally, Tonnies differentiation between what I would call a tribal (gemein) mode of social organization vs a civic mode is certainly a valid analysis but isn't the point of this talk - which was merely to show that economic factors were the basis causal factor to the number of children.

As for 'social engineering' - I have absolutely no idea why you are bringing up the term. I saw no evidence of such in this talk. Nor does it imply, in any way, 'the necessity of secularization for a successful transformation' to the civic societal mode. I consider such a conclusion strictly - your personal opinion.

I don't accept your view of the 'grinning Arabic men' (there were lots of others in the audience)and I certainly see no evidence for your conclusion that:
"this gentleman is going about the work of social engineering. The idea is to garner acceptance of the concept that not having many children has nothing to do with your religion and to offer "society based absolution" in that regard."

He's not offering absolution! Where's your evidence? All he's doing is pointing out a correlation between economic status and family size, and a negative correlation between religion and family size. You can still be religious with a smaller family!

The birth rate in China had nothing to do with religion but with the movement from a peasant agricultural economy to an urban industrial one. Moving that size of a population, with its standards of large families (to work in the fields) couldn't be accomodated in an emerging industrial mode. Economics. Not Religion.

In reply to Joe, I certainly reject that you need religion to have a moral code. As I said before, I consider that 'being moral' is a basic characteristic of 'being rational, emotional, imaginative', ie, a basic characteristic of our humanity. Joe and I disagree on this and presumably, always will. Ah well.

I think that we have to differentiate between basic morality, and societal beliefs. So, in a societal belief system, you can define 'other tribes' as evil and only your own tribe as good. Or you can define a newborn as 'not human' until the child is a month old; that's a reality within a society where newborns frequently die. That's not the morality to which I refer. You can certainly change this societal belief system.

ricardo- I'm an atheist. Being an atheist doesn't mean putting mankind as superior and supreme (I certainly don't!); it simply means a rejection of an Agential Deterministic Force in life. That our universe is organized, rational, networked, interactive, functional - I'll accept all of that. But not a Supreme Agential Force.

Of course you do ET. Your marxist analysis precludes anything beyond what's in the slop trough that may fill your belly. Maybe the discussion would make more sense to you if we were to debate the merits of last night's rotten carrot - steeped beet collage than mull over the fine points of humanity's strain to elevate itself.

To paraphrase ET: Hush fellow swine why struggle so - do you not know that swinehood hath no remedy?

Heh, Joe, I'm not a marxist. I don't think you know anything about marxism; surely you don't think that because someone considers that the economy plays a key role in societal organization that this makes them a marxist! Wow.

But note, how filled with hatred you are for someone who doesn't agree with you, how you denigrate and insult someone who doesn't agree with you. That's quite the moral code you live by. Sad, really.

ET at May 26, 2012 3:59 PM,

Hate to butt in, but further to our discussion: I would disagree on your China example. Birth rate is controlled by the State in China -- people didn't "adapt" to the economics of industrialization and hence decide to have less babies. The State forces them to.

I think I agreed that economics is "a valid analysis". But I don't think economics is a Master Theory that explains why people behave everywhere.

I never said you were a marxist ET I simply said every analysis you offer is marxist. A wise man once said, "Man does not live by bread alone". Too bad you haven't learned that lesson yet.

BTW I don't hate you ET. (did you realize how leftist you sound when you say that?) I don't even know you. What I despise is flaccid marxist rhetoric coming from an otherwise intelligent individual. How brain dead do you have to be to agree with Marx that only the material matters?

ricardo - yes, I fully agree that this wasn't a natural adaptation to a societal transformation; that would have taken too long.

It was a top-down authoritarian imposition and, I think, an acknowledgment that trying to get millions of peasants, with their large family norms, off the land and into urban areas and into an industrial economy, could only be done if the new urban population was kept low.

I consider that people adapt, economically, to the ecological realities of their area - ie, the key question is: How can we, a people, survive in this ecological area? Are there animals to domesticate, plants, water, fertile soil, reasonable temperatures, rainfall, etc etc. Then, how do we use these natural resources? Gradually, a societal way of life develops, which is articulated within a set of beliefs, behaviour, values.

A problem in societal analysis is that many people ignore the basic realities: that ecological domain and the economic adaptation to it...and focus only on the mental constructs that people have developed over the generations. They ignore that many of the particular mental constructs would not have developed in a different ecological domain.

That's also why I'm against multiculturalism; it's emotionally gratifying up to a point to Remember the Old Land, but to ignore the New Land and its differences alienates immigrants from collaborating with others and prevents them from developing a new-land and new neighbours set of beliefs.

As a religious apathist, I'll poke the bear. I have never found very religious people to by the most moral or even nicer than average. What I have noticed is that the moderately religious tend to be nicer than average. I suspect that like environmentalists who lecture about energy consumption while rationalizing/ignoring their piggish use, the overtly religious believe their fervent holiness compensated for their bad behavior.

A major point in this video is that western countries have no need to pursue government policies aimed at discouraging childbearing by their citizens which the UN, liberals, and their ilk have long pushed onto the west. In fact, most countries in the west should increase their birthrates.

And the backwardness and poverty of the third world is not the fault of the west, it is the fault of huge families borne by residents of the third world. - 6 or more children to heads of houselholds who earn 5% (!) of the income of typical western households.

Joe - to declare that an economic analysis is 'marxist' shows that you don't know anything about economics. Or Marxism.

And to comment on the hatred evinced by your really offensive personal insults is hardly a symptom of 'being a leftist'! My goodness, any rational person, I hope, would object to the descriptions you've used.

Was Hayek a Marxist? Karl Popper? Von Mises? Friedman? Have you bothered to read them? Have you even read Marx?

Hayek's analytic frame was based on a view that the economic and societal organization of a population was networked. I add the ecological adaptation.

You can call it material; I call it realism - the realism of Aristotle, of Popper, of Hayek, which all acknowledge that we, with our capacity for reason, must acknowledge our finite (material) nature and live with humility within its constraints. That acknowledgement, of finite reality, is what economics is all about.

The more the woman are educated, the more likely they are to not want to stop their careers to reproduce.

The likes of Ted, Maurice and Dr. Fruitfly love these presentations because the socialist / communist system of the two-income families plays right into their grand schemes.

There has been a flooding of the economic system with women who are paid lower wages because they are not the primary income earners and are willing to accept those wages as they see themselves as just supplementing the traditional male provider income. The government loves the added tax base by which to fund all the touchy-feely social programs to help sustain the "new economic realities".

The progressive women love their "new-found" freedom of economic autonomy, demanding the population control methods which got all the cheers in this propaganda tripe.

This is nothing more than an intellectuals attempt at demanding the Chinese "one-child" policy. Progressives are nothing but regressives, trying to extract more of yours and my money to do as they wish and please.

ET, "must acknowledge our finite (material) nature and live with humility within its constraints" sounds almost Malthusian. This ignores the ability of mankind to overcome constraints with technology and creativity. Every prediction of population doom has been overcome with science and the free market.

Sorry for yet another Reason link but it is a good interview about dangerous anti-humanism under the guise of resource constraint. The history of government mandated population control and sterilization programs on the most vulnerable women is inhumane.

Robert Zubrin: Radical Environmentalists and Other Merchants of Despair

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ei6jbrcX8ao

This is nothing more than an intellectuals attempt at demanding the Chinese "one-child" policy.

Yeah, as the Marxist, social engineer, ET says;

yes, I fully agree that this wasn't a natural adaptation to a societal transformation; that would have taken too long.

Can't have people doing as they wish, that would take too long.

Hey how about that folks ET says she has read a bunch of materialistic authors and agrees with them. YAWN. Yes ET I have read most of them as well and I don't agree with much of what they have to say. A lot of them have the insight of a gnat in regards to the human condition. Now why don't you forgo your little enclave of like minded knitwits and try exploring the real world for a change. If you have any intelligence it will take you about 2 months of ground work to realize that the buffoons who write books don't always know much about what they write.

"The more the woman are educated, the more likely they are to not want to stop their careers to reproduce."

The more women work the more of them find that they had it really good before they had to get up at 5 am and drag their asses into some crappy job in an office, work all day and get more after dark. Its a good thing they never achieved true equality or instead of dragging their asses into relatively comfortable offices they would be slinging cinder blocks on construction sights or dying of mesothelioma or black lung disease like their men folk.

In my experience women who can find a husband who can support them are happy to quite there jobs to look after children.

The reason I enjoy Small Dead Animals is the intellect of the posters on its threads. I compare this to threads on National Post where they are dominated by brain-dead leftists that no amount of facts or reasoning can dissuade them from the same old tired rhetoric.

Whenever they are crossed or challenged they react in the same caustic, childish petulance shown by Joe and Fiddle on SDA. If you don't have anything intelligent to add to the discussion, STFU.

ET
"I don't accept my own life experiences as valid evidence of a collective or normative data base."
If this is the case, you are a self described useful idiot. Rendering your own life experiences as statistically insignificant makes you a perfect nihilist. Foisting opinions from this perspective is oxymoronic by definition and hypocritical in nature. In your first sentence you defeated any argument you may have on any topic.

"I could hardly claim that my own singular personal experiences have greater empirical validity than a host of statistics!"

Your "personal experiences" represent a host of statistics which you are willing to dismiss out of hand. On what grounds? Pure foolishness?

"I don't see the relevance of an 'ideal type' analysis in this argument; it's purely statistical."

Emic vs. etic. Here you select values ascribed to society rather than values a society would ascribe to itself. It has long been argued that objectivity in this regard cannot be achieved. Here you reject the entire Post Modernest era. This is rejection of modern social scientific methodology... in the name of science???!!!

"...the point of this talk - which was merely to show that economic factors were the basis causal factor to the number of children."

The talk was specified as being about the link between religion and sexuality. Then the shell game was played and economic factors were presented. Straw man. Then the conclusion: "Religion has very little to do with the number of babies per woman; all religions are fully capable to maintain their values and adapt to this new world,"
No evidence was offered in support of this conclusion. Maintenance and adaptation... another oxymoron concluded the presentation. (New World Order, for those who choose to notice)

"As for 'social engineering' - I have absolutely no idea why you are bringing up the term.
I cannot fix cluelessness.

"I don't accept your view of the 'grinning Arabic men..
You are not willing to think critically of your own perceptions because you don't value them in the first place.

"You can still be religious with a smaller family!"
This is the adaptation the presenter seeks. Here you have ascribed your understanding of the term religious without regard to the emic and statistically significant tradition of many religious peoples. As you are an atheist this statement is galling in its particularist ethnocentric elitism.

"The birth rate in China had nothing to do with religion.." Indeed, neither did Mao Zedong. "Moving that size of a population, with its standards of large families (to work in the fields) couldn't be accommodated"..
No indeed, social engineering imprisoned, starved, exterminated, 45 to 65 million people. Then, the one child policy.
No, not religion, statism, social engineering, genocide.

dave I have never suggested anyone STFU. Why? Because I believe the dull and the ignorant and even you yes you too should have your say.

If you don't have anything intelligent to add to the discussion, STFU.
Posted by: dave at May 26, 2012 6:29 PM

And by your metric you aught to do the same. Humanist and Marxist talking points spewed by the likes of ET (and by your agreement) you, are what we challenge as being shallow and mostly the opinions of those whom you read and agree with. And they are of Socialist and Marxist thinkers on this subject.

They will be challenged, sometimes with remarks of derision, sometimes with compassion. Especially when ET starts in on the "morals" statements which are laughable.

wow, infinity - you make a lot of assertions but they remain just that: your opinions.

That's right, my own individual experience is not and cannot be, a statistic. That's because statistics is the collection, collation and analysis of lots of data. Lots. So my one 'bit' is not a 'host of statistics' but is statistically irrelevant and is not a definition of nihilism. [Goodness, you toss words around, don't you.]

I don't foist opinions and I don't use my own singular experience. I gather data from statistical sources and use reason and logic for analysis. That's it.

I'm not into the simplistic reductions of that old dualism of etic and emic and long, long ago rejected postmodernism. Postmodernism is hardly a scientific methodology.

I disagree with your view that the outline of economics was a straw man. This was a brief talk, not a 300 page book. His conclusion that religions adapt is valid and can be explored elsewhere.

In response to my:"As for 'social engineering' - I have absolutely no idea why you are bringing up the term."
You replied: "I cannot fix cluelessness". That's not a valid response; it's just a red herring ad hominem.

In response to my:"I don't accept your view of the 'grinning Arabic men..", you replied:
"You are not willing to think critically of your own perceptions because you don't value them in the first place."
My goodness, another ad hominem rather than a valid response. You ought to be able to prove that I 'don't value my own perceptions'.

And don't try the 'statistically insignificant', for that would be yet another logical fallacy on your part.

You state: "As you are an atheist this statement is galling in its particularist ethnocentric elitism." Whew, that's meaningless. Kindly show how atheism is linked to 'particularist ethnocentric elitism'. Each word needs an explanation!

You flip words around like confetti. Every population develops sets of normative beliefs and behaviour. The socialization of the new generation is, crudely put, 'social engineering'. This happens in every society and you seem to ignore the necessary socialization of the next generation.

And to attribute the millions dead in the transformation of China from a local rural agriculturalism to a modern urban industrialism, in one generation, merely to 'social engineering' misunderstands what went on - and why.

Marxism is a religion of sorts just as the radical environmental movement is, and has radical and moderate believers just as Christianity, Islam and the other religions do. But this is not the thread to discuss the history of any of them except in the context of the presentation.

I would add to the last paragraph of my comment at 3:23 that at first glance there is no apparent difference in the economic level or the ability to afford more or fewer children. Although there is generally a difference in the educational levels achieved.

I also have to add, like dave, this is a great site to explore and exchange ideas and read what people more knowledgeable in their fields have to say, and deplore it when it degenerates into name calling.

Can't we all just get along. :-)

Irreverant Dreamer:

That population is going down is a sound premise,but for how long, with what consequences?

WTF?! He said the world's population is going to go from 7 billion today to 10 billion in 80 years. How in the world do you get "population is going down" from that?!