<p>Now tell me where it says human beings are only suppose to have a couple children? A couple hundred years ago it wasn’t uncommon to see a family with 10+ children and it was probably a personal decision why they did not want to adopt.</p>
<p>There are plenty of parents right here in the US who can’t even fufill their parenting duties and care for even a single child, yet your chastising them for being responsible loving parents? People like you make me sick because you prick apart other people’s business when you shouldn’t worry about it in the first place. Stop complaining and go adopt all those unwanted and unloved children.</p>
<p>I think we should have a kid limit like they do in China. We can’t feed all the people we have, so why produce more? If they really wanted to do good and to take care of God’s children then they should have adopted and given suffering children the chance at a decent home, instead of selfishly overbreeding. Sickening.</p>
<p>–</p>
<p>Hmm my parents wanted to become Bill Gothard-ites - the males can’t have facial hair, everyone MUST be homeschooled, females must wear dresses in public, no dating, only courting, etc…</p>
<p>He encourages lots of Children - David, King of Israel, was like number 12 or so in his family - what if his parents had stopped having kids at 11? The argument is one should not interfere with how many children God would like you to have.</p>
<p>It’s kind of hard to understand if you didn’t grow up in an religiously orthodox home. I haven’t made up my mind as to whether or not I’ll employ forms of birth control once I get married and start having sex (hopefully in that order…)</p>
<p>Rebel, I do plan on adopting. I work at a group home for orphaned kids and try to help them as best I can, but I am 18. So don’t tell me to stop complaining and do something when I already do.</p>
<p>^ Dshinka, I don’t vote because I’m 17. Politics and hurting the Earth are pretty different issues. Barring something absolutely ridiculous, humans are never going to destroy the Earth. It’s unlikely we’ll even destroy ourselves. And if we do, or if something else takes us, the Earth won’t care a whit that we’re gone. In fact, it’ll probably be the tiniest bit “happier.”</p>
<p>
I’m not trying to change your opinion about the Duggars in this reply, so you might bother to read it. I just wanted to reply to the bit I bolded.
Obviously, it depends on what you mean by “a couple,” but that usually means 2-3. Humans evolved in a world with tons of natural threats. If you only had 2-3 children, it’s unlikely that you would have any survive to adulthood. You can see this by looking at how many children people have in pre-industrial countries. Basically, it looks like we were “supposed,” whatever that means to have 6-7. Obviously the Duggars have gone way over this, but who’s to say that most Americans aren’t selfishly underbreeding and denying nature?</p>
<p>You might find it useful to learn about the demographic transition model. It has 4 stages at this point, but some people think that by looking at rapidly aging, incredibly low birth rate countries like Japan and some European countries, we’ll need a 5th one soon. I love bringing it up in discussions with random online people about population and proving that they should really learn something if they’re going to pretend they know anything about population.</p>
<p>“It’s unlikely we’ll even destroy ourselves.” Ummm nuclear weapons? Self-inflicted radical climate changes? I personally doubt that we’ll destroy ourselves, but that’s due to my Christian beliefs - humans will be around until the tribulation and then Armageddon. But from a secular point of view, there’s no guarantee that we will survive indefinitely.</p>
<p>While they are different issues it’s a bad mentality to have that since my personal actions make little aggregate difference to the grand scheme I am free to do whatever. Pragmatic and secular morality works this way. While stealing one mp3 from the internet isn’t going to hurt any profits significantly, we would have a huge problem if everyone did it. Therefore the individual action is “wrong.”</p>
<p>When you say the demographic transition model, are you referring to what Thomas Carothers dubbed the “transition paradigm”?</p>
<p>I mean, we could destroy ourselves. Nuclear weapons are probably the most likely possibility. But I think it’s more likely we’ll go extinct the way every other species has: naturally.
I guess I had sort of never thought about how that conflicts with my Christian beliefs. Uh oh. Is the Earth supposed to end after Armageddon? I’ve read Revelations, but it was a long time ago.</p>
<p>To me at least, it does seem like everyone illegally downloads MP3s. My entire chemistry class recommended Limewire to our Tupac and Biggie loving teacher. I know one person who doesn’t, and he is absolutely obsessed with music and has 1000+ CDs or albums or whatever. But I do definitely see what you mean. The “humans will destroy Earth” argument just gets on my nerves a lot, especially with so many people making a show of being “green” (for what it’s worth, my sister who returned from college now thinks me strangely obsessed with recycling). We <em>might</em> hurt ourselves significantly by overusing. We might even kill ourselves (but I really, really doubt that). But there is no way we’re going to destroy a planet. Earth is bigger, older, stronger, everything-er than us. Even if Earth were Pluto-sized, we couldn’t destroy it.</p>
<p>I don’t know of the demographic transition model being called the “transition paradigm,” of which I have never heard, but it’s possible. You can just google demographic transition model, or even better google image it, and you’ll get a drawing. From what I can see by googling, which is often very ineffectual, as may be the case here, the transition paradigm is not something you can draw.</p>
<p>Yeah I don’t know if this is the place to discuss religion so I’ll be brief but basically God will destroy our current world (by fire, I believe - he promised never to do it again with water and Noah’s Flood), and then create a new heaven and a new earth… I don’t study the end-times too much, but yeah read revelation and it’ll be there… Revelation 21:1 “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea.”</p>
<p>Transition paradigm is basically the belief that states implementing authoritarian regimes will have a breakthrough, then collapse and then consolidation towards long-lasting viable democracies. I think this kind of thinking is overly-optimistic and is wrong - a lot of regimes are “stuck” at the beginning of the consolidation phase - for 20 years or more - are aren’t progressing towards a democracy. They exist in what Carothers calls a “political gray zone.” Rather than describing these regimes in “qualified democracy” terms in order to fit them to a line that suggests they’re moving towards becoming a democracy, other people, like Levitsky believe it’s better to compare Regimes towards what they came from, like calling some a “competitive authoritarianism.”</p>
<p>of course a long time ago (as little as a century ago) it was biologically necessary to have as many children as possible. a woman might have 10 children and only 5 would live to adulthood. in this day and age, having a lot of children isn’t necessary. Michelle Duggar had one miscarriage (the one that she claims was caused by the birth control that she swore off). 200 years ago, that number would have been higher. </p>
<p>THAT SAID how much of a help to the world are the Duggars?</p>
<p>[url=<a href=“http://www.VHEMT.org%5DVHEMT%5B/url”>http://www.VHEMT.org]VHEMT[/url</a>]
at first glance you may think they (and I) are crazy. read through it if you have the time (OBVIOUSLY YOU ALL DO, YOU’RE ON CC LOL). read the chart of idiotic reasons people give for having children, the explanation for their reasons, and intelligent alternatives.</p>
<p>We had this whole debate about this exact topic in my AP Enviro Science class. We’ve decided that each woman can give birth only three seperate times in her lifetime, and each male can only father three seperate births. 'Cause we’re American and the shizzz.</p>
<p>Could you imagine the amount of black market drugs inducing twin-pregnancies that’d surface?</p>