So why take it seriously? What if I guesstimate something entirely different? And if there's no way to favor one over the other...what is the purpose of making this guesstimation in the context of this discussion?
I'm a European. I am bound to be pessimistic.
Okay...so...isn't this something your position has to reconcile? That's a quick, massive decline without a major change in government or even the kind of change in culture that one would expect to be necessary. So clearly, either massive cultural change is possible in a short period of time, or else the idea that we need massive cultural change to lead to dramatically lower birth rates is wrong.
You don't have all of the facts about the situation in Iran & it may have as many indigenous reasons on why its birthrate is what you allege it was. You still don't have enough information to extrapolate the notion that 'massive cultural change' is or is not needed to lower birth rates.
The problem is the word "can't."
No it isn't.
You've only pointed out that they haven't, which isn't the same thing.
You have made the mistake of inferring something that isn't, from your own incomplete logic.
The plain fact of the matter is that Britain could feed its own population relatively well for at least the past 2500 years. It is only in the past 150 years or so that it can't without relying on imports. In fact, over 70% of the UK is still farmland, woodland or countryside. Yet, it can't feed its indigenous 65 million inhabitants.
Now, which factor do you think it is that we need to actually import food to feed 65 million mouths?
My analogy from before should still be instructive: eating out doesn't mean I can't cook.
This is irrelevant. Economically it would almost certainly be an advantage to feed the indigenous population. It has just grown too much. Hence, it is an
overpopulation.
Similarly, pointing out that a country imports food doesn't, in and of itself, mean it is incapable of growing enough of its own. I'm not even necessarily disputing your conclusion (though I don't think it's a problem, regardless), I'm simply pointing out that the mere fact that Britain imports food doesn't really demonstrate anything other than that they're better at things other than food production. It says nothing, by itself, about their ability to feed themselves.
No, this is a specious point of view. It is nonsense to believe that the UK isn't overpopulated. UK farming is one of the most efficient on the face of the planet, it has to be. It became important in the 19th century as population expanded & we eventually led the world in farming technology. Innovations that were made then are still used all over the planet.
The goalposts are moving. Nobody's denying that religion plays a role in one's position. Nor is anyone denying that religion can be used as a pretext to control people, women or otherwise. What I'm denying is that anything like that has even remotely reared its head in this thread. This is a distraction.
I haven't touched the goalposts. I personally don't care about abortion either way. I still think it should be up to the woman that the foetus is actually in. It is organised religions that have held back progress for millennia. They seek to control human beings for their own agendas & in many parts of the world use deliberate obscurantism to control people for their own usually patriarchal , misogynistic & fanatical belief systems & fairy stories. It is education in contraception, abortion & other issues which is denied many in the undeveloped world.
Probably. I'm not sure what evidence there even is for it, beyond the fact that I've decided it's worth arguing about. And as a quick persual of the rest of the site will show, I do that for lots of things, and I can't be obsessed with all of them. Either way, it doesn't matter if I'm perfectly level-headed or an obsessive idealogue; the arguments are the thing. This is another distraction.
Maybe, maybe you still aren't being totally honest with yourself about this. Why do you believe that abortion is necessarily a negative concept?
As I said before, if you consider the belief that human life has special inherent value as "emotional," then sure, my position is emotional.
Well, it's both emotional &/or irrational. I could just as easily ask you to 'prove' that human life has 'special inherent value'. As far as I am concerned we are just another animal that has evolved on the planet, admittedly a cleverer than average primate. My concern is for the already born & the living, not the potential living. We just don't have that luxury as a species any more in my opinion. Either way, I still don't think that it is any of my business what a woman wishes to do with her
in utero foetus.
But so are most people's general moral codes, too, so by this definition any argument with any moral component or presupposition (which is pretty much all of them) is "emotional."
I doubt that most moral codes are necessarily emotionally based. What about absolutist & non-absolutist deontological moral codes?
But I don't think that's how most people use the word in this context. An emotional argument about abortion is holding up a sign with a picture of an aborted fetus, or describing how ugly the process is, or linking you to a video of babies laughing in slow motion with a Sarah McLachlan song playing in the background. I'm not doing anything like that.
Yes, I'm aware of that. You don't have to actually demonstrate anything to imply anything in subtext though do you? Luckily, I don't know who Sarah McLachlan is anyway.
What's the point of calling an argument about abortion emotional if you've decided to define the entire issue as inherently emotional? Once you do that, saying someone is making an emotional argument is literally just saying "you're talking about abortion."
No, I don't believe the 'argument' about abortion (there is no argument
per se in my country anyway) is inherently emotional. I don't feel emotive about the subject. But when you start to use concepts like the possibilities or otherwise that the 'belief that human life has special inherent value'
in utero or otherwise, you are the one who has introduced the emotional concept & rhetoric, albeit subtextually.
Well, where are you looking? Where are you not seeing the changes?
You still aren't selling me your figures on this.
Indonesia is not stabilising, Indonesia's rate has been dropping for 30 years. The article linked to before also mentioned that parts of Africa are part of the trend, too. How do you reconcile these "possible exceptions"?
Even if your figures are correct, which I very much doubt, dropping birthrates don't mean that the population isn't expanding, it just means that babies aren't being born so frequently.
So, your argument is "lots of people have statistics, I choose not to believe those ones, and I bet I could find other ones if I wanted to"? Would you have accepted such a response if I'd offered it the first time you mentioned the population of India?
Yes. If you could do it, you can't though.
OK. You can't deny that there aren't conspiracies though either, can you?
Either that or you're saying none of these organizations have any idea how to measure or project population.
As I said, they have their own agendas for publishing the figures they do.
And if that's the case, you'd have to explain why you decide to trust any estimate or projection that you cited to make the case that overpopulation is a problem, too.
No I don't, it's just bloody obvious.
Because birth rates were higher than they are now. Now they're lower.
They're not lower everywhere on the planet, & even if they are lowering, which I still don't believe, it still isn't enough to avoid the inevitable population time bomb.
Sure, you don't have to accept figures from any sources you don't necessarily trust. But that'd still leave you to explain why you don't trust them, and why you do trust the ones you do.
You're still not getting this. I don't have to explain anything. The global population figures speak for themselves. You can find all sorts of 'statistics' from all sorts of 'institutions' but the fact of the matter is that the population of human beings on this planet has doubled within half a century. This is an unprecedented event in known human history. It's not going to get better no matter what the fluctuation of birth rates is or isn't.
Naturally I cannot prove whether or not something will or will not take place in the future.
Naturally.
If your position is going to retreat to the safety of "you can't technically prove me wrong," then I think this conversation has run its course.
It isn't a matter of retreat to safety, you actually
can't prove me wrong technically. To be totally honest, I hope that you are the one who is correct about all of this. Unfortunately, as I said before, I'm a pessimistic European & I live on an overpopulated island.
Closed Thread
