I understand that. The point is that 2.58 is not an extreme rate of human growth, and that trends indicate that overall, not just in the first world, the rate of growth is decreasing. Also, I was pointing out that the places where TFR was abnormally high, i.e. beyond the median birth rate, that the death rate was also abnormally high, i.e. above the median. I was corrolating a high fertility rate with the necessity of breeding due to a high likelihood of death. Yemen, being the only country that bucked this trend.
Not at all fallacious. You are setting your bar in such a way that the injunction on moral behavior requires you to change nothing, but requires much of others.
Unless my math is way off (and that’s possible), a net population increase of .48 per generation means there will be ~9 billion people on Earth by 2030.
It’s not a net increase of .48, it’s a net increase of .24. So the population will be around 7.5-8 billion by 2030. Remember 2.1 refers to ‘per woman’, so it generally accounts that there is a man in the equation, so the two children are replacing two adults with the .1 to account for errant deaths. So the extra is not .48 it’s .24 because it’s measured off of replacing two people. So it’s a quarter again, not half again. But as we’ve seen over the past half century, the rate of increase has decreased across the board, not just in the first world. We don’t know what will happen with those rates in the future, but the trend shows that we don’t need extravagant measures to achieve demographic balance.
So what if I am? How is that more than just an ad hominem? What I am objecting to is the idea that since lots of us waste energy to some extent, that there is nothing particularly wrong with wasting extreme amounts of energy. It just doesn’t follow.
Another option is that I live an environmentally-friendly lifestyle. But whether I do or not is really irrelevant to my argument.
Why do all the projections show a leveling off population? I think we are in a “great awaking” of religion to a more orthodox strain, where having large families is the norm. In fact The Duggers are a great example of this trend. I could easily see the world’s population explode in the next few decades. Or am I way off base?
Then you may have convinced me - can someone else confirm that his numbers are correct?
I took them all from the CIA world factbook.
Well the question was, about where to set the bar, and you blew it off. You are saying it’s obvious that the Dugger’s are beyond the pale, but the question is what is the ‘pale’ threshold?
No one really knows what an environmentally friendly lifestyle is. Yes, we can certainly reduce our footprint, but what level of consumption is reasonable? Is having a computer reasonable?
The maths, not the statistics.
Personally, I’d say my rule of thumb is “can they all fit in one car?”
If your kids have their own driver, time to make with the birth control.
I used to have a 15 passenger van. That makes them only 4 over, and some of those four can drive. I think they passed your test.
Seems rather simple to me. 2.58 is number of children per woman. For a woman to have a child there has to be a man. So that is 2.58 per person. 2.1 is accepted replacement rate, so that leaves us with .48. .48 is about 50% of a person. So we replace two people with two and a half more. IE, 12 couples will have 15 kids. A roughly 4/5 ratio.
Hey, that’s a way for the Hummer and the 18 kids to justify one another. 
What if it’s one of your older kids?
The problem I have with the Duggar’s is not the number of children they have, though that magnifies the problem. My problem is the unbelievable level of creepiness their family gives off. Here’s a few quotes from their FAQ page:
How freaking creepy is it that. What teenager actually enjoys making up motions to memorize scripture? I think this would be the absolute last thing that I would have wanted to do as a teenager. Err scratch that. “Making up skits & acting out examples of right responses & wrong responses” would definitely top the list. What the hell have the Duggars done to these kids to make them actually enjoy that? Then there’s naming all the kids with J names, dressing them the same, and “training our children to love God” that just creeps the hell out of me.
It wouldn’t matter if they had 1 kid or 18, that’s one creepy family. Conversely, if they were a normal family the 18 kids would only ping slightly on my odd meter.
They are creepy because they study the bible?
Wow, that’s pretty intolerant.
What you find creepiest about them is that they are Christian. Ok.
I said that where?
Post 273
Ever hear of ‘Kinesthetic learning’? I am a Kinesthetic learning type. I move my arms emphatically when I speak, and it helps me memorize things.
Meh. It was good enough for my…
Okay. Uhm. I know a great deal of my family history and… uh. We ain’t been studying the bible for a few hundred years.
But if it was good enough for families a hundred years ago, it’s no bad thing to do today. If they find enjoyment in it, it’s no worse than video games.
I never said that there was anything creepy about studying the bible, or even forcing their kids to do so. You’re attempting to craft what I wrote into something entirely different, just so you can easily dismiss it. Ain’t going to work bub.
Oh right, it’s creepy that they ENJOY it. Right.
Yea god forbid we find something as sacred as religion creepy, that’s just wrong.
Well…only some religions–it’s ok to be creeped out by Scientology or Jim Jones or some other cult, but Christianity is just out of bounds.