Moontanman

Basically it's about there being no limit to the number pf people the earth can sustain because God is going to provide for us as opposed to the earth is finite and eventually we will exceed it's carrying capacity.

Great point, i'd pos rep you if i could...

I think we should have more rep votes, way more pos rep votes in 24 hours, maybe unlimited, i often run out of pos rep votes in a day, but also more neg rep votes too, at least 6 in 24 hours.

Yup, pretty much dead on target!

This is a great rant, let them eat cake! I doubt the current population of the world could exist at the level of wealth now seen in most western countries. None the less no matter how thin you spread the resources if we don't stop reproducing eventually there will be no resources for anyone to use. I don't understand how the religious argument can trump reality. The Earth is not big enough to house the people we currently have. somewhere it has been said that we are already using the resource equivalent of 1.4 earths and most of the world's population exists at a economic level far below the west. If we continue to reproduce at an increasing rate we will use up everything and die off. It has happened in populations of fast reproducing animals on isolated islands as well as humans, Rapa Nui is a good example of what is going to happen on the earth. We will get to the point where our society will collapse and most people will die due to a lack of food and water. There is no other way, no way the earth can continue to sustain us in ever increasing numbers. The Earth is finite, it is limited, we can and will exceed it's carrying capacity at some point if we continue to reproduce...

You don't pay to have your sins forgiven. You must be forgiven first, and that is free in the Catholic church too, although you must use a priest as an intermediary between you and God. You pay so that you are not punished either on earth or in purgatory. The idea is that if you do something like pay some money to fund a church (or spend your time building a church), you will have cleansed your soul the same as if you had spent some nasty time in purgatory, or with some newly acquired disease. Ah yes, purgatory, i had forgotten about that one. So even if you are forgiven you have spend time in purgatory but you can pay money to get out or stay out? If you don't you get a disease or you suffer in purgatory? Sounds like a racket to me. No purgatory in Protestantism either. Or neo-paganism for that matter. But i think the Evangelicals have a similar system where you give them huge amounts of money and or property to make sure god hears you or something like that, love offerings they are called. I had an uncle that was a popular preacher, he got rolex watches and expensive cars from his congregation.

This is nothing but a self fulfilling prophecy, what about all the people who do go hungry, who do not make it no matter how hard they pray or work? Can they blame god for not providing for them? i am opptimistic about most things, just not religion. I see no evidence of any higher power in the world. Power corrupts absolute power corrupts absolutely... Whose power is more absolute than religion? If faith makes people beleive they can go one reporducing with no consequences then faith makes them stupid not optimistic. We so far religion has failed miserably to explain reality, from lightning to evolution so far religion fails completely. Why should having sex with a person connect you to them forever? Why is sex such a limiting factor? Polygamy is not about not abandoning sex partners, it's about marrying young girls before then can figure out how they have been filled with bullshit about how their cults prophet says they have to marry this old man and have his babies so he can be a god in the after life and you can continue to have his babies to populate the worlds he will amek in the after life, along with the last 5 or 6 young girls the religion has brain washed that way. Sex is good, sex is enjoyable, and while you are trying to find out if you are compatible with some one and since sex is a huge part of being compatible i see no reason we should not have sex with different people until we find the one we are truly compatible with, this works for women as well as men. as long as children do not result i see no reason not to have sex with people i am considering pair bonding with and sometimes if both people agree why not just sex for the fun of it? That is truly fine, i see no reason to not reserve sex for marriage if that is important to you but after you are married will you abstain from sex unless you want a child? Or will you use birth control and allow your self to have a real healthy sexual relationship with the woman you love? I'm not arguing against commitment i am arguing against limiting your relationship due to the fear of pregnancy and the hardships unplanned pregnancies can bring. i think people who can make a life long commitment to each other is what it's all about and sex is a big part of any normal relationship, not being able to use birth control makes a mockery of any relationship between people with a normal sex drive in our society. While i have no basis for feeling this way, i do feel that charging people to forgive their sins is less than straight forward and basically dishonest. The ease by which it was perverted seems to confirm this. Of course i was raised protestant, we do not have to ask anyone but god to forgive us and he does it for free...

Yes, if this is true then it is prime example of how sky rocketing population messes with our society, having ever greater numbers of children will not help this only make the inevitable collapse worse. So would birth control, why take away one of the best parts of marriage to keep from having too many children? The Catholic churches solution only serves to help the church control people. I have never suggested that abortion is a solution to over population. Birth control is a reasonable solution. What does have to do with it? That is simplistic and dishonest, being rich spiritually will not feed your children or keep a roof over your head. So we just drown in our own excrement and it will be ok in the next life? Lots of room in hell for those who do not comply? Spiritual richness will not stop the enevitable collapse as resources run out. It's not an answer, it's nothing but proselytizing your seriously wrong religious views. Just about as likely as God coming and fixing everything...

No not stupid, less than honest maybe when it comes to sin but calling those people unscrupulous is disingenuous at best. At the time it was not only condoned it was part of the main stream church not a few unscrupulous members doing something bad. I'd keep one if I had it too...

No I'm not... 14 billion is a few billion more.... None the less even this will not even come close to being enough if our numbers continue to rise... None the less even this will not even come close to being enough if our numbers continue to rise... None the less even this will not even come close to being enough if our numbers continue to rise... No matter how efficiently we use our resources at some point we will run out. I have no doubt technology will delay this but around the world even now there is not enough to go around and with every child born it gets worse.

You failed to consider there is a limit to the surface area of the earth... and the resources that come out of it... No it is not overly simplistic, population growth is not sustainable, Population growth inevitably will result in more poverty and more wide spread poverty.

Limited resources? Over population? When god comes he will restore all the parts of the earth we have messed up, used up, and covered up, not to mention let us live happily shoulder to shoulder and the more kids we have the greater the glory to god... Of course if he doesn't come back and restore everything we are fucked... It all comes down to two basic choices, do we just let everything run to failure and wait for god to fix it or do we make long range plans to range in our population so we don't drown in our own excrement? Choose now, tomorrow maybe too late for either of them...

We keep on debating with no definition of the words we use and the way we use them, a person under anesthesia is temporarily unconscious but he has brain activity he is not brain dead, and no one who is brain dead has ever recovered, some people who were mistakenly diagnosed as brain dead may have recovered but no truly brain dead people have ever recovered. People who drown in cold water have been revived as long as 30 minutes after they drown but not because they are being revived from the dead, the cold has kept them from really being dead. Obviously at some point a unborn human becomes a person, we know it's not at one month or two or even three because we don't venerate the embryo at this stage if it dies. We do how ever consider an 8 month old child to be a person and an 8 month old who was delivered dead would probably be buried and given the same veneration as an adult person or near to it at least, i think this says it all... A fetus with no higher brain development is not as yet a person, by your definition every cell in the body is a person because they contain the genetic code to be a human. Clones are crap? Can you drop the crap that a fertilized egg is a person?

You know thats not true needimprovement, clones can be made of body cells, it has been done in animals no reason it cannot be done in humans. Every cell in the human body has the potential to be a human being, just because this new cell does it easiest doesn't mean it is a person. Needimprovement, we are on a science forum not philosophy. Yes he should... No it is not ok and it is also illegal. So now we have from one month it's not a person and at 8 months it is, can we narrow it down some more?

Ok, i agree, life does begin at conception but it is not a person at this time, i cannot say exactly when it is a person, if indeed it is a person then every time a woman misses her period and then gets it back the next month a person has died but do we hold funerals for that life? do we even notice unless there is a problem? No we do not, it is obvious that the closer to a live birth you are the closer it gets to being a person. i am not in favor of abortion as routine birth control but I recognize that the mothers needs out weigh the fetus. Sometimes that need will not be life threatening but i can't see it used as routine birth control as many people try to suggest it is used So we know that a newly implanted fertilized egg is not a person, we assume a live birth is a person. A live birth hasn't always been considered a person but i can't see such a thing in any modern context. Now i think a good rule of thumb is if the thinking parts of the brain have not developed then it is i not a person. We have just demonstrated it is not a person just after implantation so where do we go now?

Exactly! Life began something like 3.8 billion years ago! Now, not what you had in mind? Then give me your definition of life, exactly what are you talking about? A human life? Complex life? All life? Let us know...

Of course, You have just confirmed what you really are, you are doing your best just to stir discord, you take a definition and apply it the way you want then use it to argue something that is simply bullshit, talk about straw man. By the definition of the OP I am indeed correct you are just running around with the goal posts. Upsets me? Being correct makes me smile...

Where is Lynyrd Skynyrd and his sense of smell when you need him....

AP is correct you are baiting people, I have followed this thread very closely, AP did not fail, you failed to follow any reasonable rules about debate, you make assertions with no back up other than your assertions. i am not incorrect but even if i am you are the one who has made an assertion that is non mainstream, it's up to you to back it up, not me. Now i will admit that not being part of the main stream doesn't make you wrong but not backing up your assertions does... We are not discussing this in the philosophy section, this is a science section either back up your assertions or admit defeat and move on. Since you are using a definition of life that is not relevant to the idea of common decent i have no doubt you think you are correct but changing the goal posts doesn't mean you win. The OP is flawed it should have been worded as human consciousness instead of life. Human consciousness is not life, a human who is unconscious is still alive in the sense of biology but not in the sense of the OP. Now if you want to discuss this honestly then do so but don't try to use a twist of words to redefine the answer....

On the contrary, as usual you do not listen, i have no problem with what you believe, only when that belief affects me does it become a problem. I have no problem with the song of Solomon but I can see why some bible thumpers would get their panties in a knot over it. I really don't care what anyone does till it bothers others then it becomes a problem for everyone. If my neighbor walks around nude all the time in his house as he prays to the porcelain throne for more vodka i could care less. but when he comes to my house and insists i get naked and pray for more vodka it pisses me off. When he gets laws passed that restricts me in some way because i don't get naked and pray for more vodka I am pissed as well. i see religion doing it's best to make society conform to it's specifications, that is just wrong... I have no problem with god, it's his fan club that pisses me off...

I will say this again, it is demonstrably true that all complex life forms are Eukaryotes, all complex life forms have as their ancestor single celled Eukaryotes. Elephants, sharks, flat worms, jelly fish, sponges, lions, sunfish, snakes, naked mole rats, ants, chimps, gorillas, earth worms, us, you and me, are all descended from single celled Eukaryotes.

Well then if you can't be honest then I guess discussion is not possible. But I'll try to make it clearer, it is demonstrable that all complex life is descended from single celled Eukaryotes, yours, mine, all complex life forms are Eukaryotes....

I am not AP, I fear no creationist, and if I am banned for pursuing the truth then so be it, bring it on... I will go to a forum where the truth is valued over repeated baseless assertions ... I will start this out, all complex organisms on the Earth are Eukaryotes.

Zapatos, you have demonstrated to me that religion is evil, it restricts love between even dedicated partners. It attempts to control humans from birth to death by restricting activities that are a big part of being human simply to control them, no other reason. The immorality of sex and the control on the population by causing guilt and strife over something that should be freely given between humans in love flies in the face of the idea of a loving god and gets us back to the cruel and spiteful god. Religion if believed and followed above reality is the most dangerous thing to humanity on this earth. Sex is a great thing, between people in love it's wonderful, to restrict that loving relationship by saying sex must result in procreation is evil. It steals a big part of what being a fulfilled human being means.