Christians Call Overpopulation a Myth

For at least a century thoughtful people have supported the movement to slow the world's population growth to sustainable levels. It doesn't take a PhD in demographics or mathematics to realize that the population explosion, if left unchecked, will be the worst catastrophe to ever hit the Earth.

If we keep having babies at the current rate, we'll be shoulder-to-shoulder covering the entire Earth, oceans and all, in well under 800 years!

So what do you say to this? It's a reader's comment to this article: The Myth of Overpopulation.

"If you [are an atheist], then you think that humans really need to control their fertility and population growth. ... But if you know that there is a God, who knows what He’s doing when He sends babies into the world, then you know not to worry about overpopulation. Those atheists live in a scary world. Without God, the scary stories of overpopulation make perfect sense. Only a knowledge of God can help us see that we don’t need to worry about it, just trust God.

This is lunacy. What this writer is saying is that logic and science prove that we're in deep trouble, but if you have faith in God you'll know that He has a plan for all those babies. (Isn't this the same God who killed all of the Canaanites, including babies?)

Global warming and terrorism get all the headlines when it comes to the doom-and-gloom theories. But the truth is that overpopulation is a far worse threat. Without population control, global starvation is inevitable. It will spark genocide and wars on a scale that will make World War II look like a children's schoolyard fight. We can grow all the food we like, convert everything to solar energy, solve global warming and fix any other problem you'd care to name. But if we don't slow population growth, none of this will matter. Without population control, global starvation is always just a few decades away.

It turns out there is an entire movement devoted to debunking the "myth" of overpopulation. Their logic seems to be something like this:

• Overpopulation seems to be a problem.
• Fifty million babies have been aborted in America.
• Each of those fifty million babies would have made a "distinct contribution" to humanity.
• Presto! The problems caused by overpopulation would have been solved by those aborted babies!

This is a perfect example of the Anti-Rationalism Meme, which I wrote about extensively in The Religion Virus. The Anti-Rationalism meme tells us that when faith and reason collide, faith is the stronger of the two. It's been at the very core of Christianity since its very beginning.

This is why a live-and-let-live attitude toward religion won't work. If religious people simply went to church to worship, I would have nothing but respect for my religious neighbors. But when people actively oppose science and logic, when their actions endanger the entire world, I can't ignore it. And you shouldn't either.