[caspera]

With all due respect, you misunderstood what I was saying. By "too many" is meant that the fact that the growth rate slowing and actually reversing in most of the world is de-facto evidence that the current global population is at or nearing it's maximum sustainable level

It is not de facto evidence of any such thing. The Muslim birth rate is exploding. Gaza has a birth rate into the fours or fives. Spain has a birth rate of 1.3. Are you saying that this is de facto evidence that Spain has hit its resource ceiling whereas Gaza has not? Ridiculous. You are ignoring the importance of ideology. The Shakers did not believe in sex -- even the procreative kind. That's why you don't find a lot of Shakers around. Not because North America ran out of resources for the Shakers.

Western Man has recently come to prize non-procreative sex: abortion, contraception, homosexuality, late marriage, etc. Whatever you may personally think of these activities does not alter the fact that they put one at a demographic disadvantage to a philoprogenic philosophy.

[Gunny Gene]

I believe I said global . I'm well aware that individual countries, cultures, etc. will vary quite a lot.

See the graphs here, in particular the growth rate graphic. http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/world.html

[sodpoodle]

Western Man has recently come to prize non-procreative sex: abortion, contraception, homosexuality, late marriage, etc. Whatever you may personally think of these activities does not alter the fact that they put one at a demographic disadvantage to a philoprogenic philosophy.
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An obvious result of Intelligent Design.

[Mrs. Don-o]

Yes, it turns out that contraception, sterilization and abortion can destroy families, nations and civilizations. Who'da thunkit?

Related news flash: it also turns out that children flourish best in a family that has (a) a mother and (b) a father who are (c) married to each other.

Here's just one indicator: in 1965, when Daniel Patrick Moynihan published "The Negro Family: The Case for National Action," his research found that the major cause of Black poverty, welfare dependency, low academic achievement, high crime, etc. was out-of-wedlock childbirth, resulting in father-absent families. He said the Negro family was "in an unprecedented crisis" of "social pathology" largely because 25% of births were out of wedlock. (This was compared with 3% white illegitimacy.)

Today 25% of White births are out of wedlock--- compared to 15% of Asian-American births, 45% of Hispanic births, and almost 70% of black births.

If it was an "unprecedented crisis" of "social pathology" 40 years ago, what is it now?

Twenty-somethings and thirty-something, quit messin' around. Get married. And then --- hey! You know what to do.