Why We Should Have Lots Of Children

There are still people who think that the world is overpopulated. Prince Harry and Megan Markle are planning on only having two children to help keep the ecosystem sustainable. The Guardian said about this, “So, of all the lifestyle choices you could make, having one less child is by far the best option.”

Sadly, this is about the worst thing we could do. The Guardian, and many others are worried about our ‘carbon footprint’. For some reason, they want us to think that the developed world is responsible for majority of CO2 in our atmosphere. But if you look at the data, it is the under-developed countries that are responsible for all of the increase in CO2.

And most of the other under-developed countries are increasing their CO2 output as well. (And I don’t blame them. They need more energy to become modern, prosperous, healthy countries).

One can worry about CO2 emissions or not, but there is virtually nothing that the developed countries can do about it.

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Here is a huge problem that more and more people are realizing: under-population in developed countries is becoming a disaster.

Consider this graph of population growth:

It takes 2.1 children per woman to maintain a population. But by the end of the century, world population will begin to decline. Worse, population decline is already happening in most developed countries.

Why is this bad? Countries depend on current workers to support their Social Security and Medicare-type programs. Low fertility rates means fewer workers and more retirees.

Countries around the world are beginning to reckon with a years-long drop in new births that has skewed population demographics heavily toward older age groups.

In a more local perspective, some cities are already reckoning with the challenges of precipitous drops in new births, including “ghost cities” in China and maternity wards with too few births to justify staying open in Italy. Some South Korean universities have so few students that the government is pressuring them to merge with others, and entire towns where deaths outnumber births are being consolidated in Japan.

Japan sells more adult diapers than baby diapers.

Look about what Elon Musk says about this:

Elon Musk says population collapse 'potentially the greatest risk to the future of civilization'

Musk has previously warned population collapse is a bigger problem than most people realize.

 

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It is true that too many children are being born in the Middle East and Africa, causing many problems for them. But outside of those areas, population declines are causing a huge problem.

Here’s my request of you, my dear readers: If you are a loving, married couple, please have lots of children. That means at least 3 and preferably more. Yes, kids cost money. But out great-grandparents were poor and had 6 to 8 children, and they worked it out.

NO! I don’t want to hear any excuses….

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Tim Farage is a Professor and Graduate Advisor in the Computer Science Department at The University of Texas at Dallas. He writes about mathematics, computer science, physics, chemistry, the reconciliation between science and spirituality, Intelligent Design, and the application of Natural Law to our various systems such as education, government and economics.

Should Christians accept homosexuals as ethical equals and not as sinners?

The question posed in the title of this post on Quora.com. I thought some of my blog followers would like to see my response.

Christ said that one of the greatest commandments was to love all others, even our enemies. And the only prayer that he is recorded as giving us to say is “The Lord’s Prayer”, which starts with the words, "Our Father". Thus, he taught that we are all children of God.

Furthermore, one of the most well-known stories in the New Testament is the story about a woman caught in adultery, a sin that Christ mentioned a number of times. A number of people were about to stone this woman because that was part of Jewish law. (And, of course Christ was Jewish). 

He famously told the people, “He who is without sin, let him cast the first stone.”

They all walked away. Christ said to the woman, “Is anyone left to condemn you?”. She said, “No, my Lord.” He responded, “Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more.”

In this beautiful story, we are told 1) we are all sinners, and 2) we are not to judge others, even if they have sinned.

If you read the Gospels, Christ railed against hypocrisy more than any other sin. So anyone who considers themselves a Christian and calls out homosexuals as sinners are hypocrites, because they, and we, have all sinned in many ways.

We have no record of Christ mentioning homosexual sex. He did define marriage as between one man and one woman when he said:

“Have you not read that He (God) who made them at the beginning 'made them male and female,' and said, 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'? So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate."

Christ gave this spiritual definition of marriage, and so it’s understandable that some Christians believe a marriage can only exist between a man and a woman.

But instead of having laws against same-sex marriage, or polygamous marriage for that matter, it would be much better to remove any government involvement or licensing of any marriages. After all, it has only been since the 1800s or so that any governments licensed marriage. By doing this, people can make whatever private arrangements they wish, and that is their business. They can also file a will, or any other legal documents they wish. These legal documents are between individuals.

Even if a Christian were to consider homosexual sex to be a sin, it would be pretty low on the ladder. At the top would be murder, rape, child abuse, and then stealing, fraud and such. Hypocrisy is not far from the top.

Certainly adultery would be considered a ‘higher level’ sin than homosexual sex, because adultery is mentioned as a sin many times, while homosexual sex was not mentioned by Christ, and only mentioned a couple of times in the letters in the New Testament.

The bottom line is that Christians who rail against those who have homosexual sex are hypocrites, because it is certain that they sin every day, as do we all. We are all children of God and should treat each other as such.

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Tim Farage is a Senior Lecturer in the Computer Science Department at the University of Texas at Dallas. One of his main interests is how to improve education using technology. He also writes and speaks about Intelligent Design, and how science and spirituality can be reconciled.

What shall we do about issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples?

In 2015, the Supreme Court ruled that states that issue marriage licenses, must also issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. I do not wish the argue the issue here, rather to give a solution to the probems it has caused. 

One problem was that a number of county clerks did not wish to do issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Yet, one can argue that since they are government employees, they should be fired for not doing so. 

And yet doctors, even in county hospitals, are not required to perform abortions if it violates their belief system. 

How can we handle this issue? We want to allow people to follow their beliefs as long as they are peaceful. Otherwise we would be violating the bedrock principle of our country - the right to act according to one's beliefs. 

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The root cause of many such conflicks comes from the fact that government has way overreached in many areas. 

If we got states out of the business of issuing marriage licenses, we wouldn't be arguing about this. If 3 men get married in a church, that is their business since I am not endorsing it personally or through my government. 

But the government has a cetain legitimate role here. If a married couple, or group of individuals get divorced, there may be children to deal with, property issues, and other issues that might only be resolved by the government. 

So a good way to handle this is for states to stop issuing marriage licenses to anyone. Any couple or group could get a minister, or priest, or even a lawyer to witness their marriage. They would sign some marriage documents of their own choosing. There would not be any government employees issuing a marriage license, since there would be no more marriage licenses, which imply a government's endorsement of a marriage.

This couple could go to the county office and register these decuments, along with any other related documents, such as pre-nuptual agreements. The state would just have to stamp 'received' on it, and no one in the government would need to sign or endorse anything.

We'd have to clean up a few things like that have gotten entangled in marriage such as health insurance, the income tax, etc.

But for most of the history of the world, governments were not involved in marriage. Even at the start of the United States marriage licenses were not issued. 

Keep marriage private. Even schools would not have to teach about what the government's current definition of marriage is.

And then we would be not waiting for the Supreme Court to decide what its next definition of marriage will be.

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Tim Farage is a Senior Lecturer at The University of Texas At Dallas. The opinions given here are his alone.