Two is what my wife told me, in no uncertain terms.

She in no way qualifies as an elite, nor listens to those who do.

But you're very anti-human.

They could always adopt.

She Who Is Perfect In All Ways told me "one" very firmly when we married, because she was an only child. About a year ago, she asked "are you sure you don't want a third?". On the other hand, one of her best friends said "5 or 6" at marriage but stopped at two. My closest friend when I was young told me that she'd never have children, but her first was due earlier this week. What global conclusions about women can one draw from this?

AOG:

Plenty, but none out loud.

The wrong thing to do is to extrapolate any long term trends based on the fertility rates of today's cohorts. I believe that once the world population levels off, it will probably bounce up and down within a range from one generation to another. Each generation tends to reverse the excesses of it's parents. There have been a series of books by William Strauss and Neil Howe, namely "Generations: the History of America's Future 1584 to 2169" and "The Fourth Turning" that lays out a very interesting theory about how the personalities of generations repeat in a cycle of four. Has anyone else read any of their books?

There's never been a voluntary reduction in fertility at this level.

OJ, there has never been an industrial and information revolution before either. Societies are still adjusting to the impacts of those revolutions, which are still unfolding. I don't see societal norms stabilizing for several generations, so there is no reason to believe that current attitudes towards marriage and childbearing are irredeemably ingrained for the future.

Would not just Darwinism suggest that Europeans would have reversed their fertiolity decline by now if it was going to happen naturally?

To your last question, no, that's not how darwinism works. It doesn't force winners, it just recognizes them.

To your earlier question, has there ever been a voluntary decline in fertility so great? Yes, in Hawaii in the 19th century.

Yes and look at the Hawaiians.

Yes, they now have very high birthrates.

I haven't read Strauss and Howe, but Robert's one-sentence summary sounds interesting.

And if two hundred years from now Japan and Europe have cultures like the Hawaiians you'll still believe in progress?

OJ:

Ah, but evolution will raise the fertility rate of Europeans; it doesn't care that that will make them all african muslims...

Mike:

Were Darwinism valid it would try to preserve European genes, and in that sense would care that it is well on its way to becoming Turkish/Algerian.

OJ
Europeans are not a separate species. Turkish, African and European genes are all human genes.

Robert:

Wow, so despite thousands of years in differing environments and stuff our genes are all identical? You're even better at this skepticism stuff than I am.

OJ:
You are channeling Dowd again.

Robert didn't say identical, he said human.

You conveniently neglect the documented genetic drift in human populations. In particular, had the Australian aborigines got there roughly 50,000 years sooner than they did, they might well have been a separate species by the time Europeans arrived.

Jeff:

You're right. There's no evidence of speciation in humans despite geographic isolation. Welcome to the club.

OJ:
You are wrong. Speciation was in progress, and only stopped due to the Europeans arriving and interbreeding. Otherwise, given known rates of genetic drift, if their isolation had been allowed to continue for another 50,000 years, then enough additional changes would have accumulated to cause the aborigines to become another species.

Which, BTW, confirms an evolutionary prediction: Speciation happens fastest among small, geographically (or otherwise)isolated populations.

If you care to deal with this factually, I can mail you a book from the Scientific American Library, Human Diversity.

Caution: the facts, and such they are, will not be kind to your ideology.

One can hardly improve on the proof that Darwinism is a faith than by citing your argument that the failure of speciation to occur proves natural selection.