Why do you care?

"Protocols of the Elders of Science." Gotta love that guy.

Robert:

Because Creation can be a magnificent project.

"What do the secular care what came before or what comes after themselves?"

The largest population increases are in sub-saharan Africa therefore are you saying that those societies are more foward looking? Is there an objective criteria that you use for measuring this future orientation, that you could share with us?

h:

The stated end of the society.

OK, cool. You don't have to care, though. You do know that, don't you? God's kingdom is not of this world. This is a throwaway world, you've been warned not to get too attached to it.

All you really have to care about is God, of course, and your soul (that's a given). Just believe the right things, and you'll live eternally in a state of bliss. Giving a crap about this world will just distract you. It's idolatry, you know.

Yes, we are Commanded to care. You can choose not too, but the alienation you feel from your purpose plays out in the pathologies you create.

The reality is that it's a matter of money. A decent life in most First World countries is too expensive for one income to pay for. Thus, it is necessary for both spouses to work in most cases. When that occurs, nobody is home to take care of the kids. Then, the options become paying someone to take care of the kids, dumping them on your retired parents, or not having kids. It should be of no surprise that too many people choose the last option.

Cut the taxes, reduce the burden that government imposes on us and the 'birth dearth' will take care of itself.

bart:

Money has nothing to do with it. It's purely spiritual.

Robert -- is the implication of your snideness that you do care, but that Christians shouldn't? Or would you have us mute the clarion?

And Christianity doesn't mean to "believe the right things."

"No man can come to me [Jesus], except the Father which hath sent me draw him." (John 6:44)

oj,

How many childless couples do you know? Have you ever had a serious discussion about the matter with people who don't have kids? Most childless people I know see the money issue as the primary consideration. Make it cheaper to live a decent life through tax reduction and shrinking the burden of government generally and we'll be up to our earlobes in babies.

bart:

Yes, people who talk that way are spiritually empty.

The statist dead end created by socialists worldwide has evrthing to do with the ability to provide for oneself and family. Money , or the lack thereof, is just a symptom of the utopian project, a means to an end, if you will, liable to be taxed away for the collective good at the expense of the family. Every theory touching on 'equality' as defined by the socialists among us costs money when put into prctice and a heavy handed yet subtle coercive style. That is precisely the purpose of the 'progressive' tax on 'income'. In Europe, savings as well as the cost of raising a child are taxed away in order to provide Euro-style 'benefits'. If the 70 year trend continues here, we will have less savings as well as fewer children as well. Minus immigration, Americans would not be at population replacemnet levels as it is now. We get the immigration because we are more oriented toward frteedom and individual responsibilty than the hard core socialists of Europe, but only at the margin. The widespread acceptance of the utopian model is a spiritual issue and a highly taxed and regulated economy is the result of the spiritual vacuum.

oj,

It's not a matter of spirituality, it is a matter of hard-headed practical reality.

Tom:

Actually even we natives reproduce at (or so near as to be a reporting error) replacement rate and we have record savings. We are different, though you're right that we need to be even more different.

oj -

Look West, young man, across the more important ocean. We'll have all those pantheistic Hindus and Buddhists to meld with over the course of this new century.

ghost:

Assimilate.

kids aren't that expensive when you get down to it. but they do take an awful lot of time and attention, and that i think is why many people who say "its the cost" choose not to have kids -- it gets in the way of their fun.

Agreed, cjm, it's not about the money. I wouldn't be surprised to find an inverse correlation, in fact.

It's self-indulgence.

Robert -- is the implication of your snideness that you do care, but that Christians shouldn't? Or would you have us mute the clarion?

I do care, and I'm sure that you and OJ care as well. I'm just not buying this "we have to care because we're Christian" nonsense. Or it's corollary "you can't care because you're secular".

And Christianity doesn't mean to "believe the right things."

That depends on which Christianity we're talking about. Didn't Luther discover that there is no salvation but through faith? And faith is believing the right things, right?

"No man can come to me [Jesus], except the Father which hath sent me draw him." (John 6:44)

No mention about caring for the world in that quote.

oj -

Most (all?) religions have profound intuition at their essence. Bt the time the apostolic apparatchiks have codified their dogma ... as a marketing and teaching strategy, really ... the original intuitive essence has been reduced to mere indoctrination. A pale, pale facsimile of the original.

At its intuitive essence, Western mysticism is essentially male, while Eastern mysticism is essentially female. My bet is on melding, not domination.

Robert D. -

As you are no doubt are aware, one cannot base his entire view of Jesus on verses about loving the whole world. That view leads to sappiness in a New York second. Many of Jesus's statements are, to say the least, disquieting. Sort of the thing we might expect from, well, God.

None of us gets to choose how God, or anyone else for that matter, will love us.

Bart" Plenty of people in the US live "decent lives" on one income. If "decent" means adequate shelter, clothing and food as well as a few modern "toys", that is. If "decent" means trips to Europe or Florida every year, designer clothes, a Lexus, an IPod, nails done at a salon and stuff like that, then you are right.

ghost:

They are converting to Christianity--no one converts to theirs except hippies while on drugs.

"No man can come to me [Jesus], except the Father which hath sent me draw him." (John 6:44)

The Father cares and commands us to.

cjm: that's called an opportunity cost. Different opportunity costs explain some of the difference in birth rates among classes; i.e. the time spent on child care is more money, or more of the fun leisure activities that it buys, out of the pocket of a high-powered career couple than a blue-collar one. Here's Gene Expression on The Future of the Birth Rate:

"Assuming that the biological impulse to reproduce is constant, the demand for children will depend on the other costs and benefits of having them...there is probably no developed country where it is economically advantageous to have children."

Bart-

It may not be a matter of spirituality but it is certainly a matter of faith: Faith in the state and the socialist 'heaven on earth'. Let no expense be spared in pursuit of utopia.

joe: that initial assumption does not hold; many well off people have sublimated their reproductive instincts to the point where they no longer function. i don't know anyone who has children as an investment, they have them out of love.

oj -

It's like Easterners moving to Oregon, or flatlanders moving to the Appalachian hill country. Both will change. The end of religious history will accomomdate patriarchs and matriarchs equally.

Neat "Freudian" typo, no?

cjm,

Kids are very expensive. Feeding them, housing them, clothing them, giving them medical care and, just as important today, giving them a decent education so they can get a shot at the brass ring all cost lots of money. Ivy League undergraduate schools are $45000 plus/yr. Medical school is $60000+/yr. Rutgers is $15000-$20000 if you live on campus. If you live in a part of the country where the public schools are lousy, private school is $10000+/yr. Andover or Exeter are about $35000-$40000. Horace Mann, an elite NYC day school, is $35000.

When the parents both work and if they work in fields with long or weird hours, time is a precious and scarce commodity.

Bob,

I live in Bergen County, NJ. The median housing price is $350,000, and that gets you a drafty 100 year old firetrap standing only because the termites hold hands. Median real estate taxes are $8000. IOW, a typical couple wanting to buy a house would have to earn $110,000/yr to qualify for a mortgage. How many single income families earn over $100,000? Not many even in the NYC area. The same is true in any of the close-in counties to the City. If you move to where the commute is 2-3 hours each way like the Poconos or Burlington County you do a lot better on housing but you're on the road 12-14 hours a day, so where is that time to spend with the kids.

Bart: Move. Its a big and cheap country.

And one more thing: "Ivy League undergraduate schools are $45000 plus/yr. Medical school is $60000+/yr. Rutgers is $15000-$20000 if you live on campus. If you live in a part of the country where the public schools are lousy, private school is $10000+/yr. Andover or Exeter are about $35000-$40000. Horace Mann, an elite NYC day school, is $35000". It is quite possible to live a "decent life" without going to any of those schools. In fact, 95% of the people in the US do not. Its pretty clear that "decent life" means upper class life.

bart: tuition at berkley or ucla is less than $10k/yr, and the quality of education is much higher than at harvard. stuff all the pretentions of manhattan, the good life is where you find it. i am guessing your views are pure theory :) anyway if selfish people don't reproduce then all the better for the nice people who do.

Sorry, Bob, I happen not to believe kids should be consigned to the third-rate and that they should get every advantage it is possible to have. Our society is becoming more stratified and less fluid than it ever has been and kids need to be properly prepared to take advantage of it or at least survive. The first rule I ever learned from my folks was 'Don't be a victim' and I live my life by that. If you see that as 'upper class' so be it. I merely consider it as the only rational response to the existing stimuli.

cjm,

Sure, I'm selfish. If I'm not looking out for Number #1 who else is? Depending on what you're doing, it's not the quality of the undergraduate, or occasionally the professional, education but the label on the sheepskin that matters. The single dumbest lawyer I ever met went to Harvard, but then so did some of the smartest.

If I am not for myself, who is for me? But if I am for my own self only, what am I?

bart: nothing wrong with looking out for #1 :) nothing wrong with wanting the good life :)

your ego can't be that big else you would have had a kid to carry it forward. find some 30+ year old single jewish woman and put her in the family way, that's my advice.

cjm,

You sound like my boss' wife. She's trying to fix me up with some of her friends. But that's 'Hello Matrimony! Goodbye, shellfish, pork products, and Saturday afternoon college football.'

Robert -- sorry you have taken the implication to be your stated corollary: "you can't care because you're secular." We are all part of Nature and have a responsibility, whether the Father has drawn us to Him or not.

My quote was pointing out that Jesus did not preach the saccharine Christianity that you summarized. Luther's understanding of faith was incomplete (at least how it is preached nowadays by evangelicals).

The one thing we are sure of is that we have all been given life. It is our responsibility to respect life and carry it forward, to be fruitful and multiply.

bart: its always sweeter when you have to sneak it :)

Randall - the corollary is a part of OJ's philosophy, he's the one my argument was for. I use such simplifications of Christian theology for him, as a way to point out to him by counter-example the ridiculousness of his simplistic world view of secular people. I realize that most other believers are capable of dealing with the complexity of life and its moral dilemmas in a more mature manner.

I agree with your conclusion. I think part of the problem stems from Bart's perception, which is widespread in modern culture, that if you are going to have children you have to go all out and provide them the best of everything. Only the best minds require, or can benefit from, the best university educations. (Not that cost correlates to the quality of education, not anymore at least). It is heartbreaking for many parents to admit, but most children will only be ordinary. And that's ok, it is the proper way of things.

Ironically, our society is so prosperous now that the ordinary, and even the substandard in intelligence and ability can live comfortable lives, yet more parents are holding back on children for fear that they will turn out so, and the parents who have children are frantically cramming them with all the expensive tutoring and activities to ensure that they do NOT turn out ordinary.

I guess the modern philosophy of life could be stated as: "the ordinary life is not worth living". And it's corrolary: "the ordinary child is not worth having".

Robert:

Yes, to the extent the secular conform themselves to standards they are incapable of arriving at through their own reason they can be quite decent.

Robert,

My dating habits are designed, as my dad's were, to avoid the issue of 'ordinariness.' If phenotype is the result of genetic and environmental factors, the more I skew genetics and environment to get my desired result, the more likely I am to get my desired result.

Bart,
The problem is when your child's desired result for his/her life is not the result you desire for their life. You can genetically engineer Superman, but you can't make him put on the cape.

Robert,

That is of course true. But you can instill certain behaviors by teaching and by example. Such things as dilligence, the pursuit of excellence, a curiosity about the world at large, seriousness about money just to name a few. Generally speaking we can't browbeat our kids to become cardiologists, but we can instill an interest in the natural world and we can instill the notion of doing well in school as a value in and of itself.

Bart: I'm really not trying to convince you to have kids. It is better for all concerned if you don't reproduce.