Population, religion and homo extinctus
Untitled artwork by Roy Calne
The world is over-populated and over-heating. Sir Roy Calne offers a blunt appraisal of humanity’s long term prospects.
It has recently been suggested that humans have an inborn hardwired wish to believe in a supernatural being. Such belief would seem to offer a reasonable evolutionary advantage at an early stage in living together in communities, sharing duties, collaborating and beginning to specialise, and requiring an hierarchical disciplined dogma of rules.
I feel therefore that this part of human nature is important, historically and currently.
However, the crystallisation of major religions associated with increased world population, and consolidation of humans in geographical areas which until recently were relatively separate, has resulted in certain religions having great power associated with coercion, fear and persecution for those who do not comply. Not surprisingly fringe groups in each religion have developed. Fundamentalist extremists are often violent and even suicidal adopting philosophies which have resulted in great misery, wars, massacres and slavery.
Recently weapons have become so advanced as a result of scientific developments that the carefully planned suicidal thoughts of small groups could now result in huge destruction, out of proportion to previous historical events. What we have seen so far is probably the tip of the iceberg concerning the potential extreme scale of development of atomic, biological and chemical weapons.
There is a theme running through all major religions and specifically written in some texts where the deity instructs his followers to “go forth and multiply”. This is not a particularly difficult instruction to follow since it mirrors the evolutionary imperative to survive and reproduce. There is now an enormous inbalance between the numbers of humans conceived and surviving beyond reproductive age and the previous attrition that came from diseases that can now be controlled or cured, particularly infection. In other words, there is ever increasingly efficient death control, but birth control is limited mostly to the developed world, especially civilisations where women are educated and emancipated and have freedom of choice concerning the number of children they will bear.
I was amazed recently to watch an excellent programme chaired by David Attenborough on the danger to the world mainly of global warming, but also in the utilisation of resources and the elimination of wildlife species. He pointed out that the booming human population of the world fuelled man-made global warming, necessitating enormous efforts to reduce our harmful emissions. In developing countries, quite naturally, there is an aspiration to attain the creature comforts of the rich, developed nations. All this was handled in a masterly fashion by David Attenborough with his charming and persuasive personality. But in the whole programme the word “religion” was not mentioned. Nowhere did he point out that the powerful religions either proscribed birth control actively or tacitly in the wish for co-religionists to increase in numbers.
We are constantly being encouraged to eschew scepticism in the battle to negate overpopulation and climate change, but realistically there seems to be no way for any individual or small group to influence the progressive deterioration of the planet, a direct result of the inexorable increase in human population. Perhaps like many extinct species the direction in destination of homo sapiens is to become homo extinctus.
Sir Roy Calne is a pioneering transplant surgeon who performed several record first transplant operations in Europe and the world. A fellow of the Royal Society, a Distinguished Supporter of the British Humanist Association, and a member of artists’ group Group 90, Calne is currently the Yeah Ghim Professor of Surgery at the National University of Singapore.
Population, religion and homo extinctus,
Since Sir Roy Calne is a medical man I had hoped he would throw some light on the population problem, but he only seems to have obfuscated it. To what extent is the population increase down to 1) the natural process, 2) the religious instruction to go out and multiply and not to use control methods, 3) the advances in medicine that allow people to survive and produce offspring, 4) the advances in fertility treatments that allow women to have children who would previously have been unable to? 5) political measures such as the chinese one-baby per family policy? Can such factors be quantified? There are probably others of significant importance.
As to what policies should be followed, 4) is probably a very minor factor but might increase in future, and most humanists would I think want the research 3) to continue regardless. I’m doubtful about the actual impact of 2) since many catholics for instance ignore the pope’s instructions, and failure to use birth control measures can result in more deaths (e.g. from AIDS) as well as more births. I think the statistics show that greater prosperity and education, particularly of women, reduces the population growth, but this is a slow process and may not reach a plateau before the polpulation is well beyond optimal.
Are their other measures that can be taken that are not oppressive.
Sure, lots of Catholics ignore the pope’s line on contraception, but that’s not thew whole story. Religious groups often don’t stick to banning contraception, they try to ban knowledge of contraception. Under George Bush all American aid had strict regulations on what family planning procedures could even be discused by recipients, and other religious groups continue to try to disrupt family planning schemes in both the developed and developing world, as well as trying to gain as much control over education systems as possible – and when a religious organisation has taken control of a school it may not only try to avoid discussing family planning, it is quite likely that discussion of environmental concerns connected to overpopulation and excess consumption will go out the window too…
May I suggest that George Gellis is being a tad disingenuous. Surely, Sir Roy Calne is not suggesting that we can do anything to prevent the extinction of the human race, but that it has now become inevitable. Personally, I’m a little more hopeful that a sufficient number of humans will survive to evolve into beings that might live in a bit more harmony with the planet and each other.
This is largely true I think (v. Freethinker Jan. 09) but perhaps too pessimistic to be useful. Yes many self-righteous causes – family, race, nation, faith – contribute to the population explosion (the religious pressures of Rome and the USA included) and there are repulsive examples of women regarded as baby machines. But uncompensated medicine has thoughtlessly converted natural sexuality into a crisis by neglecting to enable and promote birth control. The irreligious should be proud of Bradlaugh and Besant for their pioneering Malthusian efforts. Most Western children will make big carbon footprints, but the unwanted, untaught children of the poor can be exploited by all.
Population – and the dubious ‘right’ of multiplication – are finally becoming salient issues. Well-being and happiness should be linked with small families, both in health programmes and through education and the media (e.g. TV soaps). Individuals (the work of psychologist Bandura for example) and groups (such as the Optimal Population Trust) can be effective. Even longevity in the developed world is beginning to find some balance in the concern with quality of life and possibility of assistance in suicide.
The world would indeed be amply filled by one-tenth of us enjoying fulfilled and constructive lives. The near unavoidable extra billion over the next decade or so truly constitutes a crisis both for resources and the climate problem. It is not easy to regulate and rebalance population but there are examples (Kerala, Singapore, China) from the persuasive to the harsh. Alarm, but not panic, is perhaps the recipe for hope.