> Interesting idea - but Ill take a shot at it. It seems to me
> that civilization is evolution too, that to be evolutionaly
> (if that is a word) viable as a human, you MUST be able to fit
> into civilization.
Nobody is stopping you from becoming a hermit, are they? Of course, if you
want to have children...
> Once again, I blame religion for the whole problem.
:-) I love having an easy scape goat on hand... makes rationality soooo
much easier!
> Unfortunatly my emotions dont quite match logic - empathy keeps
> me from saying "let the sick die!" - even though it might be
> beneficial to us in the long run.
I think I've pointed to this before, but just in case, this article is
*well* worth the time of anybody interested in the rationality of the over
population problem:
A Modest Proposal (by Jonathan Swift? just a guess)
http://www.benturner.com/theirs/proposal.html
It's is *almost* convincing...
> "every fetus has a soul"(a concept that I find repugnant)
Me too. It becomes especially silly when you shine a little medical light
on it:
Quality is the big problem, not novelty as such. Nature's usual
approach to quality is to try lots of things and see what works,
letting the others fall by the wayside. For example, lots of sperm
are defective, missing essential chromosomes; should they fertilize
an ovum, development will fail at some point, usually so early that
pregnancy isn't noticed. For this and other reasons, over 80 percent
of human conceptions fail, most in the first six weeks (this
spontaneous abortion rate is far more significant than even the
highest rates of induced abortions). -- William H. Calvin
http://weber.u.washington.edu/~wcalvin/1990s/1995HowThingsAre.htm
If the Catholics actually take their own doctrines seriously, their god is
responsible for more infanticide than we humans could ever be capable of.
Fortunately, most Catholics are hypocrites.
> Hopefully I will be able to have a say in the genewtic offerings
> of my own children, I would take the step, but I fear I may be
> done reproducing before the option arises.
I've thought about this issue as well. I can see no reason why I
*wouldn't* want to choose the best gene's for my children -- especially,
if, say, it was possible to take a million of my sperm, a few hundred of my
(future) wife's eggs, and pick the single BEST genetic combination from
among them. Then place it back inside my wife for a "normal" birth... Such
a child would still be "ours", and yet would certainly be more fit than we
could ever hope for by chance. Sadly, as you say, I don't expect to have
that kind of capability in the time frame needed. My children will perhaps
have that choice.
ERiC