Religions and Babies

[Meadowchik]

4 minutes ago, Ahab said:

Someone else said something suggesting we only have this planet to work with, with only so much room or space on this planet, so I then suggested we could go out into space to get access to more space and materials.  Space travel and the colonization of other planets in space is something we (our kind of being) can do... and as some of us (LDS) know, it is something that has already been going on, I believe for forever.

So let's stop talking as if we only have access to what we have here.  Our kind of being should not consider ourselves limited to only what this planet has on it.

We are literally limited. Being aware of that actually enables us to identify obstacles in order to overcome them.

[The Nehor]

3 minutes ago, Ahab said:

Someone else said something suggesting we only have this planet to work with, with only so much room or space on this planet, so I then suggested we could go out into space to get access to more space and materials.  Space travel and the colonization of other planets in space is something we (our kind of being) can do... and as some of us (LDS) know, it is something that has already been going on, I believe for forever.

So let's stop talking as if we only have access to what we have here.  Our kind of being should not consider ourselves limited to only what this planet has on it.

We are nowhere near being able to colonize another planet. We could set up outposts but the idea of making Mars self-sufficient is a long ways off and will likely consume more resources than it can produce. As much as I think NASA funding is currently a national disgrace and follow astronomical studies with much interest humanity is largely constrained to the earth and probably entirely contained to this star system.

[Ahab]

39 minutes ago, CV75 said:

Survival urgency, given the risk of pregnancy and childbirth to the mother's health, well-being and personal economics, would seem, on the surface at least, to favor avoiding them. There seems to be a disproportionate level of self-sacrifice for the questionable long-term benefit for survival urgency to explain the pursuit to generate living children when failure has been the pattern.

Maybe I'm thinking you are speaking in absolute terms and that is not what you intend.  I tend to think in the eternal perspective about this kind of thing, rather than thinking in the more limited mortal perspective.  We will go on after we die here and we will reproduce ourselves more by having more children, forever and ever, and we won't ever have to worry about running out of resources or space to build homes.

In the here and now, though, sure, of course, we on this planet don't have access to everything now.  My wife's health was such that if she tried to have more babies she would likely die, so we had to stop having babies, for now.  This situation is only temporary, though.  Later we will go on having more children and we will continue to do so forever and ever, with some of our children also reproducing themselves as more children forever and ever, too.  

Edited December 6, 2019 by Ahab

[Ahab]

7 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

We are nowhere near being able to colonize another planet. We could set up outposts but the idea of making Mars self-sufficient is a long ways off and will likely consume more resources than it can produce. As much as I think NASA funding is currently a national disgrace and follow astronomical studies with much interest humanity is largely constrained to the earth and probably entirely contained to this star system.

Who is this "we" you speak of.  I am including all of us who are our kind of being.

[Ahab]

16 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

The general consensus at the moment is that we have no idea whether the universe is finite or infinite or finite but expanding to infinity.

Yes, we (LDS) are a very small minority of the people on this planet.  That doesn't mean we shouldn't consider what God tells us or has told us, though.

[The Nehor]

10 minutes ago, Ahab said:

Who is this "we" you speak of.  I am including all of us who are our kind of being.

Quit jumping back and forth and acting smug about correcting people. 

A premortal or post mortal human visiting Alpha Centauri or the galaxy of Andromeda does not influence the available resources for consumption by current Telestial humans on Earth.

[The Nehor]

8 minutes ago, Ahab said:

Yes, we (LDS) are a very small minority of the people on this planet.  That doesn't mean we shouldn't consider what God tells us or has told us, though.

God has not spoken on that topic to my knowledge.

[MiserereNobis]

22 hours ago, smac97 said:

Wow.  I sure feel better about humanity after reading this stuff.  Don't you?

I am the sponsor of the student environmental club at my high school. We work closely with the local environmental center in a lot of ways: hands on work, policy lobbying, information campaigns, etc. I have NEVER in my 10+ years of doing this heard any of the environmentalists say things like this. They will point out that one of the biggest issues facing the environment is human greed (humans can be greedy, nothing particularly misanthropist about that). The big focus is on finding ecological balance. And one of the most common reasons brought up as to why we should care about the environment, the climate, etc, is because of our children. What kind of world are we going to leave our children, and our children's children, etc. So human children are actually at the forefront of the motivation.

Radical environmentalists do not represent environmentalists, obviously (hence the word "radical").

[Stargazer]

50 minutes ago, Ahab said:

The universe having infinite resources and us (our kind of being) being able to get them are 2 different things.  The universe literally does have infinite resources.. infinite stars. infinite planets, infinite nebulae, infinite materials moving around in space in some other ways... even if we can't get to all (with no end to all) that is out there.

I told you I could write a better science fiction story than you.  And I can also write a better true story too.

Is that a challenge?

Or is this one of those my dad can beat your dad kind of things?

Edited December 6, 2019 by Stargazer

[Ahab]

12 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

God has not spoken on that topic to my knowledge.

Keep studying, young padawan.  Or maybe you just need to ask our Father to assure you of the truth of the words spoken by prophets of God on this issue.  I don't remember where I read it or who said it, but God assured me it was true when I read it.

[The Nehor]

6 minutes ago, Ahab said:

Keep studying, young padawan.  Or maybe you just need to ask our Father to assure you of the truth of the words spoken by prophets of God on this issue.  I don't remember where I read it or who said it, but God assured me it was true when I read it.

Color me unimpressed by your vast knowledge that comes dripping with condescension from sources you cannot recall. I think I can even guess at some of those sources but they do not answer the question of the shape and composition of the Universe.

Edited December 6, 2019 by The Nehor

[The Nehor]

20 minutes ago, MiserereNobis said:

I am the sponsor of the student environmental club at my high school. We work closely with the local environmental center in a lot of ways: hands on work, policy lobbying, information campaigns, etc. I have NEVER in my 10+ years of doing this heard any of the environmentalists say things like this. They will point out that one of the biggest issues facing the environment is human greed (humans can be greedy, nothing particularly misanthropist about that). The big focus is on finding ecological balance. And one of the most common reasons brought up as to why we should care about the environment, the climate, etc, is because of our children. What kind of world are we going to leave our children, and our children's children, etc. So human children are actually at the forefront of the motivation.

Radical environmentalists do not represent environmentalists, obviously (hence the word "radical").

Do not remove the self-imposed illusion of their caricature. They need it so they can paint their opponents as cold-hearted haters of humanity.

[Ahab]

18 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

Color me unimpressed by your vast knowledge that comes dripping with condescension from sources you cannot recall. I think I can even guess at some of those sources but they do not answer the question of the shape and composition of the Universe.

I am recalling a hymn we sing to our Father in heaven.  Do you know which one I am talking about?

Edited to add: found it.

If You Could Hie to Kolob

 

Lyrics

1. If you could hie to Kolob
   In the twinkling of an eye,
   And then continue onward
   With that same speed to fly,
   Do you think that you could ever,
   Through all eternity,
   Find out the generation
   Where Gods began to be?
2. Or see the grand beginning,
   Where space did not extend?
   Or view the last creation,
   Where Gods and matter end?
   Methinks the Spirit whispers,
   “No man has found ‘pure space,’
   Nor seen the outside curtains,
   Where nothing has a place.”
3. The works of God continue,
   And worlds and lives abound;
   Improvement and progression
   Have one eternal round.
   There is no end to matter;
   There is no end to space;
   There is no end to spirit;
   There is no end to race.
4. There is no end to virtue;
   There is no end to might;
   There is no end to wisdom;
   There is no end to light.
   There is no end to union;
   There is no end to youth;
   There is no end to priesthood;
   There is no end to truth.
5. There is no end to glory;
   There is no end to love;
   There is no end to being;
   There is no death above.
   There is no end to glory;
   There is no end to love;
   There is no end to being;
   There is no death above.

 

Text: William W. Phelps, 1792–1872

Music: English melody, arr. Ralph Vaughan Williams, 1872–1958, from the English Hymnal. Used by permission of the Oxford University Press. Making copies without written permission of the copyright owner is prohibited.

 

Edited December 6, 2019 by Ahab

[The Nehor]

6 minutes ago, Ahab said:

I am recalling a hymn we sing to our Father in heaven.  Do you know which one I am talking about?

Edited to add: found it.

If You Could Hie to Kolob

 

Lyrics

1. If you could hie to Kolob
   In the twinkling of an eye,
   And then continue onward
   With that same speed to fly,
   Do you think that you could ever,
   Through all eternity,
   Find out the generation
   Where Gods began to be?
2. Or see the grand beginning,
   Where space did not extend?
   Or view the last creation,
   Where Gods and matter end?
   Methinks the Spirit whispers,
   “No man has found ‘pure space,’
   Nor seen the outside curtains,
   Where nothing has a place.”
3. The works of God continue,
   And worlds and lives abound;
   Improvement and progression
   Have one eternal round.
   There is no end to matter;
   There is no end to space;
   There is no end to spirit;
   There is no end to race.
4. There is no end to virtue;
   There is no end to might;
   There is no end to wisdom;
   There is no end to light.
   There is no end to union;
   There is no end to youth;
   There is no end to priesthood;
   There is no end to truth.
5. There is no end to glory;
   There is no end to love;
   There is no end to being;
   There is no death above.
   There is no end to glory;
   There is no end to love;
   There is no end to being;
   There is no death above.

 

Text: William W. Phelps, 1792–1872

Music: English melody, arr. Ralph Vaughan Williams, 1872–1958, from the English Hymnal. Used by permission of the Oxford University Press. Making copies without written permission of the copyright owner is prohibited.

 

So is the Universe flat or a torus? Is that in the sixth verse?

[Stargazer]

1 hour ago, The Nehor said:

We are nowhere near being able to colonize another planet. We could set up outposts but the idea of making Mars self-sufficient is a long ways off and will likely consume more resources than it can produce. As much as I think NASA funding is currently a national disgrace and follow astronomical studies with much interest humanity is largely constrained to the earth and probably entirely contained to this star system.

I would not be so pessimistic.  When you consider that we went from horse-and-buggy to landing on the moon in less than 100 years, among other very large advances in technology and engineering, I feel like we're selling ourselves short to think that we won't have made even more dramatic steps inside the next 100 years.  Maybe we are nowhere near it from the point of view of your lifetime, but keep in mind that my grandmother was born when horse and buggy ruled, and lived to see Neil Armstrong walk on the moon.  Much may take place in one human lifetime that you now regard as completely undoable.

Ever hear of Vannevar Bush, the Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development under Presidents Roosevelt and Truman?  In 1945 he appeared before the Special Senate Committee on Atomic Energy and stated:

"The people who have been writing these things that annoy me have been talking about a 3,000-mile, high-angle rocket, shot from one continent to another, carrying an atomic bomb, and so directed as to be a precise weapon, which would land exactly on a certain target, such as a city. I say, technically I don't think anybody in the world knows how to do such a thing, and I feel confident it will not be done for a very long period of time to come. I wish the American public would leave that out of their thinking.“

12 years later, the Soviets put the first artificial satellite into orbit using a rocket that was designed to do exactly what Bush said was not going to be possible "for a very long period of time". Of course, he lived to see this, but I don't recall if anyone ever asked him to eat his words.

 In April 1946 the chairman of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, Jerome C. Hunsaker, echoed the same view in an address before the National Academy of Sciences:

"One is tempted to speculate about the possibilities of an improved rocket of this type [V-2]. An engineer cannot see much prospect for an improved propellant nor for much better materials of construction. It is unlikely that a ratio of starting weight to empty weight of much more than three can be obtained. It, therefore, appears that the range of 200 miles is near the maximum for the type."

A year later, Convair had designed and test-launched three rockets based on the V-2 that had design ranges of 8,000 miles. In the same year the Soviets built their first rocket based on the V-2, and it had a range of 500 miles.

Bush was a brilliant engineer, inventor and science administrator.  Hunsaker was an engineer and naval officer who witnessed one of the earliest flights of heavier-than-air aircraft, and was still active when a heavy bomber dropped an atomic bomb on Japan.  They both should have known better.  They are both poster children for Arthur C. Clarke's famous 1st Law:

"When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong."

Elon Musk (SpaceX) has stated that he wants to begin the colonization of Mars very soon now, and is currently designing and testing the craft that he plans to use to do it.  Jeff Bezos (Blue Origin) has been less forthcoming about his future goals, but he is developing advanced space launch capability as well.  You want to bet against either one of these gentlemen?  

Edited December 6, 2019 by Stargazer

[Ahab]

29 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

So is the Universe flat or a torus? Is that in the sixth verse?

The idea expressed is that you could go on forever and never get to the end.  It doesn't matter which way you go as long as one way you can go goes on forever.

Edited December 6, 2019 by Ahab

[Stargazer]

10 minutes ago, Ahab said:

The idea expressed is that you could go on forever and never get to the end.  It doesn't matter which way you go as long as one way you can go goes on forever.

There's been some talk among cosmologists about the shape of the universe actually being a torus (as @The Nehor suggested).  And if this is correct, just like a ring or a circle, if you set off in any given direction you would never reach the end.  

Edited December 6, 2019 by Stargazer

[Ahab]

11 minutes ago, Stargazer said:

There's been some talk among cosmologists about the shape of the universe actually being a torus (as @The Nehor suggested).  And if this is correct, just like a ring or a circle, if you set off in any given direction you would never reach the end.  

What do you suppose they imagine being at the edges of the ring or circle?  I envision it going on forever in every direction, otherwise... what?  There would be an end to it.  An edge or boundary or some point you could go to but no further.

Edited December 6, 2019 by Ahab

[CV75]

2 hours ago, Meadowchik said:

It may just be the way we are made.

On the one hand, when human beings starve, we lose fat stores. And when a woman's body fat falls below a certain percentage, fertility can be decreased naturally by the body. Perhaps this biological feature helps increase chances of overall survival by reducing the chances of resource depletion that would be caused by more mouths to feed in a time of famine.

On the other hand, the development of lower infant mortality rates is relatively recent in human history. It has come along with also-lowered child mortality rates and overall higher life expectancy. So, to put it into perspective, for most of human history, infant mortality rates have been much closer to the highest ones now than to the current average. Imagine, by contrast, if the human impulse to reproduce was relatively inhibited, instead of being what it appears to be in urgent states of survival. Arguably, we wouldn't be here; we are here because of that impulse.

I'm trying to identify the impulse. Somehow the people in the OP seem to intuit that having children is a way to improve their personal survival in urgent states despite the added personal risk, and would only stop due to incapacity or despair. Also, they somehow might have a more immediate and temporary endorphinic aim to achieve a sense of well-being despite the long-term likelihood that as a result they will suffer in pregnancy and their children will likely die.

Religion typically seems to cultivate a delayed gratification in people that would encourage the first set of attitudes. So when material prosperity more readily satisfies survival urgency, perhaps they begin to intuit that having children threatens that survival.

[CV75]

2 hours ago, Ahab said:

Maybe I'm thinking you are speaking in absolute terms and that is not what you intend.  I tend to think in the eternal perspective about this kind of thing, rather than thinking in the more limited mortal perspective.  We will go on after we die here and we will reproduce ourselves more by having more children, forever and ever, and we won't ever have to worry about running out of resources or space to build homes.

In the here and now, though, sure, of course, we on this planet don't have access to everything now.  My wife's health was such that if she tried to have more babies she would likely die, so we had to stop having babies, for now.  This situation is only temporary, though.  Later we will go on having more children and we will continue to do so forever and ever, with some of our children also reproducing themselves as more children forever and ever, too.  

I think the innate desire to form relationships, enjoy sex and have children is fundamentally an expression of the light of Christ. Of course that light gets filtered and deflected now and again, but we do our best once we haply find and keep the covenants.

[Calm]

4 hours ago, CV75 said:

There seems to be a disproportionate level of self-sacrifice for the questionable long-term benefit for survival urgency to explain the pursuit to generate living children when failure has been the pattern.

You need to remove the impact of limited access to birth control (in terms of actual supply, but also cultural and educational limitations) and social programs for caring for the elderly (historically done by their children, there are even countries where it is a legal obligation) and the use of children as economic aids (labour help in more rural areas, income producing in places that have child labour) that are frequently factors in poorer communities on fertility rates.

I would like to see studies that control for the above and measure actual desire to have children simply to have children and not to have someone to help with the work, care for one when old, increase one's social status, etc.

[katherine the great]

2 hours ago, Stargazer said:Elon Musk (SpaceX) has stated that he wants to begin the colonization of Mars very soon now, and is currently designing and testing the craft that he plans to use to do it.  Jeff Bezos (Blue Origin) has been less forthcoming about his future goals, but he is developing advanced space launch capability as well.  You want to bet against either one of these gentlemen?  

I would bet against Elon Musk any day, all day and every day.

[Meadowchik]

8 minutes ago, Calm said:

You need to remove the impact of limited access to birth control (in terms of actual supply, but also cultural and educational limitations) and social programs for caring for the elderly (historically done by their children, there are even countries where it is a legal obligation) and the use of children as economic aids (labour help in more rural areas, income producing in places that have child labour) that are frequently factors in poorer communities on fertility rates.

I would like to see studies that control for the above and measure actual desire to have children simply to have children and not to have someone to help with the work, care for one when old, increase one's social status, etc.

I think those are excellent points. 

[Calm]

4 hours ago, Ahab said:

Someone else said something suggesting we only have this planet to work with, with only so much room or space on this planet, so I then suggested we could go out into space to get access to more space and materials.  Space travel and the colonization of other planets in space is something we (our kind of being) can do... and as some of us (LDS) know, it is something that has already been going on, I believe for forever.

So let's stop talking as if we only have access to what we have here.  Our kind of being should not consider ourselves limited to only what this planet has on it.

Until you can demonstrate it will take less resources to get access to all that space and material, there is no reason to assume it will be possible.  It is a huge resource cost just to get something off the surface of the planet and into space.  You can't just wave physics away.  It takes Work (energy transfer) to move an object from here to there.  Even if somehow we were able to use solar winds to move things in space, there is still the issue of getting to and from surfaces.  Contrast the cost of moving a pound of whatever across the surface of the earth to putting it on the moon (cost being a shorthand way to define resources needed to do something):

https://www.forbes.com/2009/07/16/apollo-moon-landing-anniversary-opinions-contributors-cost-money.html#3a0625641d04

Quote

After all is said and done about what went wrong, the bottom line is simple: money. It's about $10,000 to put a pound of anything into a near-earth orbit. (Imagine John Glenn, the first American to orbit the earth, made of solid gold, and you can appreciate the enormous cost of space travel.) It costs $500 to $700 million every time the shuttle flies. Billionaire space tourists have flown to the space station at a reputed price of $20 million per head. 

And to put a pound of anything on the moon costs about 10 times as much. (To reach Mars, imagine your body made of diamonds.) We are 50 years into the space age, and yet space travel is just as expensive as it always was.

 

[Ahab]

13 minutes ago, Calm said:

Until you can demonstrate it will take less resources to get access to all that space and material, there is no reason to assume it will be possible.  It is a huge resource cost just to get something off the surface of the planet and into space.  You can't just wave physics away.  It takes Work (energy transfer) to move an object from here to there.  Even if somehow we were able to use solar winds to move things in space, there is still the issue of getting to and from surfaces.  Contrast the cost of moving a pound of whatever across the surface of the earth to putting it on the moon (cost being a shorthand way to define resources needed to do something):

https://www.forbes.com/2009/07/16/apollo-moon-landing-anniversary-opinions-contributors-cost-money.html#3a0625641d04

 

That would demonstrate it is not only possible, but that it is efficient. But suppose someone has an infinite amount of power and isn't really concerned about how much energy it takes to go from point A to point B.  And could get there quicker than you can imagine.

I don't think our Father in heaven is very concerned about how much energy it takes to go somewhere or how long it will take him to get there.  Maybe he is, though.  I dunno.  I just know he can show up here whenever he wants to.

Edited December 6, 2019 by Ahab