Against The Stream ~ PREVENTION
IS BETTER THAN WAR
THE WORLD-POPULATION
is presently about 6 billion— that is, 6,000,000,000—
and increasing rapidly. In poor countries like Ethiopia
and Somalia— the most outstanding examples—
famine and starvation cast their ominous shadows over
millions of people, and it is easy to imagine it becoming
much more widespread. Even with this awful reality,
however, people continue to procreate uncontrollably,
though this is probably Nature's blind urge to ensure
the survival of the species.
Any solutions to the global environmental
problems must be carried out coincidentally with drastic
population control and reduction. According to environmental
expert David Suzuki, the birth of each extra person
in an industrialized country is more disastrous than
the birth of 50 people in undeveloped countries like
Bangladesh, for example. It is people in industrialized
countries who produce the bulk of the carbon-dioxide
and CFC's that are causing the Greenhouse Effect and
the depletion of the Ozone Layer.
Over-population causes misery in many forms:
pollution, starvation, deforestation, water-shortage,
land-degradation and war. Whoever opposes birth-control
unspokenly supports war, as war is one of the outcomes
of overpopulation. We have only to look back over
history to see what happens when a country's population
becomes too big to be supported by that country: people
will not just lie down and die of starvation if they
can see plenty and to spare in the next country's
fields, will they? We can also see it in the animal
world, with rabbits, mice and locusts as examples.
They know nothing about contraception, and look what
happens with them!
Pope John-Paul II is notorious for opposing
contraception; he denounces it continuously. His stand
is a classic example of how Christianity, in particular,
has opposed Science— and not just Science, but
Common Sense— through the ages. Why does he
behave in such an irrational and irresponsible manner?
We are not talking about Abortion here, which Buddhists,
Hindus and Jains also oppose, as Abortion is murder;
life begins at the moment of conception, when the
three elements of sperm, ovum and incoming-consciousness
come together. Contraception, however, is just a matter
of preventing the three elements coming together and
conception taking place; there is no killing involved.
And today, with numerous forms of contraception available,
governments can and must afford to carry out birth-control
programs; the costs are minimal compared with the
alternative costs of over-population.
The Pope says that contraception is unnatural.
Well, yes, it is unnatural; no-one denies this. But
why single out and condemn contraception on this basis,
when so much else about us is unnatural? If he is
going to use that as his rationale for condemning
it, he should be consistent and not live in a building
of any kind, not use any form of transport, not eat
cooked food, and not wear clothes. Nor should he use
a toilet, but should perform the bodily functions
of excretion just where and when the feeling to do
so comes upon him, like animals. Maybe he is harking
back to the time in the Bible, when ‘God’
told ‘Adam and Eve’ (Genesis 1:28): "Be
fruitful, and multiply". Well, in the early days
of man’s history, prolific reproduction was
a necessity as mortality rates were very high and
life short; but that is hardly so today, and in fact,
the opposite is needed: not increase but decrease!
Such exhortations must be understood in context and
not applied for eternity. But if this biblical injunction
is the Pope’s reason for opposing birth-control,
why is he himself celibate? From where did the Catholic
Church get the priestly practice of celibacy? The
Jews did not practice it. I can think of no passage
in the New Testament where Jesus spoke directly about
celibacy, or encouraged it, let alone made it a rule
for his disciples (except one passage about eunuchs).
Maybe it is one of the many influences of Indian thought
on early Christianity. Incidentally, some of the Popes
were not celibate, but openly had wives and children.
(The history of the Papacy, like the history of Christianity
as a whole, is very interesting!)
It is fortunate that the Popes of our time
do not have the power over people’s lives that
earlier Popes had. Now many Catholics pay no heed
to the Church’s ideas about birth-control, and
hopefully more of them will listen to the Voice of
Reason instead of to the Voice of Popish Dogma. It
is imperative now to face facts if the human race
is to avoid annihilating itself or devolve into an
inferior condition. We can no longer insulate ourselves
in ignorance and superstition, but must see how we—
each one of us— con-tribute to the problems
besetting the Whole of Humanity. The Whole is made
up of parts, and the parts are people, like you and
I. We must accept responsibility before it’s
too late to do anything. We do not live alone in the
world; the world is not our personal property, but
belongs to us all, for a while; we share it with others
now, and will pass it on to those who will come after
us. Is it not in our own interests to think about
things and take care of them?
The solutions to the problems facing us
lie not only with Science but also with Religion,
which still exerts a very powerful influence over
our lives, as shown above. Albert Einstein wrote:
"The religion of the future will be a Cosmic
Religion. It should transcend a Personal God, and
avoid dogmas and theology. Covering both the Natural
and the Spiritual, it should be based on a religious
sense of all things, Natural and Spiritual, as a meaningful
unity". He also wrote, in the same work:
"Though I have
asserted that in truth a legitimate conflict between
religion and science cannot exist I must nevertheless
qualify this assertion once again on an essential
point, with reference to the actual content of historical
religions. This qualification has to do with the concept
of God. During the youthful period of mankind’s
spiritual evolution human fantasy created gods in
man’s own image, who, by the operations of their
will were supposed to determine, or at any rate to
influence, the phenomenal world. Man sought to alter
the disposition of these gods in his own favor by
means of magic and prayer. The idea of God in religions
taught at present is a sublimation of that old conception
of the gods. Its anthropomorphic character is shown,
for instance, by the fact that men appeal to the Divine
Being in prayers and plead for the fulfillment of
their wishes".
And further: "The
main source of the present-day conflicts between the
spheres of religion and of science lies in this concept
of a personal God. It is the aim of science to establish
general rules which determine the reciprocal connection
of objects and events in time and space. For these
rules, or laws of nature, absolutely general validity
is required— not proven. It is mainly a program,
and faith in the possibility of its accomplishment
in principle is only founded on partial successes.
But hardly anyone could be found who would deny these
partial successes and ascribe them to human self-deception.
The fact that on the basis of such laws we are able
to predict the temporal behavior of phenomena in certain
domains with great precision and certainty is deeply
embedded in the consciousness of the modern man, even
though he may have grasped very little of the contents
of those laws. He need only consider that planetary
courses within the solar system may be calculated
in advance with great exactitude on the basis of a
limited number of simple laws. In a similar way, though
not with the same precision, it is possible to calculate
in advance the mode of operation of an electric motor,
a transmission system, or of a wireless apparatus,
even when dealing with a novel development.
"To be sure,
when the number of factors coming into play in a phenomenological
complex is too large, scientific method in most cases
fails us. One need only think of the weather, in which
case even prediction only a few days ahead is impossible.
Nevertheless, no-one doubts we are confronted with
a causal connection whose causal components are in
the main known to us. Occurrences in this domain are
beyond the reach of exact prediction because of the
variety of factors in operation, not because of any
lack of order in nature".
Again: "The more
a man is imbued with the ordered regularity of all
events the firmer becomes his conviction that there
is no room left by the side of this ordered regularity
for causes of a different nature. For him neither
the rule of human nor the rule of divine will exists
as an independent cause of natural events. To be sure,
the doctrine of a personal God interfering with natural
events could never be refuted, in the real sense,
by science, for this doctrine can always take refuge
in those domains in which scientific knowledge has
not yet been able to set foot.
"But I am persuaded
that such behavior on the part of the representatives
of religion would not only be unworthy but also fatal.
For a doctrine which is able to maintain itself not
in clear light but only in the dark, will of necessity
lose its effect on mankind, with incalculable harm
to human progress. In their struggle for the ethical
good, teachers of religion must have the stature to
give up the doctrine of a personal God, that is, give
up that source of fear and hope which in the past
placed such vast power in the hands of priests. In
their labors they will have to avail themselves of
those forces which are capable of cultivating the
Good, the True and the Beautiful in humanity itself.
This is, to be sure, a more difficult but an incomparably
more worthy task. After religious teachers accomplish
the refining process indicated they will surely recognize
with joy that true religion has been ennobled and
made more profound by scientific knowledge".
Still further on, he says: "If
it is one of the goals of religion to liberate mankind
as far as possible from the bondage of egocentric
cravings, desires, and fears, scientific reasoning
can aid religion in yet another sense. Although it
is true that it is the goal of science to discover
rules which permit the association and foretelling
of facts, this is not its only aim. It also seeks
to reduce the connections discovered to the smallest
possible number of mutually independent conceptual
elements. It is in this striving after the rational
unification of the manifold that it encounters its
greatest successes, even though it is precisely this
attempt which causes it to run the greatest risk of
falling a prey to illusions. But whoever has undergone
the intense experience of successful advances made
in this domain, is moved by profound reverence for
the rationality made manifest in existence. By way
of the understanding he achieves a far-reaching emancipation
from the shackles of personal hopes and desires, and
thereby attains that humble attitude of mind towards
the grandeur of reason incarnate in existence, and
which, in its profoundest depths, is inaccessible
to man. This attitude, however, appears to me to be
religious in the highest sense of the word. And so
it seems to me that science not only purifies the
religious impulse of the dross of its anthropomorphism,
but also contributes to a religious spiritualization
of our understanding of life.
"The further
the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more
certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity
does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear
of death, and blind faith, but through striving after
rational knowledge. In this sense I believe that the
priest must become a teacher if he wishes to do justice
to his lofty educational mission".
[I have quoted Einstein at length here
in order to share something of his thoughts with others
who might otherwise not be aware of them].
Nowadays, people are becoming aware that
this Earth of ours functions as a Whole, and is affected
by all the living things on it— especially by
humans, with their propensity for destruction. Until
recently, very few people cared about pollution, deforestation,
or the slaughter of wildlife — to the point
of extinction, in many cases. But now, faced with
the reality that we are all directly involved with
what is happening, people are beginning to awaken
from their apathy, and realize that if the boat sinks,
we will all go down with it. However, it will take
a great deal more to keep them awake and inspire them
to participate in doing something positive to counter
the effects of centuries of neglect and exploitation.
Now we must see beyond the narrow barriers we have
created, must understand the ‘human-ness’
we have in common with others, must move towards the
‘Cosmic Religion’ that Einstein envisaged;
it is imperative to do so!
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