Common Ground?: Deep Faith and Deep Science

I don't think that "most or all" would agree that abortion per se is a serious problem--I don't. The attempt to impose one sect's religious convictions on other persons' reproductive freedom is a serious problem, though.In fact, I think abortion is often a good thing. I don't want to stray off-topic to discuss why, either, but there is no such consensus as the one you cite. I see no reason why it is in my interest to reduce the incidence of abortion.Your sunny optimism about overpopulation and ecosphere degradation sounds like Pollyanna whistling past the graveyard. I don't know anyone who proposes the current state of the globe should be maintained in perpetuity. In fact, I would like to see it rolled back to its pre-industrial status. Global warming, for example, is occurring at rates unevidenced in the geologic record. Overpopulation, and the consequent urgent needs of too many people, have driven decades of short-sighted solutions: pesticides, soil health-depleting fertilizers, sulfur-rich coal burning, etc. The attendant problems have not been solved, they have been exported to the developing world in such forms as famine, poverty, and tragically high infant mortality rates--overpopulation has helped to make human life cheaper than ever. Birth rates in the industrial world are slowing, and those millions of malnourished and starving children elsewhere are not going to provide "more minds to draw from for solutions."My sense of this particular divide is that on the "other side" (from my perspective), the living earth is seen as expendable, merely a stage for the unfolding of one sect's particular Passion Play.

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When lo! an angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him. Behold,
A ram, caught in a thicket by its horns;
Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.
But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one.Wilfred Owen Save lives! Click here!
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Hi Quetzal,I've had an uneasy feeling about how this thread was framed, though I wasn't sure the feeling was right. But as it's unfolding with other posters' comments, I see it going a direction that is very much NOT where I had in mind going.As I've mulled it over, I think your three situations would take me far away from my original intention. For one thing I'm not sure there is a divide between scientists and nonscientists on those questions anyway. It may be a political matter more than a scientific matter how people think about them.At this point I don't think I can work my preliminary thoughts about the two cultures into this thread. Possibly you can reframe it for that purpose but I'm not very optimistic. Maybe you can make it work for what interests you though.In any case, I still want to read Snow's book first, and see if I can recall the kinds of examples that got me thinking along the lines of the two cultures, and the book hasn't yet arrived.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

What a strange idea.

I also have a high regard for the creativity of the human mind. However, as Omni noted, the majority of the population growth and the consequent pressure on the ecosphere is occurring in areas where the proximate causes are unlikely to contribute to any potential future solution. In an ideal world, where inequalities didn't exist, I concur with your statement the more minds the better. Unfortunately, that's not the case in reality.The reason I framed my note on overpopulation in terms of carrying capacity rather than number of people is because there really isn’t that close a correlation (if at all) between population size (Malthus’ measure) and the capability of the environment to support them. Hong Kong, for instance, or Holland, which have some of the highest population densities in the world, but they are only able to maintain that population by importing basic necessities from other areas. Contrast this with Ethiopia, Somalia, and Haiti. These latter countries have substantially less population and much lower population density, but represent cases where extreme poverty, environmental degradation leading to a drop in net productivity, and increasing population have contributed to some of the worst humanitarian crises in the last 30 years (see, for example, Cairo 1994). In my opinion, these crises are indeed the first canaries in the mineshaft.I agree with you that historically, at least since the 1930’s, science and technology have been exceptional at increasing things like net food productivity per unit of land, efficiency in resource usage, etc. IF such technological advances could be translated to every arable piece of land remaining, and IF all the energies of the growing human population could be turned to these problems, THEN I see no reason why science can’t continue to solve our problems for us indefinitely. However, the reality on the ground is somewhat different. During the same time frame, the Pacific Coast of Ecuador for instance has lost 90% of its remaining forest cover; 20% of the arable soil of Indonesia (especially Java), has been lost forever; in Niger alone desertification of the formerly highly arable Sahel destroys 2500 km² each year - an area equivalent to the land area of Luxembourg; 10 million ha of arable land is lost to erosion every year (see Preiser 2005). The point here is that regardless of how successful technology is at developing new ways feeding people, the effect of population growth, unsustainable agricultural practices, and environmental degradation is actually reducing the carrying capacity of the planet overall. At some point - and the “when” is arguable - the capability of technology to sustain population growth will be exceeded. The literature on biodiversity loss and its effects is quite extensive. I concur that models can be developed to show just about anything you want to show. However, that doesn’t change the fact that our species relies on ecosystem services provided “free” by natural ecosystems.

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Our food is a good example. Human beings eat a wealth of plants and animals in the home-cooked meals and restaurant dinners that we live on day-to-day. Yet one of the most immediate threats posed by the loss of biodiversity is the shrinkage of plant gene pools available to farmers and agricultural scientists. During the past several decades, we have increased our ability to produce large quantities of food, but we have simultaneously increased our dependence on just a few crops and our dependence on fewer types of those crops. As much as 80% of the world food supply may be based on fewer than two dozen species of plants and animals (CEQ, 1981). We are eroding the genetic diversity of the crops we increasingly depend upon, and we are eradicating the wild ancestors of those crops as we destroy wilderness habitats around the world. (Nations JD 1988, “Deep Ecology Meets the Developing World”, in Biodiversity, E.O. Wilson, ed. NAP 1988, pg 81).

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Another, somewhat less technical examination of ecosystem services and the threat posed by ecological degradation can be found here:

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Human societies derive many essential goods from natural ecosystems, including seafood, game animals, fodder, fuelwood, timber, and pharmaceutical products. These goods represent important and familiar parts of the economy. What has been less appreciated until recently is that natural ecosystems also perform fundamental life-support services without which human civilizations would cease to thrive. These include the purification of air and water, detoxification and decomposition of wastes, regulation of climate, regeneration of soil fertility, and production and maintenance of biodiversity, from which key ingredients of our agricultural, pharmaceutical, and industrial enterprises are derived. This array of services is generated by a complex interplay of natural cycles powered by solar energy and operating across a wide range of space and time scales. The process of waste disposal, for example, involves the life cycles of bacteria as well as the planet-wide cycles of major chemical elements such as carbon and nitrogen. Such processes are worth many trillions of dollars annually. Yet because most of these benefits are not traded in economic markets, they carry no price tags that could alert society to changes in their supply or deterioration of underlying ecological systems that generate them. Because threats to these systems are increasing, there is a critical need for identification and monitoring of ecosystem services both locally and globally, and for the incorporation of their value into decision-making processes. (Daily GC, et al, 1996, “ECOSYSTEM SERVICES: Benefits Supplied to Human Societies by Natural Ecosystems”)

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The point of both of these two articles is that ignoring ecological degradation is highly dangerous. Loss of biodiversity, destruction of natural ecosystems, etc, has a synergistic effect when coupled with increasing population, resource exploitation, etc. Additional reading on the subject might be of interest. For instance, Nat. Res. Council 2004, Valuing Ecosystem Services, National Academy Press; Ehrlich PR and Ehrlich AH, 1981, Extinction: The Causes and Consequences of the Disappearance of Species, Random House; Levin SA, 1999, Fragile Dominion, Perseus Press.For those interested in the current “state of play” on this subject, I invite attention to the World Health Organization report, Corvalan C, Hales S, McMichael A, 2005, “Ecosystems and Human Well Being”. This report also covers my point 3 concerning EID’s.Hope the above clarifies my position, and why I hold it. If you would like me to provide more articles concerning either the existence, extent or consequences of ecological degradation wrt our species' long-term survival, I'll be happy to oblige.Edited by Quetzal, : attribution

I know you're not ready to flesh out a full topic, but I'd appreciate it if you could at least outline what you thought the discussion should be about. IOW, if you could at least note what your original intention was, perhaps we can figure out if there is overlap on this topic, or whether it needs a separate topic when you are ready. Thanks.

Oh, Pollyanna, eh? Maybe so, but I prefer that to a Luddite Chicken Little.I am curious about your claim that global warming is occurring at rates unevidenced in the geologic record. It's ambiguous. Are you saying that the record shows that there has never been global warming like we are seeing now, or instead, making the weaker claim that there's no evidence the planet has warmed like this, but it may well have, we just don't know?As far as the problems in the "developing world" go, history shows us that those problems are common as nations move from pre-industrial, through industrial, and forward. History also shows us that as the nations continue to develop, the development itself provides the solutions to the problems.{ABE} I'm also curious about your claim that That is an accusation I've frequently heard hurled at the right, but I must confess, it's not something I've often heard people on the right say themselves. Can you provide me with some support for the Passion Play comment?Edited by subbie, : No reason given.

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Those who would sacrifice an essential liberty for a temporary security will lose both, and deserve neither. -- Benjamin Franklin

I even have to track down my previous posts to remember what got me thinking along these lines, on the Problems with EVC thread for instance, and the Abstinence thread, and I have yet to collect them all and think about them. Also the book hasn't yet arrived. When I have it all assembled I'll try to address your question. I'm more and more doubting my angle on this is anything that would interest you though.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Well, we won't know until/unless we try, n'est-ce pas? In any event, take your time. I think this thread is going to be going in a different direction than I had intended, but it looks fair to be interesting in any case.

Well, Q, why don't you try to explain where you wanted to go? The thread isn't exactly going like gangbusters, I think it can support a couple of different but related ideas. The OP was certainly broad enough to encompass a wealth of topics.

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Those who would sacrifice an essential liberty for a temporary security will lose both, and deserve neither. -- Benjamin Franklin

Quetzal writes

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1. Overpopulation.

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You'd be surprised to learn just how much foods are either destroyed or prevented from being produced by first world nations just so food wouldn't be cheaper than dirt. Problem is purely economical.

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2. Ecosphere degradation.

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Problem is again purely economical. Third world countries lack the capacity to develop their lands efficiently. The slash and burn routines in SA is just about the only way the average farmer in SA know how to develop the land.

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3. Globalization and emerging infectious disease.

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Purely economical. The only places where we see these diseases acting out the way they did to our ancestors (I'm talking about the sufferings and the rate of people dying) are third world countries. Again, purely economical.The best solution to all three of these problems has nothing to do with religion verses science. It's a matter of practicality and human decency. For every child people like Riverrat and Faith adopt rather than follow their "god-given" instinct to breed, the world has one less suffering child. For every piece of don't-need crap we don't buy from wal-mart, we have this much more money to invest in something more meaningful. And for the sake of the gods, stop being so capitalistic and opportunistic. To quote Tom, "You fellas don't know what you're doin'. You're helping to starve kids ... You don' know what you're a-doin..."

I'll have a stab at what I gather is the nub of your OP if I may Quetzal.You've outlined a couple of critical areas facing human kind and they are ones I hadn't considered before. I have for some time now, been of the opinion that mankind is has already driven over the cliff of his own success - in the sense that his ever-increasing desire to consume is about to run out of fuel on a number of fronts. We have major population centres such as India and China emerging into a capitalist, consumptive mindset for instance and so billions are coming into a position of viewing (on their tv's) the prize that us westerners take so much for granted: affluence, style and comfort. Inward investement into these low-cost labour countries will tend to result in their advance out of backwardness and move them ever towards western-style affluence. We are teaching them to want and to be like us.The world cannot even sustain our own consumption. The trouble is that the tendency has always been to fight for the valuable resources which allow for this consumption. At the moment oil is strategic but it won't be long before people are positioning themselves around other precious materials. For man always wants more. Enough is never enough. Even our economic system, Capitalism, survives by ever growing: no growth is bad, shrinkage is seen as even worse. Stop it must and fight along the way I think we will. There is little precedent to indicate otherwise.The queston is whether people on each side of the science/faith divide see this as a problem or not. We might suppose you represent a deep science adherant and I a deep faith one. And from my perspective "a common problem" is not how I see it. Nor is averting or trying to avert the approaching disaster(s) seen by me as an overriding concern. It is in the nature of mankind to act as he acts. He had always had traits tending towards self-centredness whether this is expressed individualistically or, as when a group of individuals act together, nationalistically. Man has found a way to allow expression of this trait to reach a point where it can destroy himself.Consumption is just another area where selfishness has been allowed such destructive expression. Man has already arrived at the point of being able to destroy himself in another area where selfishness finds expression. War. Man has striven for and arrived at the very peak of what it is to go to war. To ensure he gets what he wants he has developed ever more powerful ways to achieve that. And the race for advantage is still going on - running down the other side of the mountain at the peak of which sits nuclear weapons.Changing human nature is like trying to herd kittens. No chance at all of success. One can fiddle around the edges, introduce more and more complexity to try to offset the negative effects of selfishnesses momentum. As the structure gets ever more complex it becomes weakened by the inability to maintain that complexity in working order. Like the space shuttle, the design of society is a top-down, adhoc affair and any changes one desires to make have impacts throughout the system. And at a certain point it becomes impossible to spanner on it anymore and one must take flight knowing there are 1500 key points of potential failure - any one of which will result in a loss of the craft. That is why I say that we are already over the side of the cliff. Applying the brakes or putting the drive in reverse will alter the end result not a jot.If man has had an opportunity to do one thing it is to demonstrate to himself that he cannot save himself. His end is always towards death.For a person coming from the deep faith viewpoint, this is all going exactly as it is to be expected. This is not to say that a person of deep faith is necessarily callous about it. They can be moved as can the next man, to action in order to offset the plight of his fellow man in the local sense. But one is not supposing that there is anything to be done about the "inbuilt genetic coding" which makes it so. For the person of deep faith, the duration and comfort of a mans life, still less the ability of the world to continue ad infinitum is not his overriding concern. For a person of deep faith, the concern is for a mans SOUL. And there is nothing like trouble and strife to cause a man to see what his position is once all the trappings of life are begun to be stripped away. Such things: health, wealth, comfort, prosperity and the like can and are used as masks with which man avoids looking at himself and his position. It is not mine to wish on man what seems inevitable. I don't have to - for he is doing perfectly fine himself. My role is to be there to tell him where to look when he finds there is no place left to go.Can the two views be reconciled? I don't think so Quetzal. For they are looking at two quite different problems

Absolutely. I anticipated disagreement over the three problems I noted. I'm happy (thus far) with the way things are going. Most of my threads don't go very far anyway. Feel free to discuss whatever you'd like in the context of the OP. Your first post was quite within the parameters I envisioned. Now all you have to do is defend your position... Completely agree. Fire away.Edited by Quetzal, : clarification

Good post. I see why Quetzal POTM'd it. And I'm glad somebody came along who understands what he had in mind and could respond to it.

Thanks sis. It seems to me that the myth of 'More'is an ugly cancer which is abroad in the world. And that it's cure is to raise ones head from the consumptive threadmill and see ahead to the question that gnaws away on the inside of us all whenever the thrill of the latest aquisition has worn of - and it will always wear off."Now what?"Life: a wheel of "now what's?" all the way to death? What monumental waste.Thank God for hope.

I have read many articles that advance the argument you present. It is entirely possible that an economic basis underlies many of the problems facing the world today, including the three that I presented in the OP. If that is the case, then it is conceivable that the solution to the problems would also have an economic basis - or at least component. However, if we are going to accept the economic argument as an ultimate cause rather than proximate, it’s going to have to be approached in a much more comprehensive way than you’ve outlined even to be understood. We have to deal with the complexity of the interactions between humans and their environment in economic terms. We have to look at concepts such as ecological footprint, environmental costs of economic growth, and the tragedy of the commons. We have to determine a way to objectively quantify such “purely” social issues as “quality of life” and historical cultural affect, as well as the value of ecosystem services so that we can calculate both the direct and indirect environmental cost among a myriad of other factors. In short, my biggest complaint about an economic-only approach to even defining the problem leads to at worst empty theorizing and at best a “pie-in-the-sky” utopian idealism along the lines of “All we need to do is bring the developing world up to the level of the developed world and all our problems are solved”. Or, “get the fundies to adopt all the excess children in the world and all our problems are solved”. Economics has its place. This isn’t it.Let’s try a really simplified (in fact, grossly over-simplified, but illustrative) calculation to give you something to think about. The ecological footprint of the average American - using us as the standard for “developed world” - is approx. 1.5 ha (3.5 acres) per person at a minimum. For this simplified calculation, ecological footprint only considers food and forest product consumption, and the inevitable degradation due to waste, living accommodations, etc. I’ve read estimates up to 10 ha (24.5 acres), but let’s go with the low number. If we were to raise the developing world to US consumption standards (assuming a current population of 6 billion, zero population growth, etc), that would mean we would require 9 billion ha (22.05 billion acres) of combined prime agricultural land, pasture, and forest. The Earth currently has approx. 8.9 billion ha (21.9 billion acres) of ecologically productive land - much of it marginal. IOW, even if we exploited every single available hectare of land, the Earth simply can’t support a planet-wide developed world with the ecological footprint of an average American (figures derived from Palmer AR 1999, Ecological Footprint and Carrying Capacity). Note that this calculation doesn’t even address the environmental costs except in the abstract.Now, as subbie noted, science has the capability to increase carrying capacity by improvements in technology, agriculture, etc. - to an extent. However, population growth is exponential, and scientific advance tends to be incremental without some “flash of brilliance” from the likes of a Newton, a Darwin, or an Einstein (or______insert favorite scientist here). Since we can’t count on the help of one of these geniuses at a moment of crisis, I submit that we are already living on the margin.Tell me again how it's all economics?