Naa. Islam reached 1 billion in the 21st century.

The assumption you are making is that it's been spreading at the knife edge from what the Moor times?

>> ^hpqp:

Uh, you do know that more often than not it was spread, like Christianity, at the edge of the sword, right? Conquest, colonisation, slave trade, same old same old.
>> ^Farhad2000:
Furthermore people forget that Islam represents 22% of world population. Much of it not in the Middle East. If the religion was so shit it wouldn't have taken every other religion out there.

Uh, you do know that more often than not it was spread, like Christianity, at the edge of the sword, right? Conquest, colonisation, slave trade, same old same old.

>> ^Farhad2000:

Furthermore people forget that Islam represents 22% of world population. Much of it not in the Middle East. If the religion was so shit it wouldn't have taken every other religion out there.

Furthermore people forget that Islam represents 22% of world population. Much of it not in the Middle East. If the religion was so shit it wouldn't have taken every other religion out there.

Worldwide, only 250 million people use narcotics?

That's less than 4% of the world population.. much fewer than I expected!

>> ^shinyblurry:

>> ^VoodooV:
There is always going to be religion and group-think. There are going always be people who are less intelligent and less independently-minded. The only problem is when you've got someone who will manipulate those mindless masses for their own agenda. Let's be real. The power structure behind Christianity isn't actually interested in advancing faith...they want power...otherwise there wouldn't even be a power base in the first place and religion would be restricted to just the local churches.
There is nothing inherently wrong with religion and faith. You just gotta reign in their power base and influence to more tolerable levels. I do believe in freedom of religion even though I don't practice any myself. People should be free to believe whatever they want..just as long as those freedoms don't encroach on other people's freedoms.
Wanting Christianity eliminated because the zealots are guilty of oppressing people makes you no better than the oppressors

What horseshit. Do you realize Christians make up over 1/3 of the worlds population? Do you seriously think you can pigeonhole that many people? There are Christians in every walk of life, every kind of profession, intellectual or otherwise, at all ranges of IQ. The bible says only a fool doesn't believe in God. When I was agnostic, I truly was a fool because I had no spiritual discernment. That is why atheists believe the bible is nonsense. Without any awareness of the spirit, or the fact that they have one, they're no better than robots executing some program with a tacit self-awareness. Logic is nothing in and of itself..


I won't go too far here, but this is dangerous thinking. It's full-on vitriolic, bigoted, and hate filled. I don't know how you can read that to yourself and sleep at night soundly, willfully going out of your way to hate and dismiss a large part of the population. (Which you complain about...)

I'm an atheist and I've never meet you. I do no great evils (other than not believing in your God). Please tell me logically why I deserve your hate and specifically why you are certain that my "smarts" are faulty; as to this day I've heard the opposite from others about myself (people I know, not this Internet hogwash).

Your dipping into zealotry and from there it is a short journey to become the thing you hate; whether that seems likely or not, it has been fairly well defined, and a time-tested adage. What you're saying is exactly the same you complain about: pigeonholing.

/Zealotry is dangerous as it causes you to fall into the condition, "You can't see the forest for the trees.". Or, I would say it also causes "tunnel-vision".

//I'm not trying to provoke you as your fine to believe as you wish, but when you expect others to see things ONLY your way you will suffocate yourself socially as people HATE to be meddled with. Which is perhaps the reason many atheists are as vocal as they are; they've been meddled with.

P.S.--

Lastly, atheists don't follow spirituality as it has no logical or scientific basis (instead we usually follow neurosciences' and psychologies' term 'psyche'). If you define "the soul" via science it makes literally no sense; as we understand the brain to be more of a "compartment" like system. You have the left and right hemisphere, then the neo-cortex which is a glorified search engine that makes Google look like a baby in diapers, you have your perception based areas, your emotion based centers, and memory storage. When they work together you gain your perception and that is arguably where you find sentience. The brain is very complex, but it is being understood more and more each day. So what happens when one day we create a true, sentient A.I.? What if they are smart enough to understand the power of community and become more gracious than mankind? What exactly IS a soul at that point? One day religion in general may need to explain things that truly it's prophets may never of foresaw and it's followers will be hard pressed to explain (except for 'faith').

P.S.S.--

I hope you don't think this is an outright attack on you, as this isn't my intention. I merely wish to show you the differences in thought and secondly let you know that what you said is not "helpful" it's very negative in nature. It sounds as though you need to bury the hatchet with something.

>> ^VoodooV:
There is always going to be religion and group-think. There are going always be people who are less intelligent and less independently-minded. The only problem is when you've got someone who will manipulate those mindless masses for their own agenda. Let's be real. The power structure behind Christianity isn't actually interested in advancing faith...they want power...otherwise there wouldn't even be a power base in the first place and religion would be restricted to just the local churches.
There is nothing inherently wrong with religion and faith. You just gotta reign in their power base and influence to more tolerable levels. I do believe in freedom of religion even though I don't practice any myself. People should be free to believe whatever they want..just as long as those freedoms don't encroach on other people's freedoms.
Wanting Christianity eliminated because the zealots are guilty of oppressing people makes you no better than the oppressors


What horseshit. Do you realize Christians make up over 1/3 of the worlds population? Do you seriously think you can pigeonhole that many people? There are Christians in every walk of life, every kind of profession, intellectual or otherwise, at all ranges of IQ. The bible says only a fool doesn't believe in God. When I was agnostic, I truly was a fool because I had no spiritual discernment. That is why atheists believe the bible is nonsense. Without any awareness of the spirit, or the fact that they have one, they're no better than robots executing some program with a tacit self-awareness. Logic is nothing in and of itself..

If you're the president of a company, and the business is suffering, and the first place where you cut isn't your benefits and the benefits of the other executives, you are an asshole. Period.

If the business is suffering enough that you are considering firing people and you don't even touch the salaries and benefits at the top first? You are a horrible horrible person. Period

More than ever, I truly think that no one needs to be a fucking millionaire. I don't have anything against someone being one, but I truly believe it's way too much a for a single person.

If you make enough money that you can pay all your bills, take care of your family, have a decent car (and I don't mean a ferrari obviously. A good renault or VW should be enough for everyone), have a decent home, can pay for the education of your kids, save some money for retirement or rainy days, and have a few luxuries, like going out for a meal at least once a week, and movies whenever you feel like it, and maybe a big screen TV and whatnot, you should be satisfied. And that's still waaaaaaay more than 90% of the world population has.

Fable 3 was my last chance for Peter M. He fucked me with B&W, and he fucked me with the first two fables... always over-promising and under-delivering. And like an abusive relationship, I bought into the hype and let him fuck me again, but I swear this is the LAST TIME. NO MORE.

What pissed me off the most about the sudden change at the end of Fable 3 is that it was symptomatic of very bad setup and story telling. Quest after quest, I was told to do one thing, but in reality the game expected me to do something else.

The best example of this was the quest early on where the game told me that I needed to go and buy a disguise. The in game "GPS" kept leading me back to a pie making mini-game and whenever I went to the store where the disguise was, it just wasn't an option to buy... at no point in this frustrating moment did it tell me that I didn't have enough money for the disguise, or that the pie game would give me said money. Instead it just FORCED me to do the damned pie game because basically there wasn't anything else I could do.

My problem with this is that my frustration could have VERY easily been quelled by one of two things: 1. A price on the fucking disguise or 2. Just something in the quest log itself to TELL me that I didn't have the money necessary and that I needed to go off and do mini-games till I had the funds.

This was basically my experience all the way through. The game wants to fake being a sandbox when in reality it has a VERY clear path it wants you to take, sometimes absurdly so and with little logic to it.

Mind you, I was patient enough to sludge through most of the game after I caught on that I just should not expect logic or ask questions. That was until the end. Yatzee hit the nail on the head, the arbitrary nature of the way the end creeps up on you is pretty much game-breaking. The ideals situation would have been one where I was given the opportunity to KNOW that I would be required to grind out 6mil coin BEFORE the stupid 1 year timer with it's absolutely horrible good/evil choices bullshit came up.

Peter M. must be fucking Frederich Nietzsche because clearly he's gone beyond good and evil with his understanding of what those words mean. I don't think I've ever been as pissed off at a game's concept of good/evil ever.

Fuck you Molyneux. You are the M. Night Shamaylan of the gaming world. Populous was your Six Sense and you've basically shit on us ever since. I vow never to buy another one of your games. (not that he's reading this, but it just feels good to make that assertion)

Fisheries policy, like the agricultural policy, is all about individual countries trying to protect the jobs of their people. Too many short term politicians pandering to their electorate result in too many short term decisions against the long term sustainability of our fisheries, which we're really going to need come 2050 when the world population hits 9 billion.

Fishermen are still behaving like hunters roaming further and further afield when they can't find fish locally, instead of acting like responsible farmers who have to protect their land if they want it to continue producing food. Except that irresponsible farmers are over-using fertilizers and herb/pesticides which are washing off into the ocean, some of which act like fish hormones decreasing their ability to reproduce, and others create oxygen depleted algal blooms in which fish can't live.

Sometimes I wish I had an orbital ion cannon and a C&C interface to the world. Then we'd see who makes stupid decisions on my watch...

Wall of text in 3... 2... 1...

@Gallowflak

Let me go post by post here...

Yogi asks why he should care. He states that he hasn't seen any solid proof that COS has caused any deaths. He thinks they're stupid and crazy, and there's not much you can do about stupid, crazy people.

It seems to me the correct response, if you disagree with him, would be to provide examples. Instead, GK starts building a chorus line of straw men. Yogi is a sick fuck. Every time Yogi asks a skeptical question, God kills a kitten.

Your first response is solid. You don't present evidence, but you do clearly explain why you have a problem with COS.

Yogi tells GK that he doesn't see enough evidence that they're a large problem; There are bigger problems that require attention. Obviously you disagree with this, but it's a valid position and there are no fallacies or childish outbursts.

Yogi replies to you, listing some examples of things he perceives as bigger problems that are more deserving of attention. Scientologists account for about .0007% of the world population and these people are joining voluntarily. The numbers are something I just looked up, but it's one of Yogi's points. I'd say it's a very insightful one.

You say prioritizing problems is irrational and ridiculous, but you don't say why. I'd be interested to hear you back that up.

GK says little boys are apparently shipped in bulk to Catholics so that they may be raped and adds another strawman to the line.

Yogi gets a little irrational with his argument here, saying GK is crazy. He compares arguing over this to arguing over 9/11 conspiracies, which is misunderstood by just about everyone to be categorizing the two of them as equivalents.

You call Yogi out on his poor argument though, in my opinion, you overplay it. You also add a strawman to the party by misrepresenting his statement about 9/11 conspiracies. You seem shocked that someone would respond with hostility to being called an irrational, thick-skulled, sick fuck who might kill kittens.

GK's next post is a response to me, which I'll address in a separate comment.

Yogi calling you a liar was not on screen when I wrote my comment. That was quite bad form. Things have somewhat degraded since then.

And now I come to your response to me. I said he was fairly calm and collected. He did wander toward poor form as I mentioned above. I can actually claim he was fairly calm and collected and, in fact, I did. You say I can't. Why not?

You bring up the 9/11 thing again. I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt that you just misread it because you don't seem like you're interested in misrepresenting his argument on purpose. Or maybe you are since you've also twisted his statement about this argument not accomplishing anything to mean that GK will never accomplish anything.

He "blasted" GK, who frankly could use a blasting after that temper tantrum, and yet you, who claims to value honest, productive debate, defend GK. Nothing anyone could say would degrade GK any more than his own "argument", which really doesn't fit any formal definition of "argument" that I recognize. So who has disdain for for his opponents, again?

It wasn't so much my intent to defend Yogi as it was to point out perceived hypocrisy in you calling him out for childish behavior and saying nothing about GK.

Are you referring to me or Yogi doing a drive-by assessment? I'm not clear on this one.

The comment system has been broked for months. It's sort of been broke by design since the 4.0 upgrade and then it also doesn't work as designed, which, I guess, makes it double-broked.

I was implying GK needed a time-out, not you.

Chilaxe, I've never run into you before, but I run the Science channel. In opposition to many other channel owners, I run my channel (when I'm around) with an iron fist. Included in my channel description is the note that "if the video is intended to be factual and not parody, it must be reasonably scientifically accurate and in keeping with scientific thought."

This post, video, and the related article make claims that are unsubstantiated given the evidence they cite. For fucks' sake, the post starts off with "Muslims make up about 20 % of the world population but only produce 1 % of the worlds scientific papers (according to the IOP)." which is blatant horseshit if you take the time to even browse the article for the actual statistic.

In the future, please do me the favor of not reversing my decisions for the Science channel, especially if it involves dumping garbage back into Science.

P.S. Sifters, what the hell has happened? Y'all know I also think religion is a crock of shit but you are better than this....for shame.

*nochannel
*religion
*islam
*talks

>> ^chilaxe:

Regarding the fair question about whether this belongs in the "science" channel:
If we put atheists' videos in the "religion" channel, we don't mean they're necessarily correct about religion, we mean that the video contains an argument about religion.
The same appears to be true about videos that contain arguments about science and comparative metrics of nations & cultures' scientific contributions.
I believe it's thus consistent to retain the categorization of science, not because we're claiming the author is correct, but because the author is legitimately discussing science.

@Sniper007

Eating locally won't help you when you have a local disaster. You missed the point. If everyone is using the maximum available land, nobody has extra food to help when someone else has a shortage.

As to deforestation, and climate change, the whole planet's system is self balancing. More CO2, means faster and stronger the vegetation growth which in turn produces more O2 at a faster rate. More CO2 for humans means shorter life spans, which means less population growth. There is no ability for human intervention to change this global balancing act.


CO2 has more than one effect on the planet. Even if you assume that plants grow faster and stronger with more CO2 (which is bullshit since they need nutrient food in the soil as well...CO2 is just one part of photosynthesis), CO2 is still a greenhouse gas. Furthermore, when the atmosphere is heavy in CO2, it also causes the ocean to become more acidic, which affects all sorts of ocean life, and therefore the food chains which we rely on. You're right to say that the world is self-balancing, but wrong to assume that human survival is automatic no matter what we do.

Maybe the world's limit is 30 billion if people are, as you say, crammed into cities, and the rest of the world is farmed. MAYBE, just MAYBE, that's NOT the most efficient way of living! Maybe people have minds of their own, that they can put to good use to produce their own food on their own land with their own hands as they desire.


No, look. Of course people have minds of their own. I don't see anyone saying anything to the contrary. You talked about it taking 1/5 of an acre earlier to support a family with a vegetarian diet. It's more like 1/2 acre per PERSON. Some land is not suitable for farming, but is suitable for livestock pastures.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071008130203.htm

So, say we supplement our vegetarian diet with some dairy and a little meat to efficiently use all the available land to feed more people. Check out the math:

http://one-simple-idea.com/Environment1.htm

It doesn't work out. There isn't enough land to support a trillion people...not even close. Not even 1/10th of a trillion. Even your revised number is laughable with current practices. So, say we throw in some urban farming...vertical farming in the form of skyscrapers that produce food. Cool...we've got a shitload of people now. Who even says that's a worthy goal? How can you morally argue that more people is always better? You've said a bunch of stuff indicating that's what you believe, but you haven't provided any reasons other than something to the effect of "human brains are amazing and can figure stuff out".

I don't think the speaker in the video is advocating global planning...at least not in the form of a world government. I don't think he's assuming that he's smart enough to know how to plan everyone's lives, nor do I think I am.

What he's pointing out is that populations naturally slow their growth as education and health increase. When you're pretty sure your children will survive, you don't feel the need to have 6-8 in order to have 2 that survive. When conditions are good enough to allow the survival of 80-90% of children born, parents also feel like they can provide a better life for their kids if they're dividing their resources between 1-2 instead of 6-8.

So, you don't need a global government to reduce population growth, you simply need to assist people in improving their health and education levels. Charities and individual countries can do this on their own. So what if they organize their efforts? It doesn't have to be central planning on a global level.

Personally, I think it's better to live within our means. Even if we could grow to the trillions on our little planet, why not do it slowly and carefully? Why do we need a giant population? Why do we all need to be "blessed" with giant families? Why can't we enjoy other peoples' families? As a country, we don't even need large populations for wars anymore. Nuclear weapons and conventional weapon technology ensure that future wars will be fought with very small numbers of people compared to the masses needed in the past.



If you didn't read all that, just answer this: What's the overall purpose of a huge world population? How does it benefit me or anyone else to be born into a crowded world?

>>A widely held but incorrect view. Limited global population MUST be the desired outcome or humans will exceed the carrying capacity of the Earth. Relying on the promise of new technologies is a naive recipe for possible disaster.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrying_capacity
If you want to talk assumption, you're assuming that maximum relative wealth is the desired outcome. Pretty selfish, eh?
Baby boomers leaving the workforce is really only a problem because of Social Security and health care costs and an unbalanced worker to retiree ratio. That ratio will change over time and we'll probably have a period of austerity as it changes back to something resembling equilibrium. The baby boom being correlated with economic growth/decline is really not proof that increased population causes increased wealth. There are many other factors involved which have nothing to do with population.
Wealth is obviously not directly tied to population, or the United States wouldn't have vastly higher wealth with such a relatively low population density compared to the rest of the world. If you mean overall world wealth, perhaps that's true, since more people = more work = more promises to pay back debts, but when you're talking about a closed loop system, it's all relative. So, if you take the view that more world population means more poor people for rich countries to exploit, that would be true, but then you also have to assume infinite resources and an undamageable environment.



@mgittle "So, if you take the view that more world population means more poor people for rich countries to exploit, that would be true, but then you also have to assume infinite resources and an undamageable environment."

The rich exploting the poor is like a wolf eating a chicken... Natural, human and even necessary. There would be no rich if all were on equal terms. We would not have science, medicine, machinary or such on the same scale. Sure, happenstance would bring about these things eventually, but that is the same as a wolf getting through the chicken coop eventually too.

At least that is MO.

Those two billion would gladly exploit the rich and become what they detest or envy so much.

>> ^mgittle:

>> ^Sniper007:

A widely held but incorrect view. Limited global population MUST be the desired outcome or humans will exceed the carrying capacity of the Earth. Relying on the promise of new technologies is a naive recipe for possible disaster.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrying_capacity
If you want to talk assumption, you're assuming that maximum relative wealth is the desired outcome. Pretty selfish, eh?
Baby boomers leaving the workforce is really only a problem because of Social Security and health care costs and an unbalanced worker to retiree ratio. That ratio will change over time and we'll probably have a period of austerity as it changes back to something resembling equilibrium. The baby boom being correlated with economic growth/decline is really not proof that increased population causes increased wealth. There are many other factors involved which have nothing to do with population.
Wealth is obviously not directly tied to population, or the United States wouldn't have vastly higher wealth with such a relatively low population density compared to the rest of the world. If you mean overall world wealth, perhaps that's true, since more people = more work = more promises to pay back debts, but when you're talking about a closed loop system, it's all relative. So, if you take the view that more world population means more poor people for rich countries to exploit, that would be true, but then you also have to assume infinite resources and an undamageable environment.


If there is a carrying capacity for the earth, humanity has not even come close to it. I'd say the limit is somewhere in the hundreds of trillions, based on the fact that it only takes 1/5 of a acre to feed an entire family a vegetarian diet. This is not a theoretical figure, it is currently being done. I'd say the earth is grossly underpopulated based on the obscene amount of lawn space (and golf courses) in existence.

Just drive somewhere (anywhere) for 10 miles, and tell me how much un-utilized, or under-utilized SPACE you see in your immediate vicinity. I'm not talking tilled, fertilized farmland. I'm talking empty parking lots, front lawns, abandoned buildings, etc. All those places need some human who is willing to engage in the proper behavior and responsibly utilize that space. The world is not overpopulated with bodies. It's 'over populated' with the wrong mindset and work ethic.

I didn't mean to imply that maximum relative wealth is a desired outcome. It is not.

I do agree, population growth is certainly NOT the only ingredient needed for an increase in sheer economic wealth. Though, for the families who engage in it, it can be the very definition and 'object' of their wealth and their increase in quality of life (though it may lead temporarily to a decrease in economic abundance). But the question of how to increase monetary wealth for most of the world is an entirely vain one that ought not to be entertained as it is relying on to many insidious assumptions.

It is sufficient to recognize that large families are NOT a plague, and go on living your own life as best as you know how. As to that discussion, ethical standards cannot be philosophically advanced by empirical data. Philosophy is inherently and necessarily theoretical.

>> ^Sniper007:

He's assuming limited global population is the desired outcome. It just so happens that limiting your population growth is what will take the blue box to below the 'sandal people'. The tremendous economic growth has risen and fallen in the US following exactly in line with the demographic phenomenon called the baby boom. Now that the baby boomers are leaving the work force, the entire US financial house of cards is falling.
This guy has NO CLUE what he's talking about. Wealth is CREATED by humanity. If you limit humanity's growth, you limit wealth's growth.
If he's worried about 'climate change', then he should realize that it's not the number of people, but their behavior which (potentially) affects that. In FACT, there are humans which by living their lives (ironically, in a lifestyle manner not unlike the 'sandal people') have a POSITIVE effect on their local climates, and thus the global climate (sic).


A widely held but incorrect view. Limited global population MUST be the desired outcome or humans will exceed the carrying capacity of the Earth. Relying on the promise of new technologies is a naive recipe for possible disaster.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrying_capacity

If you want to talk assumption, you're assuming that maximum relative wealth is the desired outcome. Pretty selfish, eh?

Baby boomers leaving the workforce is really only a problem because of Social Security and health care costs and an unbalanced worker to retiree ratio. That ratio will change over time and we'll probably have a period of austerity as it changes back to something resembling equilibrium. The baby boom being correlated with economic growth/decline is really not proof that increased population causes increased wealth. There are many other factors involved which have nothing to do with population.

Wealth is obviously not directly tied to population, or the United States wouldn't have vastly higher wealth with such a relatively low population density compared to the rest of the world. If you mean overall world wealth, perhaps that's true, since more people = more work = more promises to pay back debts, but when you're talking about a closed loop system, it's all relative. So, if you take the view that more world population means more poor people for rich countries to exploit, that would be true, but then you also have to assume infinite resources and an undamageable environment.