Does your knowledge about overpopulation and religion alienate you IRL

[elte]

I have a hard time dealing with my family members, some of who are   eager to grandparent as many children as possible and who have religion as at least partial motivation.   Thoughts welcome.

[Magical Realist]

What does their religion have to do with their reproductive agenda? Do they construe God's will in accord with the Genesis mandate: "Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth."?

[elte]

Be fruitful and multiply is probably still in their minds from childhood Catholic indoctrination.

Another thing is that religion can cause a person to think that God will provide regardless of whether the future looks good or bad.

[Magical Realist]

Could this have anything to do with believing birth control is against God's will? My Catholic sister and her husband even practiced the rhythm of method of birth control. Didn't work. They had two more kids in their later years. Then, two of her daughters had kids out of wedlock. Such are the unsavory fruits of Catholic brainwashing.

[elte]

I think that indoctrination to be adverse to birth control is a factor.

 Every time a cousin gets married or has a birth, I get depressed.  It's hard not to seem insensitive when I want to scream how come no one gets that overpopulation is the actual cause of so many problems in the world.  I refuse to consider climate change, which to be the object of focus is like trying to keep the titanic from sinking by bailing water with buckets.

[Yazata]

Does your knowledge about overpopulation and religion alienate you IRL

No. I know far more about religion than any of my living relatives and most of my friends. We rarely if ever discuss religion, so nobody is alienated.

I have a hard time dealing with my family members, some of who are eager to grandparent as many children as possible and who have religion as at least partial motivation.

You don't have any children, do you?

Your parents probably aren't thinking so much about religion as they are about family. As people get older, they think more about the big picture, about their ancestors and about continuing the family line. (With younger people it's all sex and instant gratification.)

My own tendency is to agree with your parents. Today overpopulation isn't really any kind of threat in the developed world, in the US, Japan and Europe. A bigger worry is population decline, as birth rates fall below replacement levels and populations shrink. We are seeing that happening in many places.

The main culprit there is female emancipation. As women chase jobs and careers, they don't want to be burdened with children. So many of the more successful young women delay child-bearing until later in life... if ever.

That means that a disproportionate amount of children are born to the low-end of society, to single mothers in troubled circumstances, to precisely the people who should be delaying childbirth so as to get their own lives in order. The concentration of childbirth in these communities magnifies all kind of social pathologies, such as school failure, crime and poverty.

Meanwhile as the rest of the population ages, the ratio of elderly to working-age people rises, putting a severe strain on things like pensions, social security and medicare.

[C C]

I have a hard time dealing with my family members, some of who are   eager to grandparent as many children as possible and who have religion as at least partial motivation.   Thoughts welcome.

Most of my relatives, friends, and acquaintances who expect / have grandchildren seem to want / delight in them without need of religious factor. Which is to say, I actually can't recollect a single occasion where the latter was referenced as a reason for desiring either a couple or eight being engendered by an offspring.

But I expect there are groups where it has become part of an agenda to multiply, so as to outnumber the politically secular population in the future. [Similar to some self-proclaimed ethnic minority leaders encouraging their members to proliferate or acquire citizenship so that they can have more leverage. Ironically many in those sub-cultures being conservatively opinionated and religious, despite seeking to vote liberally in repayment for symbolic attention received from on high.] Middle-class and outright wealthy Mormons come to mind with their large families, who buck the "only those who are poor, uneducated, and substance-addicted" trend. Neo-Nazi and KKK wives / partners often boast about being "breeder moms", hopelessly competing in the numbers race for more ideological representation or dominance; and perhaps having a higher percentage that do fall into the lower income bracket.

I seem to have worried more about overpopulation in the classic "Make Room, Make Room" (Harry Harrison) context back when I was younger. Now it seems like less concern about feeding everybody and living like crowded chickens in cages than wistfully dwelling upon how much more peaceful and diminished energy-demanding and ecology-stressed the world would be if there were only 500 million people instead of 6 billion plus and growing.

[elte]

"You don't have any children, do you?"

It looks like luck that I didn't have any.  My philosophy pretty much develops over time regardless of my social affiliations.  They could have gotten psychologically hurt.  It's a big factor why I feel so uncomfortable associating with most people.  Most people in my area in the USA have religion as a major support that they are barely conscious of at any one moment.  My family falls into that category.  I'm not a social person, so talk about socially relevant things like sports doesn't interest me.  Eventually things tend to gravitate toward hints coming out that I'm atheist or agnostic, in contrast to my family.  Too much of that could cross a line that does too much harm to me and them.

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"I seem to have worried more about overpopulation in the classic "Make Room, Make Room" (Harry Harrison) context back when I was younger. Now it seems like less concern about feeding everybody and living like crowded chickens in cages than wistfully dwelling upon how much more peaceful and diminished energy-demanding and ecology-stressed the world would be if there were only 500 million people instead of 6 billion plus and growing."

I don't feel any duty to have humanity continue on after me. I can't say that I wanted to be brought into this Earth and it looks like since life is balanced toward misery, people coming after me have a net disadvantage in coming into existence. For us here, my perspective is the fight is on--a fight we didn't ask for. A fight against the hurtful forces affecting our existence.

I think the lower figure of what the optimal population should be would be better in the long run. That would tend to cause much less ecological deterioration. I'm in concordance on that and other things.