Arkansas-based Duggar admits she doesn't believe in overpopulation. "Well, first off, the idea of overpopulation is not accurate because, really, the entire population of the world, if they were stretched shoulder to shoulder, could fit within the city limits of Jacksonville," Duggar reasons in an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network

How can Fundamentalists be this stupid?

It's amazing that they don't have the mental capacity to understand that each individual person requires more resources than can possibly fit in an area that boxes in no more than their shoulders.

Let's do the math on that shall we.

I'm not overly large so I'll use myself as an average. I'm 6' tall and 185 lbs. My shoulders are 18" across, and front to back between 12-15" depending on if I'm holding my gut in, so I'll go with 15". That's 1.5'x1.25' for a total of 1.875 square feet. There are 7,000,000,000 people in the world requiring 13,125,000,000 square feet to hold everyone. One square mile holds 27931225 square feet. Which could hold, 29,739,973.3 people my size shoulder to shoulder, front to back. Meaning if my calculations are right you would need 235.37 square miles to hold all of the people in the world. According to wikipedia Jacksonville has 767 square miles of land.

So she is technically correct.

What the moron doesn't take into account is things like arable land, and drinkable water are finite. But hey when have religious zealots let things like facts get in their way.

What we need to do is build giant one mile cubed cities similar to the ones described in Pohl's book "Outnumbering the Dead". With vast stretches of government/corporate farm land stretching as far as the eye can see from each "city".

OR! The giant world covering city like in Azimov's "The Last Zoo", where we all subsist on nothing but plankton, or algae.

I look forward to either of these distopian futures for my children's children.

I talked to a girl who was 22 and thought we got all our drinking water from the ocean.

Did you explain how expensive desalination is?

We just need to invent the matrix and become batteries *nods*, solves all of our problems!

Pretty much this. I mean, ****'s sake, we've got cities here in the US that are actually running out of water and will be out of it within the next few decades. I don't understand how someone can say with a straight face that there aren't population problems when you can easily look at places like India and Africa and see that there are.

Didn't get that far, she had trouble understanding what desalination was to begin with.

Velvet, I will make this simple for you to understand on just how deep that pool of stupidity goes.

Fundamentalist christian..

/thread

While of course she could technically be correct, we all know that isn't what she was thinking when referring to overpopulation. When you are dealing with someone who takes the bible literally, has 19+ kids and are unwilling to stop because they believe that "God" controls how many children they and every human on the planet has. That is a level of denial and stupidity you just cannot argue with logically. The sooner the media stops giving morons like this attention and shuts these people out, the quicker their type will just go away. Sadly people like this are going to eventually force countries like the US to adopt china like laws restricting the number of children you are allowed to have. Eventually we will get to a point where we simply do not have the resources and that type of law will be forced.

Until we get past the everyone is offended by everything situation we have, I can't see us going with any kind of birthing limitation law, unfortunately...Now, I don't know China's history over the last 100 years, but I'd venture a guess that its quite different than ours, history as in children out of wedlock, supposed "accidental" births from one night stands or ppl you have no intention of being in a relationship with, etc.

One of my coworkers, who is and should always be a loser, is pregnant now. The guy who she got impregnated by was another coworkers "friend", coworker 1 and friend did it in coworker 2's kids bedroom(coworker 2 is also an idiot). Friend impregnated 4 other women in his lifetime with 5 kids, is 37 I think, almost 40, lives with his mom, doesn't work ever, and got his GED this winter. Coworker 1 also prefers to date felons as she married one right out of high school, she is 21 I believe, though she has said several different ages too. Coworker 2 is dumber than a box of rocks who can't make a decision to save her life, literally if she was walking down train tracks and a train was coming, she would ask "should I move off the tracks?" and if nobody answered, she wouldn't. She has 4 kids from 3 guys, and they are all her babies(spoken beybeys), the youngest being 6 I think, and oldest 18, which surprisingly the oldest hasn't gotten pregnant yet since she has been trying for years.

This is just two of the women I work with at the airport that is small but not tiny...mean, but would love for them to not procreate...

Oh, and the media hasn't tried to help society in years, no money in it.

Heh, what about the version from Bio of a Space Tyrant - birth control added to all public water supplies, and to have children you must get (from the gov't) medicine to counteract it.

Minimum income and IQ to give birth, anyone?

Damn! I was about to ask if you worked with my roommate, but he doesnt work an an airport. But MAN, I need to start posting his rants from work. He works for a healthcare provider and half of the stuff that people call in and talk about. Yeah....

Sadly my ass, the US should already be trying to adopt that policy or at the very least some kind of license to breed.

Yeah because that's going to happen in a country that demonizes sex education, birth control and abortions. We are actively encouraging breeding beyond our means and trying to outlaw abortions.

There's tons of lakes in the world that would fit the entire world population.
E.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Constance in Germany.

Sometimes, drowning them all seems like a good idea.
The fundamentalist christians should already be familiar with that idea

Ok, so let's put all the stupid people like this within the city limits of Jacksonville, wall them in, and let them eat each other when the resources run out.

Don't worry, God would deliver them...


yea..I went there.

What is the optimal population of the earth?

I don't think you could ever get anyone to agree on a hard number for that. There are too many variables involved. The answer is determined by resources, how much food, water, and energy can we produce so as not to create shortages and hardship. Advancements in technology are constantly making that number rise, but there is still a finite limit.

Deliver them what? Pizza?

They'd probably just twist Jesus' Last Supper speech to say that eating each other's flesh is ok, nay, even a holy thing to do.