Contraception

[rowyn]

About a week ago, Prester Scott wrote about the morality, or lack thereof, of contraception in a Christian context. In response, I posited that, historically, Christianity condemned contraception because, for a variety of reasons, uncontrolled population growth was a positive good. Given that the situation between today and Biblical times -- or

Comments

[prester_scott]

This is very interesting, but I'm not going to address it directly. Rather, let me lay this thought on you

[tuftears]

Reminds me of George R. R. Martin's Tuf Voyaging. Great book!

The planet of S'uthlam had a population problem but it was mandated by their religion. See, the Messiah's second coming meant that he had to be born, so if they stopped having kids, the Messiah would never be born. Turn that around and their reasoning goes, the more kids they have, the better the chance that in a generation will be born the Messiah.

[rowyn]

Heehee. As I was writing this, I kept thinking of that collection of short stories m'self. (It's presented as a novel, I know, but they're really just a bunch of related short stories...)

Incidentally, I found Tuf's "solution" to the S'uthlam overpopulation problem utterly abhorrent. Enforced sterilization of 99.9% of the population would not only rob that portion of their spiritual beliefs, but place an enormous and inhuman burden on the remaining .1% *shudder*. It would have been kinder to make conceiving extremely difficult and rare--but still possible--for everyone. But that's another question entirely, really.