Trend: blame us for everything

Man, we get blamed for everything! Check out this article about Britin’s chief rabbi, Lord Sacks. Lord Sacks was knighted in 2005 for services to interfaith relations.

In his article, Sacks blames Europe’s falling birth rate on Neo-Darwinism. He says that “Europe was the most secular region in the world and the only continent seeing populations fall.” And thus blames secularism for a reduction in birth rate. Apparently, Neo-Darwinists are so freaking selfish they don’t have kids, because kids would get in the way of their rampant materialism, instant gratification, and consumerism. We aren’t prepared for the sacrifices of parenthood. He said “parenthood involved He said parenthood involved massive sacrifices of money, attention, time and emotional energy.” Apparently those are things secularists don’t have.

Lord hackey-Sacks said:

“Wherever you turn today – Jewish, Christian or Muslim – the more religious the community, the larger on average are their families.

“The major assault on religion today comes from the neo-Darwinians.”

Really, people who believe in evolution are to blame for falling populations?

Let’s do a quick what-if. What if “Neo-Darwinians were actually having more kids than religious people? If that were the case, Sacks could say the same thing – we’re assaulting religion and having lots of kids because the Neo-Darwinian model says that the purpose of life is to produce children like rabbits. It would prove how depraved we are and how lightly we take matters such as sex and childbirth. It would prove we are selfish because we’re overpopulating the world with little regard for the environment or the people around us.

It doesn’t really matter what we do. We’re bad, bad people.

Fellow blogger Linden commented on this silliness:

Call me scientific but might it just be that the number of people surviving birth has increased: 140 infant deaths per 1,000 births in 1900 to 5.4 per 1,000 in 1997. With more people surviving birth you don’t need as many children, life expectancy has also increased (75 for boys, 80 for girls in 1999 compared to 45 and 49 respectively in 1901). A longer life expectancy reduces the pressure to have children at a young age, or at all.

Next, we’ll be blamed for global warming.