It’s only natural to expect that Tim Tebow’s full-frontal Christianity on the football field would please lots of fellow Christians, football fans or not.



While this religious effect is a sure bet, his effects on the secular world are not so easy to forecast. Here’s my bold weekly picks:



Tebow vs. The New England Patriots: 3 to 1 odds against Tebow. That New England defense isn’t unbeatable, but its offense will score more points than Tebow’s Denver Broncos.



Tebow vs. The Growth of Unbelief. 8 to 1 odds against Tebow. His public spectacles of pious religiosity annoy far more people than the few people who convert because of him. The growth in the numbers of nonbelievers might even accelerate if more ‘stars’ acted like Tebow.



Tebow vs. Jesus Christ. 12 to 1 odds against Tebow. Does Christianity really want to be known for being there when a fabulously rich white man narcissistically needs more Jesus? Christians surely prefer a reputation for caring more about the forgotten and truly needy. Atheists can’t tell Christians how to pray and we needn’t resort to outrage – but it does look like Jesus needs to have a serious talk with Tebow far more than any of the rest of us.



Tebow vs. Separation of Church and State. 20 to 1 odds against Tebow. Separation of church and state will survive just fine. Tebow isn’t running a church on the taxpayer’s dime or buying up the national airwaves to preach, or demanding any special government favors (so far) so that he can pray in sports stadiums.



Tebow vs. The Future of Civilization. 50 to 1 odds against Tebow. The way that professional sports can dominate our public life is depressing to friends of intellectual culture, but this isn’t Tebow’s fault. It’s hard to see how he could make matters worse, so he probably can’t bring about the downfall of civilization.



Tebow vs. Angry Atheists. 7 to 1 odds against Angry Atheists. Atheists pouncing on this opportunity to ridicule and denounce Tebow’s sincere convictions and his courage to publicly express his beliefs (all protected by the Constitution) doesn’t really put those atheists in a good light or arouse any sympathy. Besides, don’t atheists want the same opportunities when they can get in front of the television cameras?

 

Odds are that sports figures will keep on praising Jesus, or Allah, or whoever. I don’t have psychic powers to know Tebow’s religious sincerity, and the Constitution protects expressions of faith anyway. But I bet our Founders expected more from free speech than just a prayer.

The way people categorize themselves is often tightly linked to the way we want others to see us. The negative social connotations attached to atheism are familiar to everyone. That’s why polls that ask “Are you an atheist” find few people willing to self-identify as an ‘atheist’, even to an anonymous pollster.

It’s a sad psychological condition—the level of self-deception involved can cause people to resort to all sorts of silly defense mechanisms. For example, Sally Quinn, an atheist and a moderator at the Washington Post’s On Faith section, describes her struggle with the label of ‘atheist’ in “My Five Lessons from On Faith”. In this essay she announces that she really isn’t an atheist.

What turned Quinn around? Not a “come to Jesus” moment. Not an flash of inspiration from a sermon. Not a solid conclusion from a theological argument. Her colleague Jon Meacham had a big role, she says. But Meacham wasn’t trying to convert her to a religion, it seems—he was just persuading her to abandon the label of ‘atheism’. As Quinn reports, he said to her, “You don’t want to define yourself negatively, and you know nothing about religion.”

Huh? That’s all it takes to stop being an atheist? Avoid ‘negative’ labels, and don’t avoid something unless you know all about it first? This is ridiculous and illogical. I assure you, Sally Quinn, that you are an atheist, and if you can’t admit it even to yourself, the sad anti-intellectualism and perverse social rhetoric that has infected so much discussion about religion has come to infected you.

Think about it. You know enough about religion by now, surely. What have been religion’s two main strategies against unbelief? First, proclaiming that religion has crucial knowledge so valuable that anyone and everyone must get intimately acquainted with it: read our scriptures, come to our worship places, try to follow the theological mazes – do whatever it takes to really, really, understand what’s so wonderful about what our religion is saying. Second, after all that, if you still won’t agree with us, then we will slander you with the nastiest, filthiest labels that gutter language has to offer. We will publicly humiliate and shame you until you cower in fear and never show your atheist face in public.

Religion is a master of instilling self-degradation and self-deception, and it can do that for nonbelievers, too. That’s why religion conveniently defines atheism as “Claiming to know there’s no God” so that religious people can seem much humbler by comparison. And that’s why religion shames atheism as “Having no morals or meaning to life” so that religious people can seem so ethical by comparison. Can’t you see how your mind has been infiltrated and distorted by these viral insinuations?

Being an atheist is simple: lack belief in God. If you honestly don’t think there is a God, you are an atheist. On the other hand, if you now suspect that there could be a God, tell us why you think that. We’d love to hear your thoughts on God.

But no, you don’t sound like you are admitting that God now looks plausible to you. You are as much an atheist as ever. Religion has labeled you as an atheist, and all the self-deception and public squirming can’t change that. Religion regards you as an atheist, and all of your kind words about nice religious people hasn’t changed that. Those religions really don’t respect you.

A New Year’s Resolution: Admit to yourself that you are an atheist. It’s not a matter of faith, but fact. In the long run, you’ll feel much better about yourself. And having confidence and pride in yourself is the only genuine way to receive respect from society around you.

In modern times, naturalism and supernaturalism are the only serious worldview competitors. Naturalism—the scientific worldview—takes reality to be what verifiable observation and scientific method discovers. Much has been explained by science, and much more will be.



As science has shined its light of knowledge farther into nature, religion’s God has fled to hide beyond all the stars.



Supernaturalism can now only appeal to the margins and obscure corners of human experience: uncanny sights and sounds, spooky feelings of being watched, tortured emotions and deep dreads, engrossing tales of magical deeds, reassuring voices of priestly incantations, self-righteous feelings of moral authority, and the like. Theology was once the mighty explainer of all things in heaven and on earth, but by now it can only take comfort in whatever science has not yet explained. Theology, that architect of soaring systems of vast thought, has been reduced to hunting and stitching together tattered scraps of mysteries.  



Science, and technology’s benefits, do more to render religion impotent than any amount of philosophizing. Yet, it may not be science’s role to deliver the fatal stroke to supernatural theology. Science’s intrinsic humility and modesty forbids taking that execution’s role. In a way, science supplies the only fuel left for theological machinations. Science is as good at finding new curiosities as it is at eventually explaining them—today’s science is a “to do” list as well as a “done” list. Theology snatches at any novel curiosities and shows off what it did not earn by honest toil, holding them high and shouting “A mystery! A mystery! Look at what science can’t explain!” And so another generation of theologians is kept busy with clever sewing, trying to see an image of their God in their quilted scraps. A pretty patchwork quilt to be sure, pretty like the stained glass in the churches, distracting enough for those who desperately want to keep believing. Science is too busy with real intellectual work to pay attention to theology’s amusements. Science is already rendering yesterday’s theologies obsolete with better explanations, even while it uncovers fresh curiosities to be collected up for the next generation’s theologians. Science marches on, moving faster than the parasites following its trail.



In a way, naturalism also displaces supernaturalism without ever quite dispelling it. Naturalism has no demonstrable proofs to equip the executioner’s hand beyond what science already supplies; naturalism similarly admits how many curiosities about the world remain, echoing the humility of science. Naturalism is theology’s rival and natural home for those done with religion, but naturalism should not be mistaken for theology’s executioner either.



Everyone needs to realize how it is not necessary to prove naturalism in order to reject supernaturalism as implausible. Theology is now cleverly designed to linger on so long as naturalists keep supposing that it is they who are laboring under the burden of proof. Every time a naturalist is heard to honestly admit, “We don’t have a scientific explanation for that yet,” the bells of St. Mary’s are heard ringing in victory. There should no shame in admitting ignorance, but religions should be ashamed for converting others’ ignorance into their own virtue. Naturalism ought not be dragged into playing that game in the first place. Naturalism will never be in a position to “prove itself true,” for that would require science to explain all curiosities, something for only the far future to bring, if ever.



That is why theologians love the notion that naturalism would have be proven correct before any refutation of supernaturalism could start. After all, proving naturalism correct is epistemically and rhetorically difficult. To epistemically prove naturalism as correct, the naturalist must give many good reasons for showing that science could in principle answer all the tough questions, such as explaining the universe’s origin, the mind-body relationship, and religious experiences. So long as a few tough questions appear beyond science’s present-day competency, supernaturalism can keep feeling immune from refutation. To rhetorically show naturalism as correct, the naturalist must assume a posture of someone able to know that nature is all that there is, and be so sure that no god exists too. So long as the naturalist gets put in the awkward position of claiming to know so much, the supernaturalist can advantageously appear to be the humbler believer.



Too many naturalists fall into this argumentative trap. After all, debates are advertised as matching the Atheist naturalist up against the Theist supernaturalist. This format arouses expectations on all sides that the Atheist must demonstrate the naturalism case, and then the Theist must demonstrate the supernaturalist case, and the better arguer for their respective position is the winner. This format is already prejudiced against naturalism. The Atheist doesn’t have scientific answers to every cosmic question, and pointing out a couple of open scientific questions gives the Theist plenty of debating ammunition. Logically, this is quite unfair, but debate audiences aren’t sufficiently prepared to be logically fair.



This general manner of pitting naturalism vs. supernaturalism lends other rhetorical advantages to supernaturalism. Theology has entrenched supernaturalism as a “worldview” and complains bitterly when science is wielded against it, accusing naturalism of begging the question. For example, theology detests how scientific history refuses to take Biblical stories about miracles as given empirical facts, complaining that history’s “naturalistic bias” prevents it from admitting miracles. Of course, it is only religious bias operating here, when theology expects immediate admittance of Biblical miracles as ‘good’ evidence when there’s no such evidence in the first place. All the same, people impressed by mere rhetorical effect can’t tell who is actually begging the question. They seem even more impressed when the Theist announces how science is irrelevant in any case because it can’t disprove God. While science’s inability to disprove supernaturalism is technically correct, too many people assume this is a debating point scored in favor of the Theist, when in fact theology should be ashamed by the way that evidence can’t help supernaturalism either.



If arguing for naturalism isn’t enough to disprove supernaturalism, something more is required. But what would that be? It is quite correct that naturalism and supernaturalism are strictly opposed; if one is true, the other must be false. However, proving one false does not deliver a verification of the other’s truth. These are not the only two metaphysical alternatives, after all. Three more competitors have long been around: platonism, idealism, and skepticism. However implausible, these lingering alternatives complicate the debating situation. Only philosophy can finally adjudicate among all five metaphysical options, and only philosophy is properly equipped to serve as theology’s executioner.



Philosophy is especially well-equipped to deal with theology’s death-struggles as it seeks aid from one of the other minor options. Since theology’s traditional arguments from natural evidence are all fallacious failures, it is forced to appeal to the plausibility of the alternatives for assistance. Platonism, idealism, and skepticism are not obvious allies with supernaturalistic religion; only strenuous theological contortions make alliances possible. Platonism postulates an unnatural realm of purely intellectual entities responsible for making truths of reason absolutely true. Such static intellectual purities are hardly like the anthropomorphic gods that people prefer to pray to, but a theological alliance attempts a proof for a platonic deity able to expose naturalism as inadequate. Idealism takes consciousness to be the ultimate kind of reality, so that human minds are self-sufficiently real and intrinsically valuable. Theology would much prefer that humans depend on God for existence and value, but an alliance could at least explain how the human soul and God’s mind has much in common. Metaphysical skepticism demands immediate empirical proof for everything, and then complains that nothing or almost nothing passes this strict test for knowledge. Traditional theology isn’t skeptical, but existentialist and post-modern theologies are happy to start from agnosticism and hope that emotional faith could lead on towards God.



Why is philosophy so useful? First, the logical methods needed for rendering supernaturalism quite implausible do not rely on the correctness of naturalism. Common sense rationality and logic, the core of philosophy around the world, is sufficient to do the job. Long before any adequate scientific naturalism was forged, philosophical thinkers from Greece to China had cast doubt on supernaturalism using only sound logical thinking. Basically, notions of god are either (a) self-contradictory and incoherent; (b) too vague to enjoy any support from evidence; or (c) devoid of any explanatory relevance to the world.



Second, philosophy dispels the theological alliances sought by supernaturalism. Starting with platonism, platonic theism asks naturalism to explain how its scientific knowledge could be correct, when the inner logic of science must have unnatural grounds. For example, the theist complains that a crude brain produced by haphazard evolution couldn’t know much, and surely could never know rational truths or even figure out scientific theories on its own. There must be something intellectually unnatural (divine?) about us, then. This only appears to be tough problem for naturalism, however. Neither logic nor scientific method are the products of any individual brain, first of all – methods of reasoning arise from large aggregates of brains harnessed together over many generations, passing down more refined techniques over time. No human brain evolved to do logic or science, any more than the brain was evolved for playing jazz or building bridges. Furthermore, philosophy of science reminds us that science never promises absolute truth, but only provisional and fallible (but very practical) knowledge. Proceeding to idealism, theism only rarely accepts transcendentalism’s theory that everything is mind and that matter is unreal. Only a little philosophizing is needed to show how transcendentalism either guarantees independent human immortality and makes us perfectly divine without God’s help, or transcendentalism risks making all minds just a part of God’s mind, in which case God does everything (including sin) and we do nothing by ourselves. Theism typically requires a tension between keeping us utterly dependent on God, yet capable of freely sinning on our own, so this transcendentalist alliance is inherently unstable.



Philosophy’s handling of an alliance between theism and skepticism is trickier. A skeptical theism simultaneously says that reason cannot demonstrate God’s existence (agnosticism is unavoidable), yet it also says that people’s practical needs will push them on ahead towards belief so they can gain the emotional benefits of religious faith. Call this alliance romanticism, religious pragmatism, or existentialist theology – by whatever name, the ploy is the same: theologians reassure people about thinking that God might not exist, urging them to set aside weak reason and instead use their strong hearts to seek the comforting feeling of divine presence. Skeptical theism periodically erupts when things look very bad for traditional theology. In a way, skeptical theism is calling people back to simple ritualized religion without the intellectual embellishments. Philosophically, such skeptical agnosticism is warranted – no one can know that God exists. However, how can philosophy deal with the emotional attractions of religious faith? After all, philosophy most directly challenges theology, not the underlying cultural religiosity. Philosophy is not well-designed for attacking or destroying some genuine emotional needs of humanity. However, philosophy can support positive replacements for religion: humanist ethics for community life, democratic governments for stable global orders, civilized cultures of security and opportunity for all, and the like. No single thing replaces religion entirely, but philosophy is essential for guiding humanity away from excessive reliance on religion.



Establishing naturalism is not necessary for demonstrating supernaturalism’s implausibility. Naturalism is the sensible default option worthy of commitment after one realizes that the notion of God is empty, and nothing is left to hold theism together.

Sure, pioneer George Gallup was quite religious, and happily asked simplistic questions about religion for decades. “Over 90% of Americans keep firmly believing in God” has been the refrain from Christians forever, it seems.

And now that religious bias has been handed down to the current Gallup leadership.  As Terry Mattingly reports at The Republic in his piece “George Gallup Jr’s interest in religion,” the son is even more interested in supporting religion than his father.

Want real demographic data on nonbelief in America? For starters, head over to Barry Kosmin’s Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture. The Institute’s “American Religious Identification Survey” (see the 2008 report) is vastly more reliable, and avoids prejudices against nonbelievers.

Leave faith in Gallup polls to the Christians.

Among your humbler atheists and typical agnostics, common phrases can be overheard. “Show me the evidence for God,” they say. “I’m not close-minded, just skeptical” is another cliché. Some atheists may be so bold as to announce, “Sure, I’d admit there’s a proof for God, if clinching evidence were presented to me.”



I’m not that open-minded about God. In fact, there’s no way to prove to me that there is a god. Not if we are talking about God, of the sort worshipped by billions nowadays. You’ve heard of this God: entirely supernatural, infinitely powerful, perfectly intelligent, etc. That God is impossible to prove. To anyone.



It’s not just my own personal problem. I’ve already explained why “Not even God could make Me Religious.” But my problem with God is everyone’s problem. It’s actually impossible to prove to anyone that this God exists. Here’s why.



It is possible to ‘convince’ lots of people that there’s a God. Religions have been accomplishing that for millennia. But I’m not talking about establishing psychological certitude. Persuading someone of something is hardly the same thing as proving it. People staunchly believe all sorts of things for poor reasons, or no reasons at all. Also note that the actual existence of God, if God really does exist, is not proof that there is a God. A proof of X is a sufficiently rational demonstration of X that can be understood by people and hence believed by people. A proof is a relationship between the thing to be proven and a person offered that proof. Look at it this way: water has always been composed of one oxygen atom and two hydrogen atoms, but there was no proof of that until the nineteenth century. Until modern chemistry’s demonstrations, no one could know this natural fact. Where is the demonstrable proof for God?



The basic issue is whether a human being of ordinary perceptual and cognitive powers could ever be supplied a proof that God exists. I deny that possibility, forever. It’s not just a temporary obstacle. It’s not like waiting for science to get there eventually. Not only won’t science ever supply a proof of God, no other rational method will either. Mystics and existential theologians have been saying this for a long time, and they seem satisfied with just abnormal states of awareness or profound emotions to draw them nearer to what they call God. They abandoned reason long ago, and everyone else needs to similarly realize that reason won’t ever reach God.



Here’s the basic argument showing why there’s no proof for God (as defined above).



1. Humans will never have the cognitive capacity to directly understand anything with infinite powers or qualities.



2. Humans will never have intellectual reasons to indirectly demonstrate the existence of anything with infinite powers or qualities.



3. There are only two kinds of proofs for God: direct understanding or indirect demonstration.



Conclusion: Humans will never have any proofs for God.



On the first premise, it is common enough for theologians to deny this, instead claiming that some people have had direct experiences with the Almighty. The issue is whether any of those people actually experienced some infinite properties or qualities of God, or only thought they did. Could they understand what is really happening to them? Mystical experiences are frequently described as involving losing all sense of embodiment or finitude, so that one’s consciousness seems to inflate beyond all bounds, or disappears altogether into something inexpressibly vaster. This psychological phenomenon happens to some people, sure. But these experiences can easily be induced by meditation, isolation, drugs, falling asleep, or blows to the head. Naturally, theologians claim that people of the ‘right’ religion do encounter God. But this is just a bluff: they could not possibly know this. No human has the cognitive capacity to understandably distinguish some genuine encounter with God from a pseudo-encounter. The mystical experience itself can’t display the difference between a genuine encounter with God from some impressive psychological phenomenon. By definition, mystical experiences don’t come pre-labeled with some God’s name on it – if they have anything in common, they are just infinitely mysterious. That’s why mystics end up disagreeing over which God they experience, or (more wisely) they just agree that nothing can be proven.



Theologians are aware of these obstacles. One typical trick is to claim that God endows special people with unnatural powers to know divine matters. Such tricks beg the question, requiring the prior assumption that God exists, so no proof is possible in this manner either.



On the second premise, theology has busily offered all sorts of indirect “proofs” for God. They are all failures, and their inadequacies will never be remedied. As my book The God Debates (www.goddebates.com) explains, evidence now available to us can’t justify belief in God. This is a permanent situation. No matter how far we are driven to rationally admit that something extraordinary requires a very special explanation, a sufficient explanation always falls far short of any God. Miracles can never be good evidence for God; at most we might have to say that something very powerful is interfering with known laws of nature (it’s probably just a newly discovered natural force anyways). The origin of the universe can never be good evidence for a God; if a creator is really ever needed (which it won’t be, since the simpler hypothesis is just more Nature behind the big bang) then this creator only need be slightly more powerful than the universe’s own total energy and much smarter than us. You see how this works: no matter what indirect demonstration is offered by theology, simply ask, “Is an Almighty Supernaturally Infinite God really necessary to do any explaining here?” and then supply the answer yourself: “Not at all.”



Not at all. That’s the appropriate response to the question, “Is God needed to explain anything?” In fact, and this is a point for another time, I doubt whether invoking God is even an explanation at all, much less a dubious explanation.



Should atheists or agnostics ever have to say, “Well, you could prove to me that God exists, if…”? Nope, not at all. And no one else should, either.

The surprising news is not that the world has reached seven billion people. That figure was predicted many years ago. A different surprise has emerged recently.

Looking further ahead, overpopulation in itself will not be the world’s primary problem within another generation or so. In all likelihood, within fifty years the urgent problem will be population decline across most of the world.

Underpopulation will be discussed more than overpopulation, in many countries. The bad news is that this trend toward future underpopulation won’t save the planet, either. The planet won’t support  eight or nine billion people for long, as they consume remaining energy, water, and soil resources. Secularism has been a large part of the helpful response to overpopulation so far. Looking ahead, humanism must take the lead in preventing disaster.

The efforts to reduce population using secular methods of education and birth control that were set in place two generations ago have largely worked. Families with only two children, or even just one child, are now common throughout the world. If international family planning programs had not been put in place during the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, today’s world population could now stand at 12 billion or more by some estimates. Doomsayers warning of a demographic catastrophe forty years ago have been proven right. The investments back then to reduce family size and lift families out of poverty have paid off. Combating cultural ignorance and religious obstinacy has resulted in better education for women and rising standards of living, which in turn have cut fertility rates by half or more across nearly every developing country.

We should pause to explain what this “fertility rate” refers to. The total fertility rate of a country is the number of children born to an average woman who (1) has the expected fertility rate of women her age in that country, and (2) she survives from birth through the end of her reproductive life. A related term, the “replacement” rate, is about 2.1 children, which is the fertility rate required to keep a country’s population the same. Forty years ago, the fertility rate across most of the world was above 5.0. The current global average for fertility is at 2.5 children per woman, and that number is dropping steadily. Europe’s fertility rate as a whole has dropped below 1.8. China’s has dropped to 1.6. Japan’s is 1.3. Even India’s rate is just 2.6 now and dropping fast. In about 20 or 25 years the global fertility rate will fall below the replacement rate of 2.1 children per woman. This has never happened before in the history of civilization.

Europe has already begun a discussion of underpopulation because not enough babies have been born to replace parents since the mid-1970s, and many European countries will have 15% fewer people by 2030. Russia and Japan are already depopulating and they will shrink about 20% or more by 2050. North Africa and the Middle East will grow slowly for another generation before peaking and then falling. China’s population will stop growing and begin shrinking around 2025, and its working labor force will begin shrinking earlier by 2020. Brazil’s population will peak around 2040 and then decline. One third of India’s states have already slowed their fertility rates below replacement level, and by 2060 India will stop growing and begin to shrink. Only Sub-Saharan Africa and North America is projected to keep growing past 2060.

The world’s population will gradually coast to a crest of somewhere between eight and eleven billion people by 2100, depending on who you ask. Even if the most draconian efforts to reduce fertility were imposed now, the world population would still reach 8 and a half billion people, more or less.

Humanism cannot endorse the most invasive methods of forced population control. China enforces its one-child policy with inhumane policies such as forced abortions, forced sterilizations, and property destruction. When parents are left to make their own choice, they too often choose boys. Both China and India are suffering from gender imbalances – some regions of India and China see only 700 baby girls born for 1000 baby boys. That gender imbalance will have disruptive demographic effects for the next generations.

The United Nations uses mathematical models to now predict over ten billion people by 2100. However, the UN doesn’t take into account famines, water shortages, epidemics, and wars. But we know those things will happen. By neglecting real-world environmental factors, the UN’s mathematical models forecast a billion more people in Africa by 2050 and 3.5 billion people total in Africa by 2100. These numbers are highly unrealistic. The reality is that Africa and other parts of the world will continue to lack the natural resources to sustain that many people. Half of the world right now suffers from inadequate nutrition. Yes, there was a green revolution during the 20th century. What actually happened? The world went from three billion people total to three billion malnourished people out of seven billion. A second green revolution, now hailed as the rescue plan by optimists, would similarly leave billions malnourished.

Many forecasters can’t figure out where the extra food and water will come from to feed another three or four billion people, even under the most optimistic assumptions about improved agricultural methods and genetically engineered crops. Until fertile soil and fresh water can be artificially manufactured as cheaply as plastic, people will starve, and more of them will starve in the future. This pessimistic outlook is no reason to stop trying to feed everyone. So long as more than just food is delivered, so that families are content to only have two or three children, the world could probably save these new people without pushing the world past nine billion people total. The real question is what sorts of lives those people will be able to live. Are we content to just save lives, but then leave them in terrible poverty? And why should a small percentage of the world keep consuming most of the planet’s resources?

Yes, there is an overpopulation crisis remaining today. But it might not be where you were expecting. 

There is no clear definition of overpopulation, since there is no agreement on what constitutes an excess human being. Humanism doesn’t help much at the outset. Simpler definitions of humanism rule out the very idea of an “excess” human, since the absolute priority of human life gets top billing in manifestos and declarations. But we could still talk about preventing future possible humans.

Who would be the first excess human being? Wealth is unevenly distributed to people around the world, and that humans busily produce even more resources and promptly consume those resources. Earth has been able to add six billion people over the last two hundred years to its first billion people. The world has done this by dramatically increasing its consumption of renewable and non-renewable energy resources, and by stressing and poisoning the natural habitat, especially its animal life, the soil, the air, and the planet’s waters.

Overpopulation only exists within an environmental context – overpopulation is about the long-term sustainability of humans in their habitats. Are we paying enough attention to sustainability?

Unfounded warnings about overpopulation date back to Thomas Malthus, and well-founded warnings have been clearly sounded since World War II. The more taboo subject is instead overconsumption. It is not hard to observe plenty of evidence of overconsumption. If everyone on the planet consumed as much as the typical Canadian or American, the earth’s environments would be quickly destroyed. That’s an overconsumption problem, not an overpopulation problem. Put another way, if there is an overpopulation problem, that problem is quite local.

It takes more than 16 people in India to out-consume an American like me. If we took overconsumption seriously, we could arrive at the judgment that it is better for the planet to add 16 babies in India than one more American baby. That’s one way to address the overconsumption problem behind overpopulation. It wouldn’t work, though, because many of those children in India are going to grow up as part of India’s growing middle class, who will consume more and more like Americans with each passing decade.

If the middle classes of India and China were to even reach just one-quarter of the economic status as an average American, the resulting consumption of natural resources would exhaust the planet very quickly. The damage to the atmosphere would be even worse. An average American’s “carbon footprint” is 15 times greater than an Indian’s right now. If the people of India, or China, were burning fossils fuels more like Americans, greenhouse gases would be beyond all control.

Here’s another way to answer the overpopulation problem: Simply declare that few people on the planet should consume as much as us, and most people should consume much less than us. This doesn’t sound very humanistic, but that’s the actual policy of first-world countries. They negotiate international trade agreements and design global capitalist markets to ensure that the richest on the planet continue to consume as much as they can. That doesn’t seem fair to some people. Maybe that’s quite unjust according to humanism. But humanism is not running the world nowadays.

Humanism does support adequate food for everyone, of course. However, dismissing overpopulation as merely a problem of redistribution is both profoundly right and profoundly wrong. Yes, everyone on the planet can be adequately fed in world of egalitarian distribution. But no, that distribution system will never exist, because the current capitalist system will not be replaced, and no one will pay the immense costs of equitably distributing food instead. The countries with the most purchasing power will continue to buy up most of the food, and price others out of the market. Most of the rest of the world’s transportable resources are similarly priced by international markets, and that will not change anytime soon. Poorer countries will continue to have difficulty feeding their populations, since most are net importers of food despite the agricultural revolution of the past three decades. Rising populations in those countries will only make food and water problems worse.

Yes, overpopulation will keep looking like a problem to be solved by redistribution. However, large countries will only be focusing on the distribution of wealth within their countries, not on sending it away to other countries. And the overconsumption problem will only get worse if wealthy countries try to encourage larger families to prevent population decline.

It is even more utopian to simply say that overpopulation is just a temporary problem for future technologies to soon solve. Unless we are all uploaded into the super-computer Singularity within 50 years, there probably will not be a new power source capable of largely replacing the consumption of oil and gas and coal around the world within this century. And that power source won’t also be cleaning up the oceans and replacing all its fish, or replenishing lost soils, or moving fresh water between continents.

The bad news about overpopulation is that famine and malnutrition will remain a severe problem for the poor, and overconsumption by wealthy countries will make matters much worse. The worst degradations to the earth lie immediately ahead during this century, not the 22nd century. Humanists hoping for science’s rescue within this century will be largely disappointed. The planet is being consumed to death too quickly. And the richest countries are leading the way, as they always have.

What Does Humanism Have To Do With Overpopulation?

Humanism in general promises a universalizable social ethics for guiding humanity’s earthly welfare. Social structures such as economic and political systems must answer to this humanist social ethics.

More specifically, humanism stands for valuing life, human rights, justice for all, and government that promotes opportunity for everyone. Because humanism values life in all its diversity, humanistic environmentalism is not a contradiction is terms. Balancing human needs with environments is not a problem that humanism can avoid. There are varieties of humanism which can potentially accomplish this balance. But taking them seriously won’t happen until we realize how Enlightenment humanism is now hopelessly inadequate. It was designed for a phase of civilization that has passed into history and will not return.

Enlightenment humanism, roughly from John Locke to Jeremy Bentham, constructed the ideal liberal government for protecting the natural goodness of civil life. Enlightenment humanism prospered under European conditions of growing populations, increased productivity, and national prosperity. Enlightenment humanism fostered things like mercantile capitalism with its support for individual property rights, the right of labor to seek work wherever it can, capitalist markets liberated from feudal systems and protected by legal systems, and governments prioritizing the social welfare of their populations. The liberated individual was viewed as the warm engine of progress as well as the bright light of reason. Modern humanism inherited this liberal concern for valuing and protecting every person.

Ethics proposes ideals, but nature deals out its own reality. Ecology can predict what naturally happens when an omnivore species is fed enough and has no natural predators. A deliberate plan to let the earth overpopulate could not do better than apply selected ethical principles from Enlightenment humanism: individual human values are supreme; every human life is a life worth saving; after the right to life, property rights are paramount; having offspring is an exclusively parental matter; everyone should have an opportunity to raise their standard of living as high as they can; governments should deliver rising economic prosperity to the people, and the like.

Those 18th century humanist institutions mutated far beyond any foreseeable dimensions by the mid-20th century. As republican constitutionalism evolved into mass democracy, it transcended civic virtue and community values. Mass democracies demand that governments ensure ever higher standards of living, and voters punish governments for letting economies stumble. As capitalism grew into a global financial web with a life of its own, it also passed beyond humanistic control. Capitalism only needs selfishly rational producers and consumers to perpetuate itself, and immense financial powers try to control governments rather than the other way around. Just like individuals, countries will keep borrowing and amass huge debts just to maintain an expected standard of living. 

Both high-finance capitalism and mass democracy are excellent short-term deliberators: immediate conditions right now dominate thinking, and only the next few years, at most, are taken seriously. Immediate consumption is our obsession. The consequences for the planet are obvious.

Are there any new humanisms to help prevent those consequences from getting worse? Some varieties won’t do much at all. For example, there are plenty of personal humanists focused on their own lives, who are heard to say that humanism is just a lifestyle, and not something pointing to any specific political or global agenda. Lifestyle humanism takes for granted the Enlightenment framework of rights permitting their consumptive lifestyles.

Progressive humanists have a bigger agenda, by focusing on social and political reforms to expand domestic rights and liberties. Progressive humanism is also taking for granted the first-world context of abundant wealth and opportunity and just concerns itself with appropriate domestic distribution. The atheist agenda of resisting religion isn’t the solution to overpopulation or overconsumption, either. People leaving religion is not considered by demographers as a large effect on population changes. While highly secular countries saw fertility reductions sooner, their higher standards of living mostly accounts for this effect.  Almost all Catholic and Muslim countries now have dramatically falling fertility rates too. For example, Iran’s fertility rate dropped from around seven to 1.8 in the last thirty years.

These three sorts of humanisms that I have mentioned – lifestyle humanism, progressive humanism, and anti-religious atheism—are still moving on inertia remaining from Enlightenment humanism. None of them will be much use for dealing with overpopulation and overconsumption. They can even look pretty hypocritical if they try to tell the rest of the world how many babies to have. Humanists in rich countries offering their calculations about how poorer countries should limit their family sizes and energy consumption are not very different from global financiers dictating how poorer countries should run their economies. Who is really benefitting from poor countries restricting growth while wealthy countries can have whatever populations they want?

Is there anything salvageable in the humanist tradition to construct a planetary ethics that prioritizes global sustainability in a just manner? Enlightenment humanism was made obsolete when its core premise was proven wrong: that civil life is naturally good if it is sufficiently liberated, fed, productive, and protected. This premise had a built-in assumption – an unlimited amount of fresh natural resources. But the 20th century demonstrated how limited and fragile the planet’s ecological resources are. At a global scale, we have about reached that practical limit.

The liberation of civil life is not naturally good, not at a planetary scale with so great a human population. Ethical theory reminds us how our situation has become a tragedy of the commons. With everyone feeling free to take as much as they can for themselves, there will be little left for future generations.

Humanism must become ecological: its premises about what is good for human life must take into account the sciences telling us how excessive consuming populations burden and exhaust the planet. Ecological humanism is the great leap forward from Enlightenment humanism. We need more eco-humanism and less ego-humanism. Ecological humanism has an answer to that provocative question, who are the excess human beings? The humanist answer is that there are no excess human beings, but only excessive people not yet part of the ecological and sustainable future that the world deserves. Don’t look around elsewhere – look more closely at yourself.

Humanists are friends to all life. Humanism cannot approve of any policies that fail to take care of living people. Humanists are not Mathusians who disapprove of charity and food for the poor. Humanists are not social Darwinists who disapprove of lifting people out of ignorant poverty into educated productivity. Humanists are not anti-technology Luddites dreaming of some innocent natural utopia. Humanists will always favor helpful technological advances for humanity and they will always advocate educated productivity for everyone. Ecological humanism demands that consumers spend their money on things that do not destroy the environment and do help sustain the planet for the next century and beyond.

Wealthy countries do not have to abruptly slash their income or  of living so long as their productivity and consumption is far more sustainable and makes investments in the future. People should spend money on foods that do not deplete the soils, fresh waters, and oceans. People should spend for the consumption of renewable energy rather than fossil fuels. People should spend more on electronics and machinery that use energy efficiently rather than outdated machinery. People should spend far more on developing the new technologies that everyone on the planet can use without further damaging the environment. All that re-directed spending of wealth would make an enormous positive impact on the world. There’s no lack of labor or of wealth in an ecological economy. Its not wealth that’s the problem – it is how that wealth is created, and how that wealth is spent. There are many social agendas and political movements that offer green and sustainable paths for the planet into the future. Humanists should join these sorts of movements, whichever ones they judge are the most worthy.

I have no specific green platform to endorse. This essay is about humanism and overpopulation. Humanism offers a universalizable social ethics for guiding humanity’s earthly welfare. We need to worry less about raw numbers of populations and worry more about sustainable populations. If humanism can realize its pioneering vision of caring concern for all of humanity, dedication to equal opportunity for every person, and commitment to a world habitable for future generations, then it can evolve into a truly planetary humanism. If humanists today are a vital part of that social evolution, we may deserve posterity’s kind judgment upon us.

Below is a fascinating lecture about secularism by Professor Alan Dershowitz. 

His talk was given during a 2007 conference on “Secular Society and its Enemies” in New York City, organized by the Center for Inquiry.

Some highlights to watch for:

minutes 5-7—Dershowitz doesn’t equate secularism with civic condemnation or state persecution of religion, which would be counter-productive to secularism.

minutes 8-10—Dershowitz recounts how the Founders composed a godless Constitution.

minutes 18-22—Dershowitz describes how the 1796 Treaty of Tripoli declared that the U.S. is not founded on religion. Dershowitz calls this historic event the result of encountering “Islamic terrorism” in the form of the Barbary Pirates.

minutes 25-27—Dershowitz on the crucial Constitutional clause forbidding a religious test for office—it is “tragic” that a secularist couldn’t be elected Preisdent nowadays.

minutes 31-33—Dershowitz says that secular people must constantly challenge religion in politics and defend the Constitution with a mass movement. He warns: don’t trust the Courts, since Courts change over time.

minutes 44-46—Dershowitz urges mutual toleration between religious and secular people, rather than an open cultural war.

In this interview, Bellah discusses the origins of religion, and ways of understanding the religious-secular conflict today.

The first segment is below. The full interview is available here.