Yabby,

How much family planning information does any sane and mildly intelligent person need, if they're really serious about limiting their family size? It's not rocket science after all. A large part of the Phillipines is not all that backward in any case, and there has been much Western influence in addition to that emanating from the Christian church. From all accounts Manila itself is not exactly as pure as the driven snow, so conformity with Christian doctrine may not generally be as fervent as you indicate. It would appear that other factors are at play. People can make all sorts of excuses when they are trying to avoid facing up to the truth.

Is Portugal, another significantly Catholic society, also suffering from overpopulation or population explosion?

I don't see why you are so down on the Catholic Church. Ok, the church has assets, but it is these which enable the church to do charitable and other worthwhile works, and to dissipate those assets could only act to limit the scope of those works, and that would be counterproductive. Also, there are many other church and NGO organisations endeavouring to relieve the situation of the poor and needy, but we know that whatever they do it will never be enough until population equates with available resources. How could anyone contend in all honesty that these churches and NGO's could be equally culpable with Western decadence and insatiability for the plight of the poor and needy? Credit where it's due, and blame where it rightly belongs.

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1812250,00.html

Ah Salpetre, lucky you that its not your kids scrounging on those
Phillipines rubbish tips, you too poor to afford contraception.

The Catholic Church should be ashamed of itself.

Dear Poirot,

"Your brain can conceive the entity of "God" because..."

My brain does not conceive anything - it merely passes chemical and electrical impulses.

"we are the physical, psychological, behavioural and social products of our particular evolutionary path."

With due respect, we are not.

Though we wear, this physical/psychological/behavioural/whatever body for a time and use it to observe and act in the world, we are not it.

"you fail to perceive that man as he has developed, is the product of an evolutionary chain from his beginnings as a ranging plains hunter..."

So far so good, man is mainly carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, sulfur, sodium, potassium, magnesium and phosphorus, with smaller quantities of most other elements, but all this is only about the vehicle that we currently use, not about us.

We've been here before, Yuyutsu.

"My brain does not conceive anything..."

Your brain decodes sensory input arriving in the form of impulses - and whether you believe it or not - animates you with responsive thought and action.

...or did you not purposely press your fingers upon the keyboard under instruction from your brain to transmit the thoughts conceived in your mind to post your last comments?

Your brain conceived the thoughts that comprised your last post in response to my previous one.

"...we are not it."

Your opinion, nothing more.

You do come up with some inane replies.

Dear Poirot,

If a tree falls in a forest with no one to notice - does it matter?

Yes, the brain decodes sensory input and animates my body, often even without my knowledge. It is quite good at that. The brain also prepares material for thoughts, but where there is no thinker there is no thinking, only computation.

BTW, how is this related to the topic?

Entirely relevant I'd suggest, Yuyutsu.

>>BTW, how is this related to the topic?<<

You have distilled the essence of "being" into a series of independent chemical reactions.

>>My brain does not conceive anything - it merely passes chemical and electrical impulses... man is mainly carbon, oxygen, hydrogen...etc etc<<

Conscience, along with consciousness and rationalization, can only be some form of operating system that manages those "chemical and electrical impulses". Otherwise we would all function at a very similar level to each other. Ants, I suspect, would be a good example of communal behaviour that is primarily chemically-driven, whereas more developed forms of animal life exhibit greater individual control over those impulses.

At the level to which we humans have evolved, the concepts of morality and ethics have developed to a greater degree, thanks to the emergence of a consciousness, that itself evolved further into a conscience. So the question of "what can we conceive with our brains" lies at the very heart of this discussion, I would have thought.