> Fixed ideas being challenged is exactly what science - not superstition - is all about.
Science isn't a political movement. Science can produce very reliable results if conducted efficiently, but it cannot get people to listen. That's the divide between science and politics.
> The same area of land, supporting increasingly larger and larger populations, demonstrates that in fact we can manage our population growth ...
Nonsense. It shows how biological colonies adopt increasingly clever ways to squeeze more sustenance out of the environment. All such efforts eventually collide with the real carrying capacity of the environment, a fact that we ignore at our peril.
> But what does your superstition have to do with this?
Biology is science, not superstition. The logistic function is science, not superstition. All these scientific results show the peril of ignoring the role of environment in survival.
> ... but the archeological record demonstrates that we are capable, as a species of dealing with this.
It does nothing of the kind. The archaeological record shows any number of examples of species being wiped out by changes in their environments. In one case, an environmental change wiped out 90% of all species on earth. Apparently those species weren't aware of your blithe dismissal of the role of environment in the equation of life.
> Remind me, with science: When were we humans last wiped out, again?
I bet you think there's no answer. But in fact, on at least one occasion in the past, human numbers dropped below 10,000 individuals, which means the fact that we still exist as a species can be attributed to chance, not destiny.
Quote: "The Toba catastrophe theory suggests that a bottleneck of the human population occurred c. 70,000 years ago, proposing that the human population was reduced to perhaps 10,000 individuals[3] when the Toba supervolcano in Indonesia erupted and triggered a major environmental change. The theory is based on geological evidences of sudden climate change and on coalescence evidences of some genes (including mitochondrial DNA, Y-chromosome and some nuclear genes)[4] and the relatively low level of genetic variation with humans."
I emphasize this is an example that we can establish by studying the human genome from relatively recent times. Farther in the past, the genetic record is less easy to read, but it's very likely that the Toba near-extinction is only one of many similar events.
There a much longer time when one could have said that about any of large number of other species than there has been when one could have said it about humans.
And its an invalid argument to make for the future prospects of any of them.
Science isn't a political movement. Science can produce very reliable results if conducted efficiently, but it cannot get people to listen. That's the divide between science and politics.
> The same area of land, supporting increasingly larger and larger populations, demonstrates that in fact we can manage our population growth ...
Nonsense. It shows how biological colonies adopt increasingly clever ways to squeeze more sustenance out of the environment. All such efforts eventually collide with the real carrying capacity of the environment, a fact that we ignore at our peril.
> But what does your superstition have to do with this?
Biology is science, not superstition. The logistic function is science, not superstition. All these scientific results show the peril of ignoring the role of environment in survival.
> ... but the archeological record demonstrates that we are capable, as a species of dealing with this.
It does nothing of the kind. The archaeological record shows any number of examples of species being wiped out by changes in their environments. In one case, an environmental change wiped out 90% of all species on earth. Apparently those species weren't aware of your blithe dismissal of the role of environment in the equation of life.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/16/science/meteorite-that-kil...