The last sentence in my paragraph that you bolded says almost precisely what you are allowing right now. If you say my logic breaks down at that point I am willing to substitute any logic that you may come up with to make that same assertion at that point in my argument.
The above is a further repetition of my argument in that the right to life entails a responsibility not to defile the environment.
I may have reached a similar conclusion but the manner of reaching it is material here. It is meaningless to say that moral human behavior consists of instantiating the essence of something not human.
You have not followed through to address the final question: How can equilibrium of global population be maintained when the environment reaches exhaustion of it's resources?
If I have misapprehended the question, that's because I don't see its relevance. What you're asking is a technical question, not a moral one.
I suppose the next thing you're going to ask me is how can I reconcile a high death rate brought about the presumption that life will continue under present conditions. That, to me, is a consequentialist question; I reject the logic of it. Morality is not determined by the outcome of an act.
At any rate, there will be a gradual winding-down of resource availability with attendant rise in commodity prices. As this happens, two outcomes are likely: either we return to an essentially pre-industrial time over the course of several generations as natural resources become increasingly more difficult to extract, or we develop new resources. If the latter, we have nothing to be concerned about. If the former, then the gradual quality of resource depletion will result not in mass die-offs but in a decrease in standard of living, which, under natural law, would logically force a decrease in the acceptable number of children per couple.
Wouldn't it be more moral to prevent pregnancies and prevent births than to let babies and young children die in infancy?
No, because the morality of an act is not determined by the outcome. Good intentions and good outcomes can only justify, at best, morally neutral acts.
What you're proposing is consequentialism in its rankest form; it's borderline Satanic. There is no limit to the horrors you can justify in the name of maximizing value. If you think God is a utilitarian, it's no wonder you left the Church -- you clearly have no business being in it.
Right on!
A large part of Catholic theological theory embraces natural law. Natural law dates back to Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas, circa 1250, did not have the same population or resource problems as we do today. In science, when a theory shows faults, the system is investigated for potential changes. These changes have happened countless times over the centuries. However, theology apparently lives in the past, and they are still preserving moral theory that has been seriously outdated.
That's because human morality derives from human nature, which is relatively constant, not from peculiar circumstances of the time or culture.
Hey, you really nailed this guy:
It is not as absurd as you suggest. As I mentioned previously, there is no limit to the horrors that can be justified under consequentialist thinking, so long as the outcome produces something of marginally greater value.
