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Population growth

 

During the last 4,000 years or so the human population of the planet is thought to have been relatively stable at between a quarter and half a billion people.  For the preceding 70,000 years the population was considerably smaller.   Someone who believed in reincarnation could then reasonably believe the soul passed from one person to another as one died and another was born.  But in the last hundred years the population has grown exponentially.  There are now (2015) 7.3 billion people still alive and this number is likely to reach 11 billion before stabilising. 

 

 another one
In this cartoon from 1964 the US population is shown as 192,512,078. By the end of 2015 this had risen to 322,354,800.

 

In 2015 there were an estimated 57 million deaths worldwide.  This equates to around 156 thousand a day.

Anthropologists now estimate that since modern humans emerged, between 90 and 110 billion of us are already dead. 

As God was rather tardy in sending his Son to save the sinners, the great majority of these people lived and died without the benefit or knowledge of Christian salvation.

But the book of Revelations suggests that at the day of judgement there will be 144,000 souls in heaven (Rev 7:4-8 ‘And I heard the number of those who were sealed, one hundred and forty-four thousand sealed from every tribe of the sons of Israel’).

This falls somewhat short of the 100 billion souls that God has reputedly handed out in the past and is exceeded every day by the present daily death rate.

While it says nothing about the possibility of an immortal soul of a Buddhist or eastern variety, it puts a fairly large hole in the orthodox Christian conception. 

Even if it was argued that only the purest, confessing Christians, are filtered from this large number for salvation, it suggests extremely poor-quality-control by God, who casts into oblivion thousands of millions of souls that He, somewhat frivolously created, before sending his son to redeem them, to say nothing of sincere believers in other religions. 

But then, the book of Revelations is regarded as apocryphal by the Eastern Church and many theologians. 

 

 

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Travel

Southern England

 

 

 

In mid July 2016 Wendy and I took flight again to Europe.  Those who follow these travel diaries will note that part of out trip last year was cut when Wendy's mum took ill.  In particular we missed out on a planned trip to Romania and eastern Germany.  This time our British sojourn would be interrupted for a few days by a side-trip to Copenhagen and Roskilde in Denmark.

Read more: Southern England

Fiction, Recollections & News

Electricity Shocks

 

 

 

I've always thought that would be a good headline. 

Now that I have your attention I have to report that Emily McKie, my daughter, is the author of a new e-book on Smart Grid technology in her sustainable cities series.

 

 

 

Read more: Electricity Shocks

Opinions and Philosophy

The demise of books and newspapers

 

 

Most commentators expect that traditional print media will be replaced in the very near future by electronic devices similar to the Kindle, pads and phones.  Some believe, as a consequence, that the very utility of traditional books and media will change irrevocably as our ability to appreciate them changes.  At least one of them is profoundly unsettled by this prospect; that he argues is already under way. 

Read more: The demise of books and newspapers

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