If Eva and I have twenty daughters and thirty sons and my children have twenty daughters and thirty sons and this pattern continues, then this luscious world God has given us will soon fill up. Could this planet possibly hold 15 billion [1] or maybe even 60 billion?
Before the Bad Time [Ge 3] we were pure. Could there be other worlds with pure people? Once we multiply and fill up the earth, where will we go? Could we live on the Moon? Terry, my pet pterodactyl, takes me up very high, but hardly any closer to the moon. Muh-Quamxcq has built amazing steam powered rockets. One day one of my children may build a contraption that can reach Mars based on the energy that powers the sun. Maybe future space travelers will go beyond the planets to other worlds to encounter pure ones.
Will there someday be the Lost in Space? If the Lost meet the pure ones, how will they react to each other? Could my fallen children cause the pure ones to lose their Edenic state? In the town of Goor-Gar they have built a high wall around the city to keep out ferocious dromaeosaurid theropod dinosaurs. In like manner, could there be a barrier around a pure planet to keep the Fallen Ones out?Would the reverse quarantine of pure planets be maintained by angels [Ge 3:24]? Or could a protective barrier be the creation of the pure ones themselves? Time will tell.
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… the interplanetary problem must be left on one side for the moment. The second problem is our rivals on this planet. I don’t mean only insects and bacteria. There’s far too much life of every kind about, animal and vegetable. We haven’t really cleared the place yet. First we couldn’t; and then we had aesthetic and humanitarian scruples; and we still haven’t short-circuited the question of the balance of nature. All that is to be gone into. The third problem is Man himself. --- Feverstone in That Hideous Strength (scifi) by C. S. Lewis
There is presumably an upper limit to the carrying capacity of humans on earth - of the numbers that agriculture can support - and that number is usually estimated at between 13-15 billion, though some people think the ultimate numbers might be much higher --- Niles Eldredge (of Punctuated Equilibrium fame) [2]
Writing in the Spiritual Counterfeits Project Journal, David Fetcho comments:
Notes:
1) “Science Will Solve the Population Problem” by Nicholas Eberstadt in Population ed. by Karen Balkin, (Thomson Gale, Detroit, MI, 2005), p. 35.
2) “Overpopulation Could Lead to Humanity’s Extinction” by Niles Eldredge in Population ed. by Karen Balkin, (Thomson Gale, Detroit, MI, 2005), p. 76.
…we can only speculate about what the destiny of an unfallen humanity might have been . . . If sin had not entered, and with it death, then obedience to the command to multiply would very quickly have filled the planet earth with an exponentially exploding population of immortals. Was humankind's benevolent subjection of the planet Earth but the first intended step in a plan that would eventually encompass galaxies? [3]
Notes:
1) “Science Will Solve the Population Problem” by Nicholas Eberstadt in Population ed. by Karen Balkin, (Thomson Gale, Detroit, MI, 2005), p. 35.
2) “Overpopulation Could Lead to Humanity’s Extinction” by Niles Eldredge in Population ed. by Karen Balkin, (Thomson Gale, Detroit, MI, 2005), p. 76.
3) quoted in “Defense of Copernicus” by Jay Hall (letter), Creation Research Society Quarterly, Vol. 19, No. 1, p. 80.
