Future Breed Machine

I don't know if the Duggars are living up to the true definition of "cult", since they don't seem to do much proselytizing. Of course, they have their reality show to do that for them, not to mention the circuit of mindless network morning shows every time the missus gets knocked up.

Regardless, the "religious" "discussion" about them bores the hell out of me, personally, and is a complete non-starter. Supposedly the kids are generally polite and well-adjusted, the family cares for one another, and unless there's some contravening evidence, it's hard to completely dump on that aspect of it, as creepy and obnoxious as the annual visits to the World's Busiest Womb have become.

But yes, in terms of religiosity, the Duggars merely represent the turgid, entirely predictable apotheosis of the dispensationalist belief in divine providence, in spite of all evidence to the contrary. As most such families can attest, it helps if you never leave the compound.

The idea that a small sliver of a country, one that is only 5% of the world's population to begin with, can eventually outbreed the other half of the world through dogged determination and annual pregnancies is almost charming in its mathematical hilarity. It doesn't help that the Duggars attribute beginning their long, strange trip as a result of, ahem, birth control (or more accurately, a miscarriage supposedly caused by birth control).

Anyway, here's the point (and I do have one): what's true in Bangladesh is true in Arkansas, or Nigeria, or New York City -- the key to alleviating poverty (material and intellectual) revolves more around empowering women, educating them and giving them real freedom in employment and reproductive rights, than any other single controllable factor.

The planet is exhausted and overcrowded, in the midst of a mass unprecedented extinction of mammalian species, methane pockets warming and jellyfish swarming the oceans, etc. It's entirely preventable, and it's just unconscionable that people resort to outdated mysticism of any stripe to justify adding to the problem.