Top Scientist Advocates Genocide for 90% of World Population
By Shawn Carlson, Ph.D on 26 Aug 2007
"HIV is no good, it is too slow to control human populations. Ebola zaire has potential. It kills nine out of ten humans." In late 2006, the Texas Academy of Science chose to honor one Professor Eric R. Pianka, an eminent ecologist who studies desert ecologies, with its 2006 Distinguished Texas Scientist award. Professor Pianka used the occasion to champion the notion, apparently without sanction of the Academy, that the Earth can only be saved if ninety percent of the human beings alive today are purged from the planet. He championed airborne Ebola as the most efficient virus to accomplish this. And while he stopped short of calling for terrorist action to bring this result about, he clearly implied that this was a right and proper future for our species and our planet. Astonishingly, after advocating for a future in which more than 5,000,000,000 persons would die a slow and agonizing death, many members of the Texas Academy of Science stood to their feet and applauded.
I want to answer two questions here. Do academic institutions like the Texas Academy of Science have a duty to provide Professor Pianka a forum to advance these ideas? And what might the consequences be of allowing him to do so? My answer to the first question is a resounding "no." Furthermore, I am convinced that continuing to allow Professor Pianka unfettered access to impressionable students could one day lead to a loss of life that could make the Killing Fields of Southeast Asia look like a picnic ground.
Let me explain.
First, do Pianka's opinions deserve protection under the rubric of academic freedom? Well, that depends on whether this ideas are truly academic—that is, that they are consistent with the best understanding of our world that science has established.
Now consider Pianka's arguments.
Pianka claims that the natural world would be "better off" if there weren't so many humans. To see if that's true, we have to figure out just what constitutes the "natural world"? As an evolutionist, I see human beings as the products of the same natural forces that shaped all other life on earth. Our brains evolved on this planet subject to the same kinds of natural selection pressures as those that shaped peacock feathers. The same can be said of all of our social structures, our religions and every other aspect of what we are that helped us secure resources and propagate our species (the hammer and anvil of natural selection). In short, our institutions and our technology are every bit as much a part of the natural world as elk mating rituals and beaver dams. In fact, by evolving the ability to adapt the world to fit us , human beings have become better at securing resources and procreating than any other vertebrate on the planet. By this measure, we are evolution's most successful creation (amongst vertebrates). If extraterrestrials were asked to select nature's most successful vertebrate on the Earth they would certainly point to us.
http://news.iskcon.com/node/509
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"HIV is no good, it is too slow to control human populations. Ebola zaire has potential. It kills nine out of ten humans." In late 2006, the Texas Academy of Science chose to honor one Professor Eric R. Pianka, an eminent ecologist who studies desert ecologies, with its 2006 Distinguished Texas Scientist award. Professor Pianka used the occasion to champion the notion, apparently without sanction of the Academy, that the Earth can only be saved if ninety percent of the human beings alive today are purged from the planet. He championed airborne Ebola as the most efficient virus to accomplish this. And while he stopped short of calling for terrorist action to bring this result about, he clearly implied that this was a right and proper future for our species and our planet. Astonishingly, after advocating for a future in which more than 5,000,000,000 persons would die a slow and agonizing death, many members of the Texas Academy of Science stood to their feet and applauded.
I want to answer two questions here. Do academic institutions like the Texas Academy of Science have a duty to provide Professor Pianka a forum to advance these ideas? And what might the consequences be of allowing him to do so? My answer to the first question is a resounding "no." Furthermore, I am convinced that continuing to allow Professor Pianka unfettered access to impressionable students could one day lead to a loss of life that could make the Killing Fields of Southeast Asia look like a picnic ground.
Let me explain.
First, do Pianka's opinions deserve protection under the rubric of academic freedom? Well, that depends on whether this ideas are truly academic—that is, that they are consistent with the best understanding of our world that science has established.
Now consider Pianka's arguments.
Pianka claims that the natural world would be "better off" if there weren't so many humans. To see if that's true, we have to figure out just what constitutes the "natural world"? As an evolutionist, I see human beings as the products of the same natural forces that shaped all other life on earth. Our brains evolved on this planet subject to the same kinds of natural selection pressures as those that shaped peacock feathers. The same can be said of all of our social structures, our religions and every other aspect of what we are that helped us secure resources and propagate our species (the hammer and anvil of natural selection). In short, our institutions and our technology are every bit as much a part of the natural world as elk mating rituals and beaver dams. In fact, by evolving the ability to adapt the world to fit us , human beings have become better at securing resources and procreating than any other vertebrate on the planet. By this measure, we are evolution's most successful creation (amongst vertebrates). If extraterrestrials were asked to select nature's most successful vertebrate on the Earth they would certainly point to us.
http://news.iskcon.com/node/509
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