The Duggers and Overpopulation

The news is out that Jim Bob and Michelle Dugger are having another child, their 19th. Yes you read correctly, 19 children and their oldest son's wife is expecting their first child. Let us all pray that he follows in his parents footsteps, by having as many children and being as prosperous as his parents. I have heard many people ask the question, "Are they keeping up the household without being on the government dole?" The answer to that question would be that they have never received a dime of taxpayer's money. That is not how they operate. In fact the Duggers run a their own ,business which teaches people how to budget and save by buying only what you can afford among other businesses they own and operate. They built their own home themselves, and had it paid for before it was finished. Right about now many liberals are screaming that the world is already overpopulated and this couple are just adding to the problem. Overpopulated? Is it really?



When it comes to having children, most Christians understand that the Lord opens and closes a woman's womb, and it has been that way from the beginning of time. However, mankind has tried to control that which God said is in His control. The first commandment given to man was, “Be fruitful and multiply Gen 1:22”, and He re-iterated that command again after the Flood when he told Noah, “Be fruitful and multiply Gen 9:7”. Try as I may, I have yet to find any passages where God rescinded that command. What He does tell us, is that if we put our faith in Him, He will supply our needs. Something the Duggers have proved time and time again.

However, the world we live in today is dominated by societies that worship the creation over the creator, and thus we hear the constant complaints from the "World is Overpopulated" crowd. Even in the church you will find that many Christians have very little faith in God's ability to supply their needs.

The average family in America has two point five children that consists of one boy and one girl and the statistics do not differ in the families that frequent church. Even in the families that diligently attend church more than once a week reflect the national average of 2.5 children per household. For over 40 years Americans have been bombarded with the idea that humans will overpopulate the planet if we do not limit the number of children being born every year. We have been told time and time again that if we do not control the number of humans who live on this planet that,

“it will be done for us by nature, brutally, without pity, and it will leave a ravaged world.” World Population Awareness Nobel Laureate Dr. Henry W. Kendall

As of 2 September 2009, the Earth's population is estimated by the United States Census Bureau to be 6.781 billion. That is a lot of people, and the earth worshipers believe that number is way too high for the planet to properly sustain life. Sadly, very few people realize how preposterous the idea of mankind overpopulating the earth really is. If you take into consideration the latest figures that shows the average human family contains a Mother a Father and 2.5 children, than you will be surprised to learn that the world's population would fit comfortably inside the borders of the country of Australia.

By calculating the number of acres just in Australia alone, you may be shocked at how very unpopulated the earth really is. There are 1,899,461,760 acres of land in the continent of Australia. At 43,560 square feet per acre, that means there is a grand total of 82,740,554,265,600 square feet in Australia. Now, consider that the latest figures for the estimated size of an average family lot with a 2,200 square foot house in the year 2010 will be 11,870 square feet. Now if we calculate the size of the average human family which is 4.5 humans, you will see that every family could actually have a house with a lot size of 54,908 square feet, which is about 4½ times the size that your local city planning commission will allow you to have. That my friends, would leave the rest of the world for food production and other raw material collection.

Now these numbers get even better when you factor in the new technology we have that would allow for super high density populations, such as 1000+ unit apartment complexes. Then when you take into account the portion of the world's population that is under the age of 18. You could probably give a couple acres to each family of the entire world and comfortably fit them all in Australia. Also, Australia is the smallest continent on the planet, whereas Asia has 477,820,303,488,000 sq/ft and Africa has 32,554,273,973,760 sq/ft. Finally, if you took the amount of habitable land in the world 1,449,676,800,000,000 sq/ft and divided it by the world's population, you could theoretically give each person, regardless of age, 213,785 square feet of land, which would be about 4.9 acres per person.

No my friends, this planet is a very, very long way from being overpopulated. As a matter of fact, we could use more Christian families like the Duggers, who decided to follow God's first commandment by being fruitful and multiplying.