The NXR Podcast - THE LIVESTREAM - Be Fruitful or Be Forgotten： Why the West Doesn’t Want Children

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00:00:26.800 last year south korea hit a record fertility rate of just 0.72 the lowest ever recorded

00:00:37.040 in the world meanwhile in the u.s for the first time in history women over 40 are having more

00:00:44.280 children than teenagers global population growth isn't just slowing in some places it's collapsing

00:00:51.680 and no one seems to know how to stop it from Beijing to Budapest to Boston birth rates are

00:00:59.360 in free fall governments have tried cash bonuses tax breaks and even subsidized minivans but none

00:01:06.780 of it is working secular progressives cheer the decline claiming that it means liberation for

00:01:12.560 women and fewer carbon footprints meanwhile conservatives raise alarms arguing that

00:01:18.880 civilizational continuity is impossible without children beneath it all lies a deeper conflict

00:01:25.780 between a culture that celebrates self and one that honors sacrifice population collapse isn't

00:01:32.860 just an economic or political problem it's a theological one a culture that abandons marriage

00:01:39.520 motherhood and the moral imagination required for building homes and futures is a culture that has

00:01:46.600 already chosen death. No nation survives long when it forgets how to make families. And unless 0.97

00:01:53.740 the West recovers its love for life, ordered, fruitful, and future-facing, then it will not

00:02:00.460 recover at all. This episode is brought to you by our premier sponsors, Armored Republic and

00:02:07.840 Reese Fund, as well as our Patreon members and our faithful donors. You can join our Patreon by

00:02:14.240 going to patreon.com forward slash right response ministries or you can donate by going to right

00:02:22.360 response ministries.com forward slash donate today we'll break down the fertility crisis

00:02:29.620 what's causing it why conventional solutions aren't working and what a christian response

00:02:35.500 must look like so let's dive in

00:02:44.240 all right ga welcome back we're glad to see you guys it is wednesday we have the one the only

00:02:53.120 michael belch back in the studio glad to be back yeah his voice is going to be maybe a little rough

00:02:58.040 yeah it was a long weekend yeah i think that was your first sick day in about a year and a half so

00:03:01.880 you get one i'll take it any but you get one he earned it um we we did a zoom meeting uh two nights

00:03:10.080 ago and uh your voice was pretty rough it was pretty bad so you're already substantially better

00:03:14.800 um i saw somebody on x again today this i mean it's almost a daily experience at this point but

00:03:21.200 uh uh saying you know what is a nation what is a nation and i just thought you know we should

00:03:26.100 we should continue to plug your book do you want to just real quick tell people uh the title where

00:03:31.080 they can get it yes i can answer that question in about 500 pages uh sure uh yeah the book uh

00:03:38.480 in defense of christian nations and you can just find it on amazon under that title and it's

00:03:43.680 available in paperback hardback and kindle versions right christian nationalism is important

00:03:48.640 but um but it assumes uh in some sense that we know what a nation is which usually i mean most

00:03:55.120 of human history would probably be a safe assumption you know what is a nation uh just

00:03:59.980 like what is a woman would probably be a safe assumption you know but uh when you enter into 0.52

00:04:05.200 20th century liberalism and ridiculous you know modernists that uh that are basically just

00:04:11.380 scrutinizing and questioning everything then you actually have to say well uh here's the 0.76

00:04:16.300 definition of a woman and here's the definition of a nation and so you can't have christian

00:04:21.300 nationalism if you don't have nations um and so michael does a great job in attempting to answer

00:04:27.000 that question what is a nation from a biblical um from a biblical premise all right so michael

00:04:32.580 why don't you just frame out our topic for today? Absolutely. So we are going to be talking about

00:04:37.620 the fertility crisis, the population, global population decline, which actually is somewhat

00:04:45.460 of a misnomer because there are places in the world where people are reproducing at a high rate.

00:04:51.500 And so while much of the West and developed nations like Japan and China, China's probably

00:04:58.440 not quite developed are in population decline there are some predictions that say we're going

00:05:03.560 to be at 10 billion globally by the year 2070 for instance and so there are places in the world

00:05:09.500 africa southeast asia the middle east where population rates are higher birth rates are

00:05:15.200 higher and fertility rates are higher and it's going to be producing i mean according to our

00:05:19.460 best guesses a net increase globally but our concern is that the civilization that we are

00:05:26.760 part of Western civilization, is on a drastic downward trend with its fertility rates.

00:05:32.220 And so that's what we're going to talk about today.

00:05:35.260 What I want to do to kind of set the stage is just go over some of the facts, some of

00:05:39.920 the statistics, some of the quotes, because there is a branch of liberal political perspective

00:05:48.400 out there that says two things.

00:05:49.920 It says, number one, it doesn't matter if global population is, or if Western population

00:05:59.520 is going down because global population is going up.

00:06:02.880 So the net is that the earth is going to be more populated.

00:06:06.020 This is not a concern in any way.

00:06:08.280 The second perspective is actually, this is good that the population is going down.

00:06:14.360 In fact, we have too many people as it is.

00:06:17.380 And if the population of the Earth were a few less billion people, then that would be actually better in the long run anyway. 0.87

00:06:25.100 And so there are people who argue either that the global population isn't shrinking, which in a sense is true because of the third world nations that are increasing, or that argue it is shrinking and this is a good thing.

00:06:40.200 We just need to manage the decline of the West and of the huge populations that we have in the West.

00:06:47.380 So just to establish some facts, even though this is pretty well established, I was surprised doing the research that there are people who say it's just scaremongering, right?

00:06:57.960 It's just it's just scaremongering.

00:06:59.460 It's just an attempt to scare people into having lots of kids or being conservative or things like that.

00:07:07.400 So we want to tackle that head on and just show that this is, in fact, not only a global problem, but a Western problem as well.

00:07:13.940 So here are a couple stats and statistics.

00:07:16.280 Global average, this is going to be something that shows up on the graphs, the TFR, which is the total fertility rate.

00:07:24.080 The global total fertility rate has declined from 5.3 in 1963 to 2.2 in 2023.

00:07:32.020 In other words, that means, on average, families were having 5.3 kids globally in 1960, 1963.

00:07:40.780 Now, even globally, it's 2.2 kids per family globally.

00:07:45.020 isn't that by women even more specifically than family i'm not sure it might be some of the

00:07:50.540 statistics broke it down by women and some of them yeah so i'm not sure i don't remember yep

00:07:56.220 um africa africa remains the region with the highest fertility rate averaging still

00:08:01.420 in 2024 4.1 oh you're here you are west 4.1 children per woman in 2024

00:08:07.340 east asia is some of the lowest countries like south korea have some of the lowest fertility

00:08:12.660 rates with south korea's total fertility rate at 0.72 in 2023 0.72 so south korea is in trouble

00:08:21.440 which is sad to me because a number of years ago i remember a lot of missions agencies

00:08:24.500 really touting how christian south korea was it was at 60 or 70 percent at one point

00:08:30.400 and you would think that a nation that has been one with the gospel would also have been one with

00:08:36.660 the dominion mandate and the creation mandate to be fruitful and to multiply so well sadly i think

00:08:41.700 you know christianity um chrissdom leads towards uh prosperity and opulence blessing and then

00:08:49.500 blessing uh if not stewarded well um lends towards uh being over list uh overly altruistic

00:08:57.780 and um and and in addition to that also it's it's kind of seems like um a bit of an oxymoron but

00:09:05.700 on the one hand overly uh altruistic on the other hand um self-centered and you know like so like

00:09:11.960 hoarding blessing just you know convenience thinking about yourself like it in some sense

00:09:16.500 it feels like like nations that have been particularly christianized um have like the

00:09:21.860 lowest birth rate and i think part of it is there's a lot of factors but i think part of it is because

00:09:26.600 they've reaped a lot of blessing and there's a lot of statistics about like just economic classes

00:09:31.580 and like the rich don't have kids right they don't like it's the poorest of the poor that

00:09:36.140 keep having unless you're the elon musk type rich and you know andrew tate you know like

00:09:40.340 right but they don't but but in that case they don't typically raise their kids they have them

00:09:45.180 um they're somewhere out there yeah but they're not necessarily involved and so so my point is

00:09:50.260 that like christian nations are blessed by god and tend to be um opulent um you know nations

00:09:55.040 blessed nations prosperous nations but then those nations that tend to be rich uh tend to um to

00:10:02.980 mitigate uh childbearing um the the most and i think part of it because of um just becoming

00:10:10.820 selfish uh by their own riches by their own um opulence their own blessing and then at the same

00:10:16.920 time i think also um in in the name of you know christian charity but misguided they become overly

00:10:23.700 altruistic to all the other nations of the world they open up their borders and they have you know

00:10:28.000 full-blown invasions of third worlders um and then they feel as though they don't actually 0.96

00:10:33.420 their children don't actually have a future and so they're not particularly um bullish on uh on 0.96

00:10:39.460 like hey we're gonna have eight kids you know and and and they're gonna do great you know the future

00:10:44.260 is bright like right now like for a lot of the west the future is not bright it's bleak um the

00:10:51.080 future is uh it looks like if you're in european certain european countries like england the the 1.00

00:10:56.980 future is not bright is is it's islamic that's that's the future and in that context the burqa 0.98

00:11:03.440 yeah right yeah literally dark yeah it's not bright it's literally dark there is a moon though 1.00

00:11:07.900 crescent yeah a little a sliver of brightness uh the brightness of allah who um who is a false

00:11:15.400 demon god so it's not great you know it's not great and so south so i say all that because

00:11:20.400 your comment about south korea it actually doesn't surprise me i know it's counterintuitive it's not

00:11:24.900 what christianity purports not in the genuine authentic sense it goes completely against what

00:11:29.920 the bible actually promotes and the dominion mandate and all these things uh but but so much

00:11:34.660 of christianity today in first world nations particularly is 20th century liberalism walking

00:11:41.060 around in a christian skin suit it is not historic christianity it bears uh hardly any resemblance to 0.84

00:11:47.400 historic christianity it's just gay race communism it's uh invite the world um it's it's uh just uh 0.98

00:11:55.800 suicidal it it has it's lost the will um to excellence and to survival and to greatness 0.99

00:12:02.640 and uh and so nations like that first world nations that have been christianized i almost

00:12:08.120 feel like we could probably draw a direct correlation to the more christian the nation is

00:12:12.580 um the uh the lower the birth rate and now but with the caveat of um the more christian the

00:12:18.880 nation is in first world countries because that wouldn't be true of some nations that are you know

00:12:24.600 are really becoming christianized in sub-saharan africa where the birth rate is probably still

00:12:30.320 very high well i remember ravi zacharias once pointed out that suicide is really only the

00:12:37.960 privilege of developed nations you do not have people in third world countries committing suicide

00:12:44.720 and his point was nihilism is the privilege of the rich and um somewhere along the line the

00:12:51.120 christian message and has to deal with the opulence that we've created with so-called

00:12:57.400 developed nations and that is really a serious hurdle where when you're nihilistic about the

00:13:04.620 future because comfort breeds that sense of um there's no meaning in life because you've had

00:13:10.920 everything and there's nothing that you're striving for pushing for everything has let you down

00:13:15.120 um and so apart from a true christian view of the world and life just the opulence that has

00:13:22.880 been produced by the blessings of christianity like you say joel that will tend to make people

00:13:28.020 want to give up yeah yeah and being unrooted deracinated so you live all these different

00:13:33.500 places so much of for example europe you would grow up in a town you'd have the church there

00:13:38.140 that your father attended your grandfather attended the cemetery and you saw yourself in

00:13:42.100 much more of a continuity that i'm a link in the chain from the past to the future and i have a

00:13:46.920 duty to do but when you have people that just they're cosmopolitan they live everywhere you

00:13:51.520 know what is my duty and then of course they don't see themselves as having a burden and

00:13:56.260 responsibility to the future it's well what do i want to do honor for our fathers hope for the

00:14:00.940 future those are intrinsically linked together um a a generation that has been taught um that

00:14:09.120 their fathers are a bunch of racists and they're not worthy of honor at all that's right um is

00:14:13.640 usually not going to be a future-oriented nation if you sever people from their past like what you 0.98

00:14:18.120 said uh was deracinated people if you sever them from their past honor for the past honor for

00:14:23.700 fathers and hope for the future. I don't really know cultures, any culture that has no honor for

00:14:32.720 their fathers, but has all of this ambitious hope for the future. So if you can sever people from

00:14:38.440 the past or get them, better yet, get them to actually hate their past, to feel a sense of

00:14:44.100 guilt and shame for their past, to dishonor their fathers, then they're not going to be

00:14:50.760 probably a future oriented people you know and like i saw an x just the other day somebody posted

00:14:56.860 you know um a picture of this couple you know that made the news of having like um a farm in

00:15:03.180 an estate and it was and it was sizable uh that had been in their family for 25 generations

00:15:08.700 and uh and they're british right they're british of course classic you know so that they're they're

00:15:14.400 you know your classic christianized white westerners um in in europe of course uh england

00:15:20.100 no less and they're sitting on the couch and they're smiling as they're being interviewed

00:15:23.700 and they say uh you know it's uh the estate has been in our family for 25 years and we're

00:15:28.100 25 generations 25 yeah generations i'm sorry and we're selling it wow and uh and that i mean that's

00:15:34.840 like that's kind of your quintessential boomer like there are exceptions like i'm not saying

00:15:40.260 that every boomer is terrible there are godly boomers but um but you can uh you can look to a

00:15:46.260 generation and say on the whole right speaking in generalities this generation is known for x y and

00:15:51.700 z and i'm fine with that and it's not just to pick on boomer like if people want to say

00:15:54.780 in general um millennials are uh limp-wristed overly sensitive uh pc to the max politically

00:16:03.960 correct you know like then then uh then i would say uh yeah that's that is a generally true

00:16:09.500 statement uh millennials were the participation trophy you know generation you know uh however

00:16:15.720 um millennials did not go to the store and purchase those participation trophies for themselves

00:16:22.240 boomers so so i you know so i think every generation you can do this with nations with

00:16:28.480 people right you can say well this particular um uh people group um has these strengths in a general

00:16:34.660 sense and these weaknesses in a general sense um i would say europe like white westerners in a

00:16:41.020 general sense not each and every individual but in a general sense i would say are gullible 0.86

00:16:45.840 cowardly and and suicidal right they're kind of content for their entire civilization to end with

00:16:57.100 their generation so you could say that about a particular people you can also say it about a 0.82

00:17:01.040 generation and my only point bringing up the boomers is when i think of that severing from

00:17:06.680 honoring fathers and and that that being linked honor for fathers being linked to hope for future

00:17:12.440 um i don't know in any generation you know that um that worked harder to sever honor for fathers

00:17:19.660 than the boomers the boomers i even you know even just speaking theologically in seminaries

00:17:25.040 like they i mean they were the generation of of critical analysis of the text and questioning

00:17:30.540 everything do we really are we sure there's really a virgin birth probably not you know

00:17:34.880 was it really a bodily resurrection probably not do we know that these 66 books of the bible are 0.97

00:17:39.820 actually you know infallible and inspired probably not you know like i mean the boomers like they

00:17:45.020 took a thousand years of chrysidom and questioned all of it and and just lined it up on a wall got 0.56

00:17:52.320 a firing squad shot a million holes in it and uh and then you know and then said what's happening 0.58

00:17:58.260 to our country well i mean they were a product of the post-modern perspective you know as much

00:18:06.880 as the academia was like the post-modern pill was was really really devastating in that sense of

00:18:13.900 like there's no meta there's no narrative there's nothing we can trust um yeah that's true and a lot

00:18:20.280 of that was started like in the 1920s yeah there was a lot of critical analysis towards theology

00:18:27.020 towards inerrancy and those kinds of things that that is true that that did actually start

00:18:30.960 um a little bit sooner even pre-world war uh two oh german rationalism like even machen in his time

00:18:37.140 was going over and really confronted back and forth like i don't know this higher german it

00:18:41.500 was liberal theology this higher german rationalism is pretty compelling they did a number

00:18:45.840 yeah yeah all right let me hit a couple graphs here before we go to our first break um so nate

00:18:51.260 this is image one. So this is specifically focusing on Europe, Europe, Europe's fertility

00:18:56.760 problem. So the dots on the screen, the one that's open is 2011. The one that's filled is 2021. And

00:19:05.580 so this is just showing the average number of live births per women, per woman in the European

00:19:10.720 countries in 2011 and 2021. And so there are a few countries where it has increased.

00:19:16.520 um czechia yep uh czechia or czechoslovakia has increased but in a lot of european countries

00:19:25.280 the number has dropped quite drastically yeah thanks nate for zooming in there um go to the

00:19:30.960 next one this is a forecast so you know i was gonna say to be fair to germany czechoslovakia

00:19:35.940 that doesn't necessarily who is having more children so just you read that and like no

00:19:41.020 that is germany's on the up germany's on the up and up that's you know like uh the muslims that 0.97

00:19:46.680 came into germany in the last 10 years are having a lot of kids this is this is 100 true yep yep 0.98

00:19:51.520 this is a prediction of by 2050 the european countries well not just european but a lot of 0.72

00:19:58.400 them are european countries what their population increase or decrease will be and in this case

00:20:02.780 the percentage that you see on the right is not an increase it's a decrease there's a lot of

00:20:07.260 european countries bulgaria lithuania latvia even ukraine right about there serbia almost there

00:20:12.680 where the prediction is that by 2050 they will have lost about 20 percent of their population

00:20:18.380 simply because of their fertility rate when did when was this done this study

00:20:23.940 because i'm wondering list like when you put your ukraine i want to say 2022 or 2021 i bet

00:20:32.660 So Ukraine is far worse now. 0.92

00:20:34.540 Yeah, I'm sure it probably is worse now.

00:20:35.880 After three years of being ravaged by war, 0.95

00:20:38.080 it's like, who are these women going to marry? 0.98

00:20:39.740 Yeah. 0.87

00:20:40.260 When Zelensky gave all the sons of Ukraine- 0.99

00:20:44.220 Immigrants. 1.00

00:20:45.060 To die. 1.00

00:20:45.820 Yeah, they're going to marry immigrants. 1.00

00:20:46.760 But you see some developed nations, Japan, 0.98

00:20:49.400 they're expected to be 16.3% lower.

00:20:52.700 Italy, 10% lower.

00:20:54.820 Portugal, 11% lower. 0.99

00:20:57.160 Even Poland, which is a Catholic country

00:21:00.320 and has publicly said, you know, Christ is our king, they're pretty low.

00:21:06.940 Hungary, Viktor Orban.

00:21:08.340 Yep, Hungary, Viktor Orban.

00:21:09.500 Yep, absolutely.

00:21:10.240 Same thing around the decline as well.

00:21:11.500 And those countries too, I know for Poland and Hungary,

00:21:13.840 they have pulled out all stops to try to actually fix this.

00:21:17.080 I don't want to jump ahead of you.

00:21:18.060 No, go ahead. 1.00

00:21:18.360 But don't be looking at them and like Poland's like, hmm, these are fallen. 1.00

00:21:21.100 I wonder if they'll reverse. 0.80

00:21:22.340 South Korea has been trying for decades to fix their problem, not been able to do it.

00:21:27.040 Poland and Hungary, pro-family policies, all these different things.

00:21:29.800 they haven't made a dent like those trends are still in place yep it's been the same in the u.s

00:21:34.260 so let's hit one more graph before our break uh nate this is image three so this is trends in u.s

00:21:39.620 birth rates and this is from 1980 through 2020 and you see 2007 2008 there's a steep decline and it

00:21:47.800 has not maybe right in 2014 or so there was a slight upward trend but it has just continued

00:21:54.300 to drop and i have a quote from the article that this came from um this says um commenting

00:22:03.040 specifically on this phenomenon on it starting in 2008 the theory was for a long time that it

00:22:08.120 was related to the housing crash in 2008 and discouraged people from starting families but

00:22:13.760 the conclusion of the paper that published this study said this no obvious policy or an economic

00:22:19.300 factor can explain much of the decline. The onset of the Great Recession clearly played a role in

00:22:25.620 the early stages of the decline. But beyond that, it's difficult to identify any political or policy

00:22:32.700 or economic factor that can statistically account for the continued decline. And the point is what

00:22:39.060 you said earlier, Wes, and this will be my last comment, and you guys can chime in before we go

00:22:43.660 to the break if you want but there is a westernized first and second world problem globally in the u.s

00:22:52.380 in europe in in um developed asia and like west said people aren't sure what's causing it it's

00:23:00.900 it's a variety of religions although it's true that um even immigrants hindu and muslim immigrants

00:23:06.820 they have higher birth rates but it's it's a variety of level of developed nation religion

00:23:12.880 predominant religion of the nation, economic circumstances within those nations. And it

00:23:18.720 seems like generally the Western and developed worlds are dropping substantially in their birth

00:23:26.380 rate and in their populations. Yep. Yep. Yep. All right. When we come back, we're going to talk

00:23:31.260 about some theories about why this is happening and weigh in a little bit on a Christian perspective

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00:24:41.760 America is a country that was founded 1.00

00:24:43.100 for the purpose of allowing Christians

00:24:44.480 to do their duty before God

00:24:45.800 and not to have their consciences ruled

00:24:47.280 by the doctrines and commandments of men.

00:24:49.560 Reese Fund exists in order to see

00:24:51.040 the 10 commandments properly applied,

00:24:53.060 not just as a plaque on the wall,

00:24:54.840 but to actually be used in business

00:24:56.600 as though they're commandments from God

00:24:58.940 that we're supposed to obey.

00:25:00.240 Our goal is to find businesses and to buy them and to build them up.

00:25:05.220 We want to find manufacturing businesses and use them to make sure that we can maintain our capacity to do things here.

00:25:11.820 Reese Fund, Christian Capital, boldly deployed.

00:25:17.820 All right, we're back.

00:25:18.980 You're back.

00:25:19.840 Some would say we're so back.

00:25:20.940 We are.

00:25:22.280 We're more back than we were the last time we were back.

00:25:24.300 The birth rate is not so back.

00:25:25.720 All right, so what do we think it is?

00:25:26.840 Well, it's interesting.

00:25:28.320 the question that a lot of countries are trying to figure out is why this is happening. And like

00:25:33.360 Wes said, some countries are putting significant effort into this. They're buying minivans for

00:25:41.140 families that have more kids. They are giving longer maternity leaves. Trump has proposed a 0.91

00:25:46.980 $5,000, you know, stipend for families that have a baby. This one, maybe if your kids are around,

00:25:55.020 you know just give it a pause for a second but in japan there has been some industries where they

00:26:00.860 have gone to a four-day work week so that i'll say tactically mom and dad would have a third

00:26:06.100 day to be home alone while the kids are at school to try to incentivize certain child

00:26:12.700 producing behaviors that also has not really had much of a dent in japan you know and um so this

00:26:19.720 it's actually quite a question that a lot of leaders and thinkers around the world have

00:26:25.420 tackled and have really put some serious consideration into. Yeah. For me, I, I think,

00:26:30.400 you know, there's a lot of, a lot of different, uh, contributing factors, women in the workplace, 0.99

00:26:35.360 not being at home. We'll talk more about that in a moment. Uh, but also like just chemically,

00:26:39.960 uh, for lack of a better phrase or biologically, maybe I should say, but, uh, just lower 1.00

00:26:44.760 testosterone levels like the average woman is just uh i mean she's just never going to have the 1.00

00:26:51.660 libido right of the average man not even close i mean it pales in comparison like uh women have 0.85

00:26:57.780 sex uh because uh because of men you know i mean like everything you know that i i mean i feel like

00:27:06.060 there's so much even you know just uh economically and when you think of like the markets and it's

00:27:10.280 all geared around like you know selling products and things for men to you know somehow you know

00:27:16.360 get lucky as the world would say um but even within the confines of marriage um it is it's

00:27:22.320 pretty rare and you know every woman is going to chime in you know in the comments i'm sure and

00:27:26.620 say like i'm not me i you know i love my husband and blah blah and that's great um then you know

00:27:31.460 well that's not the way general group dynamics work you you would be the exception and good for

00:27:35.760 you um praise god for that uh a wife um who you know her libido meets her husband's that that's

00:27:42.640 that's great but that is not the average and so so then what do you you know the it's the husband

00:27:48.280 predominantly what i'm building up to is it's the husband predominantly who is initiating

00:27:52.520 um sexual intimacy and uh and so what do you do if uh the husband um has you know a quarter or a

00:28:01.940 the testosterone levels of men uh the average man right just you know 50 years ago right right

00:28:08.600 like he literally has less of a drive less of a sexual drive less desire than ever before so

00:28:14.740 there's like a there is a chemical factor where men don't want sex as much and you look at like 0.70

00:28:20.680 gen z and they're all incels yeah you know they're gay outside of marriage on the gen z side of

00:28:27.860 things generally so you talk about men and drive a lot of that drive then is being satisfied by 0.91

00:28:32.280 pornography right so they would have a drive and it would have its only outlet in finding a woman

00:28:37.640 especially in a christian culture and marrying her but all of that energy that could be going

00:28:42.060 towards that well i need a home i need an income i need a profession i need all of these things

00:28:45.600 that's what it used to be channeled towards if a man wanted to have sex however now all of it is

00:28:49.840 just sapped some of it certainly by pornography but also just a culture of consumerism and junk

00:28:54.940 food and they're also not in any literal flesh and blood context to meet the opposite sex yeah

00:29:00.800 they're not like they're not meeting you know young young men are not meeting young women and

00:29:06.540 it's like we'll go to church well turns out uh all the young women are actually leaving church

00:29:11.860 the young men are actually coming back um you know and so so there's all these factors of you know

00:29:18.280 uh lower testosterone levels than ever before that absolutely plays a factor birth control

00:29:23.740 my goodness the pill you know is responsible for and people are waking up to that there was just 1.00

00:29:28.700 an article i forget where it was might have been in the guardian talking about how women candace

00:29:33.360 owens and other they're telling them ditch the birth control pill and it's happening so thank

00:29:37.220 goodness at least at some level people are waking up but that's but that's going to take time to

00:29:41.580 to overcome so i the birth control time to recover from yes oh yeah like physically um yeah there are

00:29:47.960 women who have been on the pill for you know they they got on the pill not even because they were

00:29:52.160 trying to you know inhibit pregnancy but for some other reason because you know they're

00:29:57.360 whatever that time of the month was particularly difficult for them or for their skin or for all

00:30:02.140 these other like terrible reasons um they're they're all terrible reasons there's there's you

00:30:06.580 know the pill uh absolutely um messes up women it messes them up oh yeah and so um so and we've

00:30:15.160 talked about that and we could talk more about it but but my point is like if i'm thinking of

00:30:18.720 major contributing factors i'm thinking the economy um that it's just just almost financially

00:30:25.280 impossible to have children in a single income uh home uh women not being home because of economic

00:30:32.020 reasons and feminism um and so nobody's there so you're gonna have to pay exorbitant amounts for 1.00

00:30:37.300 somebody else to raise your kids uh we have everybody's deracinated so you don't have grandma

00:30:41.400 and grandpa because they live on the other side of the country you know and in between cruises you

00:30:45.960 know they might visit for a few days once a year and then um and then you have the pill and then 0.95

00:30:50.440 you have lower testosterone levels than ever before you have the rise of homosexuality that

00:30:54.860 certainly doesn't help the equation three percent i think right yeah so you have some low t guys who 0.70

00:30:59.180 don't really even want sex and then you know who are heterosexual and then you got a bunch of other 0.69

00:31:03.360 guys who are gay um and and uh yes just not not a great recipe for uh continuing the human race 0.81

00:31:10.600 well and so let's let's look at this graph and then i'll say what i was going to say about it 0.99

00:31:14.940 So this is image four, Nate.

00:31:16.940 This is a really interesting graph.

00:31:18.720 It's a picture of the globe. 0.99

00:31:20.840 And the darker orange or red that you see is places where women would have more kids. 0.96

00:31:29.540 They want to have more kids, but for a variety of reasons, and it doesn't specify here on the picture, but for a variety of reasons, they have fewer kids than they want. 1.00

00:31:38.360 the kind of neutral colors in there the tan colors is where women's perceived um does amount of kids 0.99

00:31:47.180 that they want to have is what they actually do have and then there are some places the blue the 0.62

00:31:51.860 dark blue where um those are places where women are having maybe a kid more than maybe they think 1.00

00:31:59.820 that they would be able to support or have so what's interesting is a lot of women globally

00:32:05.400 say at least you know i would have on average another kid or another half a kid again we're

00:32:12.500 dealing with averages but something is keeping me from being able to do that and like you say joel

00:32:17.180 this could be economics i know in taiwan a man is is it's very hard to buy property there it's

00:32:24.060 very expensive germany's the same way you don't buy houses in germany no you rent a small little

00:32:28.760 place for the rest of your life and the houses are passed down yeah a little flat um families

00:32:34.100 in taiwan basically they had the option of having a kid or two and living with grandma and grandpa

00:32:39.820 for a very very long time you buy a tiny little apartment for a million dollars yep if you're

00:32:45.240 lucky and and then you pay what it's like 50 that's right in taxes yep germany very clearly uh

00:32:52.320 seems like a country that lost a significant war and never recovered right they're just defeated

00:32:57.920 people i remember going to germany when i was in high school and all the men like physically like

00:33:01.480 looking at the ground you know they wouldn't quite make eye contact when they spoke to you

00:33:05.120 um it's really sad um i did see hermit's correction thanks for that hermit i'm thinking

00:33:10.260 too of like the fact that china reversed the one child policy in 2015 which was quite a while ago

00:33:15.900 their population is largely aging out too so well that policy is mostly disadvantaged women

00:33:21.460 so it favored one child policy favoring of one child only and then a lot of abortions were

00:33:26.600 carried on girls that's correct and so it's destroyed japan china and to a certain effect 0.55

00:33:31.600 korea as well because then there's a dearth of women like the average i've read a paper a while 0.79

00:33:36.320 ago but the average male in japan is 29 single never even kissed a girl like that's just no

00:33:42.000 option to because the ratio is off and it's not like oh he's not getting out there there's tons

00:33:45.500 of opportunity australia is one of the one places actually where there's more women than men but 0.95

00:33:49.520 that terrible wicked policy in china has destroyed now for a generation the actual literal availability 0.76

00:33:55.200 of women to marry men and to have a family. 0.94

00:33:58.160 Talking about the one-child policy? 0.99

00:33:59.340 Yes.

00:34:00.140 So that's one thing that people look at

00:34:03.200 and they try and explain what's going on around the globe.

00:34:06.180 That is that it's, for a variety of reasons,

00:34:08.320 economic or cultural,

00:34:11.080 it's just not feasible to have more kids 0.99

00:34:13.260 where women or families would like to, 1.00

00:34:16.180 but they can't or they choose not to

00:34:18.300 for a variety of reasons.

00:34:20.500 Okay, so that's the first way

00:34:23.100 that people are trying to explain this.

00:34:24.400 The second one has to do with the potential, and here we delve into the conspiracy a little bit, but of global control of population and the idea that it's in the best interests of those who are in control to have the global population decrease for a variety of reasons.

00:34:43.260 and we're going to play two clips from tucker carlson's most recent um interview and um the

00:34:50.940 the interview is about the global banking system and how um this was a fascinating this was super

00:34:58.000 interesting yeah you guys should i did i got us i did find it a little funny it's like centralized

00:35:02.880 bankers right versus the west and i was like you're telling me that there's a profession

00:35:07.200 known as centralized bankers and that they're somehow trying to oppress and destroy the west

00:35:12.620 you're telling me this for the first time who are these bankers who are these bankers alex jones

00:35:16.940 you know who they are the globalists the marxists the bankers okay all right so nate just told me

00:35:21.540 that we only have the one clip so i'm going to summarize the first one because it's important

00:35:24.400 for the second one okay um the guest is saying that there's a link between global currency the

00:35:31.040 control of global currency and finance and ai and the um emerging need for energy because ai takes

00:35:40.020 so much energy. We are going to have to produce energy on an unprecedented scale. And so she says

00:35:48.180 that really what's been going on since 1994, which if you guys, it's so interesting that that was

00:35:55.140 such an important date. But even before that, global control systems being built up and that

00:36:01.720 now the the idea of ai being attached to um financial systems payment systems things like

00:36:09.440 that that the the elite have in place systems of she calls it the control grid um so her theory is

00:36:19.680 that a ton of new energy is going to have to be produced right and so with that being said let's

00:36:28.120 look at this clip um it's about it's about two minutes long um and you're going to think for a

00:36:34.480 minute oh we're kind of in the weeds and then the hammer is going to drop okay so stay with it

00:36:38.320 and you're going to see tucker's response all right let's so i wonder if the ai if the data

00:36:43.220 center boom which really is the only sort of crackling sparkling piece of the real estate

00:36:48.120 market right now i think it's building data centers development market um just call them

00:36:53.080 Control grids.

00:36:54.200 Control grids.

00:36:54.760 Control.

00:36:55.100 I mean, look, I'm.

00:36:55.700 They're control nodes.

00:36:56.680 I'm totally opposed to it.

00:36:58.200 But massive bets, economic bets on the success of AI, right?

00:37:03.200 And the missing piece is energy.

00:37:05.320 And how do you power all that?

00:37:06.940 And we're already, as you pointed out in an analysis.

00:37:09.320 You have to bring out the breakthrough energy.

00:37:11.340 That's what I'm saying.

00:37:12.320 So like either they're going to build it on coal deposits in Wyoming or, which is going to be kind of hard because they're going to have to say all that climate stuff we've been yelling at you about for 30 years. 0.96

00:37:22.640 just total bull****. Now we're burning coal. I don't know if they can. Well, there was just an

00:37:26.160 article in Bloomberg that Texas needs 30 new nuclear plants and the Chinese are building

00:37:30.700 enormous numbers of nuclear plants. Yeah. And there are risks in nuclear. I mean, I'm a right

00:37:35.620 winger and I've always defended nuclear, but let's be totally honest, like it's not risk-free big

00:37:39.280 time. Well, here's the thing. How do you govern and manage nuclear plants with leadership that's

00:37:44.900 not agreement capable? Completely. And also like in a country that's not turning out enough

00:37:50.520 people in the heart not enough engineers um right so no there are huge problems with that

00:37:55.460 and um but that's like that question is being forced on policymakers like what do you do about

00:38:01.760 energy what do you do about energy what do you and wind and solar like we're going to be laughing

00:38:05.460 about that in five years because it's just silly well one of the things you can do about energy is

00:38:09.560 depopulate right right i'm and i know for a fact i'm not guessing at this that there are people

00:38:17.060 running countries around the world who've thought about like what does AI mean for my population

00:38:21.620 means I've got too many people so this is something I know this for a fact I'm not guessing

00:38:26.120 that leaders of countries are talking about between each other like I know that and I'm

00:38:31.800 not saying they're committing genocide or whatever but they know that they're about

00:38:36.360 they're just looking at hard statistics they are that's exactly right

00:38:39.120 so there's the second explanation is that we are in a managed decline of population global

00:38:49.620 population manipulated yeah decline a manipulated managed global population decline yeah yeah people

00:38:55.680 with families they're hard to control like men and women that own land i mean that is your greatest

00:39:01.120 risk of a revolution right about the american revolution whatever it would be i mean that's

00:39:05.800 that's a risk factor and so if you can take men and you plug them into the economic machine

00:39:10.160 by golly take the women too and if they get a kid you're just talking about like the inability to 0.99

00:39:15.360 actually buy land and dirt and all of these things i can't imagine if my wife had to raise our kids

00:39:20.080 in a condo like no backyard no fresh air for them to go out to no just go outside get your energy 0.56

00:39:26.060 out of course she'd be at one and she'd be like i can't do it we can't have any more trapped in

00:39:30.680 here all day and literally that's millions and millions billions of people and they're like i

00:39:35.520 maybe got one at best too. This is too much. I can't have anymore. Give me the surgery. Give

00:39:40.940 me this. I'm done. Yep. Yep. And so that's explanation number two. The second, the third

00:39:47.040 explanation, this is really interesting. And, um, so Nate, let's show image number five. This is a

00:39:52.940 perspective on the religious, uh, birth rate among religious people versus non-religious people.

00:39:59.060 And so I'll actually show a couple graphs in a row here. So number one here, um, shows the

00:40:04.380 fertility rates by religious attendance. Nate, do you have any before that? Okay, so I will just

00:40:11.740 summarize two other ones. There is a significant difference. Now, the study that I looked at,

00:40:19.480 it just said religious attendees in America. So obviously, most of that is going to be 0.99

00:40:24.300 Christian attendees, just because Christianity is still the highest, the most dominant or most

00:40:30.380 popular religion, but there's a significant increase. People who attend church over once a

00:40:36.760 week and who believe that the Bible is the inspired word of God, their birth rate has been

00:40:42.160 from about 2.2 up to 2.5 down to 2.2. As soon as you start moving to less than once a week,

00:40:49.860 but sometimes or never attending church, the birth rate drops significantly below

00:40:55.080 two per woman okay so that's one thing to consider um the other thing nate you can go ahead and put

00:41:02.540 that graph up um so this is the replacement rate so this study was so interesting it took into

00:41:13.240 account now this is from 2022 i think is as far as it went so it's not accounting for the massive

00:41:18.880 increase in Orthodox and Catholic converts right now going on. But the blue, the blue line is the

00:41:29.840 number of children that women in a religion would have to have to keep the current number of people 0.80

00:41:39.940 who are part of that religion stable. So this is barring any sort of conversion. If you've got a

00:41:45.060 million people who are Buddhists or a million people who are Christians, and they calculated

00:41:50.580 it in the fact that people are leaving Protestantism, they're joining Hinduism or they're

00:41:55.100 joining Eastern Orthodox, things like that.

00:41:56.940 This is how many people, how many kids a woman in a particular religious group would have

00:42:04.260 to have without conversion or evangelism or anything like that to maintain the level of

00:42:10.600 that many christians or mormons or jehovah's witness etc and is that related to um because

00:42:17.300 they're dying only or because they're dying and leaving it it factors both in okay okay so nate

00:42:23.400 put it back up so so it's taking in consideration like right there where it says catholic or

00:42:27.480 orthodox eastern orthodox it's saying that they uh the average the average catholic or orthodox 0.93

00:42:33.600 woman and this is for america yes this is in the u.s in the u.s would have to have over on average

00:42:39.200 a little bit above three children in order to just maintain the current numbers of Roman Catholics 1.00

00:42:45.180 and Eastern Orthodox in America.

00:42:47.020 And that's because, not just because all the Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox

00:42:50.360 are all 80 years old and dying, but because people are leaving. 0.95

00:42:54.960 But this was, again, this was done in 2022.

00:42:57.000 Yes.

00:42:57.520 And some of this has probably changed.

00:42:59.120 The red bar is the actual rate.

00:43:01.640 Okay.

00:43:02.120 So there are no religious groups that are Christian.

00:43:05.500 There are some all the way on the right where it says other religions.

00:43:08.120 this is um they went pretty broad they they went even into like native american religions and

00:43:13.820 things like that but there are no real christian uh religions that currently on their own have a

00:43:20.660 high enough fertility rate to just keep their population stable and steady uh with the trends

00:43:27.240 of people leaving christianity and protestantism like pentecostal churches the pentecostal church

00:43:31.860 oh you're right the pentecostal church is high and that makes sense to me like and i don't mean

00:43:35.800 any i i you know i was pentecostal for a time i so i don't mean to disparage pentecostals um

00:43:41.220 they're brothers in christ i guess it depends which stripe of you know but um but you know but

00:43:46.580 like assemblies of god like these are christians brothers in christ we have some theological

00:43:51.260 differences but we're grateful for them uh so i don't mean to disparage but this would be my theory

00:43:55.820 my my working theory on that is uh i do believe that pentecostalism um number one um it has been

00:44:04.000 you know over the last like half of a century it has been the fastest growing uh denomination

00:44:08.660 within christianity um so part of it is probably just rate of attrition of people actually coming

00:44:14.000 into pentecostalism but then also um i i would imagine that um that part of it in the case of

00:44:21.020 pentecostals um you know because like right there that red line it's saying that like that they're

00:44:25.760 having the most kits well and the non-denominational christians actually are are up there too yeah so

00:44:31.340 non-denominational and then also uh pentecostal and my guess is you know kind of like what i was

00:44:37.080 saying earlier there's you know you can look at like economic status you know of like richer

00:44:41.240 nations having fewer children poor nations having more children um but but not just economic but i

00:44:47.020 think you can also look at um you can look at like education brackets you know like people with phds

00:44:52.640 aren't having kids right you know not for the most part whereas like people with high school diplomas

00:44:57.340 you know um are having more children and when it comes to pentecostalism again not trying to

00:45:03.720 disparage uh genuine brothers in christ but the doctrinal standards um like pentecostals it's

00:45:11.320 doesn't tend to attract a lot of intellectuals highly educated people or high class people

00:45:17.760 economically or in terms of education um pentecostalism tends to attract more a blue

00:45:25.640 collar right um you know either lower to middle class um high school diplomas maybe a few bachelor's

00:45:34.100 degrees and again i'm speaking on average because somebody's gonna you know email me and say well i

00:45:38.000 you know i know you know one guy who has a phd who's a pentecostal it's like i'm i'm sure there's

00:45:43.460 you know there's one guy i bet there might even be three you know across the you know but um so i

00:45:48.360 get that but in in terms of group dynamics like i was raised you know like small like i think of

00:45:53.320 small rural texas areas where i was raised most of the churches are non-denominational and

00:45:59.020 charismatic you know some kind of some brand some version of pentecostalism you know and it's uh you

00:46:05.820 know they're um you know small towns like that they could be a town like the town i grew up in

00:46:10.820 you know 18 000 population and yet there's over 100 churches and most of the people probably half

00:46:16.620 of the of the city uh at least goes to church um but but probably 70 of those churches are um some

00:46:25.700 some stripe or color of pentecostal churches they're all speaking in tongues you know and

00:46:30.820 it's just your everyday salt of the earth you know blue collar people who you know um so anyway

00:46:36.420 so to me that like that's actually not surprising whereas you get like catholic and orthodox and

00:46:41.840 although we have our theological differences with you know roman catholics and eastern orthodox

00:46:46.340 guys um that you know like um it you know even though the catholic church has had you know one

00:46:53.800 of the best positions on life uh historically for for a very long time and really held the line

00:46:59.560 uh with that um catholic church uh and i would assume orthodox also i think both uh tend to

00:47:06.860 attract a higher intellectual type of person you know more highly educated that lends towards

00:47:13.300 having less children i think there are lots of practical reasons for that one of the reasons

00:47:17.200 being you know if you go to school and you get your bachelor's and your master's and maybe you

00:47:21.140 know a doctorate you know to top it all off well by the time by the time you're actually out of

00:47:26.380 school and in the workplace and you fish you know if you're medical finished your residencies and

00:47:30.740 all these kinds of things and finally got you know some of the 180 000 worth of school you know

00:47:35.760 student loans that you took out under you know at least they're certainly not paid off but at least

00:47:40.900 you know manageable with your two thousand you know three thousand dollar a month payment but

00:47:44.960 your job is caught up you know and all those things and you're ready to start a family well

00:47:49.660 that's great but you're 65 years old um i'm exaggerating a little bit but but you're well

00:47:55.060 into your 30s and um and and so you know the window of fertility is already closing um and

00:48:02.560 that can be a factor too eastern orthodox is the most educated denomination slash tradition in the

00:48:07.740 united states pains me to say it but it's to your point i believe it yeah and catholic is probably

00:48:12.160 uh i would i would be willing to guess they're probably second and then it's first baptist church

00:48:17.640 main street alabama probably not probably there's probably anglicans episcopalians i was gonna say

00:48:24.080 i would think some of the main lines right like you've got yeah liberal who's gone to college

00:48:29.540 for sure would be up there um yeah and then uh and way way way way way way way down you know 0.70

00:48:38.580 and then you have pentecostals god bless them you know but the pentecostals are not gay you know so 0.54

00:48:44.040 i appreciate that um assemblies of god's been bad in women's ordination for a while that's that's 0.57

00:48:48.880 and it's funny they've survived as long as they have so have nazarenes nazarenes are shocking

00:48:53.140 in terms of because it really is a directly bad well well what i'm saying is that there's a direct

00:48:57.900 correlation of you know you start ordaining women to the clergy and you know typically in like 10 0.54

00:49:04.160 to 15 years you know you're gay affirming as a denomination and Nazarenes are really one of the

00:49:10.300 only ones that that started ordaining women to the clergy like decades ago like they were one of the

00:49:16.720 first ones to do it and actually held the line on on traditional marriage all 5,000 of them

00:49:23.640 But they have, yeah, to your point.

00:49:26.780 All right, we have two other potential reasons why this is happening.

00:49:30.900 Wes is going to talk about one, and then I've got some quotes on the other.

00:49:34.220 But we'll hit those when we come back from this next commercial break.

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00:50:34.820 all right here we are so one of the things i wanted to touch on i actually it was about a

00:50:42.360 week ago or so i had an exchange on x that was super helpful is there's also you think about

00:50:46.860 some of these we talked about diversity as a problem well some of these nations like america

00:50:50.100 going through a fertility decline we are pretty diverse but south korea is not necessarily the

00:50:54.720 kaleidoscope of multiculturalism that the west is and so there's no one solution but another factor

00:50:59.940 to keep in mind and i really think it's a big one is what does a country export and so in the case

00:51:04.300 of south korea which has one of the worst they're facing one of the worst fertility crises and just

00:51:09.920 someone commented and clarified it's only been a couple years that they've been trying to fix it

00:51:13.820 so they've been on decline for i looked at the rate last week it's about two to three decades

00:51:18.040 i think that it's been declining only the last couple years have they tried to fix it but check

00:51:22.020 this out the primary export of korea so what does south korea provide what do they do it's technology

00:51:27.620 and its service those are jobs that are very suited for women to be able to do women as far

00:51:32.280 as technology they don't require physical strength they don't require a lot of like you can think of 0.90

00:51:37.680 a resource extraction you can think of agriculture they don't require that and so when you're looking 0.83

00:51:41.700 at but we want to incentivize women to stay home and have children well that's really tough to do 0.95

00:51:46.060 if she's like well i'm making 150 000 i have a great social life i go out for drinks every evening

00:51:51.080 and i live in an awesome city that's very hard to do certainly because of the city certainly because

00:51:55.740 of all these different things it's also just hard because all the jobs are available what that

00:52:00.500 society exports is service versus apparently mongolia was starting to have this problem

00:52:06.240 and they they got some policies in place and they turned it around pretty quickly here's the

00:52:10.680 difference mongolia is an agriculture-based society so you had women that were leaving the

00:52:14.720 home and doing different things but honestly just generally speaking women are not begging like 0.96

00:52:19.860 please send me out right you know send me into the mine send me into the forest send me out there 1.00

00:52:25.400 to get some cobalt like it was much easier if your primary export is something physical like that

00:52:30.180 really only men can do it it's a lot easier in those cases to reverse it to say hey men you want 0.97

00:52:36.040 your wife to stay home but i understand rising costs may that happen here's a tax cut the wife

00:52:40.200 goes thanks goodness i was just working a desk job anyway i wasn't really suited to it i wasn't

00:52:44.600 making much money i didn't have a robust social life i'm happy to go home now we're able to afford

00:52:48.780 it so every single country is going to have a different dynamic what are we exporting and what 0.58

00:52:52.820 type of jobs are women occupying instead of being home and having children real quick i got to point

00:52:57.080 out somebody in the chat named adam which i appreciate you being here adam listening but i

00:53:01.040 just i want to help you out a little bit um he said homes in los angeles are a million dollars

00:53:06.000 unless it's a gang infested area and rents are four thousand dollars plus in addition medical

00:53:11.580 insurances cost me wife and son twenty five hundred dollars a month add car payments insurance 0.99

00:53:17.460 life insurance food utilities good luck right good luck having a single income home where the wife is

00:53:24.480 able to stay at home and raise the children so i wrote a little book it's called fight by flight

00:53:29.220 and the solution to the problem is what the heck and and everything that is holy and good in the

00:53:35.380 world why why are you in los angeles get out of there problem solved all right continue all right

00:53:42.720 well we have um these are some of the i live in hell and it's not particularly family friendly

00:53:48.580 what could the problem be like i i you know my my next door neighbor is lucifer and i you know

00:53:54.120 we're trying to raise our kids to fear the lord and i you know hell just it's just not conducive

00:53:58.020 to having a family life i don't know what the problem could be yep leave all right um all of

00:54:05.540 these have some explanatory power and are are you know they i'm sure there's a degree of validity to

00:54:11.860 all of these theories that we have just talked about but i think wes you mentioned it earlier

00:54:17.220 really at the core of this is women have been sold a bill of goods and men have been sold a

00:54:22.680 bill of goods too. And it's easier for the man if he doesn't have to apply himself and become

00:54:28.760 excellent at his trade or his craft to support his family, to allow his woman to go out into 0.97

00:54:34.460 the workforce. I just, we've talked about feminism a lot and the link between feminism and a woman

00:54:41.620 being in the workforce, not wanting as many kids, rejecting the mandate to be fruitful and multiply,

00:54:48.880 it goes without saying almost. But these were two quotes that, as much as we've talked about it,

00:54:55.600 they still managed to shock me. So I'm going to read two quotes, and these are from feminist

00:55:00.100 perspectives on the global population, or at least the Western population decline.

00:55:06.180 So here we go. This is the first one, and it says this. According to one perspective,

00:55:12.020 women have greater autonomy and fertility decreases as more women engage in higher

00:55:18.340 education and employment. Having access to better education means women have more control over their 0.98

00:55:25.660 relationships, increased knowledge of contraception, and more say in family planning. An increasing 0.99

00:55:31.500 number of women have chosen to postpone having children to continue their careers. Having children 1.00

00:55:36.660 also compromises the opportunity to earn more when women's incomes grow in comparison to those

00:55:43.420 of their male spouses this was specifically talking about the drop in fertility even though

00:55:50.100 africa is still above the the rate that they need to sustain themselves it's dropped it's dropped

00:55:58.740 over the last you know a couple of decades and so this article was saying actually it's good that

00:56:03.220 it's dropping there because what it proves is that the the um quest and the conquering of

00:56:10.140 women's rights is marching on and marching on and even getting to africa where now women we're

00:56:17.160 going to see lower population rates in africa because finally women boss babe uh feminism

00:56:23.540 contraception has arrived even to the the you know it's almost like a missionary effort you 0.98

00:56:29.600 think even to the farthest parts of the globe, right? The gospel is going to go. No, no. Even

00:56:34.880 to the farthest parts of the globe, the, the message of good news for women that they don't

00:56:39.460 have to, you know, uh, be subject to their husbands, that they can work, that they can

00:56:43.280 choose. They can have contraceptions and abortions. Yeah. And, um, so that, that was surprising that 1.00

00:56:49.300 they were happy that the fertility rate in Africa is dropping so quickly. Wow. Thanks. I hate it.

00:56:56.220 Yeah. Quote number two. Quote number two. This is from an article called The Global Fertility Crisis is Worse Than You Think.

00:57:05.860 And it's the quote is addressing some claims that The Spectator, which is a magazine or newspaper, was saying. 0.56

00:57:14.280 And this is the point of this article was to say this is one of the ones that claimed, yes, the population is decreasing and it's a good thing.

00:57:22.740 So it's trying to debunk a bunch of the scare tactics, it calls them scare tactics, that

00:57:27.720 the spectator was pointing out.

00:57:29.140 The spectator was saying, no, population is declining, this is terrible, we need to do

00:57:32.420 something about this.

00:57:33.220 Okay, so here's the quote.

00:57:34.900 The above claims in the spectator article don't just get the facts wrong on population,

00:57:40.140 but they form part of a wave of pro-natalist articles falsely scaremongering that low birth

00:57:46.660 rates are a cause for alarm when instead they should be celebrated.

00:57:50.900 We should celebrate low birth rates as it means more enlightened, empowered women who have agency over their lives, women who are educated, employed, and have limited barriers to accessing modern contraception, and instead focus on how ending global population growth and reducing our overconsumption of resources are key to solving the environmental crises the world faces. 0.83

00:58:16.140 we pulled this graph up not even a week ago and it was a survey of women married unmarried kids

00:58:24.000 no kids the most miserable women actually was unmarried with kids but married versus unmarried

00:58:31.360 yep besides that unmarried women with no children yeah so they're saying this is good they're having 0.99

00:58:36.060 less and that's great they're happier right they're thriving oh they're freaking miserable 0.99

00:58:42.260 yeah yeah they hate women yeah oh yeah like what's going on here they hate women they hate the way 0.96

00:58:49.120 that god has structured not just structured society structured reality and they said we

00:58:54.520 can undo it we'll beat nature uh spoiler alert they won't but that's psalm 2 right the uh the

00:59:00.780 kings of the earth you know that they uh they try they seek to break the bonds um you know it's

00:59:06.800 speaking of like god's uh it's speaking of god's sovereign power over all the earth but it's also

00:59:12.360 speaking about you know you can read implicit implicitly in the text uh how you know the means

00:59:17.960 by which god exercises his sovereign authority over the earth and one of those means of course

00:59:22.400 is the church and through special revelation and the word of god word and sacrament but also through

00:59:27.000 uh natural order through nature uh that's one of the ways that god sovereignly uh exercises his

00:59:33.060 authority over the earth his providence by what he has made through nature itself and so the kings

00:59:38.540 of the earth seeking you know together to um to stick it to uh the man in the sky stick it to god

00:59:45.080 and uh and cast off his restraints break the bond psalm chapter 2 um is i think uh one great

00:59:52.320 example of that is uh elites in any society that is trying to somehow uh fight against uh the

00:59:59.540 natural order and feminism is a a stark example of that yep someone asked and it's a great reminder

01:00:06.540 can you please remind everyone that all hormonal birth control pill and the copper iud are abortive

01:00:11.720 fashion yes yes they're not just preventing pregnancy the way abstinence does but they

01:00:16.560 would also if the sperm and the egg come together you'd have the fertilized egg which is life

01:00:21.200 they also have a third mechanism in place that make sure of the uterine wall that that can't

01:00:26.280 implant effectively killing it has no baby yeah you're you're creating an inhospitable environment

01:00:32.940 the thinning of the uterine wall so that if uh an egg is fertilized and we believe that that is

01:00:38.420 um conception that uh that it that it begins at fertilization not there's scans that actually

01:00:45.140 show a flash of light when the sperm actually meets the egg it's really cool they've seen like

01:00:49.000 a little electron flash yeah light maybe that's the soul maybe i don't know from the parents yeah

01:00:54.040 from oh snap uh traditionism um so yeah so uh so that's when life begins and uh the the pill

01:01:02.440 is um is actually making an inhospitable environment that's not the only mechanism

01:01:07.400 there are two other mechanisms uh the cervical fluid uh thickening so the sperm doesn't reach

01:01:12.780 the egg stopping the ovulation cycle so there's no egg being produced to be uh fertilized but

01:01:18.220 that third mechanism thinning of the uterine wall um is is creating an inhospitable environment so

01:01:24.400 that if the first two mechanisms fail to prevent uh fertilization and the third mechanism succeeds

01:01:31.300 uh well now you've just killed one of your your children and you might say well i'm i'm not of

01:01:36.400 the persuasion my conscience you know i just don't believe that uh that the first two would fail while

01:01:40.420 the third mechanism remains intact well first you're playing russian roulette with life with

01:01:45.320 the lives of your children. There's no serious studies that have been performed and they probably

01:01:50.400 never will because there's no incentive to produce studies on something like this. So there's nothing

01:01:55.440 that proves that scenario can't happen. But then secondly, what has been proven is that long after,

01:02:03.560 not in every case, but in many, many cases, long after a woman is ready to start having children

01:02:09.920 and she stops taking the pill, especially if she was on the pill for a long time, since her teenage

01:02:14.380 years and through puberty you know or right at puberty and you know she's been on the pill for

01:02:18.940 10 years for a decade and she stops and now her and her husband are trying and god bless uh that

01:02:24.200 they're trying you know to be parents and and uh to have children um but that last mechanism the

01:02:29.480 thinning of the uterine wall is usually one of the last things to be restored if it's able to

01:02:34.920 be fully restored so all of a sudden again that you know the cervical fluid is now um is now you

01:02:40.660 know thinning um and and not thicken slowing down the sperm you're now going back onto your

01:02:45.380 ovulation cycle you're producing eggs but the uterine wall um could take in in some cases i've

01:02:51.700 read uh you know where people say it you know it can take years um often six to eight months

01:02:57.100 that's somewhat regular normative but in some cases years so you and your husband could be

01:03:02.640 trying every single month during ovulation and for you know two years you could be uh you don't

01:03:09.840 know because it would be a very early miscarriage that might just look like a little bit you know

01:03:15.240 extra blood or may even look normal um with with your period but it's uh entirely plausible that

01:03:20.920 you and your husband could have killed 24 children over the course of two years uh without even

01:03:26.260 realizing it so you you really are playing with life and death we're not trying to um to unnecessarily

01:03:31.120 guilt or shame people um but but what we are trying to do is um is to inform people um of the

01:03:38.080 reality of what you're doing and i know plenty of couples including my wife and i um much to our

01:03:43.840 shame uh but in the first uh i think it was a little less than a year first like six to nine

01:03:49.000 months of our marriage uh that's you know we hadn't heard any teaching against it um and then

01:03:54.060 we had to repent that's what christians do so we're not trying to to unnecessarily shame people

01:03:58.680 but what i am trying to advocate for is that you would do the same thing that my wife and i had to

01:04:02.760 do we had to repent and run to the foot of the cross ask the lord for forgiveness and and change

01:04:08.800 our actions and uh and and we're so glad we did yeah it was the same with us we had um a doctor

01:04:14.680 that we were seeing and he was on some sort of board pro-life state board he was a christian

01:04:22.800 doctor and he said i guarantee you these things are not a board of patient right you know and he

01:04:28.180 said i would not say that i'm on the board of this christian pro-life doctors organization blah blah

01:04:33.680 blah and uh yes we well there were there were uh guys in in the medical industry uh doctors who

01:04:40.320 were also lay elders at john macarthur's church who were making the same argument and saying no

01:04:45.140 it's you know uh but the reason why you know so i had to look into all this because at the time

01:04:49.960 there wasn't a whole lot of information on the subject this was almost 10 years ago and uh and

01:04:54.300 so i was like well john macarthur's elders you know they're making arguments where it's okay

01:04:57.500 you know and and they're you know this so-and-so he's an elder at his church and he's also a doctor

01:05:01.520 uh but then come to find out if you do some of the reading uh the reason why these guys are saying

01:05:07.060 you know they're looking in the eyes you know without flinching and they'll you know and they'll

01:05:10.800 uh you know attempt to assure you that that it's um that it that there's no um a abortive you know

01:05:17.780 function whatsoever is because they um the quiet part the fine print is that they change the

01:05:23.420 definition of conception to implantation instead of fertilization so that's one of the reasons

01:05:30.460 is um is that many many many doctors that is kind of like the medical consensus you think that was

01:05:35.940 knowingly like was that changed in the literature and so a christian would read conception and

01:05:42.720 you're asking a guy who who's a bit of a conspiracy uh theorist so i and you know if you're asking me

01:05:48.040 i'm gonna say yeah i think it was intentional i think they knew exactly what they were doing

01:05:50.920 but yeah the medical definition of conception when life begins uh historically for centuries

01:05:57.140 has been fertilization for centuries before we ever had you know cat scans or you know or um

01:06:03.240 sonograms or any of these before we even knew all the inner working dynamics you know medically and

01:06:09.020 could articulate it uh there was still just this this you know consensus overwhelming uh universal

01:06:15.560 consensus that conception began at the moment of fertilization and that is not just oh for 70 years

01:06:21.960 we believe this no for centuries and centuries and centuries um arguably all the way back to

01:06:26.420 some of the church fathers um and you can find it in uh some of the writings and so you're talking

01:06:30.760 about 18 19 2 000 years uh 1800 1900 2000 years of believing that uh fertilization was conception

01:06:40.260 and then really just in the last few decades a very novel um and recent um change in that position

01:06:46.800 and a quiet change that wasn't communicated uh for most people so they would just say yeah like

01:06:51.980 this does not um it inhibits conception it does not um risk aborting life after conception but

01:07:01.440 then you look at the fine print they well they move the goalpost to where conception actually

01:07:05.820 happens. No longer fertilization, but implantation. And that's how they were able to make the 0.97

01:07:10.980 argument. People will say, well, you know, Aquinas talked about a period of several days or weeks

01:07:16.640 even. The point was, they didn't know how quickly fertilization happened. But their belief was,

01:07:24.020 even Aquinas, as soon as the child has been formed, they didn't understand all the biology

01:07:30.340 of the sperm and the egg necessarily,

01:07:33.040 but the theological and philosophical position was

01:07:36.720 as soon as that life has been united from the parents,

01:07:40.540 at that moment from then on, it is a baby.

01:07:43.500 They didn't understand the stages of implantation

01:07:46.360 and how many days later.

01:07:47.740 So there are people who will say,

01:07:48.800 well, Aquinas, he said that the child

01:07:52.260 is not actually a child until three weeks later.

01:07:54.360 It's only because they didn't understand

01:07:56.000 how quickly fertilization happens. 0.99

01:07:58.420 Yep. 0.98

01:07:58.520 Yep. So for today, we want to keep the episode a little bit shorter. We've got some other

01:08:02.440 projects that we're going to be working on. But I want to give opportunity for both Wes

01:08:06.460 and especially you, Michael, because you outlined today's episode. Are there any final thoughts as

01:08:10.380 we land the plane? Only this. As Christians, we need to do... Joel, you preached a sermon

01:08:17.040 years ago on Psalm 137 that children are... A heritage from the Lord. A heritage from the Lord.

01:08:25.300 uh arrows in the quiver and you said something good it was balanced you said um you should have

01:08:31.280 as many children as you can sharpen yeah right you should produce sharp arrows right so don't

01:08:36.900 don't be unrealistic we do live in difficult economic times but you also said you can probably

01:08:43.740 have one or two more sharp arrows than you think you can right in your own reasoning and wisdom and

01:08:50.460 so right push yourself a little bit and let the lord be gracious right yeah i was trying to help

01:08:54.620 people understand that uh there is reason and prudence does come into play but um but if we're

01:08:59.480 honest so does idolatry and uh and that's what we want to watch out for so as modern westerners

01:09:04.480 um you know i would err on the side of uh um having more children than you than you think you

01:09:10.500 can have uh one because the bible literally talks about you know a full quiver being a blessing from

01:09:16.400 the lord uh so the bible errs on that side uh but then secondly because we're you know western

01:09:22.100 moderns you know modern westernists um it's um we just we're swimming in in the idolatry the

01:09:30.580 idolatry of convenience the idolatry of um of you know having two incomes um the idol like

01:09:38.180 and we and we just don't even i don't even think we realize um and i would just think about you

01:09:42.820 know think about it with any other blessing so the bible clearly says children are not a burden

01:09:46.500 that doesn't mean it's hard um or that it's not hard because it is raising children is hard

01:09:51.780 But the Bible definitively, objectively calls children a blessing, a heritage and a blessing

01:09:56.800 from the Lord.

01:09:58.320 And so with the best blessings in life, the best blessings are, they're good, but they're

01:10:05.220 not easy, right?

01:10:06.200 So it's good, not bad, blessing, not burden, but difficult, not easy, right?

01:10:11.260 There's lots of things that are a blessing, but they require management and careful stewardship

01:10:15.440 and vigilance and diligence.

01:10:17.140 A billion dollars.

01:10:17.800 Wisdom and prudence.

01:10:19.020 Exactly.

01:10:19.560 So compare it to anything else.

01:10:20.940 and that was what i was building up to compare it to any other blessing right so like uh money

01:10:25.480 is a blessing but uh but lots of money um with with many people can bring about ruin um you know

01:10:33.520 all the statistics of people who win the lottery and end up you know just as poor or poorer than

01:10:37.260 they you know than they were before they won the lottery because the type of person who's playing

01:10:41.500 the lottery tends not to be you know a you know financially wise you know careful you know manager

01:10:47.680 steward, you know, steward of finances. So money is a blessing. It's the love of money, right? The

01:10:55.280 idolatry of money, greed that is the root of all kinds of sin, all kinds of evil. But money itself

01:11:01.380 is not inherently bad. In fact, it is a blessing, the Lord giving resources to you. But there is,

01:11:09.280 you know, a side of being unwise and where money can ruin a foolish man. So all that's true. At 0.99

01:11:15.760 the same time though, when you're thinking about children and thinking, well, we don't want to have

01:11:20.160 too many, just realize, just realize, you know, so I try not to be overly legalistic about this.

01:11:25.880 I think that it's foolish to put a number on it. Like everyone must have this many children. Like

01:11:31.020 there are extenuating circumstances, there are exceptions, there's all these different things.

01:11:34.980 And I don't want to play the role of the Holy Spirit in somebody's life with these kinds of

01:11:39.340 things. But I do think it's important to recognize when you think about children, you should think

01:11:43.540 about children as a blessing. And so put that in the category of any other blessing that comes

01:11:50.000 from the Lord. And money is a great example. So if your boss is bringing you back to his office

01:11:54.740 and he's saying, you know what, I want to double your salary. In that scenario, would you sit down

01:12:00.480 across from his desk and say, you know what, I want to mitigate this blessing. This is too much.

01:12:08.500 could we just could we just settle for a 12 raise you know like um but but when it comes to children 0.93

01:12:14.620 like so we my point is yes too much money could ruin someone if they're foolish especially um but

01:12:20.380 by and large more often than not we don't go out of our way actively carefully you know diligently

01:12:26.460 mitigating like i want to make sure you know if there's anything that i'm doing in life i want to

01:12:31.440 i want to work 24 7 to make sure that i don't make too much money right there's just not a lot 0.94

01:12:36.740 of people thinking in that way and could because that's that's pretty stupid if a lot of people 0.76

01:12:40.780 were thinking like that you know i'd probably be concerned but we do think that way with children 0.99

01:12:44.900 so there's there's very few blessings in life that we're actively daily trying to mitigate

01:12:50.060 but when it comes to children who the bible calls a blessing and a heritage from the lord

01:12:55.120 we are regularly constantly thinking in a framework of how can i mitigate this blessing

01:13:00.120 don't want too much blessing i'd like just a little bit of blessing you know or you know i

01:13:03.700 don't want to be blessed every two years. I'd like to be blessed every five years. And that's

01:13:09.900 not how we think about pretty much any other blessing except for children. And so if that be

01:13:13.960 the case, and I think it is for most of us, if we're willing to admit it, then I think we should

01:13:18.560 recognize that what we'd like to call prudence and wisdom often is fear and idolatry. And we

01:13:24.300 should be aware of that. So there is a prudence category, but a lot of what we, because we're

01:13:28.820 moderns 20th century liberals a lot of what we like to call wisdom what we're labeling as wisdom

01:13:34.620 if we're honest wisdom has become a euphemism for fear and prudence has become a label for

01:13:41.160 idolatry and we should be aware of that real quick the joyful wife asked the name of that sermon

01:13:46.120 um if you go to the right response youtube page um there was a three-part series on psalm 127 so

01:13:52.420 you can look up psalm 127 right i think it's only five verses um but i ended up preaching it three

01:13:57.400 time just cooking but that that particular sermon was part three of the series and it was called

01:14:02.400 children are arrows yeah sometimes you know i'll do a three-parter because it's like there's so

01:14:06.760 much in the text and then sometimes you do a three-parter because you're like i'm going to

01:14:09.820 preach the same sermon and by the third time i preach it's going to be fire sometimes it's just

01:14:14.600 like you need you know three strikes you're out and you know sometimes you need three tries in

01:14:17.900 the pulpit you know to to get a text right and uh so just need a quick month you know to really

01:14:22.720 shake it off and get in there that third try that was uh that was that was a binger yep yep all

01:14:28.200 right well let's go ahead and land the plane thank you guys for tuning in uh we appreciate it nathan

01:14:31.860 there was i think one super chat if it's something short i'll get to it real quick just to honor him

01:14:36.200 this is from the salty sailor he gave us five bucks thanks salty sailor we appreciate it he

01:14:40.600 said learned a lot today as always thank you brothers thank you salty sailor and uh everybody

01:14:46.200 else out there you stay salty as well and uh we will see you lord willing on friday yep

01:14:51.900 We'll be right back.

The NXR Podcast - April 30, 2025

THE LIVESTREAM - Be Fruitful or Be Forgotten： Why the West Doesn’t Want Children

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