I guess I can’t follow the math. Google tells me there are 167.6 million acres in Texas. At ½ acre per family of 5 I can fit 1.676 billion in the state. Add Alaska and you’re up to 5.3 billion – getting closer. But I concede the point – We can fit more people in the world. However, we must provide food, water, and livable conditions for those people. So are we full yet? I personally don’t think so. But we have to remember that there is more to the equation than just acreage.

I won\’t do the math here, but we could take the entire population of the earth, and give every family of 5 a half acre of land in Texas. The Earth is not crowded.

There are new techniques of oil recovery that make currently unavailable in heavy oil, tar sands and other sources that hold far more energy than all the known reserves and extracted petroleum on the planet. I own stock in a company that just proved the technology that made the heavy oil light enough to process, and extracted other economically desirable chemicals.

The famous Simon-Ehrlich wager of 1980 showed that not only are we not running out of resources, including food and commodities (like chromium, copper, nickel, tin, and tungsten), but that their prices are actually falling. Which means that there are more of them now than in the past.

Moreoever, the standard of living in nearly all countries is higher today than a decade ago, life spans are longer, and general health, aside from Malaria and AIDS (the first increase due to the unscientific DDT ban) is better.

None of this means that Jesus was wrong, there are indeed, poor among us. But on average things are better, and the poor, especially in the West, are more wealthy than Solomon.

We have a myriad of examples of Israel rejecting the Lord\’s commandments, and then His modifying the commandment. The Law of Moses jumps to mind – Israel broke her first covenant on the foot of Sinai, and Jehovah retracted His promises, substituting the lesser law for the Gospel.

In our own dispensation, the Lord has allowed His church to ignore many of the counsels of His prophets and substituted lesser laws (with concomitantly lesser blessings). E.g., we do not have an active Law of Consecration, we have the poorer Laws of Tithing and Fast Offering.

I believe the Lords wants to bless us, but that the greatest hindrance to His doing so is our unwillingness to obey the very laws that would make us able to receive the blessings we claim to want.

To make my point, I cite two scriptures we all know well. “For behold this is my work and my glory, to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.” “… men are that they might have joy.”

“[B.H. Roberts] cited Lord Kelvin’s theory of extraterrestrial origins for earth life as compatible with his view that Adam and Eve were translated beings brought here from another sphere (thereby preserving the scientific validity of evolution while exempting the human family). He argued that the earth was constructed of ‘pre-existing world-stuff’ (implicitly acknowledging the fossil record while making it irrelevant to the dating of creation). He asserted that a cataclysm had annihilated earthly life before Eden (thus life and death preexisted Adam, but he was needed to ‘REPLENISH the earth’). Accordingly, he made Adam head of a dispensation rather than the human race (thereby allowing for pre-Adamites, while making Adam the ‘first man’ in that particular context).” (p. 204, emphasis mine)

Roberts thus puts a lot of pressure on the word “replenish.” I was so enlightened by this passage in _PoP_. I’d always thought of the extra-terrestrial Adam and Eve as embarrassing, bizarre back-doctrine, but now I see it entirely differently: as a creative (if, yes, a little bizarre), characteristically Mormon attempt to synthesize revealed and natural knowledge. It’s a very tricky endeavor, maybe ultimately doomed, but I’m proud to be a part of the tradition.

Multiply – Have children
Replenish the earth – Fill the earth with people.

As has been pointed out, we are not told a number that makes the earth \”full.\” In addition we are given no reference as to the speed at which we should be filling the planet. However, we are told the commandment is still in force. Say, for argument, that the current population meets the definition of full. Then can the \”replenish\” commandment be met by maintaining that level?

As for changing their tune on how many kids to have: In the 60s and 70s we used to hear about how birth control was wrong; now we are told that family planning is a matter between a husband, a wife, and the Lord. Seems like a bit of a change there?