I am having difficulty with this thread. As I understand biology:

1. all organisms (not just humans) tend to be able to produce more offspring then the environment can support

2. those individuals that produce the most living (and reproducing) offspring have their genes in higher frequency in the population

3. therefore natural selection works and populations evolve

Both Darwin and Wallace crystallized their ideas on evolve after reading Malthus. It doesn't matter if Malthus was wrong on some minor points - his general idea is one of the foundations of evolution by natural selection. If you throw out Malthus' general idea then you throw out natural selection. You cannot have it both ways.

Also, the idea that famine did not occur throughout human history is naive.