Skip to comments.Population and the Age of the Earth
Posted on 01/03/2014 10:54:01 AM PST by fwdude
Genesis 1:28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it
How long have people been living on the Earth? The evolutionist says two million years. The Bible-believing Christian says about six thousand. Who is right?
Statistically, a couple must have 2.1 children to keep a population at the same level. In practice, this means a minimum of three children per family. Let us suppose for a moment that the biblical account of the Genesis Flood in which just eight people survived is true. Let us further suppose that each family from this population point in history had 2.4 children on average. This very modest number will take into account all the deaths through infant mortality, plagues and war. How long would it take to reach todays world population? Surprisingly, the answer is just less than five thousand years. This figure fits nicely into known historical records.
Now suppose we take the evolutionary view that mankind has been on this planet for two million years and we begin with two people or eight, it will make little difference and they also had the statistical 2.4 children per family. We will finish up with a number so impossibly large that the universe itself would not hold them! Aware of this problem, the textbooks explain it away by speaking of population stability throughout this time. This is nothing short of an appeal to a miracle! Frankly, the biblical account is far more believable.
Prayer: Jesus, it was through You that all things, including us, were made. When we withdrew our love from God and cut ourselves off from Him through sin, You came to our rescue. How can I ever thank You enough? Amen.
Notes: Cleone H. Weigand. Morality Remains the Best Way to Stem Population Growth. Milwaukee Journal, April 14, 1985.
"This very modest number will take into account all the deaths through infant mortality, plagues and war."
Evolutionists must assume, with no evidence or basis, that these innumerable "resets" must have happened to make their model fit the math.
Why not just believe the more plausible, mathematically sound scenario supplied by Scripture?
Where did they live before that?...................
Even Mr. Malthus could point out that no population can exceed its ability to feed itself. As food grows short, propensity to disease, violence and other elements that limit population increase.
Any child of ten could understand that. The fact that you didn’t does a serious disservice to your position.
So, you’re one of the “population stability throughout this time” banner wavers. The author addressed this argument.
Are you sporting the gun, or the popcorn?
The article is wrong.
How does the author know this? We're nowhere near having an accurate global recorded history of these events going back 5,000 years to base such a claim on.
Yeah but evolutionists would have us believe that man was making tools 200,000 years ago. To believe they couldn't find enough food is not very plausible. They would have dominated the food chain.
If you start with 6 people and double them every 100 years, it takes 28 centuries to reach a billion people.
Population growth has accelerated in the last couple of centuries, but to get the ages evolution requires, man would have had to have remained at very small numbers for a very very very long time. It's not believable.
Thank you Danny. More elegant than I could have been.
wow. I'm convinced.
This article has many unproven assumptions which render its conclusions meaningless.
something tells me we will be overrun with rats within a few centuries ... or will it be rabbits?
Please! The unproven assumptions held by evolutionists are many MULTIPLES of those you assume are in this article.
To me it’s not so much the scientific evidence (though I think that is there) that sways the argument. To me it’s the accurate description of human fallen nature so accurately discribed/displayed in the Biblical narrative - and still so evident today - that does it for me. “He who is without sin let him cast the first stone.” And another of Jesus’ challenges, “Which of you convinceth me of sin? And if I say the truth, why do ye not believe me?
Is there any other kind? But I get the purpose behind this term, with so many impostors in society.
“By conservative estimates, the population of the United states prior to European contact was greater than 12 million.”
where did they all go?
The birth rate is a small part of the story of human increase over time. Survival rates are the other part. High infant mortality, high child mortality rates, high adult mortality rates keep the population of the most fecund in check.
We have evidence of population resets; the documented mass deaths from the plague in the 14th century, deaths from the introduction of European diseases into North/South America,deaths from the Spanish Influenza in the 20th, the hundred million murders of Communism around the world in the last century, the Nazi Holocaust against the Jews. In pre history we can detect 16 scars from retrovirus infection that are common to both the Chimpanzee DNA and human DNA, showing not just our common descent from a common ancestor, but also indicating mass infections by retrovirus in our common ancestor, not just once, but many times.
Any evidence of 2.4 being a uniform universal constant? If you care to look, check the CIA world fact book that has fertility rates for just about all countries on the globe. What fraction of countries have a 2.4 fertility rate? Just about none. They range from Niger with 7.03 to Taiwan with 1.11. Does that mean the population of the world will soon be nearly all from Niger? Of course not.
The average is 2.45 when I checked just now, so your 2.4 factor is in error. Of course preaching error is what creationism is all about.
“Bible-believing Christian says about six thousand.”
Bishop Usher (sp?) said that, not the Bible.
No actually their “very modest number” doesn’t take into account anything. It’s just picking a number out of their “sun don’t shine” and making up the rest. If they’re taking things into account then first their number has to be able to deal with recorded history:
Then once they get a curve there that works they can back track further.
“Bishop Usher (sp?) said that, not the Bible.”
Thank you for pointing this out. It generally does not appear on these creationist threads.
Your long on rhetoric, short on math.
I’d rather see you debunk this with pure reason based on math than the vitriolic unnecessary rhetoric you present.
They mostly died from European diseases. Influenza and small pox being key players.
Per Jared Diamond’s book “Guns Germs, and Steel”.
The 12 million was for all of north and south America, not just the US.
A key question is why the Spanish king sent conquistadores to the new world, and why the Aztecs didn’t send conquistadores to Spain?
Why? Because the orientation of the Americas is north-south, and the orientation of the Eurasia is east west. Because of that, Eurasian plants and animals which were useful could spread east to west and be nearly uniformly useful all along the path. By contrast, plants and animals in the Americas that were useful had to cross climate zones where they were less useful, spreading more slowly.
Because of that Eurasian farm animals were more preferentially evolved, and the diseases evolved in those farm animals evolved along with them, also affecting the evolution of humans. When the Europeans arrived they got there with a lethal combination of disease, animals from which the disease moved to humans, and human keepers immune to the disease.
That faster development of farm animals lead to faster development of other technologies, such as guns and steel, but those were essentially defensive. The germs were the technology that could infect one native village after another, far in advance of the Spanish and later English colonists.
Is that right. Well, do tell us what Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva taught you last time they came down from Olympus.
If you're going to even pretend to believe the Bible, then that is about the age of humanity. We have two genealogies of Jesus, one going back to Adam, and we know roughly that 2,000 years have elapsed since His earthly appearance. It doesn't take a mathematician to crunch the numbers.
I posted facts that the 2.4 universal constant posited in the article was false.
What is rhetoric? The use of a combination of facts, reason, ethics and feelings in an attempt to convince. It isn’t a bad thing.
I posted facts. I posted reasons. I posted on ethics (it is bad to knowingly lie!). I am sorry that your feelings are hurt when I suggest that creationist liars are liars.
Your post shows you know very little about Roman Paganism. If you like, I would be glad to evangelize you.
Bishop Usher (sp?) said that, not the Bible.
Actually, the Bible DOES claim exactly 1656 years from Creation to the flood (Genesis 5), and 427 years from the beginning of the flood to the Covenant with Abraham (Genesis 11).
There is some debate on the timing of Abraham, but looking at contemporary history (Egypt, Sodom & Gomorrah, etc.) many place him between 2000-1800 BC. Of course, this assumes the Genesis records skips no generations, which appears unlikely based on the narrative. Nevertheless, it is there for you to study youself.
It's fairly easy to get to a 6,000 year old Earth, for "Bible Believing Christians", of which I am one.
Of the two genealogies, where they differ, which is correct?
Do I have to believe the incorrect one also?
It's not the math it's the model it's based on, and the one in this article is based on ignorance.
You’re really making the point that even without food the universe would still be filled with human beings? Are you keeping up with your meds?
Yeah, they just showed up one day, 2 million years ago in their Space Winnebago.............
It’s extra Biblical what you are saying.
It actually kind of makes you a Bible adder to-er, which ain’t good.
I know you mean well.
Now... who was it that showed up “on the backs of crystals”?
We’re already overrun with rats. Look at congress.
Rats and rabbits aren’t at the top of the food chain. We are.
We poison rats and mice to keep their numbers down. And yard is full of rabbits. Though there’s are some really well fed foxes in the area too.
Now... who was it that showed up on the backs of crystals?
And are you really making the point that the earth has been without food for numerous periods of time?
I think that this piece is making the point that even allowing to evolutionists the most generous assumptions, the results are still highly improbable. The piece is also not attempting to posit assumptions, as you seem to be implying, but saying that the position of creation DOES fit the mathematical model WITHOUT making unfounded assumptions.
Do I have to believe the incorrect one also?
One of your genealogies has you as the son of William. Another has you as the son of Mildred. Are they false because they are not "the same?"
Of course there’s an element of faith in creation. The earth was created with an apparent age, just as Adam was. The question becomes, who should we love, fear, believe and obey? Do we call God a liar, or men?
The language used in Genesis 1 precludes long ages. It’s impossible to have an “evening and a morning,” (literally dusk and dawn), describing such long ages, or the earth would have to be revolving once every billion years or so. And whenever an ordinal number (first, second, etc.) is used with “yom” it always means a 24 hour day.
But beyond that, there’s the stupendous complexity of the most “simple” one-celled life. It’s laughably ridiculous to believe that a single protein molecule could form spontaneously. This idea, by itself, has been declared as likely as a solar system full of blind men all simultaneously solving the Rubik’s Cube. And the most “simple” one-celled life contains dozens of them. And that’s not counting a variably permeable cell membrane, DNA, etc. Having a whole “simple” one-celled life form spontaneously appear has been compared to believing that a tornado tearing through a junkyard could create a fully functional 747. Darwin had the excuse that at that time cells were thought to be just blobs of protoplasm. “Scientists” today don’t have that excuse.
Pasteur disproved spontaneous generation a long time ago, instead devising the law of biogenesis, that life begets life, but “scientists” must cling to this fiction of spontaneous generation or face up to the prospect of God and His rules that they refuse to obey.
See “Pascal’s Wager”.
You have infinite gain and infinite loss with minor cost
No eternal gain or no eternal loss with minor gain.
Where do you want to place your “chip”? You have only one.
There’s a big part of Pascal’s Wager that never gets discussed, if you’re believing in God just to play the odds then you’re also betting God’s OK with you just covering bets and not really believing. The reality is either you believe or you don’t, believing just to cover bases is actually not believing it’s pretending.
Faith is involved, but Pascal is also pointing out that it’s actually more REASONABLE to believe in God.
More like 250 million, truth be told, but the point is made.
“Evolutionists must assume, with no evidence or basis, that these innumerable “resets” must have happened to make their model fit the math.”
Not true; that they “must” assume anything of the kind.
It might fit nice with the math needed for a “stable” population beginning at a rigged point in time, but human history never cared to bend itself to that math so it is irrelevant.
They - “evolutionsists - can also “assume” that due to basic human mortality in a much more hostile natural environment that NOT everyone individual formed a couple with someone else and NOT every couple (on average) had 2.4 children. Could that assumption be wrong? Yes. Just as creationists can be wrong to assume that every human since Noah did form a human couple and every couple (on average) did have 2.4 children.
Making history conform to a mathematical formula that uses unproven postulates does not prove the formula is an expression of actual history. It only proves that the formula conforms to the unproven assumptions that went into it.
It’s not just faith, it’s understanding the reality of what it means to believe. If you don’t believe you don’t believe, period. Faking it “just in case” isn’t believing, the REASONABLE then is to be who you are. If you don’t believe and you’re wrong (ie there is God) faking it ain’t getting you into heaven because He knows you don’t actually believe. The Wager also runs into problems in that it’s binary in a very NOT binary world, one doesn’t simply believe in God, you gotta pick a brand, and often sub-brand, and flavor, there’s lots of religions out there many with splinter groups. Presumably they don’t ALL get it right (if only because they all think the others are wrong so it’s not logically possible for them to all be right), at least some of them aren’t going to heaven, and if you pick wrong you might as well have not believed for all the good it did you.
I love Pascal’s Wager. As for settling the arguments between creationists and evolutionists, that won’t be possible until somebody invents a time machine. I don’t really care. It’s enough just to be thankful we have the Bible, and the Jews. They have brought amazing blessings upon humanity, as God said they would. Humanity is a nasty, crawling mess of filth, and the Bible has given us a semblance of order and goodness.
As far as “which brand”, I’ll leave that reasoned discussion to CS Lewis’ “Mere Christianity”.
The Christian God is the only one that makes sense.