Posted on 02/22/2013 4:36:45 AM PST by koinonia
This is from a blog from a priest which I found original and convincing regarding the age of the human race:
Man's Millions-of-years Mathematical Myth debunked: p*b y = x
Let me propose an argument, rather simple, but which should convincingly indicate that the human race - whether through evolution or as an intact race - cannot date tens or hundreds of thousands of years back (let alone millions and zillions!). The argument is based on population growth and the 7 billion people on earth as of 2012. Seven BILLION people is a LOT of people and so one can readily imagine that it took tens of thousands of years to reach this point. And yet 7 billion is a very finite number...
According to sociological studies (frequently quoted and well documented by those who want to "save" the earth and reduce the human population by 90-95%, if you think I'm kidding take a glance at the "Georgia guidestones" and listen/read what Ted Turner has been saying like a broken record: 350 million ideal number for the entire world population and international 1 child per family policy), the rough average of population growth in the early 1900's (before contraception, legalized abortion, etc.) was 1.4%. We are told that Noah entered the ark with his three sons and their wives; when they exited the ark the world population was eight. Now population growth presumes that the number of births is greater than the number of deaths. God blessed mankind twice with the words: "Increase and multiply" (Gen 1:28; 7:17), the second time was after Noah and his family left the ark.
My dad was an actuary, by the way, so this type of story problem is write up my alley :-) First, let's do the math based on a 1.4% annual increase of the population starting with eight persons and see how many years it would take to arrive at 7 billion. The math would look like this:
p*b y = x p = the starting population, so 8 b = rate of annual growth, we'll start with 1.4% (which means 1.014) y = the years, since the growth would be exponential x = the final population, in our case 7 billion
Drumroll please... yes, eight people with a 1.4% annual growth rate would surpass 7 billion people in a whopping 1481 years. Take a look at the math:
8 people * (1.014 annual growth) 1481 years = 7,003,277,544
That is an eyeopener, is it not? Well, since the human race has obviously been around longer than 1481 years, let's work our way backwards to see what the median growth rate would have had to be for eight persons to arrive at 7 billion over a period of 4600 years (what Scripture scholars tell us would have been the time of the flood).
p*b y = x 8 people*(? growth rate) 4600 years = 7 billion today
And the answer is that for eight people to surpass 7 billion over a period of 4600 years the annual growth rate would only have to be 0.45% (yes, less than half a percent annual growth rate). 4600 years is realistic, then, for arriving at 7 billion people from 4 married couples.
My point here is that to argue that man dates back tens of thousands or more years ago would go completely against all the statistics. Annually there are always more births than deaths, and this even now with world wars, abortions, sterilization, contraception - in a word, in a culture of death. In fact a growth rate of 0.45% from 2 people over a twenty thousand year period comes out to be "infinity" on the exponents calculator (just put 1.0045 in the number slot and 20,000 in the exponent slot and see what happens). I don't deny that there could have been some unlikely years of decrease or stagnancy, but the consistent trend of all creatures has always been growth and increase and this indicates (if not outright proves) that the human race is relatively young compared to the outlandish theories that are proported (dare I say dogmatically) in classrooms today around the globe. Add to that that if we evolved from apes, we probably would not have started from just 4 married couples off of Noah's ark, but be popping out of the jungle in an ever larger numbers and then multiplying from these creatures, etc.
Stupidity with formulas is still stupidity. The earth is about 4.6 billion years old and none of your nonsensical “reasoning” affects that at all.
He lost me at “write up my alley”.
Now you see, posts like yours are the reason that I wish FR had a “like” button so I don’t have to write all this out. Thanks.
I guess the bottleneck in human DNA means something other than the almost total extinction of mankind about 5,000 years ago.
What an incredibly weak argument.
That the writer has to resort to it says something about the strength of his case.
“Annually there are always more births than deaths...I don’t deny that there could have been some unlikely years of decrease or stagnancy, but the consistent trend of all creatures has always been growth and increase and this indicates (if not outright proves) that the human race is relatively young....”
Such a notion is pure ignorance and nonsense. The occurrence of more deaths than births in an annual time period is very common in human history and in non-human populations. In the non-human populations such a greater number of deaths than births is what results in the extinction of the population, and we have innumerable examples of non-human population extinctions. We also have numerous examples of various human populations, meaning different sub-groups of humans.
Up to somewhere between 75 percent to around 90 percent of the Amerindian populations in the New World succumbed to diseases before and after the Columbian colonizations. In the pre-Columbian period a number of Amerindian populations were seriously diminished by recurrent hemorrhagic fever pandemics. Inter-tribal warfare resulted in the massacre and extinction of enemy tribes down to the last man, woman, and child. Thriving Amerindian communities in such widely separated locales as Illinois, the Yucatan, and the Amazon were so depopulated by disease, economic collapse, and other events, Nature reclaimed the cultivated and urbanized landscapes and restored them to primeval conditions.
The Black Death destroyed something on the order of one-third of Europe’s entire population. Many European communities reverted to forest and prarie following this great pandemic. China’s population suffered even greater death tolls from the black plague and a number of other plagues. The Mongols depopulated Iran by exterminating every man, woman, child, dog, and other beast in the cities and communities resisting their conquests. Those few populations that survived were reduced even further by famine and disease when the Mongols destroyed the irrigations systems and the agriculture of Iran.
Cities were by and large great death traps. Without a constant influx of population from the rural communities to provide a replacement population to offset population loss from higher rates of disease, the population of the city dropped dramatically until the city was abandoned and fell into ruin. The population of Rome always fell to a fraction of its former size during periods in which the lack of economic opportunity in the city discouraged the larger influx of people from the healthier rural communities.
When the Han people of China tried to expand their population in to the tropical region south of the Yellow River, their colonies were repeatedly destroyed by the disease pool of the new environment they encountered. The Han rulers resorted to ordering repeated colonization attempts over a period of around 500 years before the colonial populations developed enough immunities to survive and expand the colonies south of the Yellow River.Until then, the number of deaths exceeded the number of births in these tropical colonies.
The bottomline is the reality that your mathematical exercise is based upon blatantly false assumptions about the rates of birth and death in the population. Until the most recent century or centuries, the death toll of humans often exceeded the birth rate to such a degree as to reduce the total humand population by greater and lesser fractions at varoius times in human history and human pre-history.
You equation is as meaningless and full of assumptions as the Drake Equation - a simplistic mathematical exercise in what-ifs that proves nothing and bears no similarity to anything that has actually been observed in nature.
Dear Koin,
Consider that before man had learned farming, he was a wandering predator. Basic ecology and population dynamics will tell you why a large population of predators can’t be supported by any ecosystem.
While I am on this subject, have you considered applying the above to the Urban Feral habitats, AKA “Big Shitty” habitats like New York City, Detoilet, Michigan, ad nauseam?
the “birthrate of man has consistently been higher” is a totally false claim as demonstrated by Erope’s loss of about one-thrid of its entire population during the Black Death. In order for Europe’s population to shrink by a thrid, it is patently obvious the death rate exceeded the cirth rate in the years of this depopulation o feurope. The same is true of the plagues in Greece, China, and the New World. Worldwide human populations have suffered net losses instead of gains at many periods of human history, which means the assumption of only gains has no basis in reality and is a recklessly false claim.
First, I’m a Christian.
Second, the math here is ludicrous.
The population growth rates on bacteria are such that at any given time a small culture could be expected to equal the mass of the Earth within a month. Yet, that doesn’t happen. Have rabbits been around as long as humans? What do their birth rates look like in comparison?
Take a look at how many rabbits there are in Australia, where they were relatively recently introduced compared to Germany, where they have existed forever.
The same thing happened in the late 1300 to early 1400s period ~ Black Plague put a stop to that growth stuff.
Wars have become less deadly BTW. Back in the day they were far more deadly.
Then, there's the early 1500 to mid 1600 period in the Americas where almost the entire native population of tens of millions of human beings were destroyed by hanta virus.
“In fact a growth rate of 0.45% from 2 people over a twenty thousand year period comes out to be “infinity” on the exponents calculator (just put 1.0045 in the number slot and 20,000 in the exponent slot and see what happens).”
This is the wrong formula to calculate the total growth rate, because the growth is geometric, not exponential. You need to use an iterative formula, like for x=1-20,000, y[x] = y[x-1] +(y[x-1]*.045)
An easy way to calculate something like that is to just use a compound interest calculator. The starting population is your starting balance, the growth rate is the interest rate, and the number of years is the number of compounding periods.
1900 to present is a modern era with countries and organisation and ability to farm with irrigation systems and domesticated animals and fertilizer. Im just scratching the surface at the amounts of technology that allow the growth of the population. This is not including wars, which were more frequent and bloodier in the past than in the present. Genghis khan alone killed 11.1% of the world population, the plague killed about 20% of the world population. Im sure animals killed humans more frequently, im sure lots died from the flu or tuberculosis or polio or malaria or an innumerable amount of diseases that we regard as nothing these days. And just the thought of humanity being borne out of incest is ridiculous. Take a look at Saudi Arabia to get a view of what excessive incestual relations do to genetics. They have the highest rate of mutations and cogenital diseases in the world because more than half the population marries their cousin.
A million facepalms.
No it doesn’t. It just assumes the aggregate growth rate is positive. There could be a death rate of 30%, and a birth rate of 34.5%, and the math would be exactly the same.
“In the non-human populations such a greater number of deaths than births is what results in the extinction of the population, and we have innumerable examples of non-human population extinctions. We also have numerous examples of various human populations, meaning different sub-groups of humans.”
Sure, but that tells us nothing about the average population growth rate of all humans. We know the total growth rate, on average, must be positive from day 0 until now, so the only question is how large is the average growth rate? Maybe he is overestimating it at 4.5%, but then what is the real figure? Is the rate which would be consistent with humans being 100,000 years old also consistent with observed human growth rates or not?
I tried to use a reverse compound interest figure to get an estimate, but putting in 100,000 years for the calculation crashed the script :)
The argument about contractions fails to take into account that, when you assume a large age, like 100,000 years, then the few years of negative growth become even more insignificant when looking at the aggregate growth rate. If we were only 5,000 years old, then the periods you cite are significant, but at 100,000 years old, a century or two of negative growth is negligible.
Young Earth nonsense makes us all look foolish. I applaud the efforts of the more reasonable evangelicals to talk some sense into these 6,000 year old Earth people, but unfortunately you just can’t fix stupid.
I don’t recall the source, but I remember hearing/reading that at a fairly recent prehistoric time the total human population was reduced to a few tens of thousands.
The argument I always get and still can’t come up with an answer (I know it’s there) is since the Bible only mentions Adam and Eve and Cain and Able where did the other people come from. I’ve answered that it’s the story of Cain and Able that was important not the family members of Adam and Eve. Secondly, maybe genetics were different then and intermarrying was not and issue. Then of course there’s Noah which brought up the same questions. But then Noah’s son’s hadn’t intermarried with their sisters. It’s all totally confusing and I wished I could come up with better answers. Yes I researched on the web.
History exposes this argument as fraudulent.
You are assuming a constant 1.4 percent rate of growth, and this is just not so. You have epidemics. You have famine and you have plague. While it is true since the agricultural revolution that our population has increased steadily this will not be the case in another 20 years, when the population levels and declines.
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