The logical trend would show that about 4-5000BC there was a "beginning" of the present world population.
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.
Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he hold to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods and on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion. [1 Timothy 1.7]
GIGO
You’re referring to the Toba super-eruption of approx 75K years ago and the theory of Mitochondrial Eve.
No, it's based on a growth rate. If there are 1000 people and 10 die but 15 are born, you have 1005 (that's what he means by a 0.5% growth rate). He presumes that people are dying every year - the population growth today is actually much larger - 1.4% - regardless of how many die, the new population each year is higher, and this exponentially.
The post wasn't about the age of the earth. Regardless, one can "believe" theories that say the earth is 4.6 billion years old. It may well be. But scientists are fish in an aquarium and there observations of what is outside there aquarium are very limited.
ayep..and nobody ever died before procreating...
Don’t sweat it koinonia, you are not alone here. Just many many more doubting thomases that still believe the secular godless scientific viewpoint ‘has their backs’ - right up until the shtf anyways.
Here are a couple of more links in defense of a young Earth/Universe. Also mathematicians are the highest majority group in complete disagreement with long age evolution, rather than so many ‘self-professed christians’ who seem to sorely lack for both critical thinking and bible reading skills.
101 Evidences for a Young Age of the Earth...And the Universe
http://creation.com/age-of-the-earth
Center for Scientific Creation - In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood
http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/IntheBeginningTOC.html
Perhaps once you learn the difference between an adverb and a pronoun, I'll listen to your musings on physical anthropology
You are using false assumptions, so you get obviously false results. You are for some reson blind to the false assumptions, which are so blindingly obvious to others.
To illustrate the point with an exaggerated example, consider the fictoinal case of Homo antiquus. This notional human population is very fecund and experiences a population growth of 100 percent in the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth periods. In the tenth period, Homo antiquus experiences a 100 percent population decrease. What is the compound percentage population growth at the end of the tenth period of time? What is the projected population of Homo antiquus at the end of the eleventh period?
What is the compound average of the population growth for Homo neanderthalis?
The logical trend would show that about 4-5000BC there was a "beginning" of the present world population.
Post was about the human race, not the age of the earth. It is not a "proof," but does certainly indicate that speaking of a relatively young human race is not "stupid" and is at least no less credible than "believing" in the scientific conjectures of our day.
You are very obviously taking the assumed compound average of population increase for the recent and the early time periods and applying it to the earlier time periods when he actual rates were substantially less than 1 percent or negative percentages for centuries at a time. The population rates of the most most recent centuries and millenia are far higher than those of the earliest periods, so they are not representative of the early periods. Using the average of the entire period grossly distorts the final product of those calculations In other words, it is an elementary school level failure in basic mathematics.
He wrote: 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.
While it's not a proof, it is certainly an indication that speaking of a relatively young human race is not ridiculous.
Thank you for the quote. The great St. Augustine! I love him. But the post was not about Scriptures, creation, etc. simply an indication, a mathematical one, that the human race is relatively young. You could use the equation to go backwards form $7 billion dollars to see how long it took yielding the same exponential interest. Not a “proof,” but certainly gives an indication that it’s just as rash to believe man existing for zillions of years. God bless...
What do you assume about the population growth rate of the first population to come over into the Americas?
Stupidity is assuming the present growth rate is constant and consistent, that it is a ceiling beyond which a population cannot exceed in populating a new continent - and a floor below which a population with diminishing resources cannot fall.
Thank you for the links. I found this one helpful as well: http://www.answersingenesis.org/
I would be remiss to not point out the last 6 entries for my first link [prior post] defend your position quite well.
In fact #96 is almost a verbatim of this thread’s premise:
96. Human history is consistent with a young age of the earth
Human population growth. Less than 0.5% p.a. growth from six people 4,500 years ago would produce today’s population. Where are all the people? if we have been here much longer?
97. “Stone age” human skeletons and artefacts. There are not enough for 100,000 years of a human population of just one million, let alone more people (10 million?). See Where are all the people?
98. Length of recorded history. Origin of various civilizations, writing, etc., all about the same time several thousand years ago. See Evidence for a young world.
99. Languages. Similarities in languages claimed to be separated by many tens of thousands of years speaks against the supposed ages (e.g. compare some aboriginal languages in Australia with languages in south-eastern India and Sri Lanka). See The Tower of Babel account affirmed by linguistics.
100. Common cultural “myths” speak of recent separation of peoples around the world. An example of this is the frequency of stories of an earth-destroying flood.
101. Origin of agriculture. Secular dating puts it at about 10,000 years and yet that same chronology says that modern man has supposedly been around for at least 200,000 years. Surely someone would have worked out much sooner how to sow seeds of plants to produce food. See: Evidence for a young world.
That certain populations or nations had set backs is reasonable, but the world population continues to grow. It grew even during the World Wars - because the rest of the world was multiplying more than the number who died in the Gulags and concentration camps and battles. Same with plagues, etc. At any rate, it is not a “proof,” but simply indicates that a relatively young human race is plausible, even probable, whereas posing a human race in the hundreds of thousands of years old does not match up with even a miniscule growth rate.
“Any documentation of a world population regularly declining?”
Yes, the chart you posted shows such declines in world population. The erason you see such smooth chart lines in the population numbers in the chart for the arly millenia is due to the lack of sufficient detailed data points necesssary to define and delineate such fluctuations. In time periods and regions where there are no surviving written records to assist in identifying and defining documented population numbers, estimates of population based upon settlement patterns, grave frequencies, and other proxies must be usedd to estimate populations with less accuracy than records of polls.
The Fifth Millenium B.C.E. change in rate of human population increase is due to key improvements in himan technologies, particularly in agriculture, anmimal husbandry, and transportation of trade goods. Civilization greatly improved the human ability to adpat to the environment and sustain arger populations which previous technologies were unable to accomplish.
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