How could you 'like it' and not understand that periodic population declines for 'war, crime, plagues, etc' are factored in the .5% growth factor?
"Let me guess, You are really an Atheist and are posting this stuff just to make Christians look bad."
Let me guess, you are really a Christian and are posting this stuff to make the atheists look bad.
Be serious
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB620.html
1) This claim assumes that the population growth rate was always constant, which is a false assumption. Wars and plagues would have caused populations to drop from time to time. In particular, population sizes before agriculture would have been severely limited and would have had an average population growth of zero for any number of years.
2) There is no particular reason to choose a population growth rate of 0.5 percent for the calculation. The population growth from 1000 to 1800 has been closer to 0.1227 percent per year (Encyclopaedia Britannica 1984). At that rate, the population would have grown to its present size from the eight Flood survivors in 16,660 years.
3) The population growth rate proposed by the claim would imply unreasonable populations early in history. We will be more generous in our calculations and start with eight people in 2350 B.C.E. (a traditional date for the Flood). Then, assuming a growth rate of 0.5 percent per year, the population after N years is given by
P(N) = 8 × (1.005)N
The Pyramids of Giza were constructed before 2490 B.C.E., even before the proposed Flood date. Even if we assume they were built 100 years after the flood, then the world population for their construction was 13 people. In 1446 B.C.E., when Moses was said to be leading 600,000 men (plus women and children) on the Exodus, this model of population growth gives 726 people in the world. In 481 B.C.E., Xerxes gathered an army of 2,641,000 (according to Herodotus) when the world population, according to the model, was 89,425. Even allowing for exaggerated numbers, the population model makes no sense.
“How could you ‘like it’ and not understand that periodic population declines for ‘war, crime, plagues, etc’ are factored in the .5% growth factor?”
—Nothing is “factored in” to that number, it’s made up. The rate of growth has changed drastically from generation to generation. In many places today the population is even shrinking. It’s absolutely silly to estimate the age of any population from its size.
In nonagricultural societies, populations are just as likely to grow as to shrink or to remain steady.
The link that the page uses as a source says that the australian aborigines couldn’t have been there for 60k years because the population was only 300k, as if there’s any reason to believe that the population had been growing.
Here’s a chart showing human population growth - it’s hardly analagous to an hourglass, and one can pull out any “growth rate” they want from that:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Population_curve.svg
>>Let me guess, you are really a Christian and are posting this stuff to make the atheists look bad.<<
The irony ... the irony...
