 I usually have fairly deep conversations with my Chiropractor over many topics. Today the topic of the origins of the human race came up, and he quoted someone he had read who said that it was "mathematically impossible" for there to be as many people as we have in the world today if the world was only 6000 years old (as the Bible indicates) starting with only two people (Adam and Eve). He argued that with the many deaths due to wars and plagues, the human race simply didn't have enough time to achieve our current numbers in such a short amount of time. My gut told me that he was wrong, and I promised to crunch the numbers when I went home. The results were quite interesting. A quick search reveals current population growth rates across the world.
I decided to use a somewhat conservative estimate of 1% growth. Using simple formulas for compound interest, I plugged in my numbers:
PV = 2 people The result maxed out the cell in my spreadsheet: "########". I expanded the field, and it did not change. It was not that Excel couldn't display my number because it was too wide: it was too big to fit in a large integer field. So I tried something else: PV = 2 people Answer: 18,414,135,882,380 That is 18 trillion people over 3000 years with only a 1% growth rate. So I decided to take a different approach and try to determine what growth rate would be required to meet our real world conditions.
PV = 2 people i = 0.003664555 or 0.3% If the worldwide growth rate averaged just 0.3% across the last six thousand years, we would arrive at our current world population. Not only is this mathematically possible, it is unlikely for the world to be much more than 6000 years old without major reductions in the population or extended periods of zero population growth. The 20th century was a particularly bloody one with many major diseases, wars, and genocides, and yet the human population mushroomed during that time. I decided to use these formulas to confirm another Biblical narrative: the original Egyptian captivity. The nation of Israel was said to have grown from 70 people to over 3 million (estimated) in a period of 400 years. Is this possible? Using the last formula above, I plugged in the following values: PV = 70 (people) i = 0.027022736 or 2.7% There are countries in the world today with over 3% population growth, and while this was an impressive rate of growth, it was certainly not beyond the realm of possibility especially considering that this time in Egypt appears to have been a time of peace. While obviously not a proof for Christianity or the accuracy of the Bible, these numbers lend credence to the plausibility of its assertions. In fact, it throws the entire question of evolution into a quandary. If homo sapiens have been around for 100,000 years, then they would have had to have an average growth rate of 0.02% to not have overwhelmed the earth. Even an incredibly slight increase to 0.03% yields 21 trillion people today. This is the law of exponential growth, and when dealing with the numbers thrown around by most evolutionists grows rapidly out of control. Now some would argue that we have improved nutrition and medical practices, but some of the least developed nations have the largest growth rates. In fact, when nations become "developed", after an initial spurt of growth, the growth rate usually slows considerably due to smaller families. Taking in account the need for extra helping hands, lack of birth control, and cultural conditions, it is not unreasonable to say that the growth rates of ancient civilizations were much higher than 0.02%. So in conclusion, to say that it is mathematically impossible for our current population to have arrived in only 6000 years is absolutely untrue. In fact, it causes me to reflect in wonder that we only have 7 billion people after 6000 years. Apparently we are very efficient at killing each other. |
|||
 |
Hidden PlacesLife outside of the mainstream |
|
|
|
|
Lemme just say this
I was horrified and repelled when I saw this "math post". ;)
Y'all know I look at things all funky so I'll say what comes to mind is "a day is as a thousand years and a thousand years is as a day to God". So if the earth was created in 6 days, is that a literal 6 thousand years? Or is that our misinterpretation because we're bound down by the measurements of our own invention, time? I'll just say that learning scientific notation was enough to make me realize that someone misnotating a zero backward or forward was entirely likely, especially concerning carbon dating. In God's "time" I AM can lob off zero's if He wants to because it's all infinity to Him anyway, there is no such thing as more or less. He could create or authorize more or less time but He doesn't abide in time although He's long on record keeping.
Plus, if you believe science, NASA reported that when Neil Armstrong first stepped on the moon, he only stepped down into 1/8" of cosmic dust. If we'd of been around for "billions and billions" of years, the dust would have been way, way taller.
The six thousand year age of the earth is not based on that verse. It was calculated by using the various dates and ages throughout the Bible. In the early chapters of Genesis, for example, it lists a full ancestry with the number of years each person lived, how old they were when their first son was born, etc. Assuming that the accounts are accurate and there were no typological errors in the manuscripts, scholars determined that the Bible records only four thousand years of history before Christ, thus we have an earth that is six thousand years old.
My point was not that the earth is six thousand years old, but based on the population of the earth and the laws of exponential math and population growth, a "young" six thousand year old date is certainly possible and, in fact, more likely than a much older date.
That being said, I have heard the verse you quoted used to defend a much older earth with the days of creation each representing ages, but this has its own set of issues... more than I feel like dealing with a this point! ;-)
Told ya it was just my "oddball math". I think what you're talking about is something like this right? http://www.preservedwords.com/images/history.gif
I love Clarence Larkin's old charts, really mind blowing.
Let's just leave it at "the earth is old as dirt" ;)
I like your math!
However...
What about those civilizations/peoples that have a recorded history that goes back over 6k years?
I do agree that we are very effective at killing each other... if you knew the history I do then the only astonishing thing is that we've survived as a species at all.
However, there is a disparity, record-wise, between other cultures and the European/African biblical timeline.
Is that to just be discounted?
~Live life to its fullest... with open arms, an open heart and most importantly, an open mind.~
No, and in reviewing my post I see that I overstated my case (and have since updated the text slightly). My real point is that the 6000 year old figure is not at all out of the realm of mathematical reason. Not even all Biblical scholars agree on the age of the earth based on the Bible, but I find it highly unlikely that humans have been on this earth anywhere near what evolutionists say due to the numbers above. It gets more interesting when you consider the time-lines you have talked about before such as the Hopi because they have catastrophic events that taken place in various points that would result in big setbacks in the population. But even here, I wonder if the numbers add up due to genetic issues of repeatedly narrowing the population down to a very small size (a few families at most) and repopulating. The further removed you got from the initial genetic potential of man, the more likely you are to have problems as is seen in cases on inbreeding today.
I guess I would say that one side or the other has to be wrong as they both cannot be right. Is there a good method to determine which to believe?
I would also like to point out an error I have in my math. I did not take into account a Biblical flood. To do so, we would have to use the following numbers:
PV = 8 people (Noah, his three sons, and their wives)
FV = 6,800,700,000 people
n = 4400 years (the flood is believed to have happened about 4400 years ago)
i = 0.004683856 or 0.47% growth
Nice catch... :)
And you are correct... a 6k timeline could quite realistically produce a bumper-crop of humans running around killing each other. I think you have solidly debunked the claim that you set out to disprove.
I'm odd in that, while I can see what the evolutionists are talking about, I cannot in good faith apply that to human beings. We are a genetic anomaly.
We may have been seeded... I don't know.
So I'm somewhere in the middle in that debate. What I do know is that, while I am not personally a christian, it is again my favorite religion that I do not follow.
Your new testament was so close to our prophecies that it actually split our tribe. The second time in our history.
:)
~Live life to its fullest... with open arms, an open heart and most importantly, an open mind.~
Think about the mortality rate
Then versus now, the difference is staggering. They had to propagate at a higher rate than 0.02%.
People were lucky to live to be forty years old, that's if they made it to adulthood, at all.
LIVE and let live.
For certain periods of time in certain geographical regions. Not all of humanity was living like northern Europe during the Middle Ages. Life in ancient Rome and the Byzantine Empire was much better for example. In order to have positive growth in a population, you only need a little over two surviving children for each generation. Without birth control, a single woman will average eight children. Even with high mortality rates, the population will usually grow.
So do married women have more children. ;)
LOL... okay, smart-alec, an individual woman.
I would have to say yes,
My parents were the babies of 23 children. 13 on Dad's and 10 on my Mom's side. Alot of my first cousins are the same age as my Mom and Dad were. Very odd Trying to figure things out sometimes. There were 4 children that passed before age 1 and 2 others that passed before age 10. Medical advances could have saved them all.
A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out. ~ Walter Winchell
I heard the number bandied about that without birth control, a healthy couple would average 15 kids. I think that's a little high since -- how many 20+ families do you know-- but I think 10 to 12 would probably be closer. My grandfather was from a family of 12 and now there is over 170 from his generation to my children's generation.
I hear you on it being hard to figure things out. My mom had cousins as old as her aunts too. In fact, one aunt actually went to school with her nephew. Poor Khomar about freaked when he went to a family reunion for the first time.