There was no time in those days so our measurement of one year or a hundred years is different. For example a generation could be as little as 40 year
YOUNG EARTH?
by Terry 39 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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designs
"there was no time in those days"....
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Earnest
Terry, I think it is the difference between simple interest and compound interest. You are assuming that the moment a couple have their 2.4 children they drop dead. It doesn't work like that. Take the Victorians, for example, who often had families of 10 or 12 children although many died in childhood. How do you account in your accumulative figures for events like the Black Death which wiped out about half of Europe in four years? I think your figure of 2.4 children is far too low and your assumptions are far too simple.
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designs
Does anyone remember what the Org. said about Noah's children and their spouses not having sex while the Ark was being built- some comparison to modern pioneers, might be from the 50s or 60s.
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Terry
Terry, I think it is the difference between simple interest and compound interest. You are assuming that the moment a couple have their 2.4 children they drop dead. It doesn't work like that. Take the Victorians, for example, who often had families of 10 or 12 children although many died in childhood. How do you account in your accumulative figures for events like the Black Death which wiped out about half of Europe in four years? I think your figure of 2.4 children is far too low and your assumptions are far too simple.
Sure, I understand what you are saying. But--did you read carefully what happens when you bump the figure?
Read this carefully. You end up with WAAAAAAY TOOOO MANY people if there is even the slightest increase:
What if the rate at which children were born is increased to the average of today? The average is 2.9.
Where would that get us?
We'd end up with a world population of: 334,190,590,114,412,000 people.
6 billion people crammed into every square mile of Earth! -
Phizzy
When I read the KJV they were constantly " Begatting " , ( so-and-so begat Unpronounceable etc), I reckon all that begatting caused a population explosion.
People seem to begat a lot less these days in my area. I haven't begatted for ages.
When you look at serious studies of the matter of historical populations you realise that it all comes down to an educated guess, but it also seems irrefutable that man has been on the Earth for a lot longer than the WT's 6,000 years to get to where we are today in population.
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Vanderhoven7
It seems to me that the biblical flood event fits current population statistics far better than a non-flood history
From the Bible-Science Guy
To calculate the earth’s population growth since Noah’s Flood, let’s be extremely conservative and say average population growth is only half this rapid. That is, let’s assume it takes 150 years for the population to double on average. This corresponds to an average annual percentage growth rate of 0.463% (for every 100,000 people, a net of 463 are added yearly). For comparison, this is the same thing as saying $6 invested at 0.463% annual interest for 4500 years would grow to $6,400,000,000.
Then in 6,000 years since Creation, there would be 40 doublings (6,000/150 = 40). Two people (Adam and Eve) would grow to 2.2 trillion in 6,000 years. This is far, far greater than today’s population. In fact it’s over 300 times today’s population.
The Deluge
1840 painting by Francis Danby (1793–1861)But about 4,500 years ago Noah’s Flood drowned almost everyone. Noah’s three sons and their wives repopulated the earth (Genesis 9:18-19). In 4,500 years there would be 30 doublings (4500/150 = 30), so those six people would grow to 6.4 billion. This is close to today’s world population of 7.1 billion.
Calculating the actual doubling time and growth rate since the Flood when the population grew from 6 people (Noah’s 3 sons and their 3 wives) to 7.1 billion people in 4,500 years, we get an average doubling time of 149 years and an average annual percentage growth rate of 0.465%.
A slight increase in the annual growth rate has a significant impact on the population when the number of years of growth is large. If we increase the average annual percentage growth rate slightly from 0.465% to 0.50%, then those six people would grow to over 33 billion in 4500 years. Therefore it is completely feasible for Noah’s family to grow to 7 billion in 4500 years at an average annual growth rate of less than ½%. This annual growth rate, 0.465%, is less than half of the average annual percentage growth rate of 1.19% from 1999 to 2012, when the population grew from 6 billion to 7 billion in 13 years.
Thus the known facts of population growth fit the Biblical chronology very well. Population growth mathematics clearly supports the Biblical record. The Biblical account of history is true, apart from our human attempts at verification. Nevertheless, it is fascinating to see how the available statistics do fit the record of Scripture.
Subsequent articles in this series on Population Growth will look at these topics:
- Israel’s growth into a nation in Egypt.
- Population growth mathematics challenges evolution.
- How many people died in Noah’s Flood?Population Growth Formulas
For those interested in checking the math, here are the Population Growth formulas used in this article:
Starting with population P, the new population is
= P x 2 d after d doublings.
= P x (1+r) n after n years at an annual growth rate r.The population doubling time in years is
= T/d where T is the population’s elapsed time in years and d is the # of doublings.
= (log 2) / log(1+r) where r is the annual growth rate.Questions to Ponder
- When observational data fits the Scriptural record, how does that impact your perspective on Biblical reliability?
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designs
"Why would you take advice from a God who killed his own children."
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Apognophos
There's less of a problem with the idea that there could be this many people after 6,000 or 2,500 years, and more of a problem with the idea that there were enough people 100-200 years after the Flood to form cities and start building the Tower of Babel.
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prologos
and the pyramids simultaneously. plus concurrent projects in central America and the far Orient.
