Tuesday, March 28, 2006
Creationist musings
There is this rather nice person that I know who is a creationist. While I do respect this person's views, I feel that a lifetime of upbringing in a religious household and religious community have blinded this person to simple logic. Now I may be stepping on toes here, so I’ll try to be a bit more respectful of my readers today. Also, I’m using population data from a few years back…
I guess that this whole thing stems from the Creationist belief that the Earth is about 6000 years old. That is around the time the Bible puts Genesis. The belief is that the current population of Earth (5.5 billion) could easily be generated from 8 people in less than 4000 years. If the earth were really billions of years old, the human population would have gone through the roof!
I guess I need to clarify a point there before I go on… Thought the belief is that the Earth is 6000 years old, the Great Flood where Noah managed to save 8 humans occurs 1656 years after Adam and Eve.
So let’s do it… Got a pen and paper ready? Good!
If we assume, for the purpose of discussion, that the earth is 6000 years old, then we start our calculation with 8 people 4344 years ago. We must wind up with the present population of 5.5 billion people.
To do that, we’ll use this really cool equation:
P(n) = P(1 + r)^n
P(n), called the function P of n, is the population generated after n years. (With the proper adjustment of r, n could be months or generations, etc. For our purposes, years will do nicely and r will be adjusted accordingly.) P (the multiplied factor on the right-hand side of the equation) is the initial population which, in our case, is eight. The growth rate is r which would be close to zero for humanity per year. A negative value would indicate a population decline. Got that???
It turns out that if r = 0.0047 then after 4344 years we would wind up with about 5.6 billion people, which is close enough. After substituting the values for P and r into the above equation we are at liberty to try out different values for n to obtain the population at different times. At the time the Israelites entered Canaan, for instance, we get a world population of 2024! By the time you divide that up between Egypt, Canaan, the rest of the world, and Israel, that leaves maybe 6 or 7 people for the Israeli army! If we go back to the time that the Hykos were expelled from Egypt, in 1560 BC, we get a world population of 325 people!
As you can see, an exponential growth curve leads to absurdity when we assume that 8 people generated today's population. Creationists, of course, could jack the r value way up at the start, jack it way down in the middle, and jack it up again for modern times, but the ad hoc nature of such an argument becomes a little too obvious.
Anyways, I don’t have anything left… I’m spent… Good night…
I guess that this whole thing stems from the Creationist belief that the Earth is about 6000 years old. That is around the time the Bible puts Genesis. The belief is that the current population of Earth (5.5 billion) could easily be generated from 8 people in less than 4000 years. If the earth were really billions of years old, the human population would have gone through the roof!
I guess I need to clarify a point there before I go on… Thought the belief is that the Earth is 6000 years old, the Great Flood where Noah managed to save 8 humans occurs 1656 years after Adam and Eve.
So let’s do it… Got a pen and paper ready? Good!
If we assume, for the purpose of discussion, that the earth is 6000 years old, then we start our calculation with 8 people 4344 years ago. We must wind up with the present population of 5.5 billion people.
To do that, we’ll use this really cool equation:
P(n) = P(1 + r)^n
P(n), called the function P of n, is the population generated after n years. (With the proper adjustment of r, n could be months or generations, etc. For our purposes, years will do nicely and r will be adjusted accordingly.) P (the multiplied factor on the right-hand side of the equation) is the initial population which, in our case, is eight. The growth rate is r which would be close to zero for humanity per year. A negative value would indicate a population decline. Got that???
It turns out that if r = 0.0047 then after 4344 years we would wind up with about 5.6 billion people, which is close enough. After substituting the values for P and r into the above equation we are at liberty to try out different values for n to obtain the population at different times. At the time the Israelites entered Canaan, for instance, we get a world population of 2024! By the time you divide that up between Egypt, Canaan, the rest of the world, and Israel, that leaves maybe 6 or 7 people for the Israeli army! If we go back to the time that the Hykos were expelled from Egypt, in 1560 BC, we get a world population of 325 people!
As you can see, an exponential growth curve leads to absurdity when we assume that 8 people generated today's population. Creationists, of course, could jack the r value way up at the start, jack it way down in the middle, and jack it up again for modern times, but the ad hoc nature of such an argument becomes a little too obvious.
Anyways, I don’t have anything left… I’m spent… Good night…
# posted by Duddadu @ 6:26 PM 
