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Author Topic:   Discussing the evidence that support creationism
Buzsaw
Inactive Member


Message 226 of 301 (443500)
12-25-2007 12:17 PM
Reply to: Message 225 by Percy
12-25-2007 11:03 AM


Re: A plea for substantive, constructive, on-topic discussion
As a matter of fact I was making a concerted effort to get to topic, thinking the human population factor was evidence in support of creationism. Oh well, what the heck, you're the boss.
Replying here as Admin to save post bandwidth since this thread is rapidly approaching 300 posts, if you look at the message you're replying to you'll see the answer. It's a reply to your Message 222, not your Message 224 about populations. You hadn't posted Message 224 when I started composing my Message 225, which was interrupted by breakfast. --Percy replying as Admin
Edited by Admin, : Add info about populations being on-topic.

BUZSAW B 4 U 2 C Y BUZ SAW.
The immeasurable present eternally extends the infinite past and infinitely consumes the eternal future.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 225 by Percy, posted 12-25-2007 11:03 AM Percy has not replied

bluescat48
Member (Idle past 4190 days)
Posts: 2347
From: United States
Joined: 10-06-2007


Message 227 of 301 (443504)
12-25-2007 12:30 PM
Reply to: Message 224 by Buzsaw
12-25-2007 10:05 AM


Re: Human Population Factor
Every item on that page is a PRATT

There is no better love between 2 people than mutual respect for each other

This message is a reply to:
 Message 224 by Buzsaw, posted 12-25-2007 10:05 AM Buzsaw has not replied

Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 228 of 301 (443508)
12-25-2007 1:13 PM
Reply to: Message 224 by Buzsaw
12-25-2007 10:05 AM


Re: Human Population Factor
Hi Buz,
First you have to check the figures from that website, Evidence For Creation, under point 4, Population Statistics.
It estimates the annual growth rate at 1% with approximately 1/3 of the population wiped out every 82 years (these figures are extremely questionable, but I'm just going to apply the math). Plugging in the numbers and starting with 8 individuals 4500 years ago (2500 BC) yields a world population today of 49 billion. Would you say that's just a little off, since the estimate of the world population in 2005 was 6.454 billion?
Even worse, applying their figures yields a world human population at the time of Christ of 1.7 million. That was probably the population of just Rome alone in the year 1. The estimated world population at the time of Christ is around 200 million.
World population growth rates have increased dramatically over the past few hundred years because of the advent of modern agriculture and medicine. Simplistically taking the recent world population growth rate and cutting it in half is just a guestimate. Applying guestimates across millennium is bound to generate significant errors. They attempt to compensate for this guestimate by adding yet another guestimate, an 82-year period between episodes causing the demise of 1/3 of the world population, despite that there were no wars, diseases, famines, etc, that would have affected the entire world at even roughly the same time, so this is more a fudge factor than a guestimate, and obviously they didn't go to the trouble to actually do the math (I wrote a simple Perl program) or they would have found they weren't even close.
Wikipedia has a table of estimated world populations at Wikipedia Population Figures, see the table titled, "Estimated world population at various dates, in thousands". The modern rate of annual population growth from 1750 to today, a period when the population grew from .791 billion to 6.454 billion, is 0.83%, far below your website's estimate of recent growth at 2%, and below their 1% figure that they applied over the past 4500 years. In other words, they applied a higher growth rate than the one after the advent of modern agriculture and medicine. Even the annual world population growth rate since 1900 has only been 1.3%. Higher growth rates have only manifested themselves extremely recently. For example, the annual world population growth rate since 1980 has been 1.5%, but nothing approaching your website's claim of recent growth of 2%.
Okay, so I've shown the figures from your website are wrong and likely made up, and that if you actually apply their figures anyway that you get a modern world population of 49 billion, off by a factor of about 7, and that it also doesn't yield accurate population figures for the past, such as at the time of the birth of Christ. But is there any truth at all to the claim that the world population of humans should have increased continuously, except for occasional setbacks, since the species first evolved, say, 100,000 years ago.
The answer is no. Human populations cannot grow beyond the resources they can extract from the local environment. Improving technology increases the size of a population a region can sustain. Stone age technology could not sustain a world population of 6.454 billion, not even close. The current world population is not 6.454 billion simply because of the passage of time, but because of the contributions of modern technology, primarily in the form of improved agriculture and medicine.
A good example of an old technology that cannot sustain large populations that is still practiced in some parts of the world such as South America is slash-and-burn. At one time it was widely practiced, and it can sustain only low population densities. Another example of a technology that cannot sustain large populations is hunter/gatherer.
Technology advanced very little during the middle ages, and if we look at the rate of population growth during the period from 1000 to 1750 we see that it has an annual rate of increase of .13%, an incredibly small figure. That's a growth only slightly larger than a 10th of a percent a year! And between year 1 and year 1000, a good part of that the heart of Middle Ages, the annual growth rate was .04%!!!
Let's look at it another way. If we assume that Wikipedia's figure of a world human population of 200 million in the year 1 is accurate, and if we assume that your website's claim that the total world population 4500 years ago was 8, then that's an average annual percentage increase of .7%, far above what was historically typical of the period.
In sum, your website uses made up figures that aren't even consistent with its own claims, let alone the record of history, and it for some reason seems completely ignorant of the obvious fact that population growth rates are greatly influenced by the available technology. Population figures throughout history support what we know about the factors that allow population increases.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 224 by Buzsaw, posted 12-25-2007 10:05 AM Buzsaw has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 229 by jar, posted 12-25-2007 1:28 PM Percy has replied
 Message 233 by Buzsaw, posted 12-25-2007 9:55 PM Percy has replied

jar
Member (Idle past 394 days)
Posts: 34026
From: Texas!!
Joined: 04-20-2004


Message 229 of 301 (443511)
12-25-2007 1:28 PM
Reply to: Message 228 by Percy
12-25-2007 1:13 PM


Re: Human Population Factor
Even worse, applying their figures yields a world human population at the time of Christ of 1.7 million. That was probably the population of just Rome alone in the year 1. The estimated world population at the time of Christ is around 200 million.
Even more interesting is that using their figures proves that the Exodus didn't happen. Their figures show that the total population of the world was less than the claimed number of Jews leaving Egypt for the Trek that Never Happened.
Edited by jar, : appalin spallin
Edited by jar, : still can't spall

Immigration has been a problem Since 1607!

This message is a reply to:
 Message 228 by Percy, posted 12-25-2007 1:13 PM Percy has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 230 by Percy, posted 12-25-2007 1:44 PM jar has replied

Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 230 of 301 (443514)
12-25-2007 1:44 PM
Reply to: Message 229 by jar
12-25-2007 1:28 PM


Re: Human Population Factor
jar writes:
Even more interesting is that using their figures proves that the Exodus didn't happen. Their figures show that the total population of the world was less than the claimed number of Jews leaving Egypt for the Trek the Never Happened.
Omigod! You're right! Their figures yield a world population of 1581 people in the year 1440 BC.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 229 by jar, posted 12-25-2007 1:28 PM jar has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 231 by jar, posted 12-25-2007 1:53 PM Percy has not replied

jar
Member (Idle past 394 days)
Posts: 34026
From: Texas!!
Joined: 04-20-2004


Message 231 of 301 (443517)
12-25-2007 1:53 PM
Reply to: Message 230 by Percy
12-25-2007 1:44 PM


On Ethics and Creationism
Now we will see if there is any Ethics standard in Biblical Creationism. Will they remove the population allegations or will the remove Exodus?

Immigration has been a problem Since 1607!

This message is a reply to:
 Message 230 by Percy, posted 12-25-2007 1:44 PM Percy has not replied

Archer Opteryx
Member (Idle past 3598 days)
Posts: 1811
From: East Asia
Joined: 08-16-2006


Message 232 of 301 (443528)
12-25-2007 3:15 PM
Reply to: Message 216 by CK
12-24-2007 10:41 PM


Where's the Beef? The Chicken? The Egg?
Evidence presented supporting creationism = 0%
CK is right. Where is the 'evidence that support [sic] creationism' we are supposed to be discussing? I've been scanning posts and don't see where anything has been presented.
This thread could have been named 'How to Mix a Martini' and the content would have as much relevance to the stated topic.
There's not much thread time left. Evidence, please.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 216 by CK, posted 12-24-2007 10:41 PM CK has not replied

Buzsaw
Inactive Member


Message 233 of 301 (443589)
12-25-2007 9:55 PM
Reply to: Message 228 by Percy
12-25-2007 1:13 PM


Re: Human Population Factor
Hi Percy.
1. I believe you are either misreading item 4 of the link or misapplying the math. As I read item 4 it is not saying 1% with i.e. factoring in the 1/3 wiped out. It's saying after you make the estimate of 1% growth then you apply the 1/3rd being wiped out.
2. The math gets more complicated in that you need to factor in evey 82 years the 1/3 of the 1% average being wiped out rather than a one step wiping out at the end of the period. In so doing the offspring is being diminished at a faster rate. So 82 years after the flood 1/3 of the population on average would factor out as being wiped out without offspring and so on every 82 years all the way down the line to the present.
ITEM 4:
It estimates the annual growth rate at 1% with approximately 1/3 of the population wiped out every 82 years (these figures are extremely questionable, but I'm just going to apply the math). Plugging in the numbers and starting with 8 individuals 4500 years ago (2500 BC) yields a world population today of 49 billion. Would you say that's just a little off, since the estimate of the world population in 2005 was 6.454 billion?

BUZSAW B 4 U 2 C Y BUZ SAW.
The immeasurable present eternally extends the infinite past and infinitely consumes the eternal future.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 228 by Percy, posted 12-25-2007 1:13 PM Percy has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 236 by Percy, posted 12-26-2007 9:03 AM Buzsaw has not replied

obvious Child
Member (Idle past 4116 days)
Posts: 661
Joined: 08-17-2006


Message 234 of 301 (443613)
12-26-2007 12:53 AM
Reply to: Message 221 by Buzsaw
12-25-2007 9:29 AM


Re: Wikipedia Liberal Anti-Creationist Bias
Just like the many posts you make and then never back in any way.
Looking at your posts list, you have a very long list of posts that you ran away from. For someone who criticizes others for substance free posts, you sure make a very large number of them yourself. But I guess it takes one to know one eh?
Simply put, if you had evidence you would have presented it. What you instead do is just run away from evidence free posts as evident by your very long list of waiting replies.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 221 by Buzsaw, posted 12-25-2007 9:29 AM Buzsaw has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 235 by Adminnemooseus, posted 12-26-2007 1:14 AM obvious Child has not replied

Adminnemooseus
Administrator
Posts: 3974
Joined: 09-26-2002


Message 235 of 301 (443617)
12-26-2007 1:14 AM
Reply to: Message 234 by obvious Child
12-26-2007 12:53 AM


Bitching about substance free messages is a bad thing.
This applies to both Buzsaw and his evo-opponents. If you can't include some topic relevant content in your messages, then don't post them.
Don't reply to this moderation message in this topic (penalty - a minimum 24 hour suspension possible). If you must reply, go to the "General discussion..." topic, link below.
Adminnemooseus

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Comments on moderation procedures (or wish to respond to admin messages)? - Go to:
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Other useful links:
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Admin writes:
It really helps moderators figure out if a topic is disintegrating because of general misbehavior versus someone in particular if the originally non-misbehaving members kept it that way. When everyone is prickly and argumentative and off-topic and personal then it's just too difficult to tell. We have neither infinite time to untie the Gordian knot, nor the wisdom of Solomon.
There used to be a comedian who presented his ideas for a better world, and one of them was to arm everyone on the highway with little rubber dart guns. Every time you see a driver doing something stupid, you fire a little dart at his car. When a state trooper sees someone driving down the highway with a bunch of darts all over his car he pulls him over for being an idiot.
Please make it easy to tell you apart from the idiots. Source

This message is a reply to:
 Message 234 by obvious Child, posted 12-26-2007 12:53 AM obvious Child has not replied

Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 236 of 301 (443648)
12-26-2007 9:03 AM
Reply to: Message 233 by Buzsaw
12-25-2007 9:55 PM


Re: Human Population Factor
Buzsaw writes:
1. I believe you are either misreading item 4 of the link or misapplying the math. As I read item 4 it is not saying 1% with i.e. factoring in the 1/3 wiped out. It's saying after you make the estimate of 1% growth then you apply the 1/3rd being wiped out.
Here's the exact wording from point 4 of Evidence for Creation:
Point 4 of Evidence for Creation writes:
4. Population Statistics...World population growth rate in recent times is about 2% per year. Practicable application of growth rate throughout human history would be about half that number. Wars, disease, famine, etc. have wiped out approximately one third of the population on average every 82 years.
I don't see how this supports your interpretation, but adjusting the 1% growth rate by an amount equivalent to a 1/3 die-out every 82 years would yield very similar answers.
Let's focus on just one date, the date of the Exodus, 1440 BC. Starting from a world population of 8 in 2500 BC would yield a population of 1581 in 1440 BC. Even if you completely throw out the 1/3 die-out every 82 years and just apply a 1% growth rate you get a world population of only 307,657 in 1440 BC.
Also keep in mind that a 1% growth rate is far above historical growth rates in human populations prior to the advent of modern agriculture and medicine.
This shows that the figures from your website are made up and yield figures that are wildly out of whack with estimates of world population history, and even with common sense.
Your website also fails to incorporate the known fact that the size of human populations are a strong function of the technology available to take advantage of local resources. Stone age technologies, slash-and-burn technologies, hunter/gather technologies, these all only supported far, far lower population densities than modern technologies. The size of today's world population is a result of improving technology, not the passage of time. If we still had stone age technology then the world population would be mere millions, no matter how much time had passed since the beginning.
In Mythbuster terminology, I'd say this one is busted! Let's move on to your next evidence for creationism.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 233 by Buzsaw, posted 12-25-2007 9:55 PM Buzsaw has not replied

Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 237 of 301 (443649)
12-26-2007 9:05 AM
Reply to: Message 224 by Buzsaw
12-25-2007 10:05 AM


Re: Human Population Factor
Starting with one "couple" just 41,000 years ago would give us a total population of 2 x 1089.
You mean 2 x 10^89. 2 x 1089 would be 2178.
The universe does not have space to hold so many bodies.
One of my favorite creationist arguments.
It just debunks itself.
Obviously there are limiting factors preventing the population of the Earth from taking up more space than the entire universe. We'd run out of food, water, places to stand ...
It's patently idiotic. What it actually proves is that the creationist assumption of a constant rate of exponential growth must be false; as, of course, we know to be the case.
Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 224 by Buzsaw, posted 12-25-2007 10:05 AM Buzsaw has not replied

Buzsaw
Inactive Member


Message 238 of 301 (443669)
12-26-2007 11:22 AM


Driving My Population Argument Home
To drive my population argument home I've calculated the population growth of .005 or 1/2 of 1% for just 20500 years beginning with 2 people. Here is the results:
2 people at 1/2 of 1% in 20500 years = 50,481,231,644,900,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 people
Human Population Calculator
At this ultra conservative rate the population growth factor appears to be a significant argument for evidence which supports creationism as per the topic title, given the evolutionist model calls for humanity existing on earth for scores of thousands of years.
How do evolutionists account for the lack of evdence accounting for the population growth problem here?
Edited by Buzsaw, : link for calculator

BUZSAW B 4 U 2 C Y BUZ SAW.
The immeasurable present eternally extends the infinite past and infinitely consumes the eternal future.

Replies to this message:
 Message 239 by cavediver, posted 12-26-2007 11:58 AM Buzsaw has not replied
 Message 240 by Percy, posted 12-26-2007 12:11 PM Buzsaw has not replied
 Message 241 by jar, posted 12-26-2007 12:15 PM Buzsaw has not replied
 Message 243 by Buzsaw, posted 12-26-2007 1:39 PM Buzsaw has not replied

cavediver
Member (Idle past 3643 days)
Posts: 4129
From: UK
Joined: 06-16-2005


Message 239 of 301 (443677)
12-26-2007 11:58 AM
Reply to: Message 238 by Buzsaw
12-26-2007 11:22 AM


Re: Driving My Population Argument Home
Buzz, I'm truly speachless... have you read anything that Percy has stated? A growth rate of 0.5% for 20500 years??? You've just been told that the growth rate from 1CE to 1000CE was around 0.04%. Where the hell do you get 0.5% from?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 238 by Buzsaw, posted 12-26-2007 11:22 AM Buzsaw has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 242 by Percy, posted 12-26-2007 12:17 PM cavediver has not replied

Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 240 of 301 (443681)
12-26-2007 12:11 PM
Reply to: Message 238 by Buzsaw
12-26-2007 11:22 AM


Re: Driving My Population Argument Home
Why are you abandoning the scenario from the webpage you cited? It started with a population of 8 in 2500 BC and projected forward with a growth rate of a little less than 1%. As I already showed in my prior messages, the results this yields are wildly at odds with both secular and Biblical history. This is the argument you advanced, and it's the argument that's been decisively refuted.
What you're doing now is making the identical argument, just with different made-up figures. The question you're asking has already been anticipated and answered at least three times. Here's my answer from Message 228:
Percy in Message 228 writes:
But is there any truth at all to the claim that the world population of humans should have increased continuously, except for occasional setbacks, since the species first evolved, say, 100,000 years ago.
The answer is no. Human populations cannot grow beyond the resources they can extract from the local environment. Improving technology increases the size of a population a region can sustain. Stone age technology could not sustain a world population of 6.454 billion, not even close. The current world population is not 6.454 billion simply because of the passage of time, but because of the contributions of modern technology, primarily in the form of improved agriculture and medicine.
A good example of an old technology that cannot sustain large populations that is still practiced in some parts of the world such as South America is slash-and-burn. At one time it was widely practiced, and it can sustain only low population densities. Another example of a technology that cannot sustain large populations is hunter/gatherer.
Technology advanced very little during the middle ages, and if we look at the rate of population growth during the period from 1000 to 1750 we see that it has an annual rate of increase of .13%, an incredibly small figure. That's a growth only slightly larger than a 10th of a percent a year! And between year 1 and year 1000, a good part of that the heart of Middle Ages, the annual growth rate was .04%!!!
After you ignored that answer I gave it again in shorter form in Message 236:
Percy in Message 236 writes:
Your website also fails to incorporate the known fact that the size of human populations are a strong function of the technology available to take advantage of local resources. Stone age technologies, slash-and-burn technologies, hunter/gather technologies, these all only supported far, far lower population densities than modern technologies. The size of today's world population is a result of improving technology, not the passage of time. If we still had stone age technology then the world population would be mere millions, no matter how much time had passed since the beginning.
Dr. Adequate repeated this point in brief fashion in Message 237:
Dr Adequate in Message 237 writes:
One of my favorite creationist arguments.
It just debunks itself.
Obviously there are limiting factors preventing the population of the Earth from taking up more space than the entire universe. We'd run out of food, water, places to stand ...
It's patently idiotic. What it actually proves is that the creationist assumption of a constant rate of exponential growth must be false; as, of course, we know to be the case.
Ignoring this factor renders your calculations meaningless, but I'll mention anyway that your population growth rate of 0.5% for periods before modern agriculture and medicine are far too high. For example, the growth rate during the Middle Ages was around 0.04%. During the ice age prior to 10,000 years ago the growth rate could easily have been negative for sustained periods.
Think about bacteria growing in a petri dish in a lab with the bacterial population doubling every hour. Obviously in only a few years the bacteria would fill the entire solar system. Limited resources, environment, natural enemies, etc., all these things prevent such an outcome from ever happening.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 238 by Buzsaw, posted 12-26-2007 11:22 AM Buzsaw has not replied

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