Is Global Population Evidence For Noahic Flood?

According to Crazy Diamond, natural disasters, etc have never stopped the growth of global population. It has been calculated that from the time of the Noahic flood to the present that the population of the world would be about right.
I have quoted myself from Message 16 since it was deemed off topic in that thread. Edited by Buzsaw, : Add links and sub title

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BUZSAW B 4 U 2 C Y BUZ SAW.
The Immeasurable Present Eternally Extends the Infinite Past And Infinitely Consumes The Eternal Future.

Thread copied here from the Is Global Population Evidence For Noahic Flood? thread in the Proposed New Topics forum.

If you use a figure of .5%/year then from Noah's original family population of 8 you get a current world population of 16 billion, which isn't very far off.But if you use a figure of .4%/year then you get a current world population of 228 million, which is way too small.And if you use a figure of .6%/year then you get a current world population of 1.2 trillion, which is way too large.I wonder how Morris arrived at the figure of .5%/year? Hmmmm.--Percy

It does not matter how much evidence that there was a Noahic Flood you make up Buz, the Biblical Flood has been totally refuted. It simply never happened as described.The fact of the matter has been pointed out to you in the past; if the Biblical flood ever happened it MUST leave the genetic signature of a bottleneck event in EVERY existing living thing.Have you ever read the Bible?In the version of the myth found in Genesis 6 God instructs Noah to:

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19 You are to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you. 20 Two of every kind of bird, of every kind of animal and of every kind of creature that moves along the ground will come to you to be kept alive. 21 You are to take every kind of food that is to be eaten and store it away as food for you and for them."

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In the version of the myth found in Genesis 7 we see similar (close but not the same) instructions:

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2 Take with you seven of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and two of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate, 3 and also seven of every kind of bird, male and female, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth.

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We also find similar explanations of what will be destroyed in Genesis 6 it says:

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7 So the LORD said, "I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earthmen and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the airfor I am grieved that I have made them."

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and in Genesis 7:

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4 Seven days from now I will send rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights, and I will wipe from the face of the earth every living creature I have made."

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In both myths lots of critters get killed, in the myth found in Genesis 6 it seems to be talking about land animals and birds while the myth found in Genesis 7 goes even further and wipes out all living things.If we play mix and match and take the best scenario from each of the myths we might be able to claim that only the birds and land animals were wiped out based on the passage from the Genesis 6 story and that we have the larger saved population found in Genesis 7.Based on that mix and match game set we have a situation where all land animals and birds found today will be descended from a population that consisted of at most fourteen critters (seven pairs of clean animals and birds) and at worst case four critters (two pair of unclean animals).Now that is what I would call a real bottleneck.We know we can see bottlenecks in the genetic record; a great example is the one in Cheetahs but we even see them in the human genome and most other species.BUT...If the flood actually happened we would see a bottleneck in EVERY species of animal living on the land and EVERY bird and EVERY one of the bottlenecks show up in the SAME historical time period.Talk about a big RED flag.That bottleneck signature would be something every geneticists in the world would see. It would be like a neon sign, Broadway at midnight on New Years Eve. It would be something even a blind geneticist could see.So it seems to me to be a very simple test that will support or refute the Flood.If that genetic marker is there in EVERY species living on land or bird of the air, then there is support for the flood. It does not prove the flood happened but it would be very strong support.If on the other hand that genetic marker is NOT there, then the Flood is refuted. That genetic marker is NOT there.

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The Biblical Flood has been refuted.

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

Extrapolate with care.Here's an exercise for you: At birth, I weighed 8 pounds. In 1972, I weighed 190 pounds. In 2002, I weighed 220 pounds. How old am I?For the bonus points: How old would I be if the scale in 1972 was off by two pounds?

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"I'm Rory Bellows, I tell you! And I got a lot of corroborating evidence... over here... by the throttle!"

Pretty much the same way you just did, by playing around with values until one gave him the results he wanted.More specifically, as I described in my "Bunny Blunder" article originally posted on CompuServe in 1991:

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MORRIS' POPULATION MODEL:

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In 1961, Dr. Morris presented his population model in The Genesis Flood , which he co-authored with John Whitcomb. First he observed that population growth can be measured in doubling-times, i.e. the amount of time it takes the population to double in size. Assuming an initial population size of 2, Morris then gives us the following relationships:

T         is the doubling-time in years
n         is the number of doublings
n * T     is the number of years that this doubling has been going
on and
Pn = 2n  is the size of the population after n*T years.

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To calculate how many doublings were required to produce a given value of P_n, we solve for n:

n = LOG(Pn) / LOG(2)

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Given a world population of 2.5 billion in 1960, Morris found that the human population has doubled slightly more than 31 times.

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Now the problem is to find a value for the doubling-time, T. Morris refers to an article by Warren Weaver in which he observed the human population grow from 250 - 350 million in the year 0 CE to 2.4 billion in 1950 CE. Weaver found that from 0 CE to 700 CE there was little change in the world population and that only after another 950 years did the population finally double to 600 million in 1650 CE. The next doubling took 200 years (1650 CE to 1850 CE) and next one after that only 100 years (1850 to 1950). Since then (1950 to 1990), it has doubled again in only 40 years.

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Morris discounted the earlier figures as guesses and considered the 1650 figure to be the first valid value. Using the two doublings in the 300 years between 1650 and 1950, he obtained an average value of 150 years for T. Since he felt that the current rate of population growth is atypical because of falling death rates due to medicine and sanitation, he leaned towards the 200-year doubling time between 1650 and 1850 and, splitting the difference, finally set the value of T at a constant 175 years.

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Applying this value, we find that the world human population grew from 2 people to 2.5 billion in 5250 years (30 doublings * 175 years / doubling). Subtracting this value from 1950, we obtain a date of -3300, which "leads us back to 3300 B.C. as the time of the birth of Noah's first son!" (Morris, 1961, p.398).

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Morris admits that his calculation is not rigorous, but finds it far more reasonable "than to say that the population has been doubling itself since a hypothetical beginning several hundred thousand years ago." To support this, Morris quotes Hauser applying the world population growth rate between 1930 and 1940 (1% per year) to an initial population of 100 individuals over a span of 5000 years and showing that that would produce a ridiculously dense current population of 2.7 billion people per square foot over the entire earth's surface.

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The year 1974 saw Morris repeatedly publishing "refinements" of his human population model, culminating in its final form. In Troubled Waters of Evolution, Morris presented it in algebraic form:

P = P0 * (1+r)n,
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where P is the final population (estimated at 1 billion [109] in
1800 CE [AKA AD]),
P0 is the initial population (2),
r is the rate of population growth, and
n is the number of years
(solved algebraically as:  n = LOG(P / P0) / LOG(1+r) ).

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Here, Morris has to find a value for r. At first he applies the then current rate (2% per year in 1974), and finds that the population grew from two people to 3.5 billion in only 1075 years, far too short a time.

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So to find a value for r, he solved for r = (P/P₀)^(1/n)-1. First he assumed n to be 4000 years and obtained a reasonable value for r of one-half of one percent (.005).

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Then returning to his treatment of doubling-times in Genesis Flood, he used the growth of the population from 600 million in 1650 to 1 billion in 1800 to obtain an average annual growth rate of about one-third of one percent (.0034). From this rate, Morris obtained a time of 6100 years which, when subtracted from 1800, yields a date of 4300 BCE for the origin of the human population.

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In Scientific Creationism, also published in 1974, Morris briefly offered two population growth models, the one based on the number of offspring per generation (more on this below) and the other as given in Troubled Waters. Of interest here is how he takes the "evolution model ... with its million-year history of man" to task for having 25,000 generations of men result in a world population of only 3.5 billion. Applying his 1/2% or 2.5 children per family to 25,000 generations yields an expected population exceeding 10²¹⁰⁰, a ridiculously enormous number.

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Again, Morris openly admits that this method is not rigorous nor completely reliable, but he does strongly endorse it because its results are "reasonable" and do not need to be "modified by various secondary assumptions to fit the known data of population statistics" as the "evolution model" needs to be.

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In Crazy's topic, Message 21, I already posted my section on population models and why Morris' pure-birth model, the simplest and most simplistic population model, is wrong.I also wrote an appendix which examined the relationship between growth rates and doubling times. A constant rate requires a constant doubling time, but history shows that the doubling times have been getting shorter, which indicates that the growth rate has not remained constant, but rather has been speeding up:

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APPENDIX

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DOUBLING TIMES AND RATES OF GROWTH:

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In this article, we have seen the rate of population growth expressed in two different ways: as a rate of exponential growth and as the doubling time of the population. In order to translate from one "unit of measure" to the other, consider the following derivation:

For:
T1 = a given point in time
T2 = a given point later in time than T1, such that T2 > T1
Delta_T = T2 - T1
A1 = the rate of population growth at time T1
A2 = the rate of population growth at time T2
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P0 = the initial population at the reference time, T0
Pn = P0 * EXP(An * Tn), at some time Tn
P1 = the population at time, T1
= P0 * EXP(A1 * T1)
P2 = the population at time, T2
= P0 * EXP(A2 * T2)
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By the definition of Doubling Time:
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2 = P2 / P1
2 = (P0 * EXP(A2 * T2)) / (P0 * EXP(A1 * T1))
2 = EXP(A2 * T2) / EXP(A1 * T1)
2 = EXP(A2 * T2 - A1 * T1)

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Make the simplifying assumption that A1 = A2 = A. This may be justified by assuming that two rates measured relatively close to each other should be similar or by saying that we are analyzing what Dr. Morris has done, so we are repeating one of his basic assumptions. Either way, it makes the math come out much easier and it provides us with the variable, A, for which we are trying to solve:

              2 = EXP(A * T2 - A * T1)
2 = EXP(A * (T2 - T1))
LN(2) = A * (T2 - T1)
LN(2) = A * Delta_T

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We can now solve the equation for either A or for Delta_T:

            A = LN(2) / Delta_T
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Delta_T = LN(2) / A

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Given these two equations, we can convert back and forth between doubling times and exponential growth rates, keeping our simplifying assumption in mind. For example, Morris' rate of 1/3 of 1% gives us a doubling time of 208 years.

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Please note also that a constant growth rate requires a constant doubling time; indeed, they are inversely proportional to each other. If the doubling time varies then so also must the growth rate. Morris and Whitcomb's source clearly indicated that the doubling times have NOT remained constant throughout history and yet they chose to ignore their source and to assume a constant rate.

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The following is a list of the growth and doubling times of the human population as taken from E.S. Deevey Jr. and reprinted in A. N. Strahler, page 367. I have added a fourth column of calculated growth rates:

Year         Population   Doubling Time   Growth Rate
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1,000,000 BCE        125,000
230,000        3.01 E-6
300,000          1,000,000
160,000        4.33 E-6
25,000          3,340,000
22,000        3.15 E-5
8,000          5,320,000
1,000        6.93 E-4
4,000         85,500,000
6,400        1.08 E-4
0 CE     133,000,000
830        8.35 E-4
1650        545,000,000
240        2.89 E-3
1750        728,000,000
160        4.33 E-3
1800        906,000,000
120        5.78 E-3
1900      1,610,000,000
87        7.96 E-3
1950      2,400,000,000
36        1.93 E-2
2000      6,270,000,000 (est.)

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And now that the topic is Morris' human population model, the "Bunny Blunder" section can be presented:

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THE BUNNY BLUNDER REVEALED:

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But now we get to the weird part (no, that isn't what we were just doing). In his article, "Creationists, Population Growth, Bunnies, and the Great Pyramid," David H. Milne points out that since Morris' population model is predictive, then we should be able to use it to determine the world human population at any time in human history. Therefore, it reveals some interesting facts about human history.

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According to Morris' model, in 2500 BCE, the world population was 750 people, so there were only about 150 to 200 able-bodied males, all concentrated in Egypt, available to hew and haul the 2.3 million limestone blocks ranging in weight from 2 to 50 tons to build the Great Pyramid of Cheops. During the preceding 200 years, even fewer men built six neighboring pyramids and many other structures. Things were even more hectic back between 3800 BCE and 3600 BCE when the total world population of 10 - 20 people, including women and children, rushed madly back and forth between Crete and the Indus River Valley building and abandoning enough fortified cities and massive irrigation systems to have housed and fed millions. My father was right; we HAVE gotten soft!

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One immediately apparent error in Morris' 1974 reasoning is that he forgot the Flood! (how could he, the Father of Modern Flood Geology?) The present human population did not start with some un-named couple recently evicted from an un-named Garden, but rather with the 8 un-named passengers debarking from an un-named Ark at the end of a year-long voyage through an un-named world-wide Flood (isn't this game of "Hide the Bible" fun?). However, working with the ICR's dates for the Creation and Flood (c 8000 BCE and 4600 BCE), and applying Morris' human population model, James S. Monroe discovered some even more interesting "facts" about the antediluvian world. According to the ICR's premises, the world population at the time of the Flood would have been at least 7.2946 E+19 people, or 13,000 people per square foot over the entire earth's surface. And if the flood only happened 4000 years ago as other ICR works suggest, then the mass of people on earth just before the Flood would have exceeded the mass of the earth itself.

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Nor does Morris' population model limit us to the human population. If we apply the model to rabbits, whose population doubles every two years, then we find that the world rabbit population (all species of rabbit being due to variation within the basic created bunny kind) had to have come from two bunnies created about 100 years ago. Here we have clear evidence that the earth can be no older than 100 years! The alternative to such a very young earth is to say that creation is on-going and rabbits were created ex nihilo in the last century (please ignore any mention of rabbits in the literature preceeding the time of their creation -- they simply didn't exist). We should see new species being created ex nihilo all the time. But we don't; so why aren't we up to our necks in bunnies? Yes, indeed: Creationism is more fun than science!

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This is why Henry Morris' population model is called the "Bunny Blunder" and it is almost as infamous as, though far more hilarious than, Dr. Duane Gish's "Bullfrog Affair". When I heard Fred Edwords tell it, it brought down the house.

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And now you know the rest of the story.{ABE: I should have included the bibliography; Sorry}
BIBLIOGRAPHY: E.S. Deevey Jr., "The Human Population," Scientific American, 1960, Vol.203, No.5, pp 194-204.Philip M. Hauser, "Demographic Dimensions of World Politics," Science, Vol 131, 3 June 1960, p. 1641.David H. Milne, "Creationists, Population Growth, Bunnies, and the Great Pyramid," Creation/Evolution Issue XVI, pp. 1-5.James S. Monroe, "More on Population Growth and Creationism," Creation/Evolution Issue XVIII, pp. 44-46.Henry M. Morris, The Troubled Waters of Evolution, 1974, Creation-Life Publishers, San Diego.------------- , "The Young Earth," Impact No. 17, September 1974.------------- , "Evolution and the Population Problem," Impact No. 21, February 1975.------------- , The Scientific Case for Creation, 1977,Creation-Life Publishers, San Diego.------------- , Scientific Creationism, 2nd Edition, 1985, Creation-Life Publishers, San Diego.------------- & John C. Whitcomb, The Genesis Flood, 1961, The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co, Philadelphia.Michael Olnick, An Introduction to Mathematical Models in the Social and Life Sciences, 1978, Addison-Wesley Publishing Co.Arthur N. Strahler, Science and Earth History: The Evolution/Creation Controversy, 1989, Prometheus Books, Buffalo, NY.Warren Weaver, "People, Energy, and Food," Scientific Monthly, Vol 78, June 1954, p. 359. Edited by dwise1, : bibliography

The calculation is meaningless. It falsely assumes that human growth rates have been completely steady for the last 4,000 years which we know can't be true.You might as well use the depth of the local resevoir to calculate the last 4,000 years of snowfall.

What evidence is there to suggest that the average rate was indeed 0.5% over the past 4300 years?Edited by DrJones*, : No reason given.

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It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds
soon I discovered that this rock thing was true
Jerry Lee Lewis was the devil
Jesus was an architect previous to his career as a prophet
All of a sudden i found myself in love with the world
And so there was only one thing I could do
Was ding a ding dang my dang along ling long - Jesus Built my Hotrod Ministry
Live every week like it's Shark Week! - Tracey Jordan
Just a monkey in a long line of kings. - Matthew Good
If "elitist" just means "not the dumbest motherfucker in the room", I'll be an elitist! - Get Your War On
*not an actual doctor

Jar, this thread is about whether population data is more supportive to the Genesis flood or to Evolution. That's what I want to focus on. Other aspects of the flood should be taken to the appropriate thread.

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BUZSAW B 4 U 2 C Y BUZ SAW.
The Immeasurable Present Eternally Extends the Infinite Past And Infinitely Consumes The Eternal Future.

There was no flood Buz.The population data you present supports NOTHING. It is totally irrelevant to either subject.

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

Would you explain to me how these 8 people built the pyramids?

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There is no better love between 2 people than mutual respect for each other WT Young, 2002

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Who gave anyone the authority to call me an authority on anything. WT Young, 1969

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Since Evolution is only ~90% correct it should be thrown out and replaced by Creation which has even a lower % of correctness. W T Young, 2008

And you believed him ... why?It is a matter of documented fact that disasters have caused reductions in population. Spot (a) the fall of the Western Roman Empire (b) the advent of the Black Death.And it is a matter of common sense that the human race has never been able to outgrow the resources available to it. In a world where, despite modern methods of agriculture, 800,000,000 people suffer from malnutrition, how much higher could today's population be? How high could it have been before the agricultural revolution? And, above all, how high could it have been before agriculture?

Well, the Great Pyramid was built between 2600 and 2500 BC, which would be before the flood according to Buzsaw's chronology. And supposedly there were enough people at that time to build it.However, in that case I wonder why the pyramid survived the flood in the first place, which, according to YECs, did have sufficient energy to carve out the Grand Canyon.Apart from the population growth issue, I would also like to see the creationist's model for the recolonisation of the earth. How long did it take Noah's descendants to reach the Americas and Australia?Edited by Dirk, : No reason given.Edited by Dirk, : clarificationEdited by Dirk, : No reason given.Edited by Dirk, : tyop

Here's a factor that neither Morris or anyone that I'm aware of have considered.According to the Biblical record, living things, including humans lived considerably longer before the flood when there was a totally different atmosphere and climate.Noah lived close to 900 years, if I recall correctly. His sons lived four & five hundred plus. Their descendants lives gradually shorter lives all the way down to Moses who lived 120 years etc.During these years each man, some, if not most, had multiple wives, bearing large relatively long living families, according to the Biblical record. The net effect on population would be a trickling down of the averages from higher to lower.Then too, it was not uncommon for 20,000 to 40,000 men dying in one battle or one siege later on down in time.At some point in time, likely the averages bottomed out to beginning to rise up to the present time.Now let's consider the evolutionist bunny blunder.
It should be assumed that any creature capable of reproduction has a sexual drive toward reproduction. This drive is a necessary component of reproduction. Otherwise, t'aint agona happen.Therefore the 1,000,000ers are blundering their way into the low calculations. Realistically, if there's reproduction, there's gotta be the sex drive. You can't just blindly alleged that it took hundreds of thousands of years for the early to relatively early populations to double. In fact, likely they more or less functioned more like a rabbitry than an ordered family as it has been historically so long as records have been kept.We know how fast rabbitries propagate, hopping about from bunny to bunny, impregnating or being impregnated. (it reminds me of the depravity we are experiencing in these end times and how the age old family unit is disintegrating.Bottom line: In spite of the discrepancies and unknowns to each hypothesis, the Biblical model is by far the more logical and likely the more realistic model.

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BUZSAW B 4 U 2 C Y BUZ SAW.
The Immeasurable Present Eternally Extends the Infinite Past And Infinitely Consumes The Eternal Future.

It's likey that you're a pig fucker Buz, but we're not talking about likelihoods are we? Do you have some facts?

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It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds
soon I discovered that this rock thing was true
Jerry Lee Lewis was the devil
Jesus was an architect previous to his career as a prophet
All of a sudden i found myself in love with the world
And so there was only one thing I could do
Was ding a ding dang my dang along ling long - Jesus Built my Hotrod Ministry
Live every week like it's Shark Week! - Tracey Jordan
Just a monkey in a long line of kings. - Matthew Good
If "elitist" just means "not the dumbest motherfucker in the room", I'll be an elitist! - Get Your War On
*not an actual doctor