33: The Population Paradox
The above video is about my book Evo-illusion, now available at Amazon. The URL for my book is www.Evo-illusion.com.
The page begins below.
Note: I constructed a page on the definitions needed to understand this page. This is not tough stuff, but you may feel more comfortable if you read the definitions page first. It’s an addendum listed under this page in the column at right: Population Definitions (34b).
500 million years after the Cambrian Explosion, the relatively short period of time that produced 75% of all modern phyla, came modern man: homo sapiens. Which brings us to another of the many problems for evolution. Evolution says that modern man has inhabited the earth for the last 200,000 years. Sounds good to me. Really. But, again a problem arises. One that just doesn’t add up. So let’s just imagine for a moment how things came about.
The doubling of a population can be a very handy tool to let us know if our scientific aging of certain species, in this case humans, is correct. The reason doubling is of interest is because, knowing the birthrate, average life span, average generation length of humans, and average recent doubling in the last few thousand years, we can calculate the approximate time a population of humans has existed on earth. It gives a way to double-check other methods of calculating the age of human existence. Obviously. And since those numbers are in the past and unchangeable, they should be faced instead of glossed over if we are talking real science. They should be dealt with. But they won’t be, as any fact that isn’t good for evolution science is discarded ragged on and ignored.Cambrian Explosion, the relatively short period of time that produced 75% of all modern phyla, came modern man: homo sapiens. Which brings us to another of the many problems for evolution. Evolution says that modern man has inhabited the earth for the last 200,000 years. Sounds good to me. Really. But, again a problem arises. One that just doesn’t add up. So let’s just imagine for a moment how things came about.
200,000 years ago there had to be a minimum of two human beings, one male and one female, for human procreation to start. Since 1800, and up until 2025 (estimates), the population of the earth doubled on average every 75 years. It would seem that doubling a population of a billion people would be much more difficult than doubling a few hundred or thousand. Which means, it would seem that the doubling would occur much more often than every 75 years eons ago.
Just for interest, let’s imagine the population did double every 75 years, and that there were only two humans in existence 200,000 years ago. (No, not Adam and Eve. I’m just trying to keep the math simple. I could use any reasonable number. See below for calculations with a start number of 1,000.) Reality would be that there were more like hundreds or thousands of people. It really doesn’t matter what initial number we started with, as long as there are minimum of two, as you will see. What would be the population today using those numbers? 200,000 divided by 75 years is 2,667; so the population would have doubled 2,667 times in 200,000 years. To calculate what the current population of the earth should be today would mean multiplying 2 times itself 2,667 times. Or 2 to the 2,668th power. Which yields: 1 x 10 to the 801 power, or a one with 801 zeros after it! Since there are 1×10 to the 80th power (a one with 80 zeros after it) atoms in the entire universe, you can see where I am going, and why using 2 for a starting point is irrelevant. Using a more realistic number for the beginning population, like 1,000, would just make the end result more absurd and astounding.
Of course we know that death, pestilence, wars, and infections killed an immense number of people, and radically kept down our modern population. So, just for discussion, lets say the population doubled on average every 800 years instead of 75. How conservative can we get? The population that resulted in 200,000 years would then be determined by multiplying 2 times itself 126 times. The end result would be 8.5 x 10 to the 37 power. One trillion is 1×10 to the 12th power, or a one with 12 zeros after it. So we would now have a population of over 85 trillion trillion trillion, still not close to reality. 8.5 x 10 to the 37 power is still immense beyond imagination.
How about if we try doubling the population every 2,000 years. That would mean the starting population would be 2 humans on earth, and 2,000 years later, or a period equaling time since the birth of Christ, there would be 4 humans. (And to anticipate dumb questions, no, I don’t mean that each person lives 2,000 years.) The result would be more than 2.5 x10 to the 30th power. Or a 25 with 29 zeros after it, or 2.5 million trillion trillion. Still not a number that would make any sense in reality.
Actually to reach th
e population we will have in 2025, approximately 8 billion, the population would have had to double on average only every 6,250 years starting from 200,000 years ago. **6,250 years approximates the time from the beginning of the Egyptian civilization until now. So 193,750years ago there would be 4 people. And in 187,500 years ago there would be 8 people. And 181,250years ago there would be 16. Of course I am talking about averages, and I am starting with two initial humans for simplicity, two being a highly unlikely starting point. But using a larger population starting point just makes things worse. You can see the absurdity? Just imagine the incredible balance there would have to have been between birthrate and death-rate over those 2,000 centuries so that the population would double only on average every 6,250 years. Obviously there were lots of mitigating factors involved. The fact that there was no birth control would have, of course, increased the population rapidly. Again, fatal injury, which a good deal were, disease, pestilence, war, and famine would have decreased it. The amazing fact is that before 1900 there were few cures for disease, there were horrible wars, famine, pestilence, and no birth control. These factors changed little in the last 2,000 centuries. Yet the population doubled from 1 billion to 2 billion in 123 years from 1804 to 1927. Above is an article on the population of the earth in the 20th century. (Click on it if you would like to read it.) In just one hundred years, the population of the earth quadrupled! Any moderate advances in disease cures, and cleanliness would have reached few people worldwide, so that cannot be considered a major factor. In fact even today our modern medicine and environmental cleanliness has not reached a major portion of the earth’s population. And, horrible wars are always present. Interestingly, the population on earth who live with the poorest conditions, inferior sewage controls, bad drinking water, poor medical care, and near starvation, are the growing the fastest. This certainly doesn’t fit evolution’s model of immense population growth caused by modern medicine and conveniences.
Just for the fun of playing with numbers, lets pretend that there were 1,000 homo sapiens 200,000 years ago and see what that would look like. To reach a population of 8 billion in 2025, the population would have to double only twenty three times in 200,000 years. Which means the population doubling would occur every 9,090 years, just about longer than the entire history of modern man. So year one, 198,000 BCE, there would be 1,000 people. 9,090 years later, there would be 2,000 people. 18,180 years later the population would be 4,000. Astounding. Possible? It would seem that any population that could be so easily wiped out to coincide with these figures would never have survived. But, of course we did. You can pretty well eyeball what the doubling times might be for starting numbers between 2 (6,250) and 1,000 (9,090).
For those of you who are evolutionauts, and who cannot get the gist of the fact that the average span between doublings is fixed at 6,250 years, if you start with two (or 1,000) people, then 200,000 years later you have 8 billion, can you figure out the average population increases per year? I will help you along. The average yearly increase is 40,000; 8 billion divided by 200,000. In case you can’t figure it. Do you think wars, disease, or whatever will make a lick of difference? Absolutely not, because those already have been factored in. The ending number of 8 billion reflects all of those factors. If there were less wars, disease, pestilence or whatever, the ending number would then have been greater. 10 billion, or 20 billion….who knows. Got it? The AVERAGE increase yearly has NOTHING to do with the ACTUAL annual increase, which VARIED (past tense) according to the factors already listed over and over. Same with AVERAGE time span between doublings, 6,250 years, and the ACTUAL time span.
According to all of the accepted population studies, the earth’s population reached 4 million by 10,000 BCE. Which means that the population went from two (the minimum; a larger number only makes things more difficult) to 4 million in 188,000 years. The doubling rate would then be 22 times in that 188,000 time span and the average span between doublings would be 8,950 years. Imagine if you will an average tribe of 100 early humans nearly 200,000 years ago. 8,950 years later that tribe would then have a population of 200. The balance that would be necessary to sustain that kind of razor sharp growth is unimaginable. If our imaginary tribe had, say, an annual birth rate of 10 newborns, or 89,950 in 8,950 years, the deaths would have to number 89,750. The death rate for that 8,950 year times span would have to be 99.777% of the birthrate! The population increase for the time period 200,000 years ago to 10,000 years BCE for the entire earth was 52 people per year. What would be the doubling rate since 10,000 BCE? Starting with 10,000,000, and ending with 7 billion, doubling would occur on average every 1250 years. Still unbelievably out of range of rational science and what we know about doubling times for humans.
To give you an idea of the rate of increase and the doubling times that we should expect, here is a formula for calculating the doubling times of humans with the birth rate AND death rate included. So all of the wars, diseases, deaths from all causes are figured in.
Figuring the increase rate of a population per year:
Birth rate (b) − death rate (d) = rate of natural increase (r).
Or b-d=r
Death rate: Zimbabwe 20.43/1000
Birth rate: Zimbabwe: 30.64/1000
Rate of increase for Zimbabwe=10.21/1000 or 1.21% or .0121
The rate of population growth at any instant is given by the equation
dN = rN
dt
where
- r is the rate of natural increase
- t — is some stated interval of time, and
- N is the the population at a given moment.
The algebraic solution of this differential equation is N = N0ert where
- N0 is the starting population
- N is the ending population
- a certain time, t, has elapsed, and
- e is the constant 2.71828… (the base of natural logarithms).
Plotting the results gives this exponential growth curve, so-called because it reflects the growth of a number raised to an exponent (rt).
Time Required for Doubling
When a population has doubled, N = N0 x 2.
Putting this in our exponential growth equation, 2N0 = N0ert
ert = 2
rt = ln (natural logarithm) of 2 = 0.69
doubling time, t = 0.69 / r
Any doubling time can then easily be figured by inserting the rate of natural increase into r. The doubling time can be figured for any numerical count that is changing: populations, or even money: If we get 7% interest on our money, we would have:
t=.69/.07=9.8 YEARS So our 7% interest would double our funds in about ten years.
In our example above, Zimbabwe, the rate of increase=.0121.
Inserting this into the equation, we would get t=.69/.0121=57 years.
I selected Zimbabwe because it has a high death rate, due to AIDS and other diseases, and it is not a country that has high birth control use. So it closely resembles what we might have expected the numbers to be for ancient man. Does 57 years equate with the immense numbers calculated for ancient man? 6,000 to over 9,000 per average doubling? Can you see the absurdity?
As I already said, disease, war, pestilence, starvation, et al, have already been factored into the 8 billion people that will inhabit the earth by 2025; so these factors are not an issue. But in discussions with evolutionauts, they continue to bring these up and ignore the fact that they have already been accounted for. They think that because these factors have been largely removed in modern times, for some reason that negates all of the population statistics that I have put together. They seem to assume that modern health facilities have reached the entire population of the earth. So to those who think these factors are so important, the news for modern man isn’t as charming as one would think. Infectious disease continues to wreak havoc on billions of people on earth, even with modern medicine, which is available to a minority of earth’s inhabitants. 40 million people live with HIV/aids, with 3 million deaths per year. 1.8 million children die of dysentery and resulting diarrhea. Every year there are 350 to 500 million cases of malaria, with one million fatalities. 1.8 billion people have access to water within 1 kilometer of their homes, but not their house or yard. 2.6 billion lack basic sanitation. Almost 30% of the world’s population lacks electricity. I wonder which global warming alarmist will get to tell them they will NEVER get electricity because the earth might get hotter! 2.5 billion people rely on some type of biomass like fuelwood, dung, or coal to warm their homes. The notion that modern man has solved almost all health factors and that that has a large effect on the population statistics over the last 200,000 years is just fooling themselves, which evolutonauts must do anyway. The number of people on earth affected by the above factors represents approximately the entire population of the earth in 1920. Almost half of the population of the planet earth lives not much better than did man 10,000 years ago. These factors have nothing to do with my statistics, as I stated, they have already been factored in. But I had to add this information to neutralize the absurd notion that they have not.
So what do I say is the answer to this huge paradox? How could humans have inhabited the earth that long ago and still come up with the current population? Of course, I have no answers. I fully believe humans did inhabit the earth that long ago. I fully believe in a 4.7 billion-year-old earth. But these numbers don’t add up. This is just another part of the puzzle that absolutely makes no sense. How do evolutonauts respond to these numbers? Of course, they are befuddled as well, but they do a good job of pretending they are not. The explanations usually are rants against anyone who brings them up. A Young Earth Creationist made a video on the subject and placed it on a pro-evolution site, http://www.rationalskepticism.org/creationism/evolution-debunked-human-population-for-dummies-t10608.html. The answers by the evolutionauts on the site ranged from ragging on the author of the vid to ragging on the mathematical figures to bemoaning the use of math in analyzing evolution. The use of math in evolution? What other sciences don’t want mathematical scrutiny? None that I know of; only evolution. Hard to believe. This is just another in a long line of astounding ratios and odds that evolutionauts so easily slough off. The ratio between the strong force and gravity (one to a trillion trillion trillion). The odds of all of the biochemicals needed for living cells assembling themselves on the sea floor in close proximity, forming up inside of a lipid bubble, then coming to life; unfathomable. The odds of biological systems inventing, designing, and assembling themselves when that scenario has never been observed. Everything evolution must deal with is one in trillions of trillions of trillions of……….
**The number of times 2 must be doubled is 33. We have 2 to the 33 power. The spaces between each doubling is 32. Exampled by 8 is 2x2x2. 8 is 2 to the third power. There are only two x’s or gaps between the three 2’s.
Here is a sampling of the responses to the YEC’s video:
by Crocodile Gandhi » Jul 26, 2010, 11:33 pm
Good grief. It is amazing that creationists always seem to gloss over the fact that there are always limiting factors to population.
I’m looking for something in an attack dog. One who likes the sweet gamey tang of human flesh. Hmmm, why here’s the fellow … Wiry, fast, firm, proud buttocks. Reminds me of me – Charles Montgomery Burns.
by CdesignProponentsist » Jul 26, 2010, 11:39 pm
By his calculations, we are swimming in an ocean of cockroaches.
“Doubt is the healthy state of mind. It is certainty that can kill you” – Me
by robinhood » Jul 26, 2010 11:42 pm
great rebuttal to not only this claim but also a few others.
You can’t reason with the religious. Otherwise, there would be no religious people- Dr. House
by redwhine » Jul 27, 2010 1:06 am
The first 150 years is problematical.
Either a 150-year-old couple had twins or there were several generations of incestuous inbreds. (Which could explain why they thought theism is a good idea.
RELIGION: treat it like it’s your genitals – don’t wave it about in public, and don’t try and shove it down your kids’ throats.
by Jef » Jul 27, 2010, 1:58 am
By his own claims on the rate of doubling etc, even if the YECs were right and the world was only 6000 years old we would still expect to have close to 11 trillion people on the planet right now.
(Me: This guy realizes the problem, but can’t even consider the difficulty it poses for evolution.)
by Crocodile Gandhi » Jul 27, 2010, 2:04 am
I think you are forgetting about Noah’s flood, silly.
by Jef » Jul 27, 2010, 2:24 am
Let’s set duh flud at about 4285 years ago (AIG). Now according to the wholly babble, just after the flood we have noah, his sons, and the sons of his sons etc. all listed (Genesis 10). In total, there a 30 named males. For the sake of argument we will have to assume one female for each male.
So starting from 60 and doubling in size each 150 years (28 doublings), I get 16,106,127,360 people. Hmmm.
(Me: So, what does this mean?)
by Blackadder » Jul 27, 2010, 3:10 am
Creationists and mathematics rarely combine well. It’s like letting a two-year-old child play with a power tool. At best the results will be messy. More often than not they inflict terrible damage upon themselves.
by Nautilidae » Jul 27, 2010, 11:06 am
It’s amusing that he thinks that he can apply mathematics.
(Me: Right. Isn’t that amusing? NEVER apply mathematics to evolution. The whole thing would crash.)
by Ubjon » Jul 27, 2010, 11:07 am
You get to a point where you don’t even bother watching these things
Interfering with the food chain when you’re situated at the top is a bit like putting a noose around your own neck and kicking the stool away.
by Calilasseia » Jul 27, 2010, 11:56 am
Let me guess … this is yet another YouTube creo-wanker who doesn’t understand such basic concepts as predation, disease or carrying capacity?
I remember demonstrating the absurdity of unconstrained population growth using Mola mola, which is ideal for the purpose.
(Me: the absurdity is the numbers Cali. And they bode ill for you and your belief system. So slough them off.)
by hackenslash » Jul 27, 2010, 11:58 am
Worse, it’s the same Youtube creo-wanker, (un)truthful cretin
Dogma is the death of the intellect
Reality is that which cannot be defined out of existence
(These guys LIVE by dogma. They just don’t know it.)
by Millefleur » Jul 27, 2010, 12:00 pm
Without even watching it I can tell from the caps and retarded title its by lady-hands Matthew the Troothful christian.
Fuck the motherfucker, fuck the fucking fucker,
Fuck the motherfucker he’s a total fucking fucker
Fuck the motherfucker, fuck the motherfucker,
Fuck the mother fucker, fuck him, fuck the motherfucker.
Fuck the motherfucker, fuck the motherfucking pope.
(Me: Right. Don’t watch it, then put down your incredible comment. Do you just go around the net posting stuff like this? Why are these people always showing off their intelligence?)
by Ash » Jul 27, 2010, 12:39 pm
Ugh. I watched that to waste time while waiting for something to download. The progress bar would have been more interesting and informative
Mission accomplished though.
Profanity is the one language all programmers know best.
by HughMcB » Jul 27, 2010 12:47 pm
Basically, this moron needs to brush up on his stats skills and his magical immortal population of humans.
Fuckwit.
(Me: So that’s it. That’s evolutionaut response to numbers that just don’t make sense to evolution and me. If I find an intelligent response from an evolutionaut, I will post it. Don’t hold your breath. As far as I am concerned, I still have to go with the current timeline. Humans appeared 200,000 years ago, even though it makes no sense, and there is no plausible explanation. And I freely admit I can’t argue this one out. Did populations get almost entirely wiped out hundreds of times? If we were so feeble, we never would have survived the period when the earth was inhabited by only a few humans. There would be no humans today. So I will stick with science’s current timeline and just avoid thinking about this one. As I said, nothing makes sense when you are trying to solve the Puzzle.)
Evolution: An Objective Look 
eddie.zdi said,
August 8, 2010 at 10:15 pm
Oh really, very well. Look, I have no problem with your math I do take issue with the premise it’s based on. Allow me to explain, the population doubling you put forward is based on numbers centred around the time of the Industrial Revolution, a time when mankind massively increased it’s effiency and productivity. More resources means more population. The opposite is also true, if you had an island that could produce enough food to support 100 people, and no more. The population couldn’t rise above 100 people if it did everyone would start to starve to death until the number dipped back below 100. So when we were a hunter gatherer species the earth could only support a certain amount of us, want proof, well the Native American population of North America never surged to the numbers that exist there now. We then mastered farming and as such we essentially increased the resource base. So the population could jump up to a new level. And again it jumped when the industrial revolution increased the productivity of the species once again.
There has never been the slightest shred of evidence to suggest the population has doubled steadily it is a strange assertion that you made, the problem with the maths is not the maths themselves but the fact that it is an irrelevant formula. The correct mathamatical formula for population growth would incorporate; breeding rates, infant mortality rates, life expectancy, food availability, sickness and disease figures, overall resource base and fertility. Without all that data any mathamatical analysis is meaningless
stevebee92653 said,
August 9, 2010 at 7:30 am
Again, how many times do I have to say it DIDN”T GROW STEADILY. My gawd. I hope you got the point from my last reply. I hold little hope.
ADParker said,
August 14, 2010 at 8:37 am
So you are admitting that this:
“So year one, 198,000 BCE, there would be 1,000 people. 8,700 years later, there would be 2,000 people. 17, 400 years later the population would be 4,000. Astounding. Possible? It would seem that any population that could be so easily wiped out to coincide with these figures would never have survived. But, of course we did.”
is complete worthless and irrelevant rubbish then? Good, because that seems to be the crux of your ill-defined “paradox” assertion.
By the way;
“200,000 years ago there had to be a minimum of two human beings…
…Actually to reach the population we will have in 2025, approximately 8 billion, the population would have had to double on average only every 4,700 years starting from 200,000 years ago.”
As I have tried to explain to you, your maths is wrong, try again.
stevebee92653 said,
August 14, 2010 at 9:04 pm
Thanks for the heads up. A big error on my part. When I calculated, I obviously read trillion (2 to the 43rd) as billion (2 to the 33rd). Probably because the outcome with billions is so astounding. Not to y’all of course. So the corrected span between doublings is 6,060 years rather than the 4,700 years I originally calculated. You will get years of ragging out of this stevebee boo boo. Of course I see the correction as even more complex and a bigger paradox for a 200,000 year old man. You see it as a “complete worthless and irrelevant rubbish.” So it gets more interesting for me; no change for you. If the span between doubling (insignificant to you) was 50,000, that would also be insignificant to you, since everything that might be negative to evo is to be downplayed and insignificant to you.
eddie.zdi said,
August 8, 2010 at 10:18 pm
Also quick point people have pointed out that the maths doesn’t support a Young Earth Creationist point of view either.
So it means as I state above the maths is false.
eddie.zdi said,
August 8, 2010 at 10:22 pm
Also for those reading this if you wish to head over to http://www.rationalskepticism.org/creationism/evolution-debunked-human-population-for-dummies-t10608.html you’ll find the full answers to this video which isn’t what is represented above, the conversation got fairly deep and the maths fairly involved, as usual stevebee ducked out early and ignored a whole bunch anyways. I highly recommend it I learnt a lot from the thread had a few of my own assumptions about population bottlenecking overthrown 🙂
stevebee92653 said,
August 9, 2010 at 7:22 am
OK after reading this, I am going to stick my answer above at RS. I didn’t duck out. Nobody gets it there. I would say they don’t WANT to get it.
eddie.zdi said,
August 8, 2010 at 10:34 pm
For simplicities sake I can show you the correct maths to use here:
World population = WP
Yearly food requirement of 1 person equals = F
Totally yearly food yield of the earth = N
if WPxF > N the population starts to starve
if WPxF < N all is good.
A population quickly increases to the point where WPxF is just below N.
The only way to increase population after that is to increase N,
Which happened on when farming was invented and again when the industrial revolution happened
The concept of a population ever exceeding the point were WPxF < N is impossible.
Hope that makes everything clear 🙂
stevebee92653 said,
August 9, 2010 at 7:20 am
Eddie, you are taking a very simple point and making it far more complex than you need to. If you start at point A in time with a certain number of people, say two, and you wind up 200.000 years later with 8 billion, the math is a lock. Doesn’t matter how they ate, procreated, starved, warred. The starting point and finish are FIXED. Given. The numbers are a lock. Kill off a bunch, start and stop. Whatever you want. The population MUST double an AVERAGE of 4671 years to reach 8 billion. And, again, it isn’t GOING TO BE 4671 years for each doubling. Doubling will be all over the place due to the factors you name. But the AVERAGE MUST BE 4671. Not one of your friends on RS.org gets this. And you don’t either. Think it out. It’s not that tough. I know you can do it. I don’t really want to go back and keep going in circles. It’s just not worth the time. And samsa warned me about being rude and trolling. I have been very polite and discussed the subject at hand. I’m sure I will get blocked soon as I was on RD, so no reason to keep going there. And this isn’t a boo hoo, so please don’t go back with that one. If we can’t discuss we just can’t. And that has been the case.
DaveD said,
August 10, 2010 at 10:25 am
Steve, you say: “the math is a lock. Doesn’t matter how they ate, procreated, starved, warred. The starting point and finish are FIXED.”
The starting point may be fixed (though neither you or I know precisely when), but the finish isn’t, unless of course the Rapture is imminent! The average will change when new data is inputted. That new data is the future.
That’s what’s wrong with Creationist mathematics. Not the sums, necessarily, but the application.
Your calculations, even if accurate, simply don’t apply.
stevebee92653 said,
August 10, 2010 at 7:34 pm
Sorry, the ONLY thing that applies to the average span between doublings is math. Pure math. Start with two, finish with 8 billion 200,000 years later. The AVERAGE doubling is fixed. No matter what the entity. People, bulldozers, rocks. The average doubling is fixed. The actual doubling is dependent on conditions. This is such simple math. If the average isn’t 4781, you won’t reach 8 billion. Tiresome trying to educate so many avid evolutonauts who don’t want to face the fact. Take the numbers to a math teacher if you like. And if you want to comment, at least know who you are commenting to. Your religious bullshit is as tiresome as is your inability to get simple mathematics. If you want to be such a science supporter, get a little education. Go math. If the math doesn’t fit your belief your choice is to ignore the math, or think. I like thinking over accepting dogma. Apparently you don’t.
DaveD said,
August 10, 2010 at 8:29 pm
“Sorry, the ONLY thing that applies to the average span between doublings is math. Pure math. Start with two, finish with 8 billion 200,000 years later. The AVERAGE doubling is fixed.”
You’re still missing the point. The average doesn’t apply here. There has been a huge amount of variation in population change over the millennia, and the graph is not a straight line, nor is it likely to be in the future. Inconvenient things like wars get in the way, and equally inconveniently, before farming there wasn’t enough food for populations to grow as fast as more recently.
For all I know you could be highly educated, whatever the impression you convey, but that education isn’t very broad. As Calilasseia has remarked on numerous occasions, it doesn’t even appear to encompass your own chosen profession!
stevebee92653 said,
August 11, 2010 at 7:05 am
Hard to believe. Is it a fact that there is not a single evolutionaut that can do basic math? I am beginning to believe that. You stuck your chin out and made a fool of yourself again. Don’t feel too bad. At least you have a large group of equally pathetic math evo-peers.
To help you along, if you start with two (or 1,000) people, then 200,000 years later you have 8 billion, can you figure out the average population increases per year? I will help you along. The average yearly increase is 40,000; 8 billion divided by 200,000. In case you can’t figure it. Do you think wars, disease, or whatever will make a lick of difference? Absolutely not, because those already have been figured in. The ending number of 8 billion reflects all of those factors. If there were less wars, disease, death or whatever factors, the ending number would then have been greater. 10 billion, or 20 billion….who knows. Got it? The AVERAGE increase yearly has NOTHING to do with the ACTUAL annual increase, which VARIED (past tense) according to the factors already listed over and over. Same with AVERAGE time span between doublings, 4781 years, and the ACTUAL time span. I am sure this comment is a waste of time. You won’t get it.
What is amazing is how you evoluitonauts are so dense on this subject, to the man (or woman) and you continue you act like you are really smart and I am so dumb. Which makes you look even worse. Didn’t any of you take math? I can see why you are so fooled by Darwin/Dawkins.
ADParker said,
August 15, 2010 at 2:05 am
“Thanks for the heads up.”
Heads up? Don’t pretend I haven’t been pointing this out for a while now.
“A big error on my part.”
Yup.
“So the corrected span between doublings is 6,060 years rather than the 4,700 years I originally calculated.”
Now it is only a somewhat smaller error. (But still huge, from a base of two, and a timespan of 200,000 years, such a doubling time would result in over 17 billion people!!)
“You will get years of ragging out of this stevebee boo boo. ”
I think your ego is a ‘tad’ over-inflated if you think that anyone finds you worth thinking abut for anything near that length of time. You are a passing joke, nothing more.
“Of course I see the correction as even more complex and a bigger paradox for a 200,000 year old man.”
And I have explained (yet again) why you are wrong on the forum, so won’t repeat it here.
“So it gets more interesting for me; no change for you. If the span between doubling (insignificant to you) was 50,000, that would also be insignificant to you, ”
That figure? Yes, quite insignificant. Although it would mean that only 32 people were alive to know about it! And the factors that led to such a practically extinct species figure WOULD be of great interest.
If for example a virus mutated and spread so rapidly that it wiped our species out in a mere 15 years. Then our population could end up as 32 in 2025 – giving precisely that figure. And once again; No paradox required.
“since everything that might be negative to evo is to be downplayed and insignificant to you.”
As I just wrote on the forum, but seems quite beyond you:
THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH EVOLUTION.
stevebee92653 said,
August 16, 2010 at 4:40 am
I am a passing joke? Then why do you keep coming back? You have been here for months. I find that rather astounding.
“NOTHING TO DO WITH EVOLUTION?” Do the caps make your statement really real? I already recognize that you think that. Why do you feel the need to continue saying the same damn thing over and over? So your opinion is all I really need to solve this riddle? har har har Methinks you protesteth too much. Me? I think evolution needs to do a whole lot of explaining. This paradox needs to be addressed on a professional level, without the stupid rants and rags you evos feel is necessary to put in almost all of your writing.
You DO give a huge shit about my stuff, or you would be gone. But you keep on coming back. What a chuckle. There must be something here for you.
The big thing is I gave you credit for finding my error. You DIDN’T. In fact no one at RS actually did. You had no idea. Bzzzzz…..loss of credit. But you did inspire me to take another look. Thanks.
I love the “YUP”. Kinda like Pluto, my favorite cartoon dog. Do they say maths in NZ? I have never heard of MATHS. YUP
stevebee92653 said,
August 17, 2010 at 3:28 am
“Comic relief”? My gawd are you trite. Nothing like a good fake internet laugh. How about a few “LOL’s” to really make you look intelligent?
Of course my population stuff is an evo-issue. It involves the God of Evolution, which we all know is time. Didn’t you know that?
Are you so dense that you can’t fathom what I might think is a paradox even though you, with all of your super powers, have declared no paradox? Don’t you get tired of playing dumb? Saying you have no idea what the paradox is, or pretending there is no design. Must be exhausting!
“strange little beliefs, your silly little blog”……you’re not a debater. You’re a two bit demeaner, an evo-clone. You have no idea what a debate is.
Debates require intelligence.
Danny Stevens said,
August 15, 2010 at 9:53 am
Steve mate,
if you have a complex line on a graph, like a population growth plot, that line will wiggle eratically. You agree?
Ignoring the doubling thing for a moment, lets just talk about growth rate to make the maths more obvious. To work out the average growth rate, i.e. number of new people per year, you subtract the starting population from the final population and divide by the nymber of years. Do you agree?
Any given average growth rate, when applied to the population you started with, for the number of years you measured, will always give you the final population. Its, as you say, “a lock” regardless of any wiggling around that happened in the middle. Do you agree?
Unfortunately this may not be true for the graph prior to your initial population, or after, because the average in those periods of time might be different. And if you measure a starting population somewhere after the original start time or measure a final population sometime before your original finish time the average you calculate may be quite different. In fact the average for any arbitrary start and end time may be different to that of any other arbitrary period.
Here is a simple example. The population for each of ten years is 1,1,1,1,2,3,4,5,8,10.
The average growth start at year 1 and ending at year 10 is (10-1)/9 = 1. Lets see if that works.
Year 1 there is 1. Year 2 we add 1, giving 2, year 3 we add 1 giving three and so on and we arrive at year 10 giving a population of 10. Wow amazing!
Ok, lets try starting at year 7 (actual population of 4) and going to year 10 (actual population of 10). The average is (10-4)/3=2. Again checking my figures year 8 pop is 4+2 = 6, year 9 pop is 6+2=8 and that means year 10 pop is 8+2 = 10. Again correct, oh my gosh.
Now lets work out backwards from the year 10 to year 1 using these averages. With the average of 1 the populations from year 10 back to year 1 are 10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1. Hooray we get the actual answer! Amazing. Would you expect any thing else? Lets try with my second average. We get 10,8,6,4,2,0,-2,-4,-6,-8. Oh no! The population of 10 in year 10 is impossible. My god the population must only have started in year 6. The numbers PROVE it. If we actually started with our 1 in year 1 we would get 1,3,5,7,9,11,13,15,17,19! Its a PAIR of DOCS! The population figures I started with must be false. These numbers prove it!
Except of course, the averages prove nothing. They are describing a relationship between your start figure, your end figure and the length of time between those figures. The averages themselves are not constant. The average for years 1 to 4 are 0, 4 to 7 are 1 and 7 to 10 are 2. The average is not an appropriate figure to use in predicting the actual figures.
Your example of using doubling runs into exactly the same problem but with slightly more complex maths. In my above population, going year 1 to year 10 the population doubled 4 and a bit times, giving a doubling period of roughly 4/9. If you start in year 7 instead the population doubles 1 and a bit times, giving a doubling time of about 1/3. if you go from year 1 to year 5 the population doubles once over 4 years, giving a doubling of 1/4.
Your calculation based on industrial revolution average doubling is just as out of whack, trying to project that backwards to show that humans had to have started more recently than people think or starting from the estimated start date 200k years ago and projecting forward to say that the human population now should be astronomically huge. Its exactly the same applied maths error I have demonstrated above. And make no mistake, it is not because I’m an evilutionaut, its because your application of the maths is just plain incorrect.
cheers
stevebee92653 said,
August 17, 2010 at 5:30 pm
stevebee: you’re not a debater. You’re a two bit demeaner, an evo-clone. You have no idea what a debate is.
Debates require intelligence.
ADParker: Well folks, you can’t get much clearer evidence that this clown is taking his crap directly out of the Creationist Play-book.
Thanks for the humor, and great evidence of your debating skill.
If you want to comment, my rules are on page 1A. They are pretty much the same as on RS.org. Otherwise, have a nice life.
JOhn101 said,
October 19, 2010 at 7:58 pm
OK, so you are saying 200,000 years ago is too early for humans to have appeard. so that means you reject neandrathal findings( they were pretty much human, i consider them to be) that are dated at around that time or you reject that dating methods used by scientists worldwide??????
stevebee92653 said,
October 19, 2010 at 8:25 pm
No, it means that science needs to deal with what evidence there is. The doubling time for humans, their birth rate, longevity, and generation length have nothing to do with me. They are just plain facts. Evo-science shouldn’t reject facts that don’t match it’s models, needs, and wants. Assuming dating techniques are very accurate, the given ages and doubling times present a great paradox that is tough to explain. And I cannot.
Nayef A. Qashou said,
April 15, 2013 at 5:52 am
Islam has an answer to this paradox.
In the grand scheme of things, the puzzle remains though it is relatively unimportant. We have enough “signs” from God that we don’t need to know the exact span of human existence.
We have a complete genealogy from Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) all the way back to Adam. There are 89 generations.
According to one narration, we know that Adam lived for 960 years.
So, even if we assumed that each of these generations lived as long as Adam until Prophet Muhammad’s birth in 570 CE, then the beginning of humanity would be at 84870 BCE.
So humanity is definitely not 200,000 years old. at least, according to Islam.
It is reported that Noah lived for 950 years in the Qur’an.
There are ten generations between Adam and Noah.
Therefore, if we assume the people of Adam and the people of Noah lived approximately similar lifespans, then we could conclude that between Adam and Noah is roughly 9500 years,
As for the 79 other generations, what we know is that most of them live longer than the typical lifespan at the time of Prophet Muhammad. So, most of these generations lived significantly longer than, say, 70 years.
So let us assume that, on average, these generations lived for 100 years on average (which is very conservative from an Islamic perspective).
That would make the span of these generations as 7900 years.
If we assume that, on average, these generations lived for 500 years (less conservative).
That would make the span of these generations as 39,500 years.
If we add 7900 to 9500 years, we get 17400 years.
If we 39500 to 9500 years, we get 49,000 years.
Conclusion: Humans first existed on the Earth between 48,480 BCE and 16,830 BCE.
Any mistakes that I have made are from myself and all good is from Allah.
May we all be guided to the truth, wherever it is.
Nayef A. Qashou said,
June 28, 2014 at 9:18 am
On reflection, I believe that the comment I made a year ago requires clarification. When I made my calculations, I did it in a way where the next generation does not start until the previous generation has died. Of course, this does not happen in real life. In other words, the real span of these generations would be significantly smaller than what I had calculated since the next generation begins after the previous generation begins to procreate.
Also, the narration which mentions that there are ten generations between Adam and Noah could also mean instead “ten centuries” since the Arabic word that is translated into “generation” could also mean “century”. So the total span between Adam and Noah could be based on ten generations of people or it could be 1000 years.
Lastly, and most importantly, I am not certain that the “89 generations” genealogy is authentic. I took it for granted that it was true when I wrote my comment based on a genealogy map on another website, but I am not aware of any Islamic source that actually verifies this map.
So an important notice for whoever read this:
Don’t take my comment as a representation of the Islamic view of the span of human existence. My comment was a simply a personal endeavor to the calculate the span of human existence based on Islamic sources though it was based on flawed premises and an uncertain genealogy. So if you do not believe what I wrote, then that is fine with me because neither do I. If you judge Islam, then do not judge it on the basis of a flawed calculation which I do not hold as true myself.
However, I will leave some authentic food for thought for those who are interested in an Islamic perspective on the first human beings.
Of course, we believe that Adam was the first human being created by God. From him, God created a woman who would be his wife. And with his wife, they gave birth to twins. To make a long story short, there were two sons of Adam who were named Habil and Qabil (Biblical Abel and Cain). Habil had a herd of animals which were his livelihood while Qabil grew crops.
In other words, in Islam, domestication of animals and agriculture began with the first generation of human beings. From this perspective, we can speculate as to when the first generation existed based on archaeological evidence that indicates when domestication of animals and agriculture first took place.
Any mistakes that I have made are from myself and all good is from God.
Logical Atheist (@AtheismLogic) said,
September 13, 2015 at 7:40 pm
your math is wrong. You may have used the correct equation that populations doubles, but you didn’t take into account any mathematical factors. Your initial assumptions were wrong, you clearly didn’t look up the life expectancy and birthrate of early humans as they are significantly lower than even those of Zimbabwe. This whole article is a giant load of shit and you really should stop doing math. you must have barely taken algebra in high school, if that because any chump who knows half as much about math as you claim to knows this is false. What credentials o you have to make these mathematical assumptions? None.
stevebee92653 said,
September 14, 2015 at 6:12 am
“This is false?” Do the math yourself. I’d love to see your very correct numbers. Actually, you just made a giant fool of yourself. The math is correct, sadly for your obvious belief system. The birthrate of early humans could have been no different than that of any humans before modern birth control, modern medicine. The ancients were humans with the same physiology as modern humans. They were HUMANS. Look at the most backward countries with the worst medical assets, and their doubling times are by far the shortest. Which should give you an idea about what doubling times were for the ancients with no birth control, and no modern medicine. The math is basic, but obviously way over your head.I realize these figures are bad for your belief system, so you must overcommit and attack me personally, since you can’t attack the math. You are typical. A clone.
truth366 said,
June 25, 2016 at 10:52 am
If I understand this correctly that the population doubles every 75 years then it would mean that about 2000 years ago at the time of Christ the population was 110. 2016 Divided by 75 equals 26. The population at that time has been estimated to 200 million
stevebee92653 said,
June 25, 2016 at 5:00 pm
If the population of the Earth was 200,000,000 in year 1 AD, the population would have doubled only five times to reach 6 billion. Population doubling then occurred every 400 years. Which makes no sense. This is almost as long as doubling took during the Black Plague. (450 years)
During the 20th century, the population doubled twice. Population doubling calculations must be mathematically accurate as we know the average number of offspring and generation times for humans. But they cannot be made to match any scientific, historical, or paleontological story of the history of mankind.
truth366 said,
June 25, 2016 at 5:57 pm
Yea, I read the population estimate at AD 1 to be around that and even 300 million. At first, I though this article made some sense then I did some math and realized it made no sense. Still, I found it to be interesting to think about.
stevebee92653 said,
June 25, 2016 at 7:42 pm
Man supposedly migrated out of Africa 60,000 years ago. It’s fascinating to figure the population doubling for 60,000 years. If the population was 10 million, and it doubled every 400 years there should be 14,272,476,9270,595,988,105,828,596,944,9495,136,3827,466,240,000,000 or
14 sexdecillion people on Earth today.
The math is sure, as it must follow known rates of procreation, generation times, and lifespans. And no matter what theory is given for the existence of mankind, demographics just don’t jive with any.
truth366 said,
June 25, 2016 at 9:30 pm
Yea, well I’m with you if you say there is a supreme intelligence that we don’t understand. To me there is no other explanation to our existence.
Bob Jones said,
November 25, 2016 at 4:37 am
For me to be here, I would have had to 524,155,813,888 ancestor parents in my pass 40th ancestral generation. How is this possible? k0rpj430@gmail.com
stevebee92653 said,
November 27, 2016 at 6:54 am
An astounding thought. In only 40 generations….
Andrew Parker said,
April 14, 2017 at 10:22 pm
Cool question Bob Jones. The key to the answer to your question is Repetition of ancestors. If you were to actually (somehow) identify each of those ancestors, there would be a lot repetition of the same people coming up in different slots.
For example, your grandparents (4) could look back at each of their own family trees, And after a few generations and find that they shared ancestors. If all four found that they were all descended from Robert the Bruce (or whoever), then your count of ancestors would include Robert the Bruce (at least) four times. So how many ancestors would you have once you removed all the repeats? A mind-boggling puzzle, not yet to my knowledge sufficiently answered, although there have been attempts.