The 6000 Year Earth

[ckempston]

I do not subscribe to the OP though the idea of much of Earths water being above the surface is interesting to ponder. If any one could do the math to determine the current volume of water on Earth; how thick a ‘water shield’ would be formed if it was something like 200 miles above the surface which is where the Space Shuttle orbits. If it was only a few millimeters or a few meteres thick, and how that would affect the sun’s energy passing through.

How the Flood would relate is also interesting with such a scenerio.

With respect to the evolution of man I think there is something to consider that is often overlooked- the rate of population growth.

Take it for what it is worth but it shows at least that in the last 45 years human population grew exponentially to the point of doubling. If, as evolutionsists claim, humans evolved over millions of years to some magic point in Earth history when lower species were eliminated, but were fully human as much as a few hundred thousand years ago, from that point it would suggest the Earth would be much more crowded than it is now.

Chinese history dates back a few thousand years, and I am not sure what population those ancient city-states held so I find the 100,000 humans in 500BC difficult to accept on its face but I don’t think it was millions either so something other than wars and plagues should account for the differences.

Always interesting to think about.

Population growth models that show trillions of people after a hundred or so generations are simplistic and often don’t even take into consideration to subtract deaths. They also don’t fit the reality, for which we have records, of say, the last couple of thousand years for which we have pretty good population information. They assume that population doubles every so many years, but they conveniently forget to “kill off” one of the previous generations and subtract it from the statistic. They are totally deceptive.

BTW, you can easily demonstrate this in Excel.

 

[Verisimilitude]

I think this hits right to the heart of the argument. I personally don’t care how old the earth is. It may be millions or only thousands of years old. But it seems that those who push for an older earth do so because they want to refute the existence of GOD and push evolution, the big bang theory etc. etc.

I think it’s 2 different arguments but somehow they get mixed.

I think there is a relevancy to mixing of ideas. I have no issue with the big bang theory and hold a more pulsating theory myself, but I would not be shocked at a younger Earth; I just don’t think God did it in the literal sense as the OP suggests.

I happen to think Day 6 of Creation was about 100,000 yeras ago which placed the created human on Earth, not as an evolutionary act. Genesis Chapter 11 was maybe 6-7 thousand years ago, but that is when Abraham is first mentioned and we can place him at about 1850-2000 BC so that is a difficulty. How long Adam and Eve were in the Garden before the Fall is not clear, nor is exactly when Noah lived. Day 5 or Day 1 (other) of the Creation account could be billions of years ago in the timeline.

 

[Verisimilitude]

Population growth models that show trillions of people after a hundred or so generations are simplistic and often don’t even take into consideration to subtract deaths. They also don’t fit the reality, for which we have records, of say, the last couple of thousand years for which we have pretty good population information. They assume that population doubles every so many years, but they conveniently forget to “kill off” one of the previous generations and subtract it from the statistic. They are totally deceptive.

BTW, you can easily demonstrate this in Excel.

I think they try and account for the natural and premature deaths in their computations.

 

[ckempston]

I think they try and account for the natural and premature deaths in their computations.

You “think” they do? Let’s see an example that matches reality. Take current population growth, which is by far the fastest in the history of mankind. If we assume that population doubles every 50 years, we can work backwards from that. Go back however many iterations from 6 billion that it takes to get to 1 person. It’s only like 1800 years. There is obviously a flaw in the calculation.

 

[Verisimilitude]

You “think” they do?

If you ‘know’ they don’t please provide something that says so. I gave the link the table was from and there they give the criteria used.

Let’s see an example that matches reality. Take current population growth, which is by far the fastest in the history of mankind.

How about the population growth of rabbits and other animals?

If we assume that population doubles every 50 years, we can work backwards from that. Go back however many iterations from 6 billion that it takes to get to 1 person. It’s only like 1800 years. There is obviously a flaw in the calculation.

I think you are doing yourself what you are accusing the data I provided. The last 50 years with likely the most accurate data we have, have had things like China’s one-child policy, legalized abortion in America, wars, tsunamis…and it still doubled.

 

[NDfan]

Population growth models that show trillions of people after a hundred or so generations are simplistic and often don’t even take into consideration to subtract deaths. They also don’t fit the reality, for which we have records, of say, the last couple of thousand years for which we have pretty good population information. They assume that population doubles every so many years, but they conveniently forget to “kill off” one of the previous generations and subtract it from the statistic. They are totally deceptive.

BTW, you can easily demonstrate this in Excel.

Chip that’s not entirely true. Some of the studies I’ve read took average population growths that date back as far as they can go. The smallest I believe was found somewhere in Eastern Europe which was around .5% or something like that. The growth rate factors in deaths and even years where the population may have contracted because of major catastrophic events like plagues, wars etc. But then other years will see surges like we saw after WWII etc. Over time the growth model smooths itself out. I believe now the World population is in a slight decline overall or has stayed stagnant. At some point you have to assign an overall value to the growth rate of the earth. It certainly cannot be zero.

So let’s take for example the notion that 8 people got off the boat after the flood assuming for arguments sake that the flood was a literal event that killed everyone and everything except 8 people and a bunch of animals Let’s say that this occurred 100 thousand years ago. Using a very low population growth rate of say .2% per year which accounts for declining years, stagnant years, and surging years we end up with trillions of people at the 50,000 year mark. Even lowering it to .1% gives us trillions of people at year 50,000. If we do something ridiculously low like say .05% growth per year we reach over 572 billion people at year 50,000. A lot more than we have now.

Somewhere along the line we have to come to the realization that man could not have existed millions and millions of years ago. Or if he did that he experienced many many catastrophic events that almost completely wiped out his/her existence. Some would have to survive so the earth could be re-populated. In that case when was the last time something like that happened? How many people survived that event and then what type of growth rate do you apply to that generation? Either way you still arrive at the earth containing billions or perhaps hundreds of billions more people than we do now. So someone is just flat out wrong somewhere.

 

[ckempston]

If you ‘know’ they don’t please provide something that says so. I gave the link the table was from and there they give the criteria used.

How about the population growth of rabbits and other animals?

And what would that have to do with anything? Do you know the average lifespan of a rabbit in 1750 AD?

I think you are doing yourself what you are accusing the data I provided. The last 50 years with likely the most accurate data we have, have had things like China’s one-child policy, legalized abortion in America, wars, tsunamis…and it still doubled.

Actually, I’m leaning the opposite way, giving the most liberal estimate for population doubling. Abortions in America have been a fraction of the population, and as immoral as it is, from a population standpoint, this number would be greatly decreased or offset by decreased infant mortality rates and mothers dying while giving birth.

The Bible gives us an idea of how long it took Israel to double, but this would be different for different cultures at different times. That is, again, why population growth estimates are so tricky. During the Exodus, Israel had a 600,000 man army. In David’s time, the army was only 1.3 million. That means it took 400 years for the population of Israel to roughly double.

 

[rossum]

I think they try and account for the natural and premature deaths in their computations.

Their computations have a lot more problems than that. For example, if we take the date of the flood as 100 years before the construction of the Pyramids then the total world population was about 13 people at a growth rate of 0.5%. According to Numbers 1:46 Moses lead 600,000 men (not counting women and children) on the Exodus from Egypt, yet this YEC population model, with a constant growth rate, gives a total world population of 726 people!

The model is very flawed and gives nonsensical results. See CB620 - Population Growth for these and other problems with a constant growth rate.

rossum

 

[ckempston]

Chip that’s not entirely true. Some of the studies I’ve read took average population growths that date back as far as they can go. The smallest I believe was found somewhere in Eastern Europe which was around .5% or something like that. The growth rate factors in deaths and even years where the population may have contracted because of major catastrophic events like plagues, wars etc. But then other years will see surges like we saw after WWII etc. Over time the growth model smooths itself out. I believe now the World population is in a slight decline overall or has stayed stagnant. At some point you have to assign an overall value to the growth rate of the earth. It certainly cannot be zero.

I’d agree with this, the curve would remain about the same if we make consistent assumptions - going steadily up, but the number of deaths by natural causes and premature deaths would also rise exponentially as population rose, not even considering natural disasters, wars, and famines.

So let’s take for example the notion that 8 people got off the boat after the flood assuming for arguments sake that the flood was a literal event that killed everyone and everything except 8 people and a bunch of animals Let’s say that this occurred 100 thousand years ago. Using a very low population growth rate of say .2% per year which accounts for declining years, stagnant years, and surging years we end up with trillions of people at the 50,000 year mark. Even lowering it to .1% gives us trillions of people at year 50,000. If we do something ridiculously low like say .05% growth per year we reach over 572 billion people at year 50,000. A lot more than we have now.

Do you have any reason for placing the flood at 100,000 years ago? You can’t have your cake and eat it too. If you’re arguing for a literal Biblical timeline, which I assume you are, you can’t possibly place the flood at 100k years.

In any case, this scenario doesn’t work out very well, even if we put the 8 people at 10,000 BC. I started out with your .2% scenario and went forward 10,000 years. 8 people in 10,000 years would turn into almost 4 trillion given your formula. Obviuosly, it does not reflect reality, because we’ve gotten into recorded history. That’s a major problem. Whatever growth rate you use, you have to make it match some known growth rate, otherwise it is totally arbitrary.

Somewhere along the line we have to come to the realization that man could not have existed millions and millions of years ago. Or if he did that he experienced many many catastrophic events that almost completely wiped out his/her existence. Some would have to survive so the earth could be re-populated. In that case when was the last time something like that happened? How many people survived that event and then what type of growth rate do you apply to that generation? Either way you still arrive at the earth containing billions or perhaps hundreds of billions more people than we do now. So someone is just flat out wrong somewhere.

I’d agree someone is definitely wrong.

 

[rossum]

I think an interesting question to ask people who hold this view is what happened to the water after it “receded”? What these individuals do is try to give some “natural” explanation for where the water originated, all the while ignoring a “natural” explanation for where the water went afterwards. Clearly, whether the flood was global or local, or whether it took place where it appears to in the Biblical timeline or some remote time before this, it was a miraculous event. I find it ironic that these young-earthers can’t just call it miraculous. Instead they try to come up with all these “natural” explanations, but what they end up with are some serious inconsistencies.

Remember that one of the objectives of Young Earth Creationism is to get their ideas taught in science classes. Including miracles is an obvious no-no if you want to get into science class. Over the years YEC has reduced the religious content as far as it can to try to get into science lessons. The current iteration, Intelligent Design, has removed God entirely and replaced Him with the Intelligent Designer, nudge nudge wink wink.

rossum

 

[NDfan]

I’d agree with this, the curve would remain about the same if we make consistent assumptions - going steadily up, but the number of deaths by natural causes and premature deaths would also rise exponentially as population rose, not even considering natural disasters, wars, and famines.

But I’m taking this into consideration. Wars, premature deaths etc. would impact years that show perhaps a decline in population. Even natural disasters like we saw with the tsunami. Over time the population of the earth has demonstrated itself to grow and ultimately we have to assign some type of rate to it. What is that rate?

Do you have any reason for placing the flood at 100,000 years ago? You can’t have your cake and eat it too. If you’re arguing for a literal Biblical timeline, which I assume you are, you can’t possibly place the flood at 100k years.

I only used 100 thousand years because many argue for a much longer period. I’m showing that even with just a small period it doesn’t work. And I’m not using a strict Biblical time line. I’m just using the people that got off the boat as a starting point. But you can certainly feel free to pick another group.

In any case, this scenario doesn’t work out very well, even if we put the 8 people at 10,000 BC. I started out with your .2% scenario and went forward 10,000 years. 8 people in 10,000 years would turn into almost 4 trillion given your formula. Obviuosly, it does not reflect reality, because we’ve gotten into recorded history. That’s a major problem. Whatever growth rate you use, you have to make it match some known growth rate, otherwise it is totally arbitrary.

Chip this is my point precisely. There’s just no argument that supports man being around for millions of years. Or even hundreds of thousands of years. At some time we have to say that man populated the earth at a starting point. The number of people at that point was certainly less than it is now unless someone wants to argue that the population of the earth is declining overall. The difference between that number and the number we have today produces some sort of overall rate. Factoring in disasters, wars, famine etc. Everything you can possibly think of. The bottom line is there are more people today then there were at some point in the past when man started to exist. Even if we use very very low fractional growth rates we still end up with more people than we actually have today if we cling to the posture that man existed for this great length of time. That’s where the fallacy is.

So let’s just use another example. Let’s assume that man existed 1 million years ago. How many people were there at that time? 10? 5? 2? 20? There has to be a number. Even applying a tiny growth rate still results in more people today than we currently have if you allow for such a long time frame for man to exist. Even considering times that show constant growth rates, no growth, or declining growth. The overall result is the number still goes up. So either man has not existed as long as some think. Or the population of the earth stayed at such a low constant number until some point in time when suddenly it exploded to hit today’s number. If that’s the case when was that and what caused the sudden surge? That’s what I’m looking for and no one has ever been able to reasonably answer the question.

I’d agree someone is definitely wrong.

So where and who is it

 

[NDfan]

There is a great deal of evidence for the old age of the earth, see How Old is the Earth.

And there’s a lot of evidence for a young earth age.

In general we cannot measure the age of sedimentary layers, what is measured is the age of volcanic deposits interleaved in the sedimentary layers. We know that sedimantary layers can form slowly or quickly - scientists have know this since Pompeii was buried quickly and not slowly.

But how is the volcanic deposit measured?

Even with slow deposition we can see that the earth is older than Young Earth Creationists would have us believe. There are over 100,000 annual varves in Lake Suigetsu in Japan, over a million in Lake Baikal in Russia and over a million in the Green River formation in the USA.

rossum

But the only thing varves tell us is that the climate changed. It doesn’t give a time frame.

 

[rossum]

Let’s assume that man existed 1 million years ago. How many people were there at that time? 10? 5? 2? 20? There has to be a number. Even applying a tiny growth rate still results in more people today than we currently have if you allow for such a long time frame for man to exist. Even considering times that show constant growth rates, no growth, or declining growth. The overall result is the number still goes up. So either man has not existed as long as some think. Or the population of the earth stayed at such a low constant number until some point in time when suddenly it exploded to hit today’s number. If that’s the case when was that and what caused the sudden surge? That’s what I’m looking for and no one has ever been able to reasonably answer the question.

So where and who is it

Population growth has been far from straight line. A major catastrophe, such as the Toba eruption can have a severe effect on human population. Likewise the Black Death reduced the population of Europe by between a half and a third with an estimated total death toll of about 75 million worldwide, of which about 50 million were in Europe.

Two of the major increases in population growth have been due to the invention of agriculture, which allowed much greater population densities than the previous hunter-gatherer methods, and of modern medicine and sewerage which have greatly reduced the numbers of early deaths from disease.

While it would be possible to calculate a single figure for population growth from the Toba eruption, which left around 20,000 humans alive about 70,000 years ago, to now, any such calculation would be useless because enough is known to show that the population growth rate has been variable and not constant.

rossum

 

[heiscominginthe]

So many scientists and not enough space.

The sun has nothing to do with carbon dating. All of us are beings based on carbon, sun or no sun.

So carbon dating has nothing to do with the sun. Common sense tells us if the preflood material did indeed receive 13 times less radiation from the sun then material after the flood, the chemical make up of the earth of the two seperate areas would be entirely different.

Now we have a scientist who tries to carbon date preflood material that has not been altered from immense radiation from the sun as our world is today, and he uses the chemical principles of material established on materical 13 times the radiation bombardment, does it not make sense that his reading woud be abstract, even to the point of saying the earth was here millions of years? Certainly.

 

[ckempston]

So many scientists and not enough space.

So carbon dating has nothing to do with the sun. Common sense tells us if the preflood material did indeed receive 13 times less radiation from the sun then material after the flood, the chemical make up of the earth of the two seperate areas would be entirely different.

Now we have a scientist who tries to carbon date preflood material that has not been altered from immense radiation from the sun as our world is today, and he uses the chemical principles of material established on materical 13 times the radiation bombardment, does it not make sense that his reading woud be abstract, even to the point of saying the earth was here millions of years? Certainly.

Does any type of solar radiation have an effect on carbon? It seems to me that you would need to prove that it would effect things in such a way as to make things appear older than they are. All you have done so far is given us a what-if scenario with no scientific support. I’m just sayin - the evidence could very well support your position, but as it stands, you haven’t proven it, so it could go either way.

 

[ckempston]

But I’m taking this into consideration. Wars, premature deaths etc. would impact years that show perhaps a decline in population. Even natural disasters like we saw with the tsunami. Over time the population of the earth has demonstrated itself to grow and ultimately we have to assign some type of rate to it. What is that rate?

It’s obviously not .2%, because we would have ran out of room from just the time of Jesus.

I only used 100 thousand years because many argue for a much longer period. I’m showing that even with just a small period it doesn’t work. And I’m not using a strict Biblical time line. I’m just using the people that got off the boat as a starting point. But you can certainly feel free to pick another group.

You’re right that with a small period it doesn’t work. This doesn’t help your case in the least. In fact it demonstrates that there is no way .2% could be the real population growth number.

Chip this is my point precisely. There’s just no argument that supports man being around for millions of years. Or even hundreds of thousands of years. At some time we have to say that man populated the earth at a starting point. The number of people at that point was certainly less than it is now unless someone wants to argue that the population of the earth is declining overall. The difference between that number and the number we have today produces some sort of overall rate. Factoring in disasters, wars, famine etc. Everything you can possibly think of. The bottom line is there are more people today then there were at some point in the past when man started to exist. Even if we use very very low fractional growth rates we still end up with more people than we actually have today if we cling to the posture that man existed for this great length of time. That’s where the fallacy is.

The black death alone may have reduced the world’s population by 20% in a single century. It doesn’t take much to realize that this only needs to happen a few times in human history to severely cut back on population numbers in a drastic way.

**In fact, that gives us a good starting point. **

Estimates put world population at about 400 million during this time. Would you agree for the sake of argument? If we start at 1400 and work our way forward at .2% growth per year, would we come up with a realistic estimate of current world population? This should be easy. (Opens Excel…) Column A would start at 1400 and would increment A1+1, A2+1…through 2009. Column B would start at 400,000,000 and increment using the formula =(b1*.002)+b1— (i.e. .2% x 400 million + the previous cell). By 2009, we should (ACCORDING TO YOUR METHOD) have a world population of: 1,350,524,303. Yeah, my brother. (whoa, I totally wrote the wrong number out. That number is one billion three hundred and fifty million. Are you beginning to see the flaw in your position? The point is, we don’t have a population growth number that reliably predicts reality.

Argument over.

So let’s just use another example. Let’s assume that man existed 1 million years ago. How many people were there at that time? 10? 5? 2? 20? There has to be a number. Even applying a tiny growth rate still results in more people today than we currently have if you allow for such a long time frame for man to exist. Even considering times that show constant growth rates, no growth, or declining growth. The overall result is the number still goes up. So either man has not existed as long as some think. Or the population of the earth stayed at such a low constant number until some point in time when suddenly it exploded to hit today’s number. If that’s the case when was that and what caused the sudden surge? That’s what I’m looking for and no one has ever been able to reasonably answer the question.

So where and who is it

 

[rossum]

So carbon dating has nothing to do with the sun. Common sense tells us if the preflood material did indeed receive 13 times less radiation from the sun then material after the flood, the chemical make up of the earth of the two seperate areas would be entirely different.

Now we have a scientist who tries to carbon date preflood material that has not been altered from immense radiation from the sun as our world is today, and he uses the chemical principles of material established on materical 13 times the radiation bombardment, does it not make sense that his reading woud be abstract, even to the point of saying the earth was here millions of years? Certainly.

You should know that carbon dating is not used to measure the age of the earth; carbon dating is only good to between 50,000 and 75,000 years ago. For older material other methods are employed, such as Argon-Argon or Uranium-Lead. For further details see Radiometric Dating - A Christian Perspective.

rossum

 

[Thing]

I think an interesting question to ask people who hold this view is what happened to the water after it “receded”? What these individuals do is try to give some “natural” explanation for where the water originated, all the while ignoring a “natural” explanation for where the water went afterwards. Clearly, whether the flood was global or local, or whether it took place where it appears to in the Biblical timeline or some remote time before this, it was a miraculous event. I find it ironic that these young-earthers can’t just call it miraculous. Instead they try to come up with all these “natural” explanations, but what they end up with are some serious inconsistencies.

What makes you think the water went anywhere?

 

[heiscominginthe]

You better put down whatever you have been reading and pick up a real science book.

God is the author of all things including science. I will stick with his Word.

 

[heiscominginthe]

Does any type of solar radiation have an effect on carbon? It seems to me that you would need to prove that it would effect things in such a way as to make things appear older than they are. All you have done so far is given us a what-if scenario with no scientific support. I’m just sayin - the evidence could very well support your position, but as it stands, you haven’t proven it, so it could go either way.

At least your response is an honest one and not one that refuses to see both sides. I thank you for that and so does the Lord.

As for proof, it won’t be found on the pages of this forum. I can give you a site that has overwhelming proof that debunks evolution. Yet, don’t think it is premitted here to put links on the forum is it? If it is permitted, I will.