There are several creationist analyses of world population growth that show it is perfectly reasonable for 8 people (Noah and family) to have produced today's population. Estimated average population growth rates to produce today's population from Noah's family are between 0.44% and 0.5%, depending on the site and the article. This is more than reasonable, since current world population growth is about 1.4%, and was recently as much as 2%.
I've seen these estimates "debunked" by evolutionists who point out that if the growth rate were constant, there would have been too few people around the time of Christ.
The problem with this "debuking" is that it starts with 8 people and then applies the average growth rate right at the start, immediately after the flood. If you do that, you get far too few people at the time of Christ. Our current estimates are about 200-300 million people living at that time, and the smooth curve would force the figure to be much, much smaller.
But if you estimate growth based on simple information from the Biblical account, you get an entirely different picture of early population growth. The people who lived immediately following the flood had much greater longevity than we do today, and had children at later ages. These lengths decreased over the next few hundred years. But even by the time Abram (Abraham) was born, the ages of parents begetting children and the ages at death were significantly higher than they are today. For example:
There's no way to know for certain what the population growth was, of course. But it is logical, based on the above information, that population growth would have been considerably higher than average for at least the first few hundred years after the flood. That's what happens when you have long life spans and people having children well into their 70s and beyond!
As the environment moved toward equilibrium after the flood, lifespans decreased, and the growth rate would have slowed down. That means the world population would have spiked early, and then settled into a lower rate.
So the "debunking" doesn't work. It depends entirely on a smooth exponential growth rate to come up with fewer people than we are confident were alive at the time of Christ. And it's clear that the Bible does not describe conditions that would infer a smooth exponential growth rate, but instead infers a growth rate that would more likely produce a large population quickly, after which growth would slow down significantly. It's perfectly logical for there to be more than enough people around at the time of Christ by simply taking into consideration all the details and not just the estimated average growth rate. If anything, the average growth rate would have to have dropped below 0.5% after the early spike in order to avoid coming up with more people than currently inhabit the earth.
I've seen these estimates "debunked" by evolutionists who point out that if the growth rate were constant, there would have been too few people around the time of Christ.
The problem with this "debuking" is that it starts with 8 people and then applies the average growth rate right at the start, immediately after the flood. If you do that, you get far too few people at the time of Christ. Our current estimates are about 200-300 million people living at that time, and the smooth curve would force the figure to be much, much smaller.
But if you estimate growth based on simple information from the Biblical account, you get an entirely different picture of early population growth. The people who lived immediately following the flood had much greater longevity than we do today, and had children at later ages. These lengths decreased over the next few hundred years. But even by the time Abram (Abraham) was born, the ages of parents begetting children and the ages at death were significantly higher than they are today. For example:
There's no way to know for certain what the population growth was, of course. But it is logical, based on the above information, that population growth would have been considerably higher than average for at least the first few hundred years after the flood. That's what happens when you have long life spans and people having children well into their 70s and beyond!
As the environment moved toward equilibrium after the flood, lifespans decreased, and the growth rate would have slowed down. That means the world population would have spiked early, and then settled into a lower rate.
So the "debunking" doesn't work. It depends entirely on a smooth exponential growth rate to come up with fewer people than we are confident were alive at the time of Christ. And it's clear that the Bible does not describe conditions that would infer a smooth exponential growth rate, but instead infers a growth rate that would more likely produce a large population quickly, after which growth would slow down significantly. It's perfectly logical for there to be more than enough people around at the time of Christ by simply taking into consideration all the details and not just the estimated average growth rate. If anything, the average growth rate would have to have dropped below 0.5% after the early spike in order to avoid coming up with more people than currently inhabit the earth.
