The flood is impossible.

Someone should come up with a script that generates random responses to threads...

Or we could just borrow Agnonaces'.

shinbits said:

Some things you need to consider.

In those times, people lived longer. Noah lived to be at least 500 years old. Lots of time to procreate. A person that had one kid every two years with that kind of lifespan, would make a little village all by himself. Then each of those offspring could repeat the pattern. Noah could've had thousands of people around in his own life time.

Add to that, that men often married multiple wives (Solomon had a thousand), then it's easy to see how the human population could've grown so fast.

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Alright, then, show the math. According to your assumptions about lifespan and the number of wives a man had, and based on a starting population of 8 people, what would the population of the world be in the year 0? And please justify the number of wives each man would have, and the birth rates with each, as well as the average age expectancy such birth rates would apply.

Vatis showed his math. Can you show yours?

(or heck, even just give the rates/ages/wives you would use and I'm sure someone else will crunch the numbers.)

Skaloop said:

Alright, then, show the math. According to your assumptions about lifespan and the number of wives a man had, and based on a starting population of 8 people, what would the population of the world be in the year 0? And please justify the number of wives each man would have, and the birth rates with each, as well as the average age expectancy such birth rates would apply.

Vatis showed his math. Can you show yours?

(or heck, even just give the rates/ages/wives you would use and I'm sure someone else will crunch the numbers.)

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There's too many variables, such as random surges in sexual activity, war, famine, natural disasters, etc, in order to that. Still, it's easy to see why there'd be a population boom from those 8.

shinbits said:

There's too many variables, such as random surges in sexual activity, war, famine, natural disasters, etc, in order to that. Still, it's easy to see why there'd be a population boom from those 8.

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Yes, yes, and those variables apply to Vatis' calculations as well. That's why these are generalizations. The point is, Vatis gets a number that is different than the actual number by a factor of 100 for just Rome itself. You are proposing that the three specific things you mention (lifespan, number of wives, and birth rates) can account for that massive difference. So yes, there are variables, but surely you can get into the ballbark.

Anyway, I am not sure that lifespan would have much of an effect, because Vatis based his calculations on human procreation rate. Yes, living longer would allow for more children, but not at a faster rate.

As for the number of wives, again, while that would increase one man's offspring, it would not really change the overall birthrate. Especially since the first 4 guys didn't have multiple wives, they just had one. And their sons could have had, at max, three, unless they were marrying their sisters. But assuming fairly equal procreation rates for each initial couple, that would mean that some boys grew up to have multiple wives, while some had none. So again, the actual birth rate stays pretty much the same (unless you propose polyandry and well as polygamy, although that still has a problem since women can only reproduce with one man at a time).

So there are a lot of considerations you need to take for your assumptions as well, especially if you are trying to explain he difference of nearly 60 million between Vatis' theoretical number based on what YECs usually say, and the known population of the Roman Empire in the year zero.

So can you please explain how, exactly, life span and the number of wives increase overall population growth rate? Not a single man's rate, but the rate of the population. Because whether it's one guy married to ten different women, or ten men married to ten women, each woman can still only have one kid a year, so that doesn't affect birth rate.

And I read your idea about more girls being born than boys. That may well be, but the difference is too negligible to account for the 60 million people you're missing.

MoonLancer said:

so when you say science is wrong... does that make it right? just trying to figure out the rules here.

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And shinbits post was not a good point as it came down to incest.

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With an initial population of 8 people, mostly closely related, it's hard not to end up with a bit of incest. Depending on your definition of incest, it may be impossible.

AV1611VET said:

What's a "remarkable find"?

Every time a scientist "discovers" something, it stuns the world, shocks the world, or amazes someone.

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That's because you get your science news from the popular press. Trust me, they usually blow things WAY out of proportion.

Skaloop said:

So again, the actual birth rate stays pretty much the same (unless you propose polyandry and well as polygamy, although that still has a problem since women can only reproduce with one man at a time).

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And women can only bear so many children, no matter how many guys knock them.

Plus today, polyandry is practised by, what, two human societies, and only in very harsh environments. I don't think that makes polyandry a realistic way of accounting for the missing millions. It seems that for the most part, we just don't do it, and when we do, it's not in the places where there's gonna be a lot of population growth.

Vatis said:

Life expectancy in ancient egypt for example was 30-35 years, without counting infant deaths. Again, this was taken from contemporary statistics.

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Can you give me a source, please? Those statistics sound like something I want to know more about.

Vatis,

You don't believe in history because global history says that there was a flood.

"Many great deluges have taken place during the nine thousand years, for that is the number of years which have elapsed since the time of which I am speaking...." --Plato, philosopher, Critias, 360 B.C.

"...the time must come when this place will be flooded again." -- Aristotle, philosopher, Meteorology, 350 B.C.

"And so even to the Athenians themselves, though they built the city of Sais in Egypt, yet by reason of the flood, were led into the same error of forgetting what was before." -- Diodorus Siculus, historian, ~1st century B.C.

"Afterwards, when most of the inhabitants of Greece were destroyed by flood, and all records and ancient monuments perished with them, the Egyptians took this occasion to appropriate the study of astrology solely to themselves; and whereas the Grecians (through ignorance) as yet valued not learning, it became a general opinion that the Egyptians were the first that found out the knowledge of the stars." -- Diodorus Siculus, historian, ~1st century B.C.

"And in the time of Crotopus occurred the burning of Phaethon, and the deluges of Deucalion." -- Clement of Alexandria, priest, Stromata, 2nd century

"One and seventy Ages are styled here a Patriarchate (manvantara); at it's end is said to be a twilight which has the number of years of a Golden Age, and which is a deluge." -- Brahmarishi Mayan, demon, The Surya Siddhanta, 490

"In the life of Manco Capac, who was the first Inca, and from whom they began to boast themselves children of the Sun and from whom they derived their idolatrous worship of the Sun, they had an ample account of the deluge. They say that in it perished all races of men and created things insomuch that the waters rose above the highest mountain peaks in the world. No living thing survived except a man and a woman who remained in a box and, when the waters subsided, the wind carried them ... to Tiahuanaco [where] the creator began to raise up the people and the nations that are in that region." -- Cristóbal de Molina, priest, 1572

"They make great mention of a deluge, which happened in their country ... The Indians say that all men were drowned in the deluge, and they report that out of Lake Titicaca came one Viracocha, who stayed in Tiahuanaco, where at this day there are to be seen ruins of ancient and very strange buildings, and from thence came to Cuzco, and so began to multiply." -- José de Acosta, priest, 1590

"In the lifetime of [Emperor] Yao the sun did not set for ten full days and the entire land was flooded." -- Johannes Hübner, evangelist, 1729

"Living organisms without number have been the victims of the catastrophes. Some were destroyed by deluges, others were left dry when the seabed was suddenly raised; their races are even finished forever, and all they leave in the world is some debris that is hardly recognizable to the naturalist." -- Georges Cuvier, naturalist, 1819

"Yea, foolish mortals, Noah's flood is not yet subsided; two thirds of the fair world it yet covers." -- Hermann Melville, author, 1851

"The belief in a great deluge is not confined to one nation singly, the Tamanacs; it makes part of a system of historical tradition, of which we find scattered notions among the Maypures of the great cataracts; among the Indians of the Rio Erevato, which runs into the Caura; and among almost all the tribes of the upper Orinoco. When the Tamanacs are asked how the human race survived this great deluge, the 'age of water' of the Mexicans, they say, 'a man and a woman saved themselves on a high mountain, called Tamanacu, situated on the banks of the Asiveru....'" -- Alexander Von Humboldt, Personal Narrative, naturalist, 1852

"I saw at once that I had here discovered a portion at least of the Chaldean account of the Deluge." -- George Smith, archaeologist, 1876

"The fragments of the Chaldean historian, Berosus, preserved in the works of various later writers, have shown that the Babylonians were acquainted with traditions referring to the Creation, the period before the Flood, the Deluge, and other matters forming parts of Genesis." -- George Smith, archaeologist, 1876

"There is, however, one special tradition which seems to be more deeply impressed and more widely spread than any of the others. The destruction of well-nigh the whole human race, in an early age of the world's history, by a great deluge, appears to have impressed the minds of the few survivors, and seems to have been handed down to their children, in consequence, with such terror-struck impressiveness that their remote descendants of the present day have not even yet forgotten it. It appears in almost every mythology, and lives in the most distant countries and among the most barbarous tribes." -- Hugh Miller, geologist, The Testimony of the Rocks, 1892

"The Babylonian account of the deluge is older than the Biblical story. It does not take away from it but rather corroborates its truth." -- Drusilla D. Houston, historian, Wonderful Ethiopians of the Cu[wash my mouth][wash my mouth][wash my mouth][wash my mouth]e Empire, Chapter XIII: The Civilization of Babylonia, 1926

"In the reign of Osorkon II of the Libyan Dynasty [22nd Dynasty] in Egypt, in the third year, the first month of the second season, on the twelfth day, according to a damaged inscription, 'the flood came on, in this whole land ... this land was in its power like the sea; there was no dyke of the people to withstand its fury. All the people were like birds upon it ... the tempest ... suspended ... like heavens. All the temples of Thebes were like marshes.'" -- Immanuel Velikovsky, polymath, 1950

"For many centuries, indeed until only a few generations ago, the story of Noah was accepted as a historical fact...." -- Leonard Woolley, archaeologist, March 12th 1953

"Geologists from earliest days, but especially from the eighteenth century (Baron Cuvier and others) recognized that a 'flood' had spread a blanket of 'drift' over Europe. Thus, it comes as no surprise that an 'event' 11,000 years ago had the energy and fluid medium to broadcast erratics and other debris in a thick blanket over southern Canada, the Great Lakes region, New England, the prairies of western Canada and the American midwest. Anyone who has pondered the well-established sudden disappearance from the region of whole species of the larger ungulates (elephants, camel, horse, sloth, etc.) and their predators, while the same families of creatures continued, apparently unaffected, elsewhere in the world, will find the 'flood' interpretation of prehistory convenient for explaining the facts." -- C. Warren Hunt, geologist, 1989

"The extent of the Sumerian flood was very substantial: a deposit 8-feet thick covering an area some 400 miles long by 100 miles wide -- a total of many billions of tons of material. And it was this discovery that sent a buzz through the corridors of uniformitarian geology. For here, at last, was evidence of a real Homo diluvii testis -- man a witness to the flood. Because this catastrophic event had occured in recorded history then -- uniquely in the geological record -- here was direct evidence of a substantial sediment that must have been laid down rapidly and all at once, rather than slowly over millions of years. And if this stratum then why not others?" -- Richard Milton, writer, 1992

"Flood legends appear in the mythology of so many cultures that a universal flood has often been invoked to explain their prevalence." -- Dorothy B. Vitaliano, geomythologist, 2007

"Noah's flood is a story so compelling that for centuries it has demanded a scientific explanation. The story clearly refers to an inundation so large that its survivors assumed that the whole world had been affected. People have long sought to tie the Flood to a specific event and location, but only recently has a plausible explanation, based on sound scientific research, been proposed. Ryan & Pitman (1999) hypothesize that postglacial melting elevated sea levels to the extent that the Mediterranean broke through into the Black Sea depression, drowing out so many settlements that a universal flood legend resulted. I am not only convinced that this is the true explanation of the Flood, but I am also impressed with how quickly and effectively these two scientists have brought this long-elusive story into the realm of science-based geomythology." -- Dorothy B. Vitaliano, geomythologist, 2007

Skaloop said:

Anyway, I am not sure that lifespan would have much of an effect, because Vatis based his calculations on human procreation rate. Yes, living longer would allow for more children, but not at a faster rate.

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The human procreation rate is meaningless when the statistics are taken in a modern world, full of many types of birth-control, and in a world where most people only want 2 or 3 kids. Meaningless. In Biblical times, not only was there no birth control, but having many kids was considered a blessing. I can post Scriptures saying so, if you like. Even today, there are couples with ten or more kids. So you can imagine if you had 500 or more years to do procreate.

In light of this, as I said, Vatis' calculations on procreation rates are meaningless.

As for the number of wives, again, while that would increase one man's offspring, it would not really change the overall birthrate. Especially since the first 4 guys didn't have multiple wives, they just had one. And their sons could have had, at max, three, unless they were marrying their sisters. But assuming fairly equal procreation rates for each initial couple, that would mean that some boys grew up to have multiple wives, while some had none. So again, the actual birth rate stays pretty much the same (unless you propose polyandry and well as polygamy, although that still has a problem since women can only reproduce with one man at a time).

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I bought that up because there are more women than men available, for biological reasons as well as social reasons. X chromosome sperm live longer than Ys. Men also die WAY more, in wars, crimes, hunting, or accidents, since women (especially in those times) didn't fight in wars, hunt, and stayed in the home. This mean that every available man could have at least one wife, and some could have at least one extra.

If all the available men have women that they can procreate with and then some, that just adds to the ability of humans to procreate. Agree?

Naraoia said:

And women can only bear so many children, no matter how many guys knock them.

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Really? What's the limit?

Vatis said:

BBC - History - Ancient History in depth: Health Hazards and Cures in Ancient Egypt
Ancient Egypt - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Life expectancy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Thanks!

Hmm, the 30-35 year figure is actually in conflict with the third article - which quotes a birth life expectancy of 35+ for the era in general. Presumably the key is variation among societies? Anyway, I digress. Thanks for the links! I think I'll want to look at a couple of books by this Joyce Filer!

Here I'd like to quote AV:

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AV is so quotable, isn't he?

Vatis said:

YEC's like to do a silly math trick, where they show how if population doubled every 150 years or so since the flood, there would be about 8 billion people today.
Now I know that every biologist will laugh at that argument since humans don't procreate like bacteria, but I would like to show how Creationists who make these claims debunk themselves without even knowing.
So here are the supposed facts:
-8 people survived the flood
-the flood happened arounnd 2.4K BC
-humans procreate at an exponential rate of 0,5% per year
So let's pick a random time in history and see if this check's out, what about the roman empire at the time of Jesus' birth?
Again, here are the facts:
-Jesus was born at around 0 BC
-the roman empire had a population of about 60 million (this is pretty accurate because it was taken from reports which were made at that time)

Here's the math:
8*2^(2400/150) = 524k
Now how about that?
Where were the other 59.5 million who lived in the roman empire at that time, not to mention everybody else in the world?

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Well done, Vatis.
To add some troubles for our creationist friends, here is the demographic record of China:

shinbits said:

The human procreation rate is meaningless when the statistics are taken in a modern world, full of many types of birth-control, and in a world where most people only want 2 or 3 kids. Meaningless.

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This made me laugh.

It is impossible that the reproductive rates were higher than this in the past. Imagine each mating couple had three children and these three children surived and mated producing 3 children and on and on. Also assume that each women stopped reproducing at the age of 20 so that each generation comes along every 20 years.

Between the supposed time of the flood and Jesus is 2400 years. A generation evey 20 years gives 120 generations. To calculate growth or future populations biologist use mathematics called a branching process. The formula p(n)=r^n gives the expected population, p(n), of the nth generation. r is the reproduction rate. Think of mating pairs not producing children but new mating pairs. If the pair has 3 children that is 1.5 mating pairs and the r is equal to 1.5.

Using the math we get a population of ancient Rome if each mating couple had 3 children starting at 8 in the supposed time of the flood. It would be about:

10,815,200,000,000,000,000,000

Of course you might now be thinking that if just having 3 surving/reproducing children can cause a population increase, in the times we are considerng, from 8 to several hundred billion times the current population of the earth, then maybe the 60 million of the empire is not that impossible of a task. You would be right.

Vatis said:

YEC's like to do a silly math trick, where they show how if population doubled every 150 years or so since the flood, there would be about 8 billion people today.
Now I know that every biologist will laugh at that argument since humans don't procreate like bacteria, but I would like to show how Creationists who make these claims debunk themselves without even knowing.
So here are the supposed facts:
-8 people survived the flood
-the flood happened arounnd 2.4K BC
-humans procreate at an exponential rate of 0,5% per year
So let's pick a random time in history and see if this check's out, what about the roman empire at the time of Jesus' birth?
Again, here are the facts:
-Jesus was born at around 0 BC
-the roman empire had a population of about 60 million (this is pretty accurate because it was taken from reports which were made at that time)

Here's the math:
8*2^(2400/150) = 524k
Now how about that?
Where were the other 59.5 million who lived in the roman empire at that time, not to mention everybody else in the world?

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Let's put down a human procreative generation at 20 years. We have 2400 years, or 120 generations, to get from 8 people to 60 million people.
Even at a growth index of 1.2, we're well past 60 million in that number of generations.
These calculations don't manage to prove anything for either side; they just demonstrate that human population growth is not very efficient.

Maxwell511 said:

This made me laugh.

It is impossible that the reproductive rates were higher than this in the past. Imagine each mating couple had three children and these three children surived and mated producing 3 children and on and on. Also assume that each women stopped reproducing at the age of 20 so that each generation comes along every 20 years.

Between the supposed time of the flood and Jesus is 2400 years. A generation evey 20 years gives 120 generations. To calculate growth or future populations biologist use mathematics called a branching process. The formula p(n)=r^n gives the expected population, p(n), of the nth generation. r is the reproduction rate. Think of mating pairs not producing children but new mating pairs. If the pair has 3 children that is 1.5 mating pairs and the r is equal to 1.5.

Using the math we get a population of ancient Rome if each mating couple had 3 children starting at 8 in the supposed time of the flood. It would be about:

10,815,200,000,000,000,000,000

Of course you might now be thinking that if just having 3 surving/reproducing children can cause a population increase, in the times we are considerng, from 8 to several hundred billion times the current population of the earth, then maybe the 60 million of the empire is not that impossible of a task. You would be right.

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Well done. Thank you for your post.

Vatis said:

OK, first of all, the assumption that human population doubles in 150 years is actually taken from a Creationists calculation. These exponential rates could never have been achieved before modern medicine.
Death rates were just too high because of hunger, wars, diseases, miscarriages, infant deaths etc.
Human population grew linearly up to the 1950's or so, like in this graph:

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Maxwell seems to have some pretty good figures on how just 3 children per couple could eventually boom into billions. So even if they didn't live that long, it plenty long enough to have 3 kids.

Second, the topic of longevity.
There is no biblical, historical or scientific evidence od longevity.
Sure, there are claims in the bible and from other sources that people lived to be almost a thousand years old, but those are merely individuals.
The bible highlights those people because it is very unusual for someone to live that long, if everybody lived to be 900+, there would be no reason to even mention Moses' age.
The bible actually disproves longevity of humanity since it emphasizes longevity in individuals.

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If the first man, Adam, lived to be around 900 years old, why not the next couple of generations? And since there's no mention of anyone who died naturally at a comparitely "young" age (say 60, 80 or 90), then there's no reason to believe that ages of 500 or more weren't common.

Last but not least the flood.
There are a lot of flood myths, that's because there used to be lots of floods.
Do you know what happens if you don't straighten a river?
I can tell you: it floods. When it rains heavily, the river will flood.
And guess what? To people back then, their village was the whole world, so if their village was flooded, it was global to them.
Also, they found fish fossils and clam shells on mountains.
A good comparison are dragon myths. There are myths about dragons all over the world, yet there are no dragons.
Why? They found fossils of big mammals and reptiles, and all came to the same conclusion.

I just found this as another explanation how flood myths came to be:
Deluge (prehistoric) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Doesn't really matter. I don't support the Flood as even the least bit scientifically sound. I was answering your OP, which was about the mathematics of 8 people populating the world. This would be shifting goalposts.

Vatis said:

The flood is impossible.

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FYI, the earth was completely flooded even before the flood.

The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters...Then God said, "Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear"; and it was so. - Gen 1:2,9.

This might explain why sea fossils are found embedded in mountaintops.

AV1611VET said:

Let me let you in on a little secret, Vatis.

Once we make a good point -- like shinbits did -- and you guys have to resort to the Bible being wrong, or resort to saying the "original Hebrew or Greek says..."; we (okay, some of us) consider our point won.

As I said in an earlier post, Shem lived right up to the time of Jacob; providing eyewitness testimony of the Flood -- not to mention longevity.

So go ahead and say the Bible was wrong -- that makes us right.

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So the fact that the Hebrew word translated as earth (erets) and taken to mean the whole earth instead of understanding that the other meanings of the word in this case make more sense as in region or land. That just because religious myth have superseded reason and scriptural accuracy in our translations, that makes you right How?

Doveaman said:

FYI, the earth was completely flooded even before the flood.

The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters...Then God said, "Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear"; and it was so. - Gen 1:2,9.

The earth as in the planet earth does not make sense that it was created at this point. So it was not covered with water.

This might explain why sea fossils are found embedded in mountaintops.

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As for the fossils on the mountains that has to do with how mountains are created not with a worldwide flood.