The Bible, Creationism, and Prophecy (part 1)

BrianCalgary

Son Goku wrote:

Aside from a theoretical period of compound interest what does that demonstrate?.

It shows that a 1% annual population growth beginning with 8 people would grow to 97,207,147,778,639,100,000,000,000,000 after 6,000 years.

Son Goku wrote:

Also evolution is a scientifically proven theory that has nothing to do with Atheism. Many Christians, Muslims, Hindu's, e.t.c. accept its evidence. It's a evidentially based fact, not a belief. Wording it like that is an attempt to weaken it.

Feel free to believe that it is a scientific proven theory. There is enough smoke out there to understand that a fire is happening.

IE, there are enough scientists to speak otherwise, and far too many assumptions made that really makes it a thin theory to peg my eternity on.

robindch

PDN wrote:

Now, if someone can answer my question, and assure me that it has been scientifically proved that it is absolutely physically impossible for a population to sustain a growth rate of slightly under 1%

You must have missed my post from yesterday morning when I answered your question. That post again is here:

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=53667243&postcount=6391

To summarize this post, and 5uspect's one here and Son Goku's on here, population does not grow exponentially. That's not the way it works.

Using Excel's compound interest thing, you can make 8 become whatever you want it to. But it won't change the fact that you're not modelling the system correctly.

MooseJam

BrianCalgary wrote:

Please MooseJam you are getting very close to the line with this comment: the usual BS where in fact....

It is obvious that you have never recognised the presence of God. otherwise the ridicule would not be so apparent.

Apologies for that it wasn't very nice on my part. You are correct I never recognised the presence of God because there is none ! if only you could open your eyes to the truth !

Bisar

Just for laughs, what is a reasonable estimate of the population arising from 8 indivduals over a 6000 year period? Assuming no-one is too fussy about marrying their own siblings etc. Or has someone answered that already?

robindch

Bisar wrote:

what is a reasonable estimate of the population arising from 8 indivduals over a 6000 year period

Good heavens, does nobody read anything that either SG, or 5uspect, Wicknight or I write (except to object)? Like, it was linked to two posts ago!

Anyhow, population does not grow smoothly. It depends on when people have kids, how many kids they have, when they die, natural disasters, plagues, wars, how easy it is to move, the weather, the availability of food, medical care, and many, many, many more variables.

Depending on the ratio of births to deaths caused by all of these things, the population may grow, it may die off, or it may oscillate between various values. Depends on the conditions and these change from generation to generation, making estimation very difficult.

You get Malthusian (exponential) growth in the early stages of bacteria growth in a Petri dish, and just about nowhere else. And certainly not in human populations.

Bisar

robindch wrote:

Good heavens, does nobody read anything that either SG, or 5uspect, Wicknight or I write (except to object)? Like, it was linked to two posts ago!

Anyhow, population does not grow smoothly. It depends on when people have kids, how many kids they have, when they die, natural disasters, plagues, wars, how easy it is to move, the weather, the availability of food, medical care, and many, many, many more variables.

Depending on the ratio of births to deaths caused by all of these things, the population may grow, it may die off, or it may oscillate between various values. Depends on the conditions and these change from generation to generation, making estimation very difficult.

You get Malthusian (exponential) growth in the early stages of bacteria growth in a Petri dish, and just about nowhere else. And certainly not in human populations.

Funnily enough I do. So is it fair to say then that the model is essentially useless over a 6000 year period because the variables you mentioned cannot be estimated with any degree of accuracy?

Sangre

briancalgary wrote:

hey Sangre
Read my post: I have highlighted the response to your objection.
Originally Posted by BrianCalgary
Ofg course atheism is a belief system. It may not be centeralised like Christianity, Islam, JW or mormonism, it still comes with beliefs.

Some of yours:
The Earth is 4.5 billion years old.
We all evolved
When we die we cease to exist.
There is no god, there can't be and there is no need for one.

I don't think it does answer my objection, in fact the bits you highlight are what I was object to. You state atheism 'comes with beliefs.' No it doesn't, the only 'belief' part of atheism is a lack of belief in God(s). Anything else is unrelated and has no bearing on whether I'm an atheist. I could believe the earth is actually flat, that is evolution is false and still be an atheist. Atheism does not come with other beliefs so it isn't a belief system as you imply. A system implies more than one but atheism only comes with ONE belief (if you'd call it that).

It shows that a 1% annual population growth beginning with 8 people would grow to 97,207,147,778,639,100,000,000,000,000 after 6,000 years.

You seem to be forgetting people die and don't live forever.

BrianCalgary

Sangre wrote:

You seem to be forgetting people die and don't live forever.

Good point. What would the death rate be? So I could plug in those numbers. Or is the 1% figure the net growth after taking into consideration deaths and births?

PDN

Sangre wrote:

You seem to be forgetting people die and don't live forever.

How is he forgetting that?

If there are 1000 people in a population on 1st of January, and if that year 30 people die and 40 kids are born, then by 31st of December you have a population of 1010. That is a 1% increase, like Brian is talking about, but it doesn't require anyone to live forever. What's wrong with that?

BrianCalgary

MooseJam wrote:

Apologies for that it wasn't very nice on my part. You are correct I never recognised the presence of God because there is none ! if only you could open your eyes to the truth !

Apologies accepted.

You never recognize Him, because you believe Him not to be there.

Oh right atheists don't belief in anything.

MooseJam

PDN wrote:

How is he forgetting that?

If there are 1000 people in a population on 1st of January, and if that year 30 people die and 40 kids are born, then by 31st of December you have a population of 1010. That is a 1% increase, like Brian is talking about, but it doesn't require anyone to live forever. What's wrong with that?

yeah but he is compounding it, so none of the 1000 will die, nor any of the new born

PDN

MooseJam wrote:

yeah but he is compounding it, so none of the 1000 will die, nor any of the new born

What on earth are you talking about? This thread cracks me up.

If the population shows a net increase of 1% a year then, including deaths, the increase is still compounded.

BrianCalgary

MooseJam wrote:

yeah but he is compounding it, so none of the 1000 will die, nor any of the new born

That is what we need to know. What is the average rate of net population growth or decline over a given period?

1% seems to be a number bandied about here. This 1% takes into consideration all births and deaths, for whatever cause of death, war, famine, disease, natural causes.

PDN

robindch wrote:

It's based upon the inherent mathematical properties of population growth -- JC has assumed that everybody dies at the same age, produces kids at the same age and has the same number of children, that there were infinite supplies of food and transportation, that there was no pestilence, wars or smiting taking place etc. None of which conditions hold, even according to the bible.

The resulting population growth graph is completely counter-intuitive, but it is real. The graph on the wikipedia page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_map

...shows how the population from generation to generation can vary wildly for various relative rates of reproduction and death. In addition, the relative rate changes over time because of variations in the availability of food, wars, famines, tsunami, volcanoes, contraception, improvements in health care etc, etc. This introduces further randomness to an already chaotic system.

Simplistic exponential (Malthusian) population growth simply doesn't happen outside of a Petri dish.

Actually that doesn't answer my question. It just shows that population growth is random, unpredictable and varies wildly. That says nothing about whether it can average a rate of less than 1% over a sustained period of time.

I don't think JC has made the assumptions you accuse him of. He has assumed an average growth rate, but that does not necessitate everyone living to the same age, or having the same number of children. that would only be so if he were talking about a mean, rather than an average.

Can anyone answer my question? Is it absolutely physically impossible for a population to grow at an average rate of slightly under 1% a year over a sustained time? I'm starting to feel like Jeremy Paxman interviewing Michael Howard.

Zombrex

BrianCalgary wrote:

Ofg course atheism is a belief system.

Atheism is a belief system in the same way that not collecting stamps is a hobby, or not playing soccer is a sport.

BrianCalgary wrote:

It may not be centeralised like Christianity, Islam, JW or mormonism, it still comes with beliefs.

No actually it doesn't. Bearing in mind that not believing in a god isn't a belief in of itself (it is a rejection of a commonly held belief) can you name me one thing that atheism requires that someone believes in, or tells people they should believe?

BrianCalgary wrote:

Some of yours:
The Earth is 4.5 billion years old.
We all evolved
When we die we cease to exist.
There is no god, there can't be and there is no need for one.

The first 3 have nothing to do with atheism and the last one isn't a belief, it is a rejection of a common belief.

robindch

Bisar wrote:

So is it fair to say then that the model is essentially useless over a 6000 year period because the variables you mentioned cannot be estimated with any degree of accuracy?

Yes, that's right -- it's frankly impossible to get the data you need to generate the constants in the equation over that period of time. The logistic map is theoretically capable of modelling a population; the exponential isn't, since it assumes infinite resources.

Scofflaw

daithifleming wrote:

But it doesnt work like he described! That would be some form of Lamarkism! Blue Fish + Yellow Fish does NOT equal green fish. The only way those fish could turn green was if there was some advantage to be had to being more green and if the neccessary genetic code existed to lead to a mutation of that code..

Hmm. Couple of errors there:

1. Lamarckianism is the heritability of acquired traits - the classic example would be the idea that of giraffes stretching to reach higher leaves, and their offspring having longer necks as a result.

2. In the example given, which is artificially simplified (although not by much - guppies, for example, show pretty much the mixing of colours suggested), all that is required are blendable colour genes, which are quite common. It is not, therefore, necessary to involve a mutation - which would, in any case, lead any Creationist to dismiss the example out of hand.

BrianCalgary wrote:

Your right no intelligence, but we started with a species of fish and finished with a species of fish. There is not a new species and what you describe quite nicely is an example of micro evolution at work, which no one would disagree on.

This argument has been addressed, both in response to this post and, I think, repeatedly before on this thread - there is no difference between "micro" and "macro" evolution, except in Creationists' heads, where it can be neither properly defined nor easily dislodged...

The example given of a 'ring species', that of gulls, is handy in that the gulls involved should be familiar to everyone in Ireland - herring gulls and lesser black-backed gulls. Herring gulls are the big white gulls and lesser black-backed are smaller, black-winged gulls.

The two don't interbreed, so they are separate species. However, herring gulls interbreed with eastern US herring gulls, who interbreed with eastern US herring gulls, who interbreed with Siberian gulls, etc, until we find that we're back at the lesser black-backed gull.

So it's fairly silly to try and distinguish between a "micro" evolution that "can't produce new species" and a "macro" evolution that can, when it's pretty clear that the whole idea of a "species" is an artificial form of classification.

If species is an artificial concept, what of 'genus', and 'family', and so on? What about, even, the venerable 'Animal Kingdom' and 'Vegetable Kingdom'? Well, they're even more artificial - we have them because we have a compulsive need to classify.

In turn, the idea that, somehow, observed evolution (the "micro-evolution" of the Creationist, which he can no longer argue against because it's been observed) simply stops at one of these completely artificial classificatory lines is laughable. Quite aside from anything else, those lines are drawn in an evolutionary paradigm, so the Creationist is asking us to believe that not only does "micro-evolution" respect classification lines drawn by humans, but classification lines drawn up by the very people he argues against!

cordially,
Scofflaw

Zombrex

PDN wrote:

Can anyone answer my question? Is it absolutely physically impossible for a population to grow at an average rate of slightly under 1% a year over a sustained time? I'm starting to feel like Jeremy Paxman interviewing Michael Howard.

Son answered your question in the very next post

"No. It is impossible for a population to grow at a certain rate from a certain initial pool and state anything about its overall patterns, as it will be chaotic."

Scofflaw

PDN wrote:

Actually that doesn't answer my question. It just shows that population growth is random, unpredictable and varies wildly. That says nothing about whether it can average a rate of less than 1% over a sustained period of time.

Hmm. Not quite so, because you're thinking your way to the end of the graph, where the huge numbers of people are. That smooths things out, and it becomes meaningful to talk about 1% growth. What Son Goku is telling you is that the left-hand end of the graph, where we go from 8 people to 30,000, simply doesn't necessarily lead to the right-hand end of the graph, where we go up to 6 billion, over any time period.

If we released a population of 10,000 people onto an unpeopled planet (for sake of argument), and came back 100 years later, the population might be any physically possible number (we'll come back to that). Populations at that size are not stable, smoothly-growing entities - they boom and bust, expand and bottleneck. This is why small populations of wild animals are considered 'endangered', because they can simply disappear as a result of a "mathematical artefact".

PDN wrote:

I don't think JC has made the assumptions you accuse him of. He has assumed an average growth rate, but that does not necessitate everyone living to the same age, or having the same number of children. that would only be so if he were talking about a mean, rather than an average.

Er, those are the same thing. Did you perhaps mean "median"?

PDN wrote:

Can anyone answer my question? Is it absolutely physically impossible for a population to grow at an average rate of slightly under 1% a year over a sustained time? I'm starting to feel like Jeremy Paxman interviewing Michael Howard.

Depends on the values of "population" and "sustained time". For a small population, it would be amazingly fluky for them to grow at anything like that. You could fake it by snapshotting the population at a time and fitting a line over it, but ten years later your line would look totally different.

For a larger population, you'd have to consider the constraints on growth, and/or look at it in energy terms. If we consider that population as starting at, say, 1,000,000 people (sufficiently big to begin to talk about 'statistical growth'), is there any reason they couldn't grow at your proposed rate? OK, we have plenty of evidence that they simply didn't, before the 20th century's advances, and we know that wars and diseases can knock out a third of a population at one sweep, but are there any necessary constraints?

The most obvious constraint is land. Let's assume a population density of 40 people per square kilometre (roughly the same as modern Ireland's population density excluding Dublin), by doing which we cover over all the availability of agricultural land, water, firewood, etc.

At 1m people, we need about 25,000 sq.km (Ireland is 69,000 sq km roughly) - by 3m people, we need 75,000 sq.km.

Assuming all that land is arranged for convenience in a big circle around the original home of Noah, his descendants will need to travel about 150km to find empty land to cultivate by the time population is 3m people. By the time there's 10m people, they'll be travelling 280km.

Given the above arrangement of maximum convenience, and population densities unknown in ancient societies, we still have a human area which must relentlessly expand at about a kilometre a year in every direction even when the population is as low as 10m people. That's 1 km of distance being completely cleared from totally virgin to agricultural land - no droughts, no floods, etc.

So, personally, I would say that while it might be possible for a dispersed population to steadily increase by 1% per year for a substantial period of time, it is certainly not possible for a human population starting from a point to do so. And that is, after all, the situation we are being asked to envisage, is it not?

Were I a Creationist, I might be inclined to take a little fact on board, and work with the idea that we need to disperse our people to all the corners of the earth as well as multiplying them, and that the latter should wait upon the former. Or is that too uncomfortably close to the "evilutionist" model?

cordially,
Scofflaw

Scofflaw

BrianCalgary wrote:

Feel free to believe that it is a scientific proven theory. There is enough smoke out there to understand that a fire is happening.

IE, there are enough scientists to speak otherwise, and far too many assumptions made that really makes it a thin theory to peg my eternity on.

Yes, but then there's enough smoke out there to say that smoking isn't harmful, that a diet of 25% sugar isn't bad for you, and that drinking beer makes you sexually attractive. Sadly, one side has nearly all the scientists, both Christian and non-Christian, and virtually all the evidence.

I would consider, myself, that men's quibbles over the exact meaning of Genesis are an equally bad place to peg your hope of eternity - and for the rest of us, a poor place to hang our understanding of the world.

Wicknight wrote:

BrianCalgary wrote:

Some of yours:
The Earth is 4.5 billion years old.
We all evolved
When we die we cease to exist.
There is no god, there can't be and there is no need for one.

The first 3 have nothing to do with atheism and the last one isn't a belief, it is a rejection of a common belief.

The first two are simply the best available current explanations - I'm not going to be upset if someone discovers that the Earth is 6.2 billion years old (or 2.5 billion), even though it will throw every bit of stratigraphy I learned at college out the window. Similarly, I'm not going to have some kind of breakdown if it turns out that, say, acquired characteristics are heritable (there's quite a bit of evidence that they are), or that DNA isn't really the root of life (there's evidence that it isn't).

As to the third - that's not a requirement at all. There are atheists who believe in reincarnation, for example, and all kinds of other weird afterlives.

The fourth isn't really a requirement either. I don't think the Christian God you talk of exists - and perhaps that's the same thing in your eyes, but it isn't in mine - but that's not out of any particular animosity towards him, but because the characteristics ascribed to him are so contradictory and illogical that he either can't exist, or isn't like that. I'm not unwilling to accept that there might be something causing the smoke, but can't see why I should get worked up over the ancient tribal deity of a Middle Eastern tribe, to whom I have no known relationship (except some by marriage).

It really isn't a "belief system", I'm afraid.

cordially,
Scofflaw

PDN

PDN wrote:

I don't think JC has made the assumptions you accuse him of. He has assumed an average growth rate, but that does not necessitate everyone living to the same age, or having the same number of children. that would only be so if he were talking about a mean, rather than an average.

Scofflaw wrote:

Er, those are the same thing. Did you perhaps mean "median"?

Oops! I think I probably meant the "mode". It's a long time since I endured a math class.

Wicknight wrote:

Son answered your question in the very next post

"No. It is impossible for a population to grow at a certain rate from a certain initial pool and state anything about its overall patterns, as it will be chaotic."

OK, so it's impossible to say that a population grew at any rate, fast or slow? Therefore every theory of population numbers between two points in time (including JC's) are meaningless and have no way of being thought of as feasible or not?

Scofflaw has given me a straight answer, that such growth is, in his opinion, impossible. This is because people would have to travel too far. This seems reasonable and something I hadn't considered (probably because I have been led astray by Jared Diamond's fanciful ideas of small groups of people travelling thousands of miles in canoes to colonise uninhabited lands).

Anyway, I have wasted enough of my time on this crazy thread. I'm going back to theology where it's easier to get straight answers based on empirical research.

PDN, perhaps this would help
http://www.imho.com/grae/chaos/chaos.html
halfway down the page is the population part

Zombrex

PDN wrote:

OK, so it's impossible to say that a population grew at any rate, fast or slow?

You can set the rate to anything you like, but in reality it won't grow like that. In reality populations don't grow in a predictable linear fashion.

PDN wrote:

Therefore every theory of population numbers between two points in time (including JC's) are meaningless and have no way of being thought of as feasible or not?

In the future, yes. Or at least the level of accuracy will be so wide that it will be largely meaningless.

Population growth is a chaotic system, it is very difficult to predict precisely because it does not follow a set linear path.

PDN wrote:

Scofflaw has given me a straight answer, that such growth is, in his opinion, impossible. This is because people would have to travel too far.

Well that isn't the only reason. The growth rate that you are talking about would have required far more food than would have been available through farming methods at the time. It would also require medical knowledge that wasn't available at the time.

PDN wrote:

probably because I have been led astray by Jared Diamond's fanciful ideas of small groups of people travelling thousands of miles in canoes to colonise uninhabited lands

Well, as I under lined, you have hit the nail on the head there as to why this wouldn't explain some where like South America.

Only a few years after Noah one needs to find hundreds of thousands of people living in places like South America, China, Japan etc.

While it is feasible that small groups of travelers could have made it this far in a few generations (as happened in places like the Easter Islands), it isn't feasible that tens of thousands would make this journey.

And every time you have a small group of travelers cross a great distance quickly you are basically back to square one on your population increase.

At the time of the Biblical flood it is estimated that 14 million humans were alive. A thousand years later it is estimated that there were 27 million humans alive. While one can certainly see how 14 million humans could have grown to 27 million in a thousand years, it is hard to see how 8 could have grown to 27 million in a thousand years.

Hivemind187

Wicknight wrote:

At the time of the Biblical flood it is estimated that 14 million humans were alive. A thousand years later it is estimated that there were 27 million humans alive. While one can certainly see how 14 million humans could have grown to 27 million in a thousand years, it is hard to see how 8 could have grown to 27 million in a thousand years.

Um ... more to the point. 8 people does not provide a large enough genetic diversity to allow the breeding of that number of people. 8 people may have managed to have a dozen or so decendents but we would all have webbed feet and monobrows.

... although this may go some distance to explaining Jesus Camp.

Zombrex

Hivemind187 wrote:

Um ... more to the point. 8 people does not provide a large enough genetic diversity to allow the breeding of that number of people. 8 people may have managed to have a dozen or so decendents but we would all have webbed feet and monobrows.

While thats not quite true (the reality of inbreeding is often not as bad as the myths about it would lead one to believe), the fact is that if we were all descended from 8 people 4,000 years ago this would jump out at anyone who bothered to look at the genetic diversity of the current human population. It would be startling obvious.

Using genetics it is possible to build quite detailed maps of the history of the human population. And nothing has ever suggested that the current human population is descended from anything like 8 humans 4,000 years ago.

Quite the opposite in fact.

rockbeer

Wicknight wrote:

the fact is that if we were all descended from 8 people 4,000 years ago this would jump out at anyone who bothered to look at the genetic diversity of the current human population. It would be startling obvious.

Using genetics it is possible to build quite detailed maps of the history of the human population. And nothing has ever suggested that the current human population is descended from anything like 8 humans 4,000 years ago.

Wicknight, you spoilsport, why do you have to insist on bamboozling our poor brains with all this evidence? Don't you understand that all these dastardly facts just get in the way of a good story?

Even though what you're saying is true, the flood myth is far too important a part of christianity to reject merely on the grounds that it's impossible.

The answer is obvious really - god doesn't want us to get confused and start to think that proof of the flood story might constitute proof of his divine existence. He relies on faith, you see, so being omniscient and knowing we would one day advance scientifically to the point of being able to genetically determine patterns of population growth and distribution, he accounted for that eventuality by faking up the genetic evidence at the time of the flood.

Same way he faked up the fossil evidence for evolution. These things are trivial to an omnipotent deity.

See how much I'm learning from hanging out on these threads

Scofflaw

rockbeer wrote:

Even though what you're saying is true, the flood myth is far too important a part of christianity to reject merely on the grounds that it's impossible.

It seems so weird, doesn't it? In order to be regarded as fully accepting the divinity of Christ (etc - see PDN's 5 points), you have to accept the reality of a physically impossible event which is directly contradicted by 99% of the evidence...

rockbeer wrote:

See how much I'm learning from hanging out on these threads

Too much!

cordially,
Scofflaw

Ekancone

God created the world. Science is wrong, especially biology.

Oh by the way, i wouldnt think twice about recieving medical treatment based on biology/genetics.

*Saving electrons, use paragraphs pls.
Asia"

Zombrex

rockbeer wrote:

Even though what you're saying is true, the flood myth is far too important a part of christianity to reject merely on the grounds that it's impossible.

ROFL

Damn you Rockbeer, I'm in work and just blurted out a not-quite-muffled-enough laugh and now the whole office is staring at me

Perhaps the Creationists should borrow the Adidas slogan "Impossible is Nothing"

Zombrex

rockbeer wrote:

Same way he faked up the fossil evidence for evolution. These things are trivial to an omnipotent deity.

Ultimately that is the paradox that Creationists/Biblical Literalists have to contend with.

If the world isn't actually the way it looks then why does it actually look like it does?

Why does the universe look like it is 10+ billion years old.
Why does the Earth look like it is 4+ billion years old.
Why does the fossil record look like life has been on the Earth for billion of years?
Why does it look like life on Earth, including humans, evolve from older species?
Why does it look like human civilization ran without hick up through the period of the Biblical Flood?
Why do genetic maps of modern humans not look at all like humans all descended from two original humans?

etc etc etc...

There seems to be three common explanations put forward by Creationists for this, it is a test, it is a mistake, it is a conspiracy.

The argument that it is all a test I simply don't get. What purpose does testing humanity in this way serve? Why is blind faith that important to God? It also runs into the problem that God is seemingly not supposed to lie, yet the entire Earth is one big lie if it is true.

The argument that all of the above is simply one incorrect way to interpret the evidence is, put simply, pathetic. One might have a point about a specific piece of evidence, but when it is all put together into a coherient framework, each part correlating with another part, the argument that is is all one big mistake is utterly ridiculous.

Which is why Creationists such as Wolfsbane and JC then descend into the conspiracy theories. They agree that it is implausible that all these scientists all over the world all working in different fields would all make a mistake that some how comes up with a similar mistaken answer, so the only plausible explanation is that they are all conspiring in some big atheists conspiracy. Never mind the fact that most of them are theists, these theists are too scared of the atheists in charge.