Posted on 01/03/2014 10:54:01 AM PST by fwdude
Genesis 1:28 “And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it…”
How long have people been living on the Earth? The evolutionist says two million years. The Bible-believing Christian says about six thousand. Who is right?
Statistically, a couple must have 2.1 children to keep a population at the same level. In practice, this means a minimum of three children per family. Let us suppose for a moment that the biblical account of the Genesis Flood in which just eight people survived is true. Let us further suppose that each family from this population point in history had 2.4 children on average. This very modest number will take into account all the deaths through infant mortality, plagues and war. How long would it take to reach today’s world population? Surprisingly, the answer is just less than five thousand years. This figure fits nicely into known historical records.
Now suppose we take the evolutionary view that mankind has been on this planet for two million years and we begin with two people – or eight, it will make little difference – and they also had the statistical 2.4 children per family. We will finish up with a number so impossibly large that the universe itself would not hold them! Aware of this problem, the textbooks explain it away by speaking of “population stability throughout this time.” This is nothing short of an appeal to a miracle! Frankly, the biblical account is far more believable.
Prayer: Jesus, it was through You that all things, including us, were made. When we withdrew our love from God and cut ourselves off from Him through sin, You came to our rescue. How can I ever thank You enough? Amen.
Notes: Cleone H. Weigand. “Morality Remains the Best Way to Stem Population Growth.” Milwaukee Journal, April 14, 1985.
I know that is how they explain away the differences. Since Judaism figures out who is Jewish by the descent from the mother, the descent from Joseph doesn’t matter.
We will leave out the Roman soldier who fathered Jesus on her.
“Where did they live before that?...................”
Miami beach.
Though I don’t believe he’d mind us trying to figure things out through our own God-given telents.
I concur, as long as our conclusions don't contradict what he revealed in scripture.
For example, scripture says he "stretched out the heavens" 17 times(see here), which would cause the appearance of an expanding universe. However, scripture also plainly relates this happened in a six 24 hour day period.
(see here)
What do you feel is wrong with #60’s first paragraph?
#60: If the universe is seen in terms of General Relativity, one can, through visualizing the ‘slowing’ of time given that system’s mass, actually construct a table that should seem logical to ‘old’ and ‘young’ advocates alike.
Nothing, as long as:
1. The interpretation does not violate this: "...and the evening and the morning were the first day." Genesis uses this phrase 6 times, and confirms if again in Exodus 20:11 (Sabbath Day), and simplest reading is that a day is a literal 24 hour period.
2. The sequence of events is not compromised. To wit, God created light that shined on the earth on day 1, but the Sun Moon and Stars he created on day 4. The Earth was formed as water first, then dry land appeared on day 3. Any attempt to blend the Big Bang/Evolution model with the creation account means one or the other has to be dramatically altered, rendering it infeasible as presented.
Population goes up and down, once an area has achieved its carrying capacity. Famine, plague, war, etc. The Black Death cut Europe's population in half when it rampaged through Europe. The American Indians population dropped to a fraction of what it was before Europeans brought various diseases over, which the Indians had no immunity to.
Look at your own graph.
Hunter-gatherers need a very large area, per person, to get enough food from a given territory.
When you introduce agriculture, the carrying capacity per square mile goes up significantly. It goes up further when you domesticate oxen and horses to pull the plow.
When you introduce pesticides to kill insects, and herbicides to kill weeds, your crop yield goes up still further.
It is only in modern times that we've gotten the agricultural technology to enable feeding 6 billion people.
Doesn't matter if it's 6,000 or 10,000, or even 100,000, you run into the same issues.
How many creationists believe in an Earth older than one billion years?
If you can present a theory better than that of nuclear synthesis of the elements in successive generations of stars, I’m all ears.
My plain reading of scripture would remain consistent with even the multi-verse concepts of M-Theory, could they ever be born-out in the energies necessary to test them.
God has truly made existence astounding!
May He watch over You and Yours...
In 1925 Chesterton wrote an introduction to Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol in which he said that “The answer to anyone who talks about the surplus population is to ask him, whether he is part of the surplus population; or if not, how he knows he is not.”
I don’t believe the first part of that graph. And that graph only goes back to 10,000 BC.
What that graph is missing, is the population growth from 6000BC to 4000BC that was wiped completely wiped out by the flood. So you had a reset to just 6 people at the time of Noah’s flood.
I don’t think it’s believable that man was smart enough to create tools 200,000 years ago, but couldn’t figure out that plants came from seeds, and planting a few could boost their gathering results.
It doesn’t make sense.
Scripture records that Abel was shepherd and Cain was a farmer. It took less than one generation from the start for man to figure out both of these processes. And that’s a more believable scenario.
Does that include Genesis 1? Stars made on day 4, after Earth, water, dry land and plants.
We can agree to disagree on how things came to be, but the plain reading of Genesis 1 and Exodus 20:11 is that God did it in 6 literal 24 hour days.
Better yet, the plain reading of John 1:3 and Colossians 1:16 indicate Jesus, God in the flesh, created all things, and Colossians 1:17 indicates he hold all things together.
Theories about origins are just that, theories. We cannot observe Creation/Big Bang, so we choose what makes sense to us, and then determine to believe it. Scripture has been around for a few thousand years, and had the same explanation of origins in Moses' day as today. Scientific theories constantly change based on new observations and hypotheses, and what we are certain about today will be obsolete in 10 years. I choose scripture!
Actually, at least 8 came off the ark, Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and their wives, and perhaps any children born on the ark. This children part is pure speculation, but is claimed in some extra-Biblical histories.
Only then could populations settle and turn their excess food into offspring with the ensuing population explosion.
Actually, the "known" historical record dates back to somewhere between 20 and 30 millennia — if one will accept evidence from anthropology. For instance, such evidence would include the magnificent cave paintings at Lascaux....
The anonymous cave painter cannot have been "human," according to the YEC timetable. But then, the question just naturally arises: How does a non-human create art???
There, fixed it for you.
Not quite. You "fixed" my problem by dropping the remarkable, exclusive propensity of human beings to create art entirely out of the question. Which was the very thing I was trying to point to.
It seems to me FWIW that the YEC timetable must be way off, if it cannot account for the "extantness" of the Lascaux artist(s), who must have been "human."
None of the above really. It's in the scriptures. Haven't you read them for yourself, or are you just following some bible thumper? Science just confirms the bible that there was a previous earth age, albeit blindly to that fact.
And there is going to be another earth age after this one, which of course science has not been confirmed. But scripture declares it and I believe it.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.