3. Population Growth – Challenge to Evolution

Noah, the Movie graphically portrays the devastation of Noah’s Flood, but it ignores a very intriguing question: How many people died in Noah’s Flood?

This Population Growth series will suggest an answer to that question.

On the other hand, if no Flood occurred and the evolutionary time scale for humanity were true, mathematical models predict that the Earth should have far, far more people than there are now. Where are they? Where have all the people gone?

Evolution speculates a time frame that would produce
crowding like this over every acre of the planet.

Populations grow exponentially, just like money in a savings account. Population growth is compound growth like compound interest. Simple figuring will show that if no Flood occurred, then using an evolutionary time scale, most of the human population is missing. This indicates that the theory of evolution cannot be true.

Evolution and Population Growth

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the post-Flood world population first reached 1 billion in 1804 and 7 billion in 2012. Over that 208-year period, the average population doubling time was about 74 years with an annual percentage growth rate of 0.940%.
(See Could Noah Fill the Earth?)

Evolutionists claim humans “evolved” a million years ago. For simplicity suppose humans started walking the earth only 150,000 years ago (far less than evolutionists claim), and use an average population doubling time of 150 years which is over twice the 74-year doubling time of the last two centuries. In that time there would be 1,000 doublings (150,000/150 = 1,000), so two people would grow to more than 10 to the 301st power. This is a staggering number! It’s many trillions of times the supposed number of atoms in the entire universe (whether scientists know this number is another topic — Spoiler: they don’t).

Now it’s true that the population could not grow at this constant rate for 150,000 years because of the limiting capacity of the earth and its resources. Nevertheless, assuming Noah’s Flood never occurred, this calculation shows there should be far more people alive and dead if humanity has been around for one million years.

Moreover, where are all those skeletons? Buried bones should easily last well over 200,000 years. In fact, evolutionists themselves date dinosaur bones that they find to over 60 million years old, and over 30 million fossilized dinosaur bones and parts have been found.
(See Dr. Jerry Bergman, The Evolution of Dinosaurs: Much Conjecture, Little Evidence, Creation Research Science Quarterly, vol 46, Fall 2009, p 124.)

Thus earth should be inundated with human bones. Yet only a few thousand human fossil skeletons have been found — not untold millions as one would expect if the evolutionary story were true.

Evolutionists try to get around this by claiming that the human population was stagnant for long periods of time. But this is only an assumption. There’s no actual evidence that this was the case.

Some argue that disease and wars retarded population growth. But the last two centuries which have seen rapid population growth from 1 billion to 7 billion people have also witnessed the worst plagues, famines, and horrific wars. All the real evidence available shows human population growing at varying rates but not stagnant.

For example, the world Jewish population in 1933 before the Nazi Holocaust has been estimated at 15.3 million (according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in the Holocaust Encyclopedia). Other estimates range from 16 to 18 million. I’ll make a conservative calculation of the Jewish growth rate using the smaller estimate of 15.3 million.

Jews are descendants of the initial Israelite population in Egypt that numbered approximately 100. (See Israel in Egypt.) In about 3700 years (circa 1767 BC – 1933 AD) the Israelites grew from about 100 people to 15.3 million people. This is an average doubling time of about 215 years and an average annual percentage growth rate of 0.323%. Even a small growth rate over a long period of time produces a significant population.

Thus the known facts of population growth fit the Biblical chronology very well, but they do not fit the evolutionary chronology of human history. The known facts support the history recorded in the Bible. The world was flooded and destroyed 4500 years ago (Genesis 6–9; 2 Peter 3:3-6), and today’s population is descended from Noah’s three sons and their wives.

Today’s population is easily reachable from Noah’s sons in 4,500 years with an average doubling time of 149 years and an annual percentage growth rate of 0.465%. (See Could Noah Fill the Earth?) However, to think that humanity has been here even 150,000 years is simply ludicrous based on population mathematics. Earth and humanity cannot be as old as evolutionists claim. There are not enough people dead or alive for evolution to be true.

Evolutionary scenarios presume humans have existed for a million years. That’s absurd! The entire known universe could not hold all the people potentially produced in that time.

Population growth mathematics clearly supports the Biblical record. The Biblical account of history is true.

Population Growth Formulas

For those interested in checking the math, here are the relevant Population Growth formulas:
The population doubling time (length of time it takes a population to double) in years is
= T/d where T is the population’s elapsed time in years and d is the # of doublings.
= (log 2) / log(1+r) where r is the annual growth rate.

Starting with population P, the new population is
= P x 2^d after d doublings.
= P x (1+r)ⁿ after n years at an annual growth rate r.

Questions to Ponder

1. Why do evolutionists ignore the glaringly contradictory evidence of impossibly small current population figures?
2. How many people do you think died in Noah’s Flood? (This will be the topic for next week’s blog post.)

Share your thoughts on these questions in the comments below. It could encourage or help another reader.

Soli Deo Gloria.

Read the prequels in this series on Population Growth:
1. Population Growth – Could Noah Fill the Earth?
2. Population Growth – Israel in Egypt

Read the sequel:
4. Population Growth – How Many Died in Noah’s Flood?

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©William T. Pelletier, Ph.D.
“contending earnestly for the faith”
“destroying speculations against the knowledge of God”
(Jude 1:3; 2 Cor 10:4)
Wednesday June 11, 2014 A.D.

Know this first of all, that in the last days mockers will come with their mocking, following after their own lusts, and saying, “Where is the promise of His coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation.” For when they maintain this, it escapes their notice that by the word of God the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water and by water, through which the world at that time was destroyed, being flooded with water.
(2 Peter 3:3-6)