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Old 07-07-2007, 06:54 AM   #11
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......2) POPULATION GROWTH. My father is a Bible Translator for a South American Indian tribe called Wai wai. When he began working with them in 1949, there were about 400 Wai Wais. Now there are about 4000. This is 4% annual growth over 58 years.......
And what was the growth rate (if any) in the preceding 58 years? The preceding 100 years? Historically? Perhaps 20th Century technology and medicines had something to do with the population growth? Perhaps changes in pre- and post-natal care? Perhaps changes in hygiene? Perhaps more inter-marriages increasing the number of couples of child-bearing age? What resources have the Brazilian and Guyanan authorities put into supporting the Wai wai? Give us a clue as to what underlay this apparent increase in population. How does any of this relate in any way to your mythical 8 Flud survivors who had none of the above? Why not post a model based on these figures for Ancient Egypt:

Child mortality to age 5 = c. 45%
Av life expectancy at birth = 20-30 years
Av age at death (adults) = 30-40 years (25-35 for women)
Pop growth rate = 0.1%
I don't know about their history prior to my father. Yes, my father introduced good hygiene to the Wai wais, but why do you suppose Noah's early descendants did NOT have good hygiene? I should think they also knew a lot more than you think did about medicine. They evidently carried some pretty advanced knowledge with them from pre-Flood times. Woolley excavating at Ur found some pretty advanced stuff--medical texts, scientific texts, astronomical texts, schools, etc. Skeptics who frequent these boards seem to have the odd view that man's cultural development was Dumb->Less Dumb->Fairly Smart->Really Smart, the "Dumb" starting about 5000 ya and the "Really Smart" being the Modern Era. Well ... I don't think that squares with the evidence.
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Old 07-07-2007, 07:09 AM   #12
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......
Child mortality to age 5 = c. 45%
Av life expectancy at birth = 20-30 years
Av age at death (adults) = 30-40 years (25-35 for women)
Pop growth rate = 0.1%
I don't know about their history prior to my father. Yes, my father introduced good hygiene to the Wai wais, but why do you suppose Noah's early descendants did NOT have good hygiene? I should think they also knew a lot more than you think did about medicine. They evidently carried some pretty advanced knowledge with them from pre-Flood times. Woolley excavating at Ur found some pretty advanced stuff--medical texts, scientific texts, astronomical texts, schools, etc. Skeptics who frequent these boards seem to have the odd view that man's cultural development was Dumb->Less Dumb->Fairly Smart->Really Smart, the "Dumb" starting about 5000 ya and the "Really Smart" being the Modern Era. Well ... I don't think that squares with the evidence.
Then how does it square with the Dynastic Era in Egypt? Medical knowledge in Egypt was at least as advanced as anywhere else; indeed, New Kingdom Egyptian doctors could be found in most neighbouring important foreign courts, either as chief physicians or as advisers. I would also be interested in how much more 'advanced' you think Ur of the Chaldees was than Dynastic Egypt?
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Old 07-07-2007, 07:27 AM   #13
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2) POPULATION GROWTH. My father is a Bible Translator for a South American Indian tribe called Wai wai. When he began working with them in 1949, there were about 400 Wai Wais. Now there are about 4000. This is 4% annual growth over 58 years. This should tell you two things: 1) small founding populations can be viable genetically, and 2) small populations can grow rapidly.
And I can tell you two things:
1) 400 is 50 times more than 8. But this does not strike you at all being in any way important.
2) You never addressed this post, where I pointed out that a population of less than 50 individuals is considered to be critically endangenered". 50 is still more than 6 times more than 8.

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3) SMYTH'S GP DATE IS MORE FIRM THAT HIS FLOOD AND DISPERSION DATES. Dean Anderson has acknowledged that he was wrong about Smyth and his astronomical dating of the building of the Great Pyramid,
And followed this directly afterwards with:
However, before you get too excited, this means nothing.

There was a star lined up with the north/south axis of the pyramid in 2170 BCE. There have been many stars which have lined up with the north/south axis at various times, and there have been many stars which have lined up with the east/west axis at various times.
But you don't ever quote out-of-context, Dave, we know.
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Old 07-07-2007, 08:38 AM   #14
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...
2) POPULATION GROWTH. My father is a Bible Translator for a South American Indian tribe called Wai wai. When he began working with them in 1949, there were about 400 Wai Wais. Now there are about 4000. This is 4% annual growth over 58 years.
...
.
Can you substantiate those numbers Dave? The only figures I can find on the internet say there in the year 2000 there were around 2020 Wai Wai in Brazil and 130 in Guyana. (from here).
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Old 07-07-2007, 08:49 AM   #15
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2) POPULATION GROWTH. My father is a Bible Translator for a South American Indian tribe called Wai wai. When he began working with them in 1949, there were about 400 Wai Wais. Now there are about 4000. This is 4% annual growth over 58 years. This should tell you two things: 1) small founding populations can be viable genetically, and 2) small populations can grow rapidly. There is every reason to believe that the sons of Noah and their descendants would have experienced at least this rate of growth early on.
Correction:
There is no reason at all to believe this.

You're comparing:
(1) a situation where a decimated jungle tribe is given access to the medicines and technology and resources that have allowed the "first world" to experience the post-industrial population explosion

with
(2) a [mythical] situation where all resources have been erased.
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Old 07-07-2007, 09:47 AM   #16
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In case my point wasn't abundantly clear, let me emphasize:

You're comparing a situation where an isolated, beleaguered group is suddenly given access to the resources of the entire rest of the human population to a situation where a group - previously used to relying on the conveniences of interacting with the rest of the human population - is suddenly deprived of that interaction AND pretty much all resources altogether, and concluding that the population growth in the one situation is a pretty good guide to the other.

Makes less than no sense to me.
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Old 07-07-2007, 09:58 AM   #17
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How did Noah manage to be super-hygienic when the entire planet was covered in two miles' thickness of mud?
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Old 07-07-2007, 10:39 AM   #18
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How did Noah manage to be super-hygienic when the entire planet was covered in two miles' thickness of mud?
Not just mud, but a world full of decomposing plants and bodies.
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Old 07-07-2007, 10:39 AM   #19
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TOWER REACHING TO HEAVEN? Why do you suppose that the King James rendering of the text ... "build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven" ... is correct? The King James translation is not inspired.
Why do you assert that only the King James describes a tower reaching to heaven? Other versions of the bible also convey the same idea: a tower that would reach to the heavens and bring fame to the builders.

Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth."

5 But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building. 6 The LORD said, "If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other."
NIV

4They said, "Come, let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach into heaven... NAS

And so on.

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If we do this, you can see that we have 51,248 people by Year 210 from the Flood, plenty to build a Tower.
Why do you initally include 8 adults as being reproductive in your chart for the descendants of Noah? (Noah and his wife aren't listed as having any more children after the flood, even though Genesis says that Noah lived another 350 years. Even though he was described as "righteous" Noah and his wife had only 3 children in 600 years before the flood, none afterward.) There are only 6: Shem, Ham, Japheth, and their 3 wives.

Genesis 10 lists the lineage of Shem, Ham, and Japheth through their sons, grandsons, greatgrandsons. You should be able to count the male descendants before Genesis 11, which tells the tower of Babel story. Apparently the (not listed) daughters of Shem, Ham, and Japheth married their brothers and first cousins.

Although it's not absolutely clear from the bible when the tower of Babel was being built, a location is given as the plains of Shinar. Gen 10 says that a grandson of Ham named Nimrod developed Shinar. It seems reasonable to deduce from the verses that Nimrod's generation of descendants was building the tower of Babel and the city surrounding it, but not necessarily all of the descendants of Noah to that date were living in the Shinar plains.
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Old 07-07-2007, 11:03 AM   #20
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I don't know about their history prior to my father.
Why does your lack of curiousity not surprise me.
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...why do you suppose Noah's early descendants did NOT have good hygiene? I should think they also knew a lot more than you think did about medicine. They evidently carried some pretty advanced knowledge with them from pre-Flood times.
Yet you continue to avoid showing how this "pretty advanced knowledge" got from "Noah's early descendants" into the structure of the Great Pyramid. If Philitis, Prince of Israel, architect supreme, and part-time shepherd didn't do it, who did? And if you don't have any evidence that the supersecret cosmological measurements embodied in the GP trace back to the advanced knowledge of the Noachians, why not admit that fact, rather than continue to avoid it?
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