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Old 06-29-2007, 07:38 AM   #481
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Indeed, the mortality rates amongst the American pioneers was quite high - only a continual influx of new settlers kept many of the pioneer settlements going. Eight individuals are simply insufficient to form a viable population kernel.
Really? How big do you think a founder population has to be to be viable?

This article says the New World was settled by a group which included only 70 adults ... http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20050528/fob1.asp

What makes you think 8 adults is too small?
200 to 300 people, of which 70 were adults, a minimum of 12,000 years, Dave. You don't have 12,000 years. And you do know that 300 is almost 40 times as many as 8, right? Further, the original group may have been as small as 70, but there was certainly more than one group of people who moved over the Bering land bridge. Youre entire world population was reduced to 8 individuals.
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Old 06-29-2007, 07:39 AM   #482
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Precisely dated? By what? Carbon 14? That's not precise at all unless you mythologize the Flood which is an untenable position. Sorry ... not buying "precisely dated."
What's untenable about it, Dave? You have no evidence it never happened, as you were at pains to demonstrate.
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Old 06-29-2007, 07:43 AM   #483
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... it appears from this graphic that it's about 4500 feet thick in the Grand Canyon area... The point remains though. I don't know how anyone can see ~1 mile of sedimentary rock complete with fossils all over the earth and NOT think Global Flood. Beats me!
If we saw that, we'd think global flood. We don't see that. The layer you refer to in the GC area is far from global.
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Old 06-29-2007, 07:49 AM   #484
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Paul Flocken ... My very rough population calculations are as follows ...

CREATIONIST / DILUVIALIST MODEL
Population growth rate 2.000%
Number of years 600
Starting population 8
Ending population 1,156,626

The 2% is very reasonable. Note that world growth rate reached very close to that in the 20th century. Now you say, "Yes, but we have modern medicine." Not a valid objection because most of the growth was NOT in the developed countries where modern medicine was available. Also note that the Bible records very long lifespans even for a few hundred years after the Flood. Recent genomic degradation studies imply that mankind was stronger and healthier in the past. There are traditions of early man having many, many children per family. Combine all this and 2% growth is not unreasonable at all. Probably 3% or more is reasonable for the early post-Flood phase.
Actually Dave it is not modern medicine that did it but modern agriculture. Mondern medicine has allowed us to roughly double our life span but the most productive of the reproductive years are still in the first half of our lengthened lifespans, exactly that part that we have always lived. Now I suppose you are going to tell me that Noah had modern agriculture at his disposal.

As to your 2%. Is that per annum? You did not state that. It is important to me. Anyway my growth rate was 50% per year. At a rate of 2% per year it would have taken over six years for the first child to be born and another six for the second. There's 12 of your years and little to show. Are you sure your math is correct?
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Old 06-29-2007, 08:01 AM   #485
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Dave, you are among those people Sam Harris described as "locating the moment of the Big Bang as occurring 2,500 years after the Sumerians and the Babylonians learned to brew beer". Among all the absurdities of the "Biblical inerrancy" position, this one is among the funniest.

You are reduced to fishing around for any source, no matter how improbable, fanciful, discredited or just plain wrong, that at some time in the past came up with some numbers that you can press into service to try and keep the leaking wooden tub of Young Earth Creationism afloat before it sinks to the abyssal depths. Because mainstream scholarship, backed by solid evidence, continues to expose the holes that are letting the water into your leaking wooden tub.

Looking around for material on Rohl, I found this:

Rohl's "chronology" deconstructed

Mainstream archaeology requires a rethink of Biblical dates

Assorted other problems with Rohl's chronology

More problems with Rohl's chronology

The last of those links appears to be particularly worrying for the Rohl chronology.

Hmm. Interesting ... * Strokey beard time *
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Old 06-29-2007, 08:01 AM   #486
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Also note that the Bible records very long lifespans even for a few hundred years after the Flood. Recent genomic degradation studies imply that mankind was stronger and healthier in the past.
Certainly those members of mankind that survived gestation and childhood would be but then there wasn't any modern medicine around to keep the misfits alive. I think you are confusing correlation with causation.

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There are traditions of early man having many, many children per family. Combine all this and 2% growth is not unreasonable at all. Probably 3% or more is reasonable for the early post-Flood phase.
48 children per woman. Yeah right.

By the way, you did not comment on my growth rate assumptions. Do you agree with them? Do you disagree with any of them?
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Old 06-29-2007, 08:34 AM   #487
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There are traditions of early man having many, many children per family
I challenge this. No such traditions exist in any form which is relevant to the flood story.
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Old 06-29-2007, 08:36 AM   #488
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Wrong, Dave. The simplest and most obvious thing to do is to dispense with this absurd notion of a global flood. There's no evidence it ever happened. You proved that all by yourself.
It's worse than that, Eric. Not only is there simply no evidence that it ever happened (which wouldn't necessarily rule out the possibility that it did happen) but there is absolutely masses of evidence that it definitely did not happen.
Dave, everyone else can see this quite clearly.
 
Old 06-29-2007, 09:04 AM   #489
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The 2% is very reasonable. Note that world growth rate reached very close to that in the 20th century. Now you say, "Yes, but we have modern medicine." Not a valid objection because most of the growth was NOT in the developed countries where modern medicine was available. Also note that the Bible records very long lifespans even for a few hundred years after the Flood. Recent genomic degradation studies imply that mankind was stronger and healthier in the past. There are traditions of early man having many, many children per family. Combine all this and 2% growth is not unreasonable at all. Probably 3% or more is reasonable for the early post-Flood phase.
dave, we had a whole thread about this where your nonsense was refuted. I distinctly remember you posting in that thread. have you forgotten about it already?
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Old 06-29-2007, 09:08 AM   #490
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I really have no idea why creationist continue to do this. Are they really to dumb to read the sentence before and after this, or do they really think that nobody will notice theor dishonest quote mine? Both explanations are beyond me. So which is it?

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Originally Posted by afdave View Post
Really? How big do you think a founder population has to be to be viable?

This article says the New World was settled by a group which included only 70 adults ... http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20050528/fob1.asp
So what? It was 200 to 300 people in total, most of which will have grown up to adults. Mentioning this number 70 is just a red herring and essentially a quote mine, because the real number (200 to 300) is given directly before this.

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What makes you think 8 adults is too small?
Just look at endangered animals - the IUCN Red List defines "critically endangenered" as
A 1. An observed, estimated, inferred or suspected population size reduction of > 90% over the last 10 years or three generations [...]
B 1/2 a Severely fragmented or known to exist at only a single location.

and most damaging to your flood fantasy:
D. Population size estimated to number fewer than 50 mature individuals.

See, Dave, there are quite clear criteria to determine if a population is viable or not. You loose.
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