Freethought & Rationalism Archive

06-30-2007, 08:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by afdave

Ok, taking your assumptions (just for the sake of argument) and knowing that you have 580 years between your preferred Flud date and your preferred GP construction date, you appear to have around 550,000 people in the entire world when the GP is built. This includes pregnant women, children, babies and geriatrics (several of who you admit are close to death towards the end of your chart).
Do you think this is enough to found the entire classical Egyptian civilisation?

Edit: note that this is about half the figure you have been trying to use for so long.

deadman_932 · 06-30-2007, 09:14 PM

Heh. The sheer inanity of Dave's "figures" is startling to the uninitiated, I bet: That a half-million people built the ziggurats, pyramids, mound burials and all other monumental architecture around the world dating to that claimed period, since all PREVIOUS traces of any hypothetical civilizations were destroyed by ye olde fludde.

The ignorance required to accept this unsupported tripe and reject the evidence unrefuted by Dave offered by JUST radiometric dating of archaeological sites around the world -- is equally astounding. And yet Dave insists he's unbiasedly "searching for the troof"

Gratefully, some forums are less tolerant of scam artistry than others.

ericmurphy · 06-30-2007, 10:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by afdave

OK. Shoot holes in this if you can. I know you want to :-)

1) You have zero evidence that livespans were even as long 4,500 years ago as they are now. The evidence that does exist indicates much lower life expectancy, and a somewhat lower lifespan.

2) You pulled your figures out of your ass, based on not so much as a twig of evidence. Further, as BWE has pointed out to the point where he fears for his own sanity, carrying capacity would have been zero after the "flood." No topsoil. No crops. No vegetation. No animals other than what was on the ark, the majority of which would have died in the first few months.

8 people alive at the end of the "flood" (assuming they survived the "flood," which they couldn't have). Zero people left five years later.

BWE · 06-30-2007, 11:34 PM

tomorrow. hint: carrying capacity.

Pappy Jack · 07-01-2007, 02:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by afdave

........Year 90: 17 X 5 = 85 kids in this generation --> 42 new couples, 85+58=143 total people.

Year 120: 42 X 5 = 210 etc. etc. You get the idea.

Keep in mind that nobody has died of old age yet ... not even the old patriarch himself, Noah. We only have childbirth deaths and accidental deaths. So these numbers will get big quickly........
***DISCLAIMER***
There may be errors in this, and of course my assumptions of 10 kids and only 5 of them ending up procreating may be off. Also there may not be equal numbers of boys and girls, and there will be other irregularities. Note that Shem was 100 years old 2 years after the Flood and lived 600 years, so he would have died about Year 500 in the above chart. The later patriarchs lived progressively shorter lives placing the end of their lives also near the end of the above spreadsheet. So it seems reasonable to omit deaths by old age for purposes of approximation.

If these calculations are even close to being correct, the numbers get very big very quickly in 600 years. I would actually only need about 400 years to get a million people and much less than that if each family averaged 10 procreating kids instead of 5. Not unreasonable at all if they were genetically superior, which, I believe the evidence indicates they were. Also note that inbreeding depression would also be much less of a problem for genetically superior people groups (i.e. less harmful mutations). This may explain why the prohibitions against close marriages did not come until Moses.

OK. Shoot holes in this if you can. I know you want to :-)......

Dave, as the evidence base for all this speculation is precisely zero, it seems an exercise in futility to try to shoot holes in it. However, you might find this extract from an article here instructive:

Quote:

......there is substantially more genetic difference among individuals within chimpanzee troops in West Africa than among all living humans on earth. ......this is due to a series of bottlenecks in human evolutionary history. Geneticists studying many different parts of the human genome have concluded that the past effective population size (that is, the number of reproducing females) averaged only 10,000 individuals over the last one million years, and was as low as 5,000 around 70,000 years ago. Compare this to the approximately one billion reproducing females alive today, and it becomes clear just how narrow these bottlenecks were.

Fit your dynamically reproducing Flud-survivors' population into this analysis, which at least has the merit of having some evidence-based research behind it.

Dave Hawkins · 07-01-2007, 03:14 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mung bean

Quote:

Originally Posted by afdave

Ok, taking your assumptions (just for the sake of argument) and knowing that you have 580 years between your preferred Flud date and your preferred GP construction date, you appear to have around 550,000 people in the entire world when the GP is built. This includes pregnant women, children, babies and geriatrics (several of who you admit are close to death towards the end of your chart).
Do you think this is enough to found the entire classical Egyptian civilisation?

Edit: note that this is about half the figure you have been trying to use for so long.

No. I think I have ~325 million. See Column L across from Year 570. Where are you reading 550,000?

07-01-2007, 03:40 AM

To be perfectly honest that was a mistake on my part. I'm so used to you posting complete drivel that I just quickly scanned the columns and read it as 325,000 instead of 325 million.
However, if you are going to use this calculation and you have 580 years rather than 570 available you should give yourself a bonus for the extra ten years, which is where the rough estimate of 550,000 ( which should be million) came from.
Couldn't help noticing though that these figures are much greater than the ones you were promoting over at RDF for the same timeframe.
Tell me, what do you think the world population was at 0 AD?
Also, having jumped on a simple and admittedly silly error of mine (and having it admitted without prevarication) is there any chance of you ever dealing with some of the other questions I've raised in various threads?
Take the Nile valley. for instance....

07-01-2007, 03:55 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by afdave

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dean Anderson

It appears that Dave's calculation is to assume 2% growth per annum, and to assume that fractional people(!) are included in the growth for the following year.

In other words, he uses a very simplistic compound interest formula, vis:

$P_N=P_0*(1.02^N)$

where $N$ = Number of years, $P_N$ = Population after $N$ years, $P_0$ = Initial population.

At least, when I use that formula I replicate his value for the population after 600 years.

To recap, Dave's population growth for the first few years is as follows:

8 people
<snip>
57.957168946018685081245825536255 people after 100 years

419.87917902966907746713355533203 people after 200 years

3,041.8760644922695682260276401483 people after 300 years

22,037.315622828612097256890943759 people after 400 years

159,652.55308362685684453368307336 people after 500 years

1,156,626.2489663722661858832710676 people after 600 years

<snip>

Of course, fractional people are silly. The 2% was an approximation based on something realistic that we know about -- a recent close-to-actual figure from the 20th century.
<snip>

If you don't want to face any of my currently outstanding questions here's a new one for you. For yonks you've been going with a 2% annual population growth rate, as per the above. This was always your preferred figure during the RDF debate and gave you a global population of around 1.1 million people after 600 years.
However, since it was pointed out to you (in this thread) that you only had 580 years available and this was enough to make a sizable hole in your population figures you have suddenly magicked up a new calculation which increases your population at 600 years by a factor of approximately 703.
So Dave, which figure do you now regard as being complete bullshit? Your earlier, longstanding one or your current, greatly inflated one?

Edit: Basically what you've done Dave is when challenged on the viability of a 2% per annum growth rate (including fractional people) you have responded by creating a calculation that is (in terms of the result at 600 years) equivalent to a 3.12% annual growth rate (including fractional people). Yes, this time I am paying attention to the figures.

Sven · 07-01-2007, 04:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by afdave

About 1 billion people in the world 4000 years ago? This shows entirely on its own that Dave's model is beyond inanity.

07-01-2007, 04:20 AM

Wiki estimates show only 50 million people 3,000 years ago.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_population

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06-30-2007, 09:14 PM	#532
deadman_932 Veteran Member Join Date: Jun 2007 Location: Altadena, California Posts: 3,271	Heh. The sheer inanity of Dave's "figures" is startling to the uninitiated, I bet: That a half-million people built the ziggurats, pyramids, mound burials and all other monumental architecture around the world dating to that claimed period, since all PREVIOUS traces of any hypothetical civilizations were destroyed by ye olde fludde. The ignorance required to accept this unsupported tripe and reject the evidence unrefuted by Dave offered by JUST radiometric dating of archaeological sites around the world -- is equally astounding. And yet Dave insists he's unbiasedly "searching for the troof" Gratefully, some forums are less tolerant of scam artistry than others.

06-30-2007, 11:34 PM	#534
BWE Senior Member Join Date: Jun 2007 Location: Portland, OR Posts: 624	tomorrow. hint: carrying capacity.

07-01-2007, 03:40 AM	#537
mung bean Guest Posts: n/a	To be perfectly honest that was a mistake on my part. I'm so used to you posting complete drivel that I just quickly scanned the columns and read it as 325,000 instead of 325 million. However, if you are going to use this calculation and you have 580 years rather than 570 available you should give yourself a bonus for the extra ten years, which is where the rough estimate of 550,000 ( which should be million) came from. Couldn't help noticing though that these figures are much greater than the ones you were promoting over at RDF for the same timeframe. Tell me, what do you think the world population was at 0 AD? Also, having jumped on a simple and admittedly silly error of mine (and having it admitted without prevarication) is there any chance of you ever dealing with some of the other questions I've raised in various threads? Take the Nile valley. for instance....

07-01-2007, 04:20 AM	#540
mung bean Guest Posts: n/a	Wiki estimates show only 50 million people 3,000 years ago. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_population

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