Population Growth
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[edit] Introduction
One of the more bizarre creationist arguments relates to human population growth.
[edit] Example
- World population growth rate in recent times is about 2% per year. Practicable application of growth rate throughout human history would be about half that number. Wars, disease, famine, etc. have wiped out approximately one third of the population on average every 82 years. Starting with eight people, and applying these growth rates since the Flood of Noah's day (about 4500 years ago) would give a total human population at just under six billion people. However, application on an evolutionary time scale runs into major difficulties. Starting with one "couple" just 41,000 years ago would give us a total population of 2 x 1089. The universe does not have space to hold so many bodies.
[edit] Discussion
This argument is so absurd that it pretty much debunks itself. Given 41,000 years, or 410,000 years --- or a trillion years, if it comes to that --- the population of the Earth could not possibly grow to be larger in volume than the universe, because long before that happened, they would run out of things like food and water.
Like every other species, the human population can grow no faster than the resources on which it depends will allow. This means that the population can grow only following the discovery of new resources (e.g. human colonization of Australia); the discovery of better ways to exploit those resources (e.g. the agricultural revolution); or after a population crash (e.g. the Black Death).
By a strange irony, it was by considering the fact that such checks existed on unrestrained growth which led both Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace to think of the theory of evolution in the first place: for further details, see the article on Malthus and Evolution.
