evolution, creationism, creation science, population, overpopulation, fossil, fossils, evolve, science, biology, life science, fundamentalism, genesis, Bible science, natural history, paleontology, design, design argument, argument from design, designer

NOAH'S BUNNIES

      The Earth can't possibly be more than about 6,000 years old, because if people had been around for a million or more years, as the evolutionists claim, there would be way more people than there are now. The Earth would have been totally overpopulated long ago, and we wouldn't even be here, because our ancestors would have died of starvation after 10,000 years or so of normal human reproduction. So there. That proves that evolution isn't true.
     As a matter of fact, if you begin at the time of the biblical Flood (as calculated by most creationists), and figure a steady reproduction rate and the resulting geometric growth of the human population, you can end up with a figure for this year in the several-billions. With just a little fiddling with average number of kids per couple, average lifespan, etc., it's not difficult to end up with a population figure for this year that's right on the money. How much more proof could anyone want that humans have only been populating the Earth for a few thousand years?
      Sorry, but it just ain't so. The math may be all right, but the basic assumptions behind it are totally wrong. The creationist date for the beginning of humanity works out only if we assume that the population has been growing steadily from a small beginning a few thousand years ago. Fine. Let's assume that. That would be true for other animals as well, wouldn't it? Their populations would have steadily grown since those rescued pairs walked, flew, or slithered off the Ark, just like the human population. No fair to start throwing in all sorts of qualifications to limit the growth of an animal population, because we didn't do that for people--did we?
      Try rabbits. Let's work up a few numbers. We'll be very conservative (since creationists seem to have taken up the "conservative" banner). Start with the one pair that hopped off the Ark (not seven, since, if I'm not mistaken, rabbits are "unclean"). Assume that pair had only four kits in the first year (very conservative for rabbits). It's been a long time since I raised bunnies, but I think it would be fair to say that by one year of age, each pair of kits has produced a 4-kit litter of its own. Continue adding rabbits at that rate each year. Rabbits do die, though, so assume every pair of rabbits dies after its third year, after having produced three litters of four, for a total of 12 offspring. Conservative enough so far?
      At this ludicrously slow rate of reproduction (for rabbits), one year after the waters receded there would be six: the original pair that Ham, Shem, or Japheth herded in, plus four kits (we're even assuming Mr. Rabbit did not "know" his wife, in the King James Version sense, while aboard the Ark). Those six pair up, male and female, and populate the Earth after their kind, and a year later we have eighteen. And so on. The simplest computer spreadsheet will do all the math for us in a snap. We'll even remember to have all rabbits die after reaching three years of age. Keep this up for a few years. After five years we have 432 rabbits (nothing to worry about, right?). After ten years we're up to 85,512. By the twentieth year we're up to 3,349,845,900 -- a lot of bunnies, but hey, it's a big world. And let's throw in another astoundingly conservative assumption: that they only weigh a pound each.
      Time to cut to the bottom line -- and we reach it in a hurry: at this very modest rate of rabbits' being fruitful and multiplying, by the fifty-third year there would be 1.669619x10²⁴ rabbits, more or less, and they would outweigh the entire Earth (1.32x10²⁴ lbs.)! That's after a mere fifty-three years of the same kind of reproduction the creationist assumes when he calculates the human population to be just about right for growth since the Flood! (Feel free to check my math.)
      Obviously the rabbit population never exploded like that in any 53 year period, even after their catastrophic introduction to Australia a few years back. Anybody, regardless of his beliefs about evolution, can tell you why: the rabbit population is kept in check by predators, disease, and if nothing else, by outright starvation if it outgrows its food resources. Equally obviously, those population pressures and constraints apply to all other animals. And surely anyone can see that they must also apply to people. Would people be the only creatures on Earth to experience a steady, unconstrained, geometric growth rate?
      Anyone who thinks so has an awfully simple-minded view of human history. Sticking strictly with historical times (since creationists don't admit there even was a prehistory), during most centuries, in most places, the human population has remained relatively stable, rather than steadily increasing. There were notable periods when populations decreased, due to social collapse and chaos, disease, failure of agriculture due to overfarming, etc. During the 1300's the population of Europe decreased by at least 1/4 (bubonic plague). From the 1500's through the 1800's, populations of Amerindians declined, in many places by 90%; in some places the extermination was total (mostly from "white men's diseases," to which they had evolved no resistance, but also from enslavement and purposeful genocide). There are no more Carib Indians--at all. In many parts of the industrialized world, including Western Europe and the US, the population has essentially stopped growing, and even turned slightly negative, due to the availability of effective contraceptives and personal choice to limit family size. In some places the only increase in population comes from immigration from other countries.
      Then how come the world population has grown and continues to grow? Easy: because we're so smart. We have invented better medicines, better crops, better living conditions, and an industrialized world in which the same amount of land can feed many times the number of people it could 2,000 years ago. Only in the past few centuries, with the rise of industrialization and modern science, has the world population "skyrocketted" in the way that creationists would have us believe it has been doing all along. Won't it continue to grow geometrically? No. The growth rate is already slowing in most places, as education, contraception, and desire for smaller families spread through the developing world. In places where social pressures and rising expectations don't limit population before it overwhelms its food supply, there could very well be mass starvations (as, of course there have already been, in the past and in our own century). Just like the rabbits.
      Why is it that there is just about the population you would expect if people had been multiplying steadily since the Flood? Mere coincidence (and a little adjustment of figures to make it come out right). We just saw that it doesn't work at all for any animal with a faster reproduction than ours (which is nearly all other animals). Their populations don't grow at a steady rate, and neither has ours . For a little mathematical fun, try other population-growth-since-the-Flood experiments with other species. In general, the smaller the animal is, the sooner it will overwhelm the Earth! I haven't run the numbers, but I'll bet mice would do it in less than a decade. How long would it take a single bacterium (you don't even need a pair!)--assuming, as the creationists do with people, no restraints on its population growth rate--to fill up the galaxy with its progeny?

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Other possibly interesting essays, on evolution and other topics
"Lessons NOT To Learn in School" .
"Hard Truths About Science"
"The Watch in the Desert"
"Do You Believe in Evolution?"
"Genesis"
Noah's Bunnies
Thermodynamics for Two, Please
Welcome to the Ghetto (of Scientific Illiteracy)
Things Creationists Hate
"Dinosaurs" (definiton essay)
"Superstition" (classification essay)

Links to other excellent sources of information on evolution

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R. J. Riggins
darrwin@aol.com
Use or repost at your pleasure, just leave my name on it, please.

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