population growth has to at least be slowed because if we don't slow it, not because of the famine that people worry about, but because with population growth comes further human development in animals habitats. and, with that, become more animal attacks on humans, and then who gets blamed for it? the animal, of course, even though it is the humans fault. if you move to the forest, be prepared to be attacked by an animal. we shouldn't go out killing animals just because some dumb human moved into the forest and was shocked that there were cougars there!

Not only the usual contraception methods, but even such anti-Scriptural practices as abortion and homosexuality, have been promoted as desirable to help attain the goal of zero population growth.

who is trying to force people to have abortions and be homosexuals? and where in the bible does it say abortion is a sin? ancient greece is where homosexuality was actually encouraged, for the reason of keeping the females virgins until marriage. the way to keep them virgins is by guys having sex with each other

It can be shown, in fact, that if the population continued to increase at the rate of 2% per year, in less than 700 years there would be one person for every square foot of the earth's surface. Obviously, the present growth rate cannot continue indefinitely.

and it won't. there will be major famines before the earth's population gets near that high. we could go into another dark age and leave behind some of our wonderful inventions. viruses are already starting to become resistant to vaccines

Since the evidence for a purposeful Creator of the world and mankind is exceedingly strong

it is? where is this evidence?

That purpose will surely have been consummated before the population exceeds its divinely-intended maximum.

it will?

Since man has not yet come anywhere near to filling the earth (the total population currently averages less than one person for every 400,000 square feet of land area), even to its maximum feasible "carrying capacity," it seems unlikely that the earth has yet reached its optimal population, as far as the purposes of the Creator are concerned.

so. . . the person of humans is to fill the entire earth? what about room for animals? room for plants? room for trees?

Many current trends seem to have been predicted in the Bible and, therefore, suggest that the return of Christ and the end of the age may be near at hand.

and what are those? is the weekly world news right when it says the anti-christ is coming soon?

It is, therefore, at least a possibility that the Creator's work of consummation may solve the population problem long before it becomes critical.

if i am an animal, it already has become critical. if any tasmanian wolves still live, they live in an area that may very well soon be developed

Even with the present status of technology (available water for irrigation, potentially arable land, modern methods of soil treatment and improved crop yields, etc.), authorities estimate that the earth's reasonable "carrying capacity" is about 50 billion people.

does that include animals? people say "well, we can have 50 billion people live on earth," but they never say where the animals are supposed to live. it's that dominion over the animals thing

Thus, even at the present annual increase of 2%, it will still be 135 years before this maximum population will be reached.

i sure hope we don't reach that population in 135 years, because that will mean that most animal habitats are eliminated or, at least, hurt very badly

It is interesting that, for the most part, those intellectuals who are most vocal in support of population limitation (Margaret Mead, for example), are also strong believers in human evolution.

there should be population limitation

This is probably because of their refusal to recognize divine purpose in the world.

oh, really? is ted turner an atheist?

If there was no creation and therefore no purpose or goal in creation, then neither is there any reason to believe the Creator will accomplish His purpose at the end of history.

then the bible's god(which morris and other ICRers always means by "creator") ought to stop people from population control

Just as man's past evolution was dependent solely on random natural processes

they weren't totally random

On the other hand, it is very significant that all of the earth's serious environmental problems, even its population crisis, have developed during that one century (say, from about 1860 to the present) when the evolutionary philosophy had replaced creationism in the thinking of practically all of the world's leaders in education, science and industry.

you want to blame all the environmental problems on evolutionists, fine. why don't you also thank us for the end of slavery in america? or giving women the right to vote? same goes for longer life expectance, vaccines, better technology. but creationists would never give credit to evolutionists for those things. but the bad things can all be pinned on evolution(which isn’t even fair or correct)

The earth has been exploited not because of any divine mandate, but because of social Darwinism

social darwinism is only related to darwinian evolution in its name. "social darwinism" has nothing to do with evolution, it has to do with capitalism

economic and military imperialism

military imperialism? really? did mckinley take the philippines to spread christianity or evolution? the romans built their empire that surrounded the entire mediterranean based on evolution? military imperialism has been for a very long time, and it will be around probably for as long as humans exist

secular materialism

oh, of course. the only people that want to be rich are all atheistic evolutionists. you know, people like pat robertson had his alliance with dictator mbutu sese seko of zaire not because he has a diamond business there, but to spread the word of jesus

and other such applications of the "struggle and survival" rationale of modern evolutionism.

if you read only henry morris stuff, you’d think social darwinism is based on evolution, economic and military imperialism came about, only atheists, agnostics, other non-christians and evolutionists want to power and money

As far as reverting to pantheism is concerned, this is simply another variant of evolutionism and will inevitably lead to similar results. The most pantheistic of nations (e.g., India with its Hinduism, China with its Buddhism and Confucianism, etc.)

i’ll wait until some creationist can actually show that any of those three religions has anything to do with those religions and what doctrines of those religions support evolution

are precisely those nations in which the population/resource ratios have been most severe.

i don’t know why those nations have so many children(and i wonder whether or not morris does, either), but i would guess it has something to with why so many early americans(of which a majority are christians) during the 19th century(and before) had so many kids, which is to help farming and help the family

It has not been the Judaeo-Christian nations in which population has become a problem,

people don’t have as many kids in judeo-christian nations now as they did before because of technological advancements, not because christianity doesn’t support having a bunch of kids. (unless somebody can proved a biblical reference to where it says people aren’t supposed to have many kids)

But there is an even greater inconsistency in evolutionary thinking relative to population. The same population statistics which supposedly presage a serious population problem in the future also indicate a very recent origin of man in the past, and therefore a special divine purpose for man in the future.

oh, good. morris gets to make a moron of himself by making stupid, idiotic comments about population growth rates, even though nobody ever said they’ve been totally continuous

To illustrate the problem, assume that the human population increases geometrically. That is, the increase each year is equal to a constant proportion of the population the previous year.

you go assume that. but, be warned, because human population--or the population of any other animal--doesn’t have a constant growth rate. famines, plagues, and wars hurt humans. and the first two are true of animals, as well

This relationship can be expressed algebraically as follows:

Looking toward the past, instead of the future, equation (1) will also indicate how long it would take to produce the present population at 2% growth per year, starting with two people. An initial population of only two people, increasing at 2% per year, would become 3.5 billion people in only 1075 years. Since written records go back over 4,000 years, it is obvious that the average growth rate throughout past history has been considerably less than the present rate.

so, unless written records were around, he would have assumed population growth rates went unchanged? and since when did a certain invention prove that’s how old the earth is?

As a matter of interest, we can also use equation (1) to determine what the average growth rate would have to be to generate the present population in 4,000 years. Thus, an average population growth rate of only (1/2)% would generate the present world population in only 4000 years. This is only one-fourth of the present rate of growth.

so what? the population growth rate hasn’t been 2% probably in history for more than maybe a couple year period. there’s been times of population declines, like during the plague, during major famines (just look at north korea. . . 10% of its people died in a THREE-YEAR period because of a famine, and it would be worse if s. korea, japan and america wasn’t helping it out). population growth was not there before agriculture was invented

Now, although it is obvious that the present rate of growth (2%) could not have prevailed for very long in the past, it does seem unlikely that the long-time growth rate could have averaged significantly less than (1/2)%.

why not? what about in non-argicultural tribes and nations? what about wars, plagues, famines, diseases, etc.? the long-term growth rate was very unlikely to be (1/2)%

For earlier periods than A.D. 1, absolutely nothing is known concerning world populations. It should be emphatically stressed that all estimates of earlier populations except that recorded in the Bible (namely, that immediately after the great Flood, the world population consisted of eight people) are based solely on evolutionary concepts of human technological development.

Such guesses are useless, however, because they are based on a discredited model, that of human evolution.

how is it discredited? because the fossil record supports a common ancestor between humans and modern apes. similiarities between the DNA of apes and humans(98 or 99 per cent similar) support that they are related. similar anatomy. and many others parts of science supports the evolution

The creation-cataclysm model of earth history fits all the known facts of man’s history much better than the evolution model does

no it doesn’t. that’s a lie, and morris knows it. there is no way that the flood of the bible could have accounted for the fossil record. there’s no way all one million living species could have fit on the ark(which has to have happened if there was no evolution). why was abraham the first known believer in the hebrew god(which is now the god of christianity of judaism), even though he lived in about 2,000 BC? (supposedly 300 or so years after the flood)

and it recognizes that man’s agriculture and other basic technologies are essentially as old as man himself.

just because something got invented at a certain time doesn’t mean that’s when humans first lived. cars were invented late in the 19th century, does that prove a 125 year old earth? no, it doesn’t. photographs was invented in 1816, is the earth 183 years old because, after all, we don’t have any pictures before that so we can’t really prove people wrote anything before then. all the writings from 4,000 BC until now could have all been fakes. it’s not like humans have always been able to think of everything. when was fire discovered?

Since this period from 1650 to 1800 antedated the great advances in medicine and technology which have stimulated the more rapid population growth of the 19th and 20th centuries, and also since this is the earliest period of time for which population data are at all reliable, it seems likely that this figure of (1/3)%, rather than the (1/2)% previously calculated, could be used as the norm for population growth throughout most of past history.

so what? he acts as if nothing that would increase human population had ever happened until 1800, which is a lie. also it means there were no outbreaks of a disease or virus, no plagues, no famines, no wars, etc. all ridicilious assumptions

In that case, the length of time required for the population to grow from 2 people to one billion people, at 1/3% increase per year is To this should be added the 175 years since 1800. Thus, the most probable date of human origin, based on the known data from population statistics, is about 6,300 years ago.

how did the population continue to grow during the flood? if a worldwide flood happened 4,300 years ago and it left only 8 people left, then a guess of human population has to come from no more than 8 people living 4,300 years ago. any guess older than that isn’t fair, because morris is cheating, and i’m sure he knows it. if the stats were true(which there’s no reason to believe that the growth could possibly be as consistent as morris wants), i don’t see how they support henry morris

By arbitrary juggling of population models, of course, the evolutionist can manage to come out with any predetermined date he may choose.

that is EXACTLY what henry morris did. henry morris juggled the population model to fit, firstly, a global flood murdering all but 8 people 4200-to-4300 years ago, then did it to have 2 people born 6300 years ago

People should realize, however, that this does require an arbitrary juggling of figures, based solely on the assumptions of human evolution.

what, then, does morris’s stuff require? an assumption of a continuous human population growth over a 4000 year period based on the growth rate of 150 years and not including major plagues, famines, wars or other mass killers. assumes that everybody had the hunting and farming ability for 4,000(and then 6300) years

The actual data of population statistics, interpreted and applied in the most conservative and most probable manner, point to an origin of the human population only several thousands of years ago.

no, they don’t. morris’ growth rates are by no means the most conservative and most probable. besides, i always thought a “conservative” estimate was not the most probable estimate

The present population could very easily have been attained in only about 6000 years or so,

yay, if they had no wars, famines, plagues, etc.

even if the average population growth rate throughout most of history were only one-sixth as much as it is at present.

and what reason--other than to come up with a 4 or 6 thousand year old earth--is there to believe it was even that much?

Even using the short Ussher chronology, it is quite reasonable, as we have seen, for the population to have grown from 8 people to 3.5 billion people in 4350 years. This growth represents an average annual increase of only 0.44%, or an average doubling time of 152 years.

but i thought the rate had to be 1/3 of a percent? something isn’t adding up. the growth rate for a 150-year period was 1/3 of a percent, more than likely higher than any other 150-year period before it

Such figures are quite consistent with all known data of population statistics, especially in light of the fact that the human death rates were very low for many centuries after the Flood, and family sizes quite large.

the only evidence for this is the bible. one source doesn’t prove a thing with these sorts of things. the only time one source can prove anything is when you are there. nobody reading this was alive when the bible was being written. and most of them weren’t living or there when the stuff they wrote about was supposed to have occured. creationists wouldn’t accept just one fossil to prove evolution, but they will accept one book to prove a flood

In any case, the conclusion is well justified that the Biblical chronology, even in its most conservative form, fits well into all the known facts of population growth, much more so than does the evolutionary chronology of human history.

the population growth rates from 1650-to-1800 might support creationism. so what?

complete version of impact #20

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