These dates were compiled by James Ussher in His Annals of the World (James is a famous historian born in 1581 – college at 13, masters at 18 and Dr at 26).
Disclaimer: NOT everyone agrees with his research/dates… (however many creation scientists do)… but don’t consider these truth with a capital T… Call them good estimates :)
Some high points from Genesis & Exodus:
4004 BC Fall of Man
2348 BC Flood over
2242 BC Tower of Babel
1996 BC Abram born
1897 BC Sodom destroyed
1896 BC Isaac born
1760 BC Isaac blesses Jacob
1728 BC Joseph sold into slavery
1706 BC Joseph’s family moves to Egypt
1635 BC Joseph dies
1571 BC Moses born
1491 BC Burning bush & Exodus
1490 BC Tabernacle completed
Now I will admit that even I – a young earth creation scientist – was a little shocked at the closeness of the flood! I mean 8 people to 6 Billion in 4357 years seemed -uhm- optimistic. So I did what I’ve been trained to do – look into it myself and do the math (shout out to Dan!)… Here’s what I found:
World Population Clock estimate for Today:
6,764,177,125
The current world population doubles every 40-50 years (depending on whom you ask). Now I know you’re saying – recent medicine advances, nutrition, etc. but just stay with me.
Best Case: Doubling the world population ever 40 years from 8 in 2348 BC after the flood (Noah + 3 kids + 4 wives) the current world population would be:
4,929,266,112,286,160,000,000,000,000,000,000 !!!
That’s too big a number to name so let’s try doubling every 50 years:
1,364,092,462,437,050,000,000,000,000
or
1,364,092,462,437,050 TRILLION!
So population growth from 8 to Billions in a few millennia is definitely mathematically possible (especially when you consider that most of the world hasn’t enjoyed most of our medical advances until quite recently and the fact that the birth rate for “developed” countries actually goes down not up). Now you throw in some plagues and such and slow the average growth to 1/3rd it’s current levels and you get a number that’s just about right:
Doubling ever 146 years: 7,701,358,198
Doubling ever 147 years: 6,690,448,509
Flip Side
What about looking at it from the other angle? What population growth is expected from an old earth view?
Evolutionists believe that Homo Sapiens first evolved between 400,000 & 250,000 years ago. We’ll be conservative and use the 250k figure. We will also assume that just 2 Homo Sapiens existed at that point instead of delving into simultaneous evolution in multiple places.
Starting at population of 2 doubling every 500 years (1/10th our current levels) you get a 3 with 150 zeros after it!
Let’s try doubling every 1000 years:
1,809,251,394,333,070,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
Finally at every 5000 years (1/100th our current growth levels) we achieve a comprehend able number:
1,125,899,906,842,620
It would only take 166,450 planet’s of our population to hold that many people.
To explain the current world population size from 2 humans 250,000 years ago you need to restrict the population growth to approximately 1/200th of it’s current levels. Which is fine if it took humanity 245,000 years to figure out a fraction of what we learned in the last 5,000. But it presents a bigger problem. If population growth was so slow and we know that “less developed” humans (even today) have many more babies (for survival reasons) – Where are all the bones from all the dead? If 99.5% of the human population growth was being killed off – where are all the literal piles of bones that we should find from their remains???