Evidence for God from Science

Jbuza wrote:Jbuza Wrote
This indicates an average population growth of .00168% during the last 1997 years
Bgood Wrote
What does that number mean?

Well first the number has a mistake in it; the average growth rate is .00168 or .168% not .00168%. The number means that given all the negative and positive factors, that there appears to be a growth, on average, of .168%. According to the United Nations population study of 1999 the human population has an innate growth rate of 2%, so one can see that the last 2000 years have seen a lot of negative impactors on growth. It means that for all of the history of population growth that researchers have a general agreement on that we can derive an average growth rate, and that number is that rate.

This is not what I meant. What does it mean to average all these figures out? What information do we get from this type of analysis?
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Jbuza wrote:Bgood Wrote
We have already established that zero growth is possible.

Yup, but not long term. Yes during war, disasters, or diseases it is possible to have zero or in fact negative growth. We have also established that all of the observations and records indicate that in spite of periods of zero and negative growth, that long term the human race is growing.

Can you prove that this growth has been occuring throughout the history of mankind? If I plot growth rates back into time based on current information it seems to be approaching zero growth.

Jbuza wrote:__
Bgood Wrote
Yes if the population obeyed your simplestic rate, however this is not the case.
Why because it doesn't fit into your false theory?

I am not fitting the data at all. The analysis is based on the data you provided.
The growth rate is not steady.
http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/worldpop.html

Jbuza wrote:Why do you assume the rate to be different than it is during the past ~2000 years?

Because the rate has changed in the past 500 years.

Jbuza wrote:What factors depress the growth rate that are not seen in that time period?

"Death and birth rates have declined over the past several decades. People are living longer in both industrial and developing countries because of increased access to immunization, primary health care, and disease eradication programs."
http://www.worldbank.org/depweb/english ... ocial/pgr/

Jbuza wrote:Remember the UN says 2% is what the race should be doing, so .168% average growth must include the host of negative factors we have seen.

???
The growth rate for the year 2000 was 1.4%, I don't know where you got .168% from.

Jbuza wrote:Are you just going to impugn my study, and come up with nothing except that past population growths are nothing like what we see today.

Look at the data, growth rates have varied, in this instance what does an average mean? I am using the data you provided!

Jbuza wrote:You keep bringing this up, and you're the one accusing me of general claims with no support. If this is all you have to add, than you have nothing to add.
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Bgood Wrote
In all those cases it is modern farming techniques and medicine which caused the population to grow in the first place.

Uh ya you keep claiming this, but it isn't true. The countries with the best farming and medicine have the lowest growth rates. Poverty and starvation in Africa has been going on for generations. Another claim contrary to the evidence. How long are you gonna stand in your house of cards?

It's not a house of cards, mortality rates account for a large proportion of population growth in developing countries. Do you want to see the data?
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Jbuza wrote: Bgood wrote
This is true, perhaps you can tell me why? In the more advanced countries the mortality rates had been reduced earlier. In other countries longer life spans contribute much to the growing population while in developed nations it is only new borns and immigration which factor in as mortality rates have leveled off.

Yes I can tell you why. In those countries where poverty, disease, and starvation have been a way of life for generations, families have been forced to have far more children. They have had more children because “backward” farming techniques have required far larger families to do the work, far larger families to make ends meet. The way to be wealthy in the poor countries is to have very large families. Poverty drives population growth, and it is a cycle. In developed countries with the advanced technologies families need fewer children to do the work. A large tractor can do the work of many children.

But these explosions of population in developing countries is a modern phenomenon. It appears that many more children than before reach adulthood. The data shows this if you would like to see.

Jbuza wrote:We do see a lot of suffering in the world, and it is in those places where modern medicine, hospitals, and advanced farming techniques don't exist. These are the places that have shown the largest growth, and according to the UN 1999 study these are the places that are projected to continue to grow at the highest rates.

By modern I don't mean state of the art hospitals and medicines. I mean modern techniques of health care which originated in Europe in the 1500's. And global immunization and health programs.

Jbuza wrote:__
Bgood Wrote
more reasonable to assume that the human population reached an equilibrium before the more recent advances in technology allowed an explosion in population.

This claim.

You can disagree with this if you want, however noticing that everything in nature produces more than can be sustained by the environment, it would appear that equilibrium is the natural order of things.

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Jbuza wrote:OK I can see why you come to your conclusions.

Average pre-modern growth is .00047 or .047%

Let's see if your model predicts things better from data taken before the advancements that you say causes higher numbers of growth.


What cause do you explain for the fact that we should see 6.557401362693605e+30 people by the year 1500 at a growth rate demonstrated by the people that lived before modern technological advancement? We actually only see 440000000 million people in that year.

Realize at that growth rate it would take 6000 years for a mating pair to produce a population of 33.

I know that your model demands that you say growth regresses to zero growth, but without any support it is just another empty darwinian tale.

Again, it doesn't matter what rate you use, population's do not grow at a steady rate. I beleive the numbers are inconclusive.

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Jbuza wrote:

BGoodForGoodSake wrote: Again, it doesn't matter what rate you use, population's do not grow at a steady rate. I beleive the numbers are inconclusive.

So stop investigating then huh.

Playing with numbers is not investigation.

Jbuza wrote:There must be a mechanism for this or it is an empty statement.

There is nothing wrong with gathering data. I beleive we have enough data to try to predict, within reasonable accuracy, 20 years and even 40 years into the future, with alot of analysis and guesswork. But your proposing to go back and predict thousands of years of data accurately.

Jbuza wrote:The human population according to the UN has an innate ability to maintain a 2% growth.

Can you direct me to the source of this link please.

Jbuza wrote:While it seems possible, to me, that the present population is possible from a small numer within the past 4-5 thousand years. 150,00,000 years of human history don't seem very probable given even marginal growth rates. Remember the present is the key to the past, Bgood.

Yes within reason. The past is a more reliable key to the past. In otherwords we can reach the conclusion that certain migrations and event in the past have lead to the present distribution of the human population. Did you say 150 million years?

Jbuza wrote:If their is no reason why people grew at a slower rate in 1000 BC than they did in 1000 AD then you are just making a general statement with no empirical support.

I beleive the evidence shows that hunter gathering preceeded farming. And that domestication was also a relatively new technology. Also things to note, irrigation techniques, farming advancements, and invention of metalurgy. Also stability of political climate, literacy, and general knowledge have varied throughout time.

Jbuza wrote:I would propse a growth rate back to 1000 BC, but I am not sure how reliable the numbers are. Perhaps I will see what I can find for 1000BC and see if thier is any harmony amongst different researchers.

You had been repeating the mantra "modern technology", "modern technology", but your model still isn't very predictive.

If all the analysis leads to a better understanding so be it. We can't force something to be predictive if it isn't. Otherwise we will lead ourselves to reach possibly false conclusions.

Jbuza wrote:I see no reason than in the abscence of numerous wars, large disasters, and disease outbreaks, that populations of points in the past couldn't have grown at higher rates than in the first thousand years AD.

Your assuming a timeline.

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Jbuza wrote:Sorry! I was frustrated I was an *** in my last post, I removed it.

I have not played with the numbers, I have put in some effort to arrive at the "observed" rate of historical growth. I was suprised to find that what has been "observed" for growth history indicates a far smaller rate of growth than I expected to find.

Can't remember where I found the 2% growth figure, but I came across it more than once, and it was attributed to the UN 1999 study. Seems reasonable given the 1.3% today with contraception, abortion, and the modern technologies that make fewer children feasible.

We cannot leave out that it is also modern medicine which allows more children and mothers to survive pregnancy.

Jbuza wrote:If the past is a more reliable key to the past and we can not make assumptions about past population numbers, than perhaps making assumptions about trait inheritance, natural selection, adaptation, and mutation are iffy.

Genetic analysis is done on living species today. If there is an alternative explanation for the data I am open to suggestions.

Jbuza wrote:I don't understand what mechanism would have reduced population increase 10,000 or 100,000 years ago, that we don't see in the numbers since 1AD.

I don't think we have reliable number before 1500. I could be wrong but numbers going back to 1AD are simply estimates.

Jbuza wrote:Is this another case of evolution claiming to know what happens in the past based on what it's theory expects?

Any estimates going back that far are just that, estimates. No-one is claiming to know. But you are correct in that any estimates before the birth of Christ are iffy and can be skewed to fit preconceptions.

Jbuza wrote:There are some interesting studies on populations of cities in periods before 1AD that seem to be more reliable than entire population numbers, as they are based on writings and archeology.

These numbers only give you data for the local population. They are in turn used to estimate the global population count.

Jbuza wrote:I know that evolution mythology includes cave man and hunter gatherer anscestors, but I don't think there is any evidence that can show that all of mankind lived in caves or hunted and gathered. It would not be very accurate to say that global population growth can be based on what a few tribes and clans like the nomadic people of today might have experienced. Agains observations show that it is likely that poor people with lots of work to do may have had more children than we have today in the "civilized" world

Even if you reject the notion of pre-agricultural societies, I am sure you would agree with me that the number of children a couple needed to have, to maintain the population size was far greater in the past than it has been in the past 500 years.

Altho the medieval data cannot be completely accurate it seems when modern technology first allowed more babies to survive into adulthood the now advanced nations experienced a similar population boom. And as lifespans increased again another population explosion. It appears that fertility rates have decreased in responce.
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/pop-in-eur.html

I think the evidence shows that a culture will lag behind in responce to decreased mortality rates.
What we are now seeing in the third world may be a combination of the two. Decreased mortality and increased longevity both pushing the population growth. UN estimates take this into account when estimating future populations.

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Jbuza wrote:Bgood Wrote
We cannot leave out that it is also modern medicine which allows more children and mothers to survive pregnancy.

Sorry, This isn't true. While it is true that modern medicine has allowed for a higher rate of survival, it doesn't follow that 99% survival rate of 1.5 children is higher than a 30% survival rate of 10 children.

Yes but many mothers would of died during pregnancy, due to younger ages of pregnancy, other complications of birth, and poorer medical knowledge.

Jbuza wrote:I agree that longer life has an impact on population numbers, but it is a fact that Africa, China, and India that have for the recorded history of medical advancement lagged behind Europe, England and the US with respect to longevity and Infant survival have grown at a faster rate than those more “modern” countries.

I beleive I pointed out that the advancement in Europe occurred much earlier and when they occured the population growth did spike. Also advancements in third world nations have come relatively suddenly compared to more developed nations.

Jbuza wrote:The need to have children is more closely associated with high population growth than modern advancements are.

The survivibility of these children can be attributed to modern advancements.

Jbuza wrote:Further high need for children is closely associated with poverty and lack of mechanical advancements.

Perhaps partly so.

Jbuza wrote:IT is likely that as the rest of the world catches up with respect to advancements that we will see a fall off in the rate of population growth.

Agreed.

Jbuza wrote:__
Bgood wrote
Genetic analysis is done on living species today. If there is an alternative explanation for the data I am open to suggestions.

Well since you seem to be in favor of zero population growth for some unknown reason in the past that you seemingly attribute to high death rates and low life expectancy, why wouldn't it be reasonable to assume that any number of organisms that were perhaps well equipped to survive as an adult might have dies from infant mortality, organisms that reproduce at consistently younger ages would have less time for mutations to occour, etc, etc.

Mutations don't accumulate from a long life. They are mostly attributed to cell division. In fact a girl is born with all the eggs she will ever produce. As for the zero population growth, if you allow radiometric dating techniques as evidence submisable for this argument it introduces more evidence in favor of this hypothesys.

Jbuza wrote:My point is that if my study about population growth is full of guess work and is meaningless because the past is a better picture of the past, and that it has no value, than how can you also say that evolutions tales of natural selection, and mutation of the past are not guess work and meaningless, but are the best science of this day.

The analysis is done on living creatures through comparative analysis. Refer to the other threads.

Jbuza wrote:How can natural selection and mutation rates be extrapolated to the past and phylogenetic charts can be drawn up, but reproductive ability, population statistics based on early death and short lives of 1AD to 1500 AD is meaningless chatter.

The charts show divergence, not dates of divergence. The dates of divergence are tentative. Only when comparing to fossil evidence and radiometric dating techniques can we guess at actual divergence dates. The data however does suggest divergence.

Jbuza wrote:You use whichever side of the argument is convenient for you at the time with respect to evolutionary explanation.

As explained before there is only one human population, there are many different species each with their own genome which allows one to do comparative analysis. Refer to this thread below.
http://discussions.godandscience.org/vi ... c&start=90
I understand how you can confuse these as being similar. However the fact remains that current living organisms share characteristics along a continuum. The theory is based on this fact.

Jbuza wrote:__
Bgood Wrote
I could be wrong but numbers going back to 1AD are simply estimates.

Of course they are. That is the nature of talking about the unobserved past. Isn't evolution walking hand in hand with my impugned population studies?

No because as I said before evolution is based on observations of living organisms. Lets stick to the subject of population, questioning evolution does not further your case.

Jbuza wrote:With respect to population of cities.

I agree that this information is more concrete, and that they are used to a certain extent to extrapolate global population. It demonstrates that man wasn't simply living in caves and hunting and gathering in total.

I am sure you would agree that large cities of antiquity were much smaller than many of todays towns.

Jbuza wrote:__
Bgood wrote
I am sure you would agree with me that the number of children a couple needed to have, to maintain the population size was far greater in the past than it has been in the past 500 years.

IT was greater, but I am not sure that it was far greater. I agree survival rates are higher today, but I think the mechanism for population growth we see today is longevity not infant mortality.

Here is a chart showing how drastic the infant mortality rates were in the past.
http://nefertiti.iwebland.com/people/

http://nefertiti.iwebland.com/people/ wrote: .............................................Ancient Egypt | Egypt Today (1) | Uganda (2) Today
Infant mortality (1st yr of life).....30%................. 4.0%.............. 11.1%
Child mortality
(from 1st to 5th birthday)............20%................. 5.1%............. 18.5%
Life expectancy at birth
(years) ...................................20-30 ..................65................... 44
Average age of grown-ups
at death,,,,,..............................30-40 ........................................ 60

This is an paper which plots the maternal mortality rates and their decrease in modern times.
http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/72/1/241S
"From 1937, maternal mortality rates began to decline everywhere, and within 20 y, the intercountry differences had almost disappeared. The decline in maternal mortality rates was so dramatic that current rates for developed countries are between one-fortieth and one-fiftieth of the rates that prevailed 60 y ago."
Here's a general paper on mortality rate and its impact on society.
http://scholar.google.com/url?sa=U&q=ht ... Nowdoc.pdf
"Maternal, neonatal and infant mortality remained high for centuries. But death of a mother or her baby or both was not an unexpected event. Even in the 1500's childbirth was viewed as one of the diseases of women"

Jbuza wrote:While I agree that infant mortality has an impact, I feel the evidence suggests that even at lower rates of survival families may have seen more children survive to the reproductive age of say 15.
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Can you show me the evidence which suggests this?

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Jbuza wrote:Mutations don't accumulate from a long life. They are mostly attributed to cell division. In fact a girl is born with all the eggs she will ever produce.

Not true. Age leads to an increase in mutations. Perhaps we should see ramped up speciation within the human population.

Older Age of Father increases risk of Schizophrenia ... And the older the father,
the more likely his sperm is to carry such mutations. ...

Disease-Causing Genetic Mutations In Sperm Increase With Men's Age
Furthermore, one of the mutations may be increasing the sperm's chances of ...
"Men over age 52 are six times more likely than a 27-year-old to have a child ...

Gene Mutation in Sperm
... that also seem to increase a sperm's chances of fertilizing an egg. ...
"Men over age 52 are six times more likely than a 27-year-old to have a child ...

BabyCentre | Dads: How your age can affect your fertility and your ...
Dads are getting older. • Age and your fertility ... This is because older men
have more sperm with mutations within the DNA in their semen. ...

biologicalClock
In fact, the risk of new mutations - those that haven't shown up in a family
before - is four to five times greater for fathers age 45 and older than for ...

Discover: How Old Is Too Old to Have a Baby?
... the chance of a woman Deirdre's age getting pregnant with her own eggs is ...
Because older sperm tend to have more chromosomal mutations--ranging in ...

FertilityWorld - Age and infertility
It stands to reason, then, that a 35 or 40 year-old egg may have accumulated more
damage due to spontaneous genetic mutation or exposure to chemicals in the ...

American Fertility: Understanding Female Fertility
... and robust and the eggs often contain subtle mutations in their genetic make-up.
... Even when an older woman does conceive, her chances of having a ...

EducationGuardian.co.uk | higher news | The biological clock also ...
... as well as eggs, accumulate genetic mutations as they age, ... Age has a big
impact on the fertility of women and the health of their babies. ...

I stand corrected.
=)

While you do make good points these do not further your argument on population analysis.

Also bacteria have very short life spans yet they seem to have no problem collecting mutations and adapting to environments. In either case, lifespans long or short, mutations do occur.

As for the speciation comment, this would require genetic isolation, and I don't see this occuring anytime soon. Perhaps a genetic drift but not speciation.

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Jbuza wrote:not sure there is to much more to say about population. I feel that past population growth could fluctuate depending on several factors, and near as I can tell you feel population regresses to zero growth.

Zero growth is not just based on population studies. However using population numbers alone it would appear the population rates of the past are indeterminable.

Jbuza wrote:I was trying to point out that theorizing about populations rates of the past is equally concrete with theorizing about mutation rates.

This does not a support your case, as in your point of view you reject the conclusions of mutation rates. But lets say your right a man who lives longer has greater chance for accumulating mutations. So this suggests that mutations occur through time. Lets say in the past people had children earlier.
1st generation 20 years has a child
2nd generation 20 years has a child
3rd generation 20 yeas has a child
4th generation 20 yeas has a child
Now in modern time men have children later.
1st generation 40 years has a child
2nd generation 40 years has a child

Even though there are 2 fewer generations in modern times both situations have 80 years to accumulate genetic mutations. If it appears that mutations occur randomly and at a somewhat constant rate then lifespan does not effect the rate of mutation.

Jbuza wrote:There are many genetic pools of human populations that have reamined pretty isolated, as isolated as one would expect genetic pools capable of interbreeding could be.

Genetic analysis does not show this.

Jbuza wrote:I think that if 150,000 years of evolution and supposed tiny growth rates are proposed by evolution against population extrapolations, than it would be completelky fair to show how evolution is no more known than past population growth rates.

As I said before this conclusion is not reached by extrapolating population numbers as you have done. It is done by comparative analysis of living specimens.
If not then how come there are no fossils of elephants or chickens along with those of Dinosaurs.

Jbuza wrote:I still see no reason to assume that past man wouldn't have been capable of growth rates demonstrated by pre-modern man.

Higher mortality rates for women and children during and shortly after childbirth suggest otherwise.

Jbuza wrote:Great I lost my post. IT was so clever it would have brought a new enlightenment to mankind .

=)

Jbuza wrote:I will summarize, as I am too lazy to go through all that again.
Mutations accumulate. Many mutations are harmful. Birth rate and infant survival together with life expectency could have been a better situation in the past.

Is this just your opinion?

Jbuza wrote:There is lots of information about how mutations effect infant mortality.

But this does not compare to mortality rates at all.
For instance
1 in 5 children in the past did not survive past the age of 3.
1 in 100 mothers did not survive child birth.

Now we have 1 in 50 mothers over 40 giving birth to children with birth defects. Many of whom live long lives due to modern technology. Children who in the past would not have survived are now contributing to the growth of the world's population.

Jbuza wrote:Premature birth is at an all time high in the US even with modern techno.

Premature births in the past would have been more fatal. Many of these children survive, this leads to higher growth rates in the present.

Jbuza wrote:Perhaps it isn't unreasonable to suggest that in the past population growth numbers were higher.

I don't follow your reasoning, please expand on this point.

Jbuza wrote:The Bible indicates much longer life spans in the past.

The bible in this case cannot be introduced as evidenciary support.

Jbuza wrote:I had several links to show the impact of mutations on infant mortality.
Isn't it reasonable to assume that in the past there were fewer harmful mutations in the human population. I think it is from creation.

This is your opinion? Or is it based on empirical evidence.