The Earth cant be billions of years old...

There aren't 10 billion people in the world, it's almost 6.4 billion. by the way the reason why their aren't as many humans as possible, is simply due to life expectancy, due to wars and disease. maybe if you stopped trying to milk this thread, stop reading into religion, and read some of these posts, then you'd understand. I'm sorry for having to come off like a jerk, but it seems like some people just refuse to listen/understand. Science had proven alot, religion hasn't.

Thank you thats what ive been trying to tell him!

Rocks have been found on earth dating back to 3.5 billion years.





pubs.usgs.gov...

Also, just check, say every 100 years, what was the average lifespan? The infant mortality rate?

AD, have you ever ridden a bicycle before? First you start slow because you dont have enough power, then, when you reach certain force/velocity you start picking up speed easily. We are like that. Human population is sorta like that. At first human just dont have enough knowledge/tech ect... to survive or maintain healthy living and they couldnt provide enough material support from the envirment so they had to take from others in wars. But, when that "threshhold" (lets say for example- the age of reasoning) is finally reached... Boom! We just picked up speed...

Keep in mind while doing these population calculations, that the infant mortality rate has been steadily decreasing. Less than 100 years ago it was almost a given that babies born prematurely would not survive. Also in that same small time frame, we had not way to defeat or even fight many childhood diseases. If we were still giving birth in a cave somewhere, how many babies would really survive?

Also besides war, famine & disease humans used to be a prey animal. We haven't always been at the top of the food chain. And, biologically speaking, we don't really deserve to be there now. There are many predators that are much more powerful than us. If we had never developed weapons & tools, how many humans do you think we be crawling around the surface of this planet?

There are many factors that need to be considered in your ideas, but your basic argument makes sense. Now you need to start analyizing the details.

early humans were like monkeys. They got the a$$es kicked by just about everything out there. we almost went extinct then!

[Edited on 13-5-2004 by masterofpuppets]

AD5673, first off you have to realize that in all the millions of years that humans have lived, yes I believe that we have been around far longer than science tells us we have been on Earth in our current form, there have been many rapid climate changes, and major disasters that put civilizations back to the stone age probably several times.

One of the thigns the Vedic scriptures say is exactly this, that there were many civilizations in the past that were destroyed, and some of them by atomic weapons. If you don't want to believe it its fine, but it is in the texts.

"The Vedic scriptures are the spiritual literature of the ancient Indian culture. A huge collection of books written in the Sanskrit language, they include material (mundane), religious (ritualistic), and spiritual (monotheistic) knowledge. The word "Vedic" is derived from the Sanskrit word veda, meaning knowledge or revelation. According to Vedic history, these scriptures were written down about 5000 years ago. This date is not accepted in modern Indology, but the date is in fact not very important, because the knowledge in these scriptures existed long before it was written down.

The Veda is understood by simply accepting what the Veda says about itself. This Vedic self-understanding may be amazing or even unbelievable to the modern reader, but the different opinions about the origin and history of the Vedic scriptures are due to a fundamental difference in world views between the followers of the Veda and modern mundane scholars.

According to the indological world view, "Vedic scripture" doesn't even exist. Modern Indology says that the collection of books mentioned in this article is not a consistent body of knowledge but a mere accumulation of texts from different sources. Indology claims that they were written over a long period, starting after the hypothetical Aryan invasion into the Indian subcontinent, about 1000 to 1500 B.C., when the mixture of tribes formed a "Vedic" culture. If we believe this scenario, then it is natural to think that the Indian scriptures are a mass of unsystematic, mythological texts. "

Excerpts taken from.
www.iskcon.org...


Second, what you say about fossils tells me that you don't know what a fossil is. A fossil is the impression or remains of a plant, or animal that existed in the past and can be found in the Earth's crust, sometimes they are found embedded in sedimentary rocks, and rocks can surely last for millions of years.

Now i am not an archeologist, so do not take what I just said written in stone, but I think I am close enough.

AD5673,

It is very good that you seem to be a visonary and I expect somewhat young? You said from the beggining that you thought this all up and that is very good! Now get the books out and pull up google and research what you have thought about and come back and speak with us again. Never try and prove something without proof. Its all good to speculate but never try and argue with limited or no facts.

X

going back more than a century you have the crusades, napoleon, expansionism of european countries, the US civil war, the mexican civil war... i just came up with all of those just off my head. also, there were the revolutions in russia.

also, as people have said: a big part of it is modern medicine. the average lifespan of an acient greek/roman was 22 years. now what's the average person? 50-some more years. the people who would survive the wars would come home and have sex. what else would you do if you were away from your significant other for months or years. hence the "baby boomer" generation. and this goes back to medicine as well, since more people would survive the wars.

also also, as people said the age of the earth does not determine how long humans have been around. humanity has only existed for about one million years. think of everything before then. when the earth was still a molten ball of lava, then the primordial soup life came from, then everything from then until humanity.

[Edited on 5/14/2004 by cmdrkeenkid]

Yes it does. I am religous! And i belive in God and that the Bible tells the truth. I'm not saying that the Bbile's not edited and that lots of thing were changed... but i know Gos is real! And the Bible tells of how Earth was created.

just like to point out that this is an 'accepted' fact, but not necessarily a fact. Although I don't disagree with the scientists' in this case, let me play devil's advocate for a moment.

based on all of our scientists' best guesses/intrepretations of the data they collect through different methods of dating rocks - there is an agreed upon conclusion that the results of said tests indicate an age of 3.5 billion (or whatever the case may be).

These conclusions may be perfectly rational and logical based on the data, but... if there are hidden variables/problems with our procedures that are unknown - everyone would be using faulty logic and reaching the same incorrect answers.


the only certain fact is - no one has ever sat by and watched the entire 3.5 billion year existence of the rocks in question.

While you are right to believe in God, you really shouldn't put so much stock in the words of the bible being absolute truth. The bible was written by man - inspired by God, but written by man. There are many lessons to learn from the bible, and I don't discount that. Just pointing out the inherrent fallability of the works of man. Take the "facts" of the bible with a grain of salt (or maybe even a five pound bag).

and none of us actually sat there and saw you write this post, but there is evidence (in the post, and my quote of the post) that it did indeed happen.

just throwing your own logic back at you, no offense.

The Bible does not claim that it was sent down from god in its entirety. Instead, it claims to be written by both God and men, and written in a way that perfectly says whatever God wanted it to say. So the bible says what God intended. You shouldn’t pick and choose to believe what you want in the bible; all of it is the word of god.


2 Peter 1:19-21

Prophecy of Scripture

And we have the word of the prophets made more certain, and you will do well to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet's own interpretation. For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

Going back to the idea that there would be many billions more people if humans had existed for a million years...

1. Hunter/Gatherers require small populations and large territories in order to survive. This is true today; it was true 100,000 years ago. During the ice ages, the planet would have been able to support only a minimum population of hunter/gatherer humans.

2. Genetical evidence suggests that humans may have almost become extinct about 70,000 years ago. I've seen estimates that the human population at that time was between 2,000 and 10,000 people. This article has info about this:
news.bbc.co.uk...

3. As many people have pointed out, technical and medical advances account for the exponential growth in human population over the last 200 years. Some of the most important advances have been in farming. Before modern farming methods, the planet couldn't feed more than a billion people at a time.

4. Many people who believe in God and the Bible also believe in evolution and a very old universe. These beliefs are not necessarily incompatible. It depends on whether you allow the writers of the Bible, who were human, the right to err. The Scriptures can be inspired and still have inaccuracies. People spoke from the knowledge and experience of the times they lived in.

A good friend of mine says that he is a Christian because he has faith in God, not because he has faith in man. So, in the cases where the Bible has a factual err, he attributes the err to the human who wrote it down, and it doesn't disturb his faith in the least bit.

Sorry didnt read the whole thread - but in economics they teach a litte theory - called Malthus - a doddering economist who claimed we would all starve - and was proved wrong - this is gross miscalculation in the same nature. The time line of this planet is so immense trying to play population growth games is silly if you really want to know its age.

Ok if you want to believe its flat - sure - then the good people the other side of the pond arnt there.

Ok you dont believe in dinosaurs - so the oil people guzzle in their tanks is some manna from the gods?

nuff said

Off for a pint - any realists joining me?

I am always amazed at the capacity of people to blindly believe a book that is supposed to be compiled of texts written thousands of years ago by people who claim they spoke to/for God. Today people that claim they speak to/for God are typically thought of as insane.

I like to refer to it as faith, some have it some don’t. You are certainly entitled to believe anything you like because god gave everyone freewill. However this will be my last religious post in this forum because it wasn’t intended to be a theological debate.