Population Growth Squared

A question was posed on my Facebook feed concerning the timeline of events in Genesis and our current world population. It can occur in many forms. An example would be , “Were Noahites given the capability to breed 10 times as quickly as rabbits?” The use of sarcastic humor in the question may be off-putting. I’m sure the questioner didn’t necessarily mean to compare human families and the raising of children with rabbit reproduction rates. The value of the sarcastic humor, though, is clear. How could it be possible for 8 individuals to repopulate the world in the short amount of time described by the events in Genesis?

By Unknown author – http://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/kircher1679/0059, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=35102210

Allow me to introduce a quote from a man who I met while I was a professor at the US Air Force Academy. He was an invited speaker who came every year to make a presentation to the cadets regarding population growth and natural resources. I disagreed with his politics and his view of population and natural resource use. And tried to stop the invitation (I was overruled by my superiors). However, his insight into the application of math to specific and ordinary situations is incredibly useful.

 “The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.”

Albert Bartlett (March 21, 1923 – September 7, 2013)
Emeritus Professor of Physics
University of Colorado at Boulder

If you’ve ever heard the story of the rice (or wheat) being used on a chess-board, you know the problem of exponential growth. The story (at least, this form of it) has a farmer who did a great service for an emperor. The emperor wanted to reward the farmer and told him to name his reward. The farmer stated, “I am a simple man. I would be honored if you would pay me in rice. We are a people who enjoy the game of chess. If you will simply take a chess board and place one piece of rice on the first square. On the next square, double the number of rice in the previous square. Continue to do this until you reach the end, doubling the rice from the previous square each time. I will be satisfied with that.”

The emperor thought this too small a price. But, he did not want to seem rude, so he agreed to the simple farmer’s request.[1]

By McGeddon – Own work – This file was derived from:  Empty wooden chessboard.jpg:(public domain), CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=48783038

Things start out OK. But, by the time you reach the second row, the final square in that row will have 2¹⁶ rice pieces, or 32,768 pieces of rice. It gets better (or worse) more quickly (and yes, that is a correct way to describe this). End of the third row, 2²⁴ = 8,388,608. Ready for one more row? End of the fourth row,
2³⁶ = 34,359,738,368. We are not half-way through the board yet.

Let’s cut to the chase. The final square on the board would require 9,223,372,036,854,780,000.00 Yeah. That’s too big for me to understand, too. The total number of rice needed to fill the board would be greater than the total world production of rice. One person reported it would be 2,000 times the current world rice production.

A lot of rice. And in only 64 steps. All because the amount grew exponentially.

Just like population.

That brings us to the question of “how long?”. Or, if you prefer, “how many?” How many people would be present, say at the tower of Babel?

Again, let’s go straight to the answer. If the Tower of Babel event occurred 106 years after the flood event[2], we can calculate a potential world population. The truthful answer to “How many people?” is “We don’t know”. Calculations depend on the growth rate. However, we can guess. And, some guesses are better than others. The best guess will be based on a reasonable (or defensible) growth rate for the population at that time.

A growth rate of 5% (very modest) would have 1,602 people at the Tower.

If the growth rate were 10%, the number of people at the Tower would be 321,078. Yeah. That’s a big difference. But, it get’s even bigger with much smaller changes in growth rate.

To change from 10% to just 11% growth rate results in almost 1 million at the Tower.

If the growth rate is 12%, the population at the Tower is over 2.5 million.

15% growth is 64 million.

64 million. Is that how many people were there in that place at the Tower of Babel event?

Very small adjustment to the growth rate results in very significant changes to the calculation of the population. It is not unreasonable there may have been over a million people at the tower of Babel.

---

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheat_and_chessboard_problem

[2] James Ussher, The Annals of the World, trans. Larry and Marion Pierce (Green Forest, AR: Master Books, 2003), p. 22.

Is He?

What if God really were omniscient? What if He really did possess the attribute of being ultimately knowledgeable?

What if God really were omnipotent? What if this God we proclaim might actually be ultimately powerful?

---

Before you fire up your keyboard for a strong retort, let me request a moment of forbearance to develop a point.

---

A God who is ultimate in knowledge, power, and presence would be able to transmit information that was extreme in its clarity and perfect in sufficiency. You should pause and consider what the words clear and sufficient confess.

Therefore, since The One True God is omnipotent, omniscience, and omnipresent, His self-revelation is more than just useful. It is ultimately authoritative in our lives. We cannot claim it is too hard to understand. We cannot hide our naked understanding behind the fig-leaf of laziness. Our lack of knowledge of what His Word clearly states is not His fault.

Got it?

Two quick applications:

1. Understanding human conditions and needs:

God’s Word isn’t made better by man’s addition of worldly wisdom. God’s three-fold revelation: the creation, The Bible, and The Incarnation (Jesus Christ) doesn’t need you or I or any other self-proclaimed expert to correct or fill in the gaps. We cannot add anything to the Truth revealed.

Since this has always been true, why do we keep acting like it isn’t?

Please don’t rush to address what I haven’t stated. Yes, God has given us intellect and ability to study the creation and learn things about it and then use it in amazing ways. I am not claiming that electrons can’t exist because they aren’t mentioned in the Bible. Nor would I claim the internal combustion engine shouldn’t be used because we can’t find it in the Old or New Testament. I am grateful for and an avid user of electricity. It’s not in the Bible either.

God has given us skill in wisdom in understanding our own condition and nature. We can study humans and learn from and about them. But, we cannot add to or update what the Bible already clearly states about humanity and our nature, as well as the prescription for fixing that nature.

Fragment of the Dead Sea Scrolls – the Minor Prophets. First column (DJD col. 8) contains Micah 4:6-5:4(5)a; second Column (DJD col. 9) contains Micah 5:4(5)b-[6:4] (DJD 8, pp. 40-43).

2. Understand the “time and seasons”.

The God who has ultimate knowledge and ultimate power provided tools within His revelation for the created beings to understand, use, and benefit from.

Then God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night, and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years;

Genesis 1:14 NASB

These tools included both the revelation of the cosmos and specific revelation given in the Law and history of His interactions with His creation. Specifically, with the people He called out to represent Him. The received very specific knowledge and were expected to understand.

“Even the stork in the sky Knows her seasons; And the turtledove and the swift and the thrush Observe the time of their migration; But My people do not know The ordinance of the LORD.

Jeremiah 8:7 NASB

Within this revelation there were very precise and specific information to understand the times and seasons. The most important being the coming of the promised Messiah. The Jewish people longed for and looked for the coming of this deliverer. Yet, when He came, the leaders acted like they were unable to know it was Him.

But He replied to them, “When it is evening, you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red.’ “And in the morning, ‘There will be a storm today, for the sky is red and threatening.’ Do you know how to discern the appearance of the sky, but cannot discern the signs of the times?

Matthew 16:2-3 NASB

We need to stop acting like God’s Word isn’t clear and sufficient. One more reason why:

What if there were specific and clear revelation that would allow us to determine the “signs of the times” and we blinded ourselves to them by claiming that God’s Word wasn’t clear enough? Did that help the Scribes and Pharisees?

If you are struggling with an answer, let me suggest you may be more Pharisaical than you realize.

Oh yeah. And in the department of “in case you were interested”, this is a more important use of the question/phrase “Is He Worthy?” than the popular song.