I am attempting to demonstrate to a friend that the Earth is young, but I am not a scientist and cannot discuss such things as the fossil record with any authority. What other evidence might I be able to us to help him to see that the Earth is young, as the Bible teaches?

A.

One of the easiest-to-understand, yet strongest, arguments for a young Earth comes from the field of human population statistics. According to United States Census Bureau, the Earth currently is home to a little more than six billion people. The human population grows when more people are born than die. According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the current growth rate of the world population is about 1.7%. This means for every 100 people, 1.7 are added each year. Using these data along with historical records, we know that the human population on Earth doubles approximately every 40 years. With this information in mind, we can ask two questions: (1) What would the growth rate need to be in order to get today’s population from the eight individuals on Noah’s ark; and (2) What “should” the population be? Calculating that the Noahic flood was approximately 4,500 years ago, we would need only a population growth of about 0.5%. Factor in things like war, famine, and diseases, and I think you easily can see how the population reached the 6 billion figure we have today.

If the Earth really is 4.5 billion years old (as evolutionists claim), and if people have been around for 3-4 million years, then what should the population be? Let’s suppose that humankind started with just two individuals (we will call them Adam and Eve for the sake of our argument). And suppose that they lived on the Earth 1 million years ago (even though evolutionists contend we have been here longer, we will use a conservative figure). Allowing for wars, famine, disease, etc., there would be more than 1 x 10^5,000 people on the Earth today! That number is a 1 followed by 5,000 zeros. Yet the entire Universe (at an estimated size of 20 billion light-years in diameter) would hold only 1 x 10¹⁰⁰ people. Evolutionary time does not explain the current population. Population statistics provide additional verification of the accuracy of the Scriptures regarding matters related to time.

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