A graph post for Cohen. Not a canticle for leibowitz.
Ain't she sweet? Our wonderful and youngest daughter Amanda is preparing to leave the nest.
At least she is marrying yet another one of those Christian radicals! My almost son-in-law Dan.
One last post before we go...
Let's review my post of about a year ago that covered the population growth and why the curve and the numbers all fit the Flood scenario and NO WAY fit Darwinist conjectures...
Friday, March 27, 2009
Quick post on population and human genetics
In Six Days
Why 50 Scientists Choose
to Believe in Creation
The above is the title of a publication in which fifty (out of several hundreds associated with the site) presented evidence to explain their belief in a literal six days of creation and a young earth. I will present excerpts from one of those fifty quickly.
James S. Allan, genetics
Dr. Allan is a former senior lecturer in genetics at the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa. He holds a B.S. in agriculture from the University of Natal, an M.S. in agriculture from the University of Stellenbosch and a Ph.D. in genetics from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. He currently serves as an international consultant in the field of dairy cattle breeding.
"As a biologist in the field of population and quantitative genetics, I had believed in the theory of evolution for nearly 40 years. During that period of my life, the long-time requirements of the theory did not really concern me. Chance (genetic drift) and natural selection in response to gene mutation and/or environmental change seemed to be logically acceptable mechanisms for the assumed extent of adaptive radiation.
My research involved using biometrical methods of analysis. I was concerned to predict rates of genetic change as a result of applying artificial selection procedures of varying intensities, based on different kinds and amounts of information. The accuracy of prediction of the rate of genetic change can be assessed theoretically and the results can, in many cases and in the short-term, be checked empirically. The change in genetic merit (and associated phenotypic merit) from one generation to the next is due to changes in the relative frequencies of the underlying genes.
Over all those years, because I accepted the “fact” of evolution, I saw no reason to differentiate in principle between changes in relative gene frequency as a consequence of either short-term or long-term natural selection. To me, these forms of selection resulted in just the one simple principle of change in relative gene frequency, and the essence of the theory of evolution is change in relative gene frequency as a result of genetic drift and of natural selection in response to gene mutation and/or environmental change.
When, at a fairly advanced stage of my career, I became a Christian I began to read the Bible reverently and as intelligently as I was able. At that time most of my reading was focused in the New Testament and, as my main concern was to know more of Christ as my Savior, my opinion concerning the theory of evolution remained unchallenged. I did not, in fact, give it much thought.
One day, after I had been expounding on the universality of DNA as evidence for the theory of evolution, my wife, who had been a Christian much longer than I, asked me whether there was any reason for God to have used other genetic systems. Just one simple question, but it stimulated me to ask myself many more.
Was there any reason for God to have created life-forms on the basis of ABC … PQR … and XYZ as well as DNA? Were that so, would it have influenced my belief in the theory of evolution, or would I have interpreted it as a number of independent origins of life?
Was there any reason why God should not have created all forms of life as “variations on themes” and so have provided the observed orderly degrees of genetic and phenotypic resemblance as evidenced in taxonomic classification? Relatives tend to resemble one another in physical, functional and behavioral characteristics. This is a phenomenon which is basic to the science of genetics. The resemblance is due to the fact that relatives, sharing in the common gene pool of a reproducing population, have genes in common. The closer the relationship, the greater is the proportion of genes in common and, therefore, the greater is the degree of resemblance. The theory of evolution assumes a common origin for all forms of life and, therefore, infers that species, genera, families, orders, etc. are genetically related. They all do carry some genes with similar structure and function, yes, but did this imply genetic relationship in the normal, within-species sense, and was one at liberty to assume a common origin for all forms of life? Was there any reason why God should have created different species, genera, etc. in completely different ways and with completely different genes?"
Why, indeed? Dr. Allan goes into depth in the article, which I hope you do read. He presents evidence that requires millions of years for a prehuman chimp-like ancestor to evolve into a human, if indeed something like that ever happened. But allow me to present his portion of population analysis in which he extrapolates the human population back to a beginning point using both genetic and mathmatical training in the process:
"According to the 23rd General Population Conference in Beijing in 1997, the total human population of the earth in that year was assessed to be in the region of 6,000 million, showing that there has been a remarkable increase over the past 200 years. Estimates of the population numbers back to the year 1500 and a prediction for the year 2080 are given in the following table.
| Year | 1500 | 1650 | 1800 | 1900 | 1950 | 1997 | 2080 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| No. (millions) | 300 | 550 | 1,000 | 1,700 | 2,500 | 6,000 | 10,000 |
Extrapolation further into the past gives the following approximate numbers:
| Year | –2000 | –1000 | 0 | 1000 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| No. (millions) | 1 | 50 | 100 | 250 |
I find these figures to be in close agreement with what one would expect from the biblical specification after the Flood in 2344 B.C. The assumed existence of thousands of millions of “prehumans” is both physically and scripturally unrealistic."
I believe it is obvious that a non-linear population growth is represented by the human race. Fits and starts have happened as rapid population growth probably occurred during the great warming period but plagues and wars and the little ice age hampered populations in some areas. Overall, the human population growth estimates take us back to around 2500 BC, which is about 4,500 years ago. Based upon the way the human population has been recorded to have expanded during the last few hundred years it is astonishing that anyone could believe that there has been a steadily expanding population for hundreds of thousands of years, let alone millions! No Sigmoidal curvature yet, that is for sure! (Although the United Nations chart predicts the sigmoidal curve to show up in the future).
No one looking at a chart of human population growth would categorize this as a linear chart. Nor would anyone suggest that we have reached stasis. This kind of growth is found in populations that are relatively young and did not begin long ago. Those of you who love math have to know this, I cannot imagine how you can ignore these kinds of numbers and believe that humanity has been around for any significant period of time.
Population growth is just one clue that the Biblical Flood absolutely took place somewhere in the neighborhood of 2500 BC and there are plenty of other indicators. Next post will go into more detail.
With thanks to the Guardian and Radar O'Reilly, linear, cubic, exponential and sigmoidal curves:
Exponential, linear and cubic curves
A sigmoidal curve.
"As O'Reilly points out, in the end those curves always flatten out. They have to; there just aren't enough people, aliens, atoms, quarks to keep growing exponentially all the time. Growth always slows."
But growth has not yet slowed because the human population just hasn't had much time to grow yet.
~
Compare the actual chart of human population growth and expect growth to the sigmoidal curve and you see that scohen must have missed or forgotten this post. No worries.
Now I may not post anything else for Sunday because our daughter Amanda is graduating college this Sunday! Art Scholarship all through and it will be so great to see her receive her diploma! Then she is going to go and marry this Dan fellow at the end of the month and live forty minutes away. Far enough to have things to themselves most of the time, close enough to visit easily and regularly. Just about as far away as our other daughters (probably 45 and 35 minutes each and both of them have our grandkids!) and we are really happy family stays close.
All three boys (men from 18 to 26) are living at home finishing or about to start college, Yikes, so that is right, we get to see Nathan graduate from high school and he has made the honor roll every single semester so he ought to be getting a few awards, too.
SO I have one artist, one not-sure-yet, one auto mechanic, two teachers and a paralegal working in County government on my kid list. That's right, I am a real guy. Nobody pays me to write this blog, I do it to love people.
Woolf and creeper and schohen and anonymous of various stripes and Angel and Jim and Tim and Amy and chaos and lava and canucklehead and the rest of you commenters, I poke you and prod you and challenge you while providing content for my students and follwers in the church/Christian community. I figure if a doper hard-drinking rock and roll singer with the vocabulary of a sailor and an eye for women could get saved and turned all around it could happen to you.
Life has been interesting. I could be officially labeled handicapped and receive a stipend. I could feel sorry for myself and all the pills I take and all the pain I deal with. I see myself get too mouthy or overstate a point and then work on pulling myself back. I am not here to hound you Darwinists, I am here to save your butts! People like creeper, who I scold and argue with are part of my blog family. I worried when Dan S fell off the end of the world. I miss IAMB not coming back often, even though I know some of those guys make fun of me in other places. So what?
This year I was thoroughly involved in politics in Indiana, meeting some of the actual power behind the power in some cases, meeting candidates, becoming friends with some and detesting others. I saw the various and sundry Potter schemes being hatched and mostly pulling out a win. And yet, one candidate who was an obvious front guy for money people and Indianapolis string-pullers attended a local church just after the election (that he won) and while there at church he got saved. He became a Christian!!! Just that one thing makes so much of the hard work and sweat and money and time worthwhile.
One of my new friends is head of the local Right To Life agency and he jumps up and down and gushes when on occasion some young lady is talked out of having an abortion. His joy is genuine and he loses money doing this. Another new friend is investigating how a plan to build a highway may well be a con and is risking his future in politics to get to the bottom of it all.
To quote a friend who quoted an author who quoted a philosopher so by this time it is mostly me:
Public convictions are convictions that I want other people to think I believe, even though I really may not believe them.
Public figures are notorious for stating convictions for the purpose of creating an impression rather than communicating truth Television comedian Stephen Colbert says the quality to which these statements aspire is truthiness. They may not be true, but they sound true; they allow the speaker to impress people with his or her sincerity.
This has been going on for a long time. We give politicians a hard time for replacing truth with truthiness, but I have an inner politician who puts in overtime, and his main job is crafting and communicating public convictions to help me get what I want. I have to keep an eye on my "publicist" to make sure he First, thank God I did not go off and tell even one-third of what I found out about local politics as a result of being heavily involved in the 2010 Indiana primaries. Part of this is because of a journalistic instinct not to print anything you cannot either attribute or prove. Second would be a Christian urge to give someone the benefit of the doubt. Thirdly, the admonition that begins, "When in Rome..." applies to a small extent. Discernment is of more value than the satisfaction of whacking someone upside the head with a questionable mallet.
Truthiness:
Sometimes being part of a community of faith increases the temptation to pretend to believe what we really don’t. One of the beliefs espoused by my church is not in accordance with my beliefs, but since I do not consider it to be doctrinal, I just let it go. But not before my wife and I had a sit-down with the two top pastors (we are part of staff) to let them know that we were willing to avoid the subject in teaching mode but in personal mode would defend that position and they agreed that we could all disagree peacefully.
That would be a public conviction. One of the dangers of preaching is that it tempts preachers to pretend they have no doubts and to settle for truthiness. Or that they preach the truthiness their congregation wants to hear rather than the truth they know in their hearts would cost them a few members and maybe a few dollars in the collection plate as well.
Private convictions are convictions that I sincerely think I believe, but it turns out they may be fickle. They may be illusory.
We have the Private convictions we THINK we believe. Sometimes we really do not know what we actually believe in our hearts until we are challenged. Will I fight to protect a friend to my own personal danger of loss? Will I indeed give my life to protect my family?
But Peter thought he would fight for Jesus to the death and then ran away from accusations around the fire in fear...and then found his personal crisis of beliefs. Peter had Public and Private convictions that adhered to Christ, but...it was AFTER Christ died and Peter was filled with the Spirit of God that his Private convictions matched his Public convictions.
This concept leads to a third level of convictions, and these are the ones that really matter. Core convictions are revealed by our daily actions, by what we actually do. They are what might be called the “mental map.” Every one of us has one of these mental maps about the way we think things really are and the way life rally works.
I believe if I touch fire I will get burned. I believe coffee helps me wake up. I believe in gravity. This is part of my mental map, so I don’t have to work hard to behave in a way that is congruent with gravity. I don’t have to remind myself not to jump out of a ten-story building. On the other hand, if I wanted to hurt myself, I would jump off the building. My actions are always the result of my purposes and my core convictions. Gravity is a part of my mental map about the way things really are, and therefore my actions are always congruent with my belief in gravity. This means I will have to become a student of my own behavior to find out what I really believe.
Peter had discovered his Core convictions were not what he thought they were. but afterwards, seeing the risen Christ and being filled with His Spirit, Peter would die for those convictions. That proves that he really did change. Peter's convictions ran from the surface all the way to the core!
We have Core convictions and they determine what we actually DO. This is what we call true integrity. If you are the same man at home, at work, at school and goofing around with family or friends then you are a real deal.
Some of you call me a liar and yet I do not lie on this blog. I will not lie on this blog. I must not lie on this blog or elsewhere or I am untrue to myself, to you and to God. You often say this when you disagree with me but you do not understand. Lying does me no good. Only truth wins the day.
Most of you must know that this blog comes from my heart and my mind and my soul. It serves as a source of laughter and lampooning for some just as the Adventures of Robin Hood starring Errol Flynn/Olivia DeHaviland/Claude Rains and Basil Rathbone begot Men in Tights in its own way as well as The Princess Bride and other such lampoons and spoofs. That is fine. I will be Robin and you be the Sheriff of Nottingham or the Sir Guy of Gisbourne. Let us see what happens when Richard the Lionheart arrives to take over his kingdom, shall we?
May we all be at the public level what we are at the core.