I was watching some videos today and was thinking about young earth creationism. It was easily absurd to me to even consider it as true. I thought about an easy way to falsify the claim.
Most YEC's are bible literalistic. If the bible true and they place Adam and Eve as the first two people from which all human life is formed, then we have gone from 2 people to 7 billion in a matter of (at most) 10,000 years.
I'm hoping someone can point me to an essay or a mathematical formula to show the absurdity of the claim. I haven't been able to find one myself, and as a person with a degree in math, feel kind of silly that I'm not sure how to even formulate the equation. (However I think it must be a fairly complex equation and I can't even comprehend where to begin, given that life expectancy rates rise over time, as birth rates (generally) decrease over time, at least in some cultures) If possible can someone use a general formula to determine the birth rates needed to go from 2 to 7 billion people in 10,000 years, or a general formula to solve for time to see how long it would take to go from 7 billion people back to 2, using random but realistic birth and mortality rates?
As I write this and continue to browse various sites I came across this photo, which conveniently enough dates back to 10,000 BC (which given the time frame I'd let the YEC's slide on a mere 2000 years). Still has the world population around 4 million.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wo...g_scale%29.png
I'm going to x-post this in SMP because someone there might have an answer, but the religious aspect is what made me think of the problem to begin with and I have never seen anyone discuss it, so it was posted here first.