…and this is a 
Which makes this video very, very smathy.
That's Carl Baugh, by the way, who appears regularly on the Trinity Broadcast Network to teach viewers about creationism. It's a good program to watch (I do, now and then) if you want to see how flinking bugnuts insane young earth creationists can be.
This particular episode has all the standard tropes. They bring on a guest gomer, and they go on and on about his credentials — this one is a 'prominent mathematician' who teaches at a high school and part time at a trade school. They puff him up good; creationists really want the Voice of Authority, which is why so many of them chase after bogus degrees…it's for the window dressing.
Then they do a lot of mutual backslapping, where they tell each other how skeptical and scientific they are, and in this case, bray about how mathematics is the language of science (which is true) and how they are going to look critically at the actual data using objective mathematics.
Then they "crunch the numbers." I think that's creation-speak for "diddle the books."
All the guy does is plug numbers into the standard formula for compound interest to calculate the expected number of people in populations after a certain period of time. Seriously. I tried it, and got pretty much the same numbers he did. You can play the same game with his Biblical scenario in a little more detail and calculate populations at various times in history: the world population was about 150,000 at the time of Alexander the Great, 600,000 when Jesus was born, 5 billion when I was born. As usually happens with these kinds of bogus calculations, our smath professor needs to use an invalid formula and apply it inappropriately to get numbers that only match at the beginning and end of the time period he is examining, but are so low as to be laughable at the earliest times in his history, and that don't match up at all over periods where we have good census data.
You might also wonder where he got his growth rate of 0.456%. He made it up. It happens to be the number that, assuming a starting population of 8 4500 years ago, you get a final population of 6.5 billion now.
Leaving death out of his calculations is a tiny omission that makes even that fudged number wrong.
I stand corrected — his growth rate, imaginary as it is, consolidates birth rates minus death rates, so it still works with non-immortals.
Physical Science
Comments
Posted by: uberllama42 | September 1, 2009 10:11 AM
I saw this video a couple of weeks ago, and tried to point out what I thought was the most basic fallacy in the video. I discovered that it's better not to argue with people in the comments of YouTube videos. There are too many stupid YouTubers out there.
Posted by: Janine, OMnivore | September 1, 2009 10:12 AM
...the world population was about 150,000 at the time of Alexander the Great, 600,000 when Jesus was born, 5 billion when I was born.
Teacher! Um...teacher! Did not India, China and the Americas each contain more people then that at those given times?
Posted by: spondee | September 1, 2009 10:13 AM
Trinity Broadcasting is located on 15th here in NYC. The building used to be a vaudeville era performance space that had been maintained. It was a beautiful theatre and a great place to work. And now this...... At least all the other theatres that closed in NYC the last few years became condos or dorms. That I can stomach, barely.
Posted by: Geds | September 1, 2009 10:14 AM
Leaving death out of his calculations is a tiny omission that makes even that fudged number wrong.
Bear in mind, people never actually die. Their souls are just transmogrified and whatnot...
My favorite example of terrible math was from this guy who claimed that if evolution were actually true then there'd be more humans on Earth than atoms in the universe. His methodology was to assume humans evolved a million years ago then double the population size every thirty years. I don't think he accounted for death, either, now that I think about it.
Other things he didn't account for included the fact that there's absolutely no such thing as a birth rate that doubles the human population every generation, modern humans have been around significantly less than a million years, and the fact that the Earth couldn't possibly hold that many people even if we wanted to. But, y'know, other than that he was spot on.
I do like the idea of "smath," though. Because that sort of crap is always followed up or prefaced by a, "See, those stupid scientists can't possibly be right. I'm so much smarter than they are."
Posted by: Walton
|
September 1, 2009 10:14 AM
I wonder if Kent Hovind used Smath to calculate his tax returns? :-)
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | September 1, 2009 10:17 AM
I wonder if they've heard of bible masturbating lesbians?
Posted by: Bob L | September 1, 2009 10:18 AM
So in the creation-tard universe there is no illness or famine? No wonder they get in a twist about Global Warming.
Posted by: Kobra | September 1, 2009 10:18 AM
"...and unfortunately, in many science settings, [skepticism] does not exist you're not allowed to question certain amounts of Darwinian litany."
He's full of shit. Scientists, even PZ Myers, question evolution all the time! The only reason they don't disbelieve in it is because the evidence is solid and the theory is sound. There isn't a lack of criticism, there's only a lack of flaws. Why are people so fucking stupid?
Posted by: rob | September 1, 2009 10:18 AM
5 out of 4 creationists have poor math skillz.
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
|
September 1, 2009 10:19 AM
Now, if my bank would just allow me to use Smath so I could build up my retirement account...
Posted by: Kobra | September 1, 2009 10:21 AM
@9: Haha you win.
@10: Oh, how lucky I would be if my withdrawals never depleted the funds from my bank account. :D
Posted by: JPC | September 1, 2009 10:22 AM
Idiots.
Posted by: McCorvic
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September 1, 2009 10:24 AM
Just to give him more benefit of the doubt than the guy even remotely deserves does anyone have a copy of this "smath book" the guy claims to have gotten that .495% rate from?
I'm not a scientist and far from know everything about evolution and the arguments the creationist come up with, but every "argument" that Twiddle-Dee and Twidlde-Dum came up with here were so obviously wrong that I almost wet myself laughing.
Really now, do they honestly think science claims that "humans popped up everywhere on Earth all at once"? Guh...
Posted by: Becca Stareyes
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September 1, 2009 10:26 AM
Technically speaking, I think you could get away with computing a function that folds the birth and death rates together into a net growth rate.
On the other hand, you need to show that your model works. I remember taking a Mathematical Biology class. We mentioned exponential functions, but briefly before we started talking about carrying capacity and the idea that 'an environment cannot support an infinite number of people'. The next simplest model is something called a logistic curve, which is nearly exponential at first, but levels off towards a growth rate of zero -- if too many people are born, more people starve, the death rate goes up, and equilibrium is preserved.
Later on, in a Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos course I took as a grad student, the idea of taking a population model and futzing with the carrying capacity to change the equilibrium was mentioned to explain insect population explosions. So, as humans get better tech, we can grow and distribute more food more efficiently, we're moving the carrying capacity of the Earth for humans up. So a logistic model doesn't work as well without modeling the change in carrying capacity.
As PZ said, if you just have two data points (8 and 6.5 billion), you can draw all the curves you want through those. What tells a good model from a bad one is how it fits the other data points you have.
Posted by: Longstreet63 | September 1, 2009 10:27 AM
I think he must be right about those ancient populations. After all, we know how those antiquarian histories exaggerate numbers. Alexander the Great's army must have been about 12 guys. They just pretended to be thousands to scare Darius' forty soldiers.
And now it is obvious why there were only 300 at Thermopylae--that was the entire population of Sparta!
After all, if we know Noah built the biggest wooden ship in history by himself, why couldn't the six Egyptians available build the Great Pyramid?
There weren't actually any Chinese until much later. That's why they aren't mentioned in the Bible. If any documentation exists, remember that no ancient text can be trusted. Satan, you know.
Posted by: DuckPhup | September 1, 2009 10:27 AM
Let us not forget Dr. Malthus. There cannot be more people than there are resources to sustain them. If there ARE more people than can be sustained by the resources, very bad things happen.
Posted by: Guido | September 1, 2009 10:27 AM
The translation is full of mistakes too.
"Sciencia"
LOL
Posted by: Chris | September 1, 2009 10:28 AM
Hah, using creationist maths about half the world's entire population fought at the battle of Marathon. Presumably, the other half were women who stayed at home. The first world war!
Posted by: Jérôme ^ | September 1, 2009 10:31 AM
Let's see... I'm sure I'm at least as good at math as this guy. Let's plug some numbers into the formula pop(n) = 6.5×10^9 / (1.00456^(2000-n)).
pop(1900) = 4 billion (nonsense, it was 1.6 billion)
pop(1500) = 670 million (plausible)
pop(1000) = 70 million (was 700 million)
pop(0) = 700 thousand (was 200 million)
And amusingly:
pop(-4004) = 0.008 people!
Epic fail.
Posted by: Sigmund | September 1, 2009 10:31 AM
They take a rather hilarious line of reasoning when they talk about the problem of who built the pyramids (their approach is that ALL the pyramid builders worked on each stone in turn - and since you couldn't get hundreds of thousands of builders around a single pyramid stone therefore this proves it must have been built by far fewer numbers!)
The whole numbers increase argument can be defeated by pointing out that nearly every species produces far more offspring than is sustainable. The bacteria in any one individuals gut grow at a sufficient rate to swamp the planet in a matter of weeks - but it doesn't happen due to high death rates and competition for food and living resources - as is the case for all organisms.
Posted by: Longstreet63 | September 1, 2009 10:32 AM
If that flat birthrate is correct, there must be millions of native people living in the Amazon rain forest by now.
And it's good to hear that the Black Plague didn't reduce the population.
Probably because they had no evil vaccines.
Posted by: Jim | September 1, 2009 10:33 AM
@15 Longstreet63
I cannot stop laughing over your comment. Very funny.
Posted by: Personal Failure | September 1, 2009 10:34 AM
Longstreet63: You owe me a new keyboard!
Posted by: Jim | September 1, 2009 10:37 AM
Did anyone notice they edited Ruben's "The Fall of Man" piece to cover up Adam and Eve's naughty parts? They can't even use a piece of art that depicts the supposed "actual events." Even their own "truth" is too much for them to handle.
Posted by: Longstreet63 | September 1, 2009 10:39 AM
As for Malthus, he failed to account for the Invisible Hand of Jesus' Free Market, which solves everything. Obviously no one would die just because they needed 10 people in the fields to support 12 people, because the Free Market ensured that no crops would ever fail. And sickness wasn't a problem because if one witch doctor didn't heal you, you would go to another one.
Bless you, Ayn Rand.
Posted by: Randy | September 1, 2009 10:39 AM
PZ... you are really doing the Flying Spaghetti Monsters work with your blog. All I could think of as I was suffering through that clip was the number of people I know or (cringe) am related to that would just nod along thinking 'gee, that does make sense'. Whether the Trinity Network or the Creation Museum, the best way to stem the tide of stupid is to expose it for what it is.
You have my gratitude!
Posted by: Eamon Knight | September 1, 2009 10:43 AM
I gave up watching while they were still banging on about how smart and edjumikated and skeptickle the math expert was, and how mathematics Proves Things so you can't argue with them.
Fucktards.
Posted by: pikeamus | September 1, 2009 10:44 AM
Damn this cretin for giving mathematicians a bad name.
Posted by: ButchKitties | September 1, 2009 10:45 AM
There's a billboard right by my house advertising a Creationism Expo that will be happening soon at a nearby church. Morbid curiosity took over, and I checked out the website.
One thing I noticed is that the site heavily advertises that many of the scheduled speakers have doctorate degrees, but it is almost impossible to find out just what they have a PhD in or where it was earned. I guess they'd rather just let one assume that the degree comes from an accredited university or that it is even remotely related to the subject of the speaker is going to discuss.
Posted by: DrBubbles | September 1, 2009 10:47 AM
I remember learning smath in school. They taught it during the Smarch term, which was already bad enough because of the lousy Smarch weather.
Posted by: Thuktun | September 1, 2009 10:49 AM
"There's always been, you know, mistakes and scams even, and carpetbaggers and all of that stuff..."
Uh, what?
Posted by: Mr Ash
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September 1, 2009 10:51 AM
Didn't Hovind used to do something similar? I think they growth rate comes from the growth rate for the earth's population over the past 100 years. It never seems to bother them that the data obtained conflicts what their own book says
Posted by: David L | September 1, 2009 10:52 AM
The lowest population growth on record must be from the two in the Garden of Eden to the eight that came off the Ark, surely well below his estimate
Posted by: Knockgoats | September 1, 2009 10:55 AM
the world population was about 150,000 at the time of Alexander the Great
The size of the Persian army Alexander defeated at the battle of Issus is estimated at about 100,000. Wow! so Darius had 2/3 of the world population fighting for him, and still lost!
Posted by: Abdul Alhazred | September 1, 2009 10:55 AM
To a creationist, evolution isn't really the main issue.
Is lying an absolute evil?
Wouldn't you tell a lie to protect your loved ones (plus random strangers) from being tortured forever?
Of course you would.
Posted by: mr,ed | September 1, 2009 10:56 AM
You are one pesky scientist. Thanks!
Posted by: Drosera | September 1, 2009 10:57 AM
I wrote down some quotes while watching this insanity:
Funny how they claimed that the Egyptian dynasties were overlapping or even did not exist, as an excuse to move forward the date of the building of the pyramids (otherwise according to The Formula the population would have been too small). Sure, if the data don’t fit the formula, you tamper with the data. And don’t they know that there is far more archeological evidence for the ancient history of Egypt than there is for almost all of the Bible? There is for example not a shred of evidence that the story of Exodus — Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt to the Promised Land — is anything else but a myth.
And what was that nonsense about the magnetic field and the free radicals near the end all about? Just some meaningless sound-bytes to impress the ignorant viewers, I guess.
In a real college this show would be considered pure comedy; people would fall from their chairs laughing. The quasi-impressed voice of the moderator is priceless, while the math professor quoting an undergraduate introductory pre-calculus textbook is beyond hilarious. It’s sobering to realize that there are people who are going to believe this crap.
Posted by: Raffen | September 1, 2009 10:58 AM
@29
I remember when there was some debate over the global warming thing here in Norway a couple of years back. All the ignorant idiots of the country (i.e. populist politicians (those for removing all expenses for the population and thereby destroying all infrastructure) and other such cretins) clearly influenced by some of this creationist attitude were still trying to put forth the opposing view. What did they do? In some meeting (political I think) they got a guest speeker to talk about how 99% of the scientists working on the issue were wrong. This guy had a Phd as well...... in..... welding! Clearly an expert on environmental issues.
Posted by: Feynmaniac | September 1, 2009 10:59 AM
lol
US Census Bureau estimates:
400 BC: ~162 million
200 BC: between 150 and 231 million
1 AD : between 170 and 400 million
Posted by: Knockgoats | September 1, 2009 10:59 AM
the world population was about 150,000 at the time of Alexander the Great
The size of the Persian army Alexander defeated at the Battle of Issus is estimated by modern historians to have been around 100,000. Wow! So Darius had 2/3 of the world's population (men, women and children) fighting for him, and still lost!
Posted by: Brg | September 1, 2009 11:02 AM
If there were two of each kind in the ark, shouldn't there be also billions of each of them now? All those gorillas, polar bears, tylacine,dinosaurs must be pretty good at hiding then.
Well, at least I can resume my Dodo and Tiger hunts without further remorse, because even if I have managed to kill those billions of animals, I need to leave only two alive and wait a few years for their populations to explode.
Brg
Posted by: mck9 | September 1, 2009 11:05 AM
PZ, where do you get your conclusion that the calculations assumed that people were immortal? A population might very well grow for an extended period at a net annual rate of 0.456% or thereabouts, without requiring immortality. As long as there are more births than deaths, the population grows.
What's unreasonable is to assume that populations always grow exponentially, or at all.
Posted by: Glen57 | September 1, 2009 11:07 AM
What a load of crap. Yes all that population stuff is silly, but the Earth is imperiled because we have lost the magnetic field to a great degree and free radicals are saturating our atmospheric context...What drivel! What planet are these guys from?
Posted by: Brownian, Most Vicious & Petty of Pharyngulites
|
September 1, 2009 11:11 AM
$100 says the same audience members that go gaga over this kind of sleight-of-mind would, when confronted with numerical data showing the efficacy of comprehensive sex ed or social and economic safety net programs, angrily respond with, "So what? You can prove anything with numbers!"
Posted by: R. Schauer | September 1, 2009 11:11 AM
There's just so much wrong about their methods one has difficulty knowing where to begin.
Why not apply some simple math to the exisistance of gawd? For example, 0 x 1 = 0. That is: zero evidence of gawd, times one gawd, equals zero gawd. There, all fixed.
This is simply another bamboozling creotards video...yawn...just what we need.
Posted by: Andyman | September 1, 2009 11:13 AM
Why does this website have Google ads telling us to doubt evolution.
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Posted by: Brian Rapp | September 1, 2009 11:14 AM
Speaking of whackadoodles getting advanced science degrees from prestigious universities...a thought occurred to me the other day.
One of the problems creationists have had getting anyone to take them seriously (other than the fact that the evidence doesn't support them) is that they can't get their papers peer reviewed. Isn't that problem solved by having a group of creationists who have received Ph.D.'s from reputable institutions? I'm wondering if their whole plan isn't to create their own peer network of liars for Jesus to provide cover for advancing their cause. I'm sure I'm not the first to think of this, I've just never seen it mentioned, so please excuse me if it's been discussed.
Posted by: Glen Davidson | September 1, 2009 11:14 AM
I believe it was Baugh who had some idiot on once who said we should wear rose-colored glasses--because before the flood the water vapor canopy shifted light to that color. Great benefits from wearing the glasses were proclaimed.
About the mathy stuff, presumably the rate could easily be 0.456% with or without death. My guess is that they didn't care whether death was factored in or not, the whole point was simply to "calculate" that it's now about 4500 years after the flood. It's "evidence for the flood," then, something they don't actually have.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
Posted by: Sharon C | September 1, 2009 11:14 AM
flinking?
Posted by: Jarred | September 1, 2009 11:17 AM
From the video:
"If creation is true, but were educated out of even considering it a proper concept, then we're going to face a creator lacking. On the other hand, IF evolution is true, we need to be able to verify it mathematically - which is the language of science - we need to be able to verify it scientifically."
They seem to be setting up contradictory standards.
Posted by: Brownian, Most Vicious & Petty of Pharyngulites
|
September 1, 2009 11:18 AM
Unfortunately ours, Glen57.
Posted by: MolecularJake | September 1, 2009 11:18 AM
Did the preacher man really say "where are all the skeletons?"
Do creationists not believe in decomposition and recycling of elements now?!
Posted by: Krystalline Apostate | September 1, 2009 11:20 AM
This is a quote from Zahi Hawass (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/pyramid/explore/howold.html), & it's wrong. The Harrapan civilization has neolithic pottery dated to 5500 BCE.Posted by: Longstreet63 | September 1, 2009 11:22 AM
@43 Glen
I think that when they say 'free radicals' they mean people like you and me who haven't been put in prison yet.
@49 MCK9
Population growth rates have something to do with available resources, you see. A surplus of them is required for significant growth. This tends to keep hunter-gatherer societies rather small. And for most of recorded history, agriculture was ridiculously inefficent (except compared to gathering). It wasn't until the advent of Science based solutions to A) farming and B) death rates that population growth of this kind was possible.
This kind of thinking is understandable to people who haven't had to experience repeated famines and regularly occurring plagues, plus periodic population displacements from generational wars that reduced agriculture back to subsistence level for generations.
That stuff happened all the time for most of history.
Posted by: spondee | September 1, 2009 11:25 AM
I made it through 30 seconds. They ruined that room! This used to be a turn of the century theatre! Orignal groundplan! Opera boxes! And they gutted it to make their little propaganda pieces. Why they were allowed? It is a preserved building. Oh right, it's only the facade that's preserved. They can do whatever they want to the inside. They did too. They removed all the wood paneling from the lobby and replaced it with floor to ceiling mirrors. Classy fuckers.
Posted by: Stephanie | September 1, 2009 11:27 AM
Hi, if you're a University of Lethbridge Student and your missing ipod is named Cephalopod, I turned it into security this morning (even though I really wanted to listen to your podcasts: The Atheist Experience etc.).
Posted by: Celtic_Evolution | September 1, 2009 11:28 AM
They can get away with spouting this completely incoherent nonsensical gibberish because... well... they know their audience.
And the real funny part, to me anyhow, is the complete failure to recognize using big science-y words and phony, but science-y sounding arguments to prove how wrong the vast majority of scientists are. It's gloriously imbecilic.
Posted by: dutchdoc
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September 1, 2009 11:29 AM
The guy is a 'Professor' at a 'High School'? Is that how Americans refer to high school teachers? As Professors?
ANYWAY... here's another guy's site that's chockful of the most impressive mathematics that will make your head spin!
http://ldolphin.org/popul.html
I'll leave the math alone.
Here are some textual gems though:
Yeah! ALMOST EXACTLY!! *sigh* Biblical scholars have always had the right idea about atmospheric oxygen content? WHERE in the bible did they get THAT from? Yeah, that's an interesting Quantum Physics notion too: If nobody looks the moon isn't really there... *sigh* Drats! No sex for the first 100 years? BILLIONS? Note that he ALSO mentions that the number of generations between Adam and the Flood is 10! No, it doesn't! And then later he states: What I don't get is, that someone writing all this, at no point starts to think, or intuitively FEEL, that there must be something HORRIBLY wrong with all this.Posted by: SEF | September 1, 2009 11:30 AM
Oi! "Smath" is already taken. That's what I named a software maths package back in the 90s (designed to be included on situations where the customary maths processor wasn't present in an embedded system).
Posted by: brian smith | September 1, 2009 11:30 AM
It seems that the point made by both mck9 and Becca Stareyes below has not been properly integrated into the analysis of this absolute rubbish. As both these commenters point out, it is possible to simplify the effect of a constant exponential birth rate and a simple exponential death rate into a constant exponential net reproduction rate just by subtracting the second from the first.
Of course, in any real world demographic study, these simplifications are gross approximations and seldom describe the situation accurately for any subpopulation for any period, let alone the global population for the entire history of the planet. This ludicrous creationist exercise is the demographic equivalent of the similar half-witted geological/mathematical analysis on the waning strength of the Earth's magnetic field to prove the world is 6000 years old. Absolute hogwash!
But it definitely does not have to assume a zero death rate in the population. It's not a good tdea to leave this slip in the analysis of this nonsense uncorrected. The ability of these true believers in fantasy to pounce on any lacuna in the refutation of their nonsense as proof of the soundness of their argument is about the only thing that is consistent in their position.
Posted by: Bryan | September 1, 2009 11:30 AM
Two points form a line, not a trend.
I guess the concept of significant sample size is unknown there at Trinity Broadcasting.
Posted by: Charles | September 1, 2009 11:31 AM
600,000 at the time of JC? Weren't there more than that many people in ROME? And I mean Rome city proper?
Posted by: Celtic_Evolution | September 1, 2009 11:33 AM
Hrm... i think I left out a few words in my last post... should read:
"And the real funny part, to me anyhow, is the complete failure to recognize the irony in using big science-y words and phony, but science-y sounding arguments to prove how wrong the vast majority of scientists are.
Posted by: Reader5000 | September 1, 2009 11:34 AM
There are also those very ancient trees in Sweden that are more than 9,000 years old. http://www.physorg.com/news127559576.html
Can the Biblical creation story accommodate Yggdrasil?
Posted by: Gruesome Rob | September 1, 2009 11:35 AM
Are any prominent mathematicians high school teachers?
Posted by: Psychodigger | September 1, 2009 11:36 AM
Rrrreeeeeeetch!
Posted by: Bill Dauphin, OM | September 1, 2009 11:42 AM
Nope, not at all. Dude must teach at Hogwarts... probably Divination or Arithmancy.
Posted by: BlueIndependent | September 1, 2009 11:43 AM
"I wonder if Kent Hovind used Smath to calculate his tax returns? :-)"
I was thinking the same thing. When you can plug any numbers you want in, why not plug in 0?
Posted by: Qwerty | September 1, 2009 11:43 AM
I've chunched some numbers. And if there were only one more couple on the ark then the earth would have a population increase of 25% because of this couple which would mean that the 6.5 million would actually be 6.5 million X .25 or 6.5 million plus 1.625 million which would total 8.125 million.
Wow! Anyone can do this.
And if only one of the four couples were infertile; then, we'd have only 4.875 million.
I did like how a high school teacher is called a professor. Nothing like puffing up someone's credentials.
Posted by: Glen Davidson | September 1, 2009 11:47 AM
That's what they did on Gilligan's Island, after all.
And since they're about on Gilligan's Island level from the DI on to Carl Baugh, well, why not take their cues from that show?
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
Posted by: Armand K.
|
September 1, 2009 11:48 AM
Of course. But the Big Ommission is that he left π out of the equation. You know, that circly-thingy-constantabout 3.141592653...equal to 3, as the Holy Bible says.Posted by: Qwerty | September 1, 2009 11:48 AM
Chunched!!!??? That should read crunched! This is what happens when I don't preview.
Posted by: Jeff
|
September 1, 2009 11:49 AM
@Thuktun: "There's always been, you know, mistakes and scams even, and carpetbaggers and all of that stuff..."
So much of it - creationism, anti-intellectualism, the conservative takeover of congress - comes down to that: the revenge of the confederacy. The anger and resentment never really went away.
@Brian Rapp: I'm wondering if their whole plan isn't to create their own peer network of liars for Jesus to provide cover for advancing their cause.
Brian,
A couple of years ago, the Institute for Creation Research announced a "peer-reviewed" journal, but I don't think it ever got off the ground. Not to worry; I'm sure they'll try again. It's part of the process, over the past three decades, of creating a parallel reality, with its own revisionist science and history.
Posted by: AZSkeptic | September 1, 2009 11:50 AM
Man, that was some piece of awful to watch!!
I was thinking halfway through that it needs to be MST3K'd. We could have PZ, a robot squid, and a robot octopus in silhouette making fun of the silly creationist videos.
We miss you, Mike Nelson...
Posted by: Darren Garrison | September 1, 2009 11:50 AM
This entry makes me think of a short story by Dan Simmons, published in his collection _Prayers_to_Broken_Stones_. Give it a look before Dan Simmons tells me to stop posting links to his short stories:
http://webpages.charter.net/garrison6328/VFiAaWaLiH/VFiAaWaLiH.html
Posted by: marcus
|
September 1, 2009 11:52 AM
According to Plutarch and his contemporaries, Alexander had 100,000 men in his army alone. No wonder he always won, he had two thirds of the earth's population to fight for him.
Posted by: SC, OM | September 1, 2009 11:53 AM
Who designed the set? Ancient Polynesian Theme Events, Inc.?
Posted by: Cyrock | September 1, 2009 11:55 AM
Sorry to ruin the party, but prominent math teacher's formula does not rely on immortality. I am VERY surprised you
biologists fail at such a simple math exercise.
Both reproduction and death are proportional to the population. Growth is thus proportional to the population. Final result: exponential population growth.
Of course, this does not make prominent math teacher's formula right.
PZ, rectify your smath!! ;)
Posted by: Divalent | September 1, 2009 11:56 AM
PZ: "Leaving death out of his calculations is a tiny omission that makes even that fudged number wrong."
There are so many things about their analysis that makes it bizarre, but this is not one of them. They are using a population growth rate, which folds in the birth and death rates; so death is accounted for.
I'll note that I ran the same analysis using bacteria as the species and (as I posted at Larry Moran's place a week ago), can conclusively show that these folks are wrong: in fact the world is only about 2 weeks old. (And will end in just a few days, being smothered by a most unimaginatively massive pile of bacteria. Sorry guys.)
Posted by: Walton
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September 1, 2009 11:58 AM
Interestingly, this is one usage that seems to differ a lot between countries. The title "professor" is applied to secondary school teachers in France (professeur), in Spain and some Spanish-speaking countries (profesor), and (I believe, though I could be wrong) in Italy and Romania.
By contrast, here in the UK, "professor" is a much more exclusive title than it is in the US, being only given to the most senior academics. A Professor at a UK university is of similar rank to a full professor or department chair in the US, and is usually at the top of his or her field. Other permanent academics, who would be Associate Professors or Assistant Professors in the US, are usually described as "Readers" or "Lecturers" over here. For a secondary school teacher to refer to themselves as a "professor" in the UK would be seen as a pretentious delusion of grandeur.
Posted by: Pseudonymous | September 1, 2009 11:59 AM
> Are any prominent mathematicians high school teachers?
For Creationists? Sure. A great many of them never completed High School.
Achievement is relative.
Posted by: Geds | September 1, 2009 11:59 AM
dutchdoc @58: ANYWAY... here's another guy's site that's chockful of the most impressive mathematics that will make your head spin!
http://ldolphin.org/popul.html
I'll leave the math alone.
Hey, sweet, that's the one I was talking about at #4! I'd forgotten where it was. Probably as a self-preservation instinct thing for my brain.
Posted by: dutchdoc
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September 1, 2009 12:01 PM
In my post (#58) where I mentioned http://ldolphin.org/popul.html , I just noticed he included an entire article: Human evolution: Pedigrees for all humanity by JOTUN HEIN.
I'm not sure what this has to do with anything he mentioned, but it's PROBABLY because of Hein's mentioning that
I guess he included it wrongly thinking that this common ancestor was the only living human at that time, thereby completely failing to understand that all it means is that all the genealogical lines of ALL the other people living at that time, have simply died out.
Posted by: spondee | September 1, 2009 12:01 PM
SC @77:
When out of logic, add plants.
Posted by: Tim G
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September 1, 2009 12:02 PM
This is mathturbation. It's self-indulgent and won't spawn anything.
I'll have to give the "professor" credit for having two working brain cells for figuring out what formula to look up.
Posted by: Jim Lippard | September 1, 2009 12:03 PM
This reminds me of David H. Milne's classic _Creation/Evolution_ article, "Creationists, Population Growth, Bunnies, and the Great Pyramid":
http://ncseweb.org/cej/4/4/creationists-population-growth-bunnies-great-pyramid
"If the creationists are right, then the [Great] Pyramid was built by eight people."
Posted by: Longstreet63 | September 1, 2009 12:03 PM
@76 marcus:
As has been pointed out above, Darius ALSO had 100,000 soldiers. So both sides had two-thirds of the world's population.
That must have made for some confusing rules of engagement, since one third of the world was presumably engaged in fighting itself*.
*This subsequently led to the first soldiers' union.
Posted by: Knockgoats | September 1, 2009 12:03 PM
Sorry for the double post.
Posted by: SEF | September 1, 2009 12:08 PM
@ Jérôme ^ #19:
Are you remembering to take into account that there is no year zero? It goes straight from +1 to -1 (or vice versa).
Posted by: Geds | September 1, 2009 12:09 PM
Charles @62: 600,000 at the time of JC? Weren't there more than that many people in ROME? And I mean Rome city proper?
You've suddenly got me thinking. Exodus says there were 600,000 Israelites who left Egypt. And that only counts the men.
That number is ridiculous in and of itself, since 600,000 men + women and children would have actually made for a population at least the same size as the population of Egypt itself at the time. No one is entirely sure, but estimates have the population of Egypt at about 3-5 million in the time of the New Kingdom. If there were 600,000 Israelite men that means that there would have been 1.2-3m Israelites total (give each man a wife and 1-3 kids, basically. It's bad math, but considering the source, well...).
However, the entire point is that the infallible Bible's ridiculous numbers of adult Israelite men for the Exodus is the same as this moron's number for the whole Earth's population some 1200 years later.
That, um, that seems a bit off. I wonder how he'd work around it if someone pointed that out to him.
Posted by: Thundergod | September 1, 2009 12:21 PM
The really scary part is that there are people who buy this crap and use is as support for thier own misguided beliefs. As though people don't understand too little science as it is we have crap like this compounding the existing ignorance.
Posted by: Luis Dias | September 1, 2009 12:30 PM
Okay, now I am convinced that these people are worse than stupid, they are evil con men. They should be imprisoned. The entire speech that starts with "Oh no! We are ALLLL for skepticism!" just wants to make me puke. Fucktards!
Posted by: Tim G
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September 1, 2009 12:32 PM
Gee, I don't suppose this was published in a leading scientific journal.
Posted by: alopiasmag | September 1, 2009 12:32 PM
MY EARS!!!!! THEY BURN!!!!! Could any of you actually finish watching that crap?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?
Posted by: Carlie | September 1, 2009 12:36 PM
"Math is the language of science".
Dammit! Then why did I take Latin?
Posted by: Alan B. | September 1, 2009 12:36 PM
A consistent 0.46% growth rate gives 13 people at the time of Babel and 395 at the time of Exodus.
Posted by: dutchdoc
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September 1, 2009 12:37 PM
#80:
Considering the rest of his presentation, "pretentious delusion of grandeur" seems like an accurate diagnosis to me!
Posted by: aratina cage
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September 1, 2009 12:37 PM
Darn you — and evolution, too, for its inadequate ability to cope with laughter and swallowing simultaneously! ;DPosted by: Jeff
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September 1, 2009 12:38 PM
@dutchdoc: In my post (#58) where I mentioned http://ldolphin.org/popul.html , I just noticed he included an entire article: Human evolution: Pedigrees for all humanity by JOTUN HEIN.
Jotun Hein is the son of Piet Hein, who developed a number of games in the sixties, among them the Soma cube (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soma_cube). I remember getting one when I was a kid; the instructions came with a solution and a mathematical proof devised by Jotun, who was about my age.
Posted by: hyoid | September 1, 2009 12:40 PM
Qwerty @72, I kind of, sorta, almost nearly thought you wrote "I Churched some numbers." I was going to say, Fightin' fire with fire.
Posted by: Aaron | September 1, 2009 12:43 PM
Population math without using differential equations? Or at the VERY least a logarithm?
wtf?
I swear, if Creationists did to math what they do to science, they would expect that every math problem could be handled by elementary algebra, and that if it's more complex or abstract, it's clearly an elitist attempt to deceive.
Posted by: truthspeaker | September 1, 2009 12:50 PM
A wife? Given the context of Exodus, I think a better estimate would be an average of 2 wives and 6 living children per adult man.
Posted by: Eric the Red | September 1, 2009 12:52 PM
Krystalline @53
I think Hawass was talking about evidence for earlier Egyptian history. Harappa was an Indus valley civilization.
Posted by: Matt Penfold | September 1, 2009 1:00 PM
There was no working shown that this was how the growth rate was worked out, so sorry, but you fail for making assumptions unsupported by evidence.
Posted by: Tim G
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September 1, 2009 1:00 PM
Watching this video reminded me of a tee-shirt a family friend once wore that read:
I'm so far behind I think I'm first.
Posted by: Bueller_007
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September 1, 2009 1:10 PM
Hooray! This exact video was my nomination for the 2009 Golden Crocoduck Award.
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=39464C191E0F3B5A
Posted by: amphiox | September 1, 2009 1:11 PM
"the world population was about 150,000 at the time of Alexander the Great"
Then over the course of his campaigns, Alexander killed off the entire world population several times over.
Posted by: Bueller_007
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September 1, 2009 1:12 PM
Oops sorry. My nomination was this one.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuTQbsV36XQ
Be warned, it is FAR, FAR worse than PZ's video.
Posted by: Divalent | September 1, 2009 1:24 PM
Matt Penfold (@104): "There was no working shown that this was how the growth rate was worked out..."
Geeze, watch the video! He selected a range of "growth rates" to cover best case and worse case and OMG case scenarios, and compared them to population growth rates that (he claimed) have been estimated from historical data.
His analysis was a pointless exercise in demonstrating an irrelevant concept because he made a multitude of invalid assumptions. But assuming immortality was not one of them.
Posted by: Tim G
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September 1, 2009 1:25 PM
I think that Cyrock [#78] and PZ both agree that what it really boils down to is that the "professor" assumed a modest growth rate sustained over extremely extended periods of time, which is obviously not what evolutionary theory assumes.
Relatively recently, agriculture and industrialization allowed the human population to surge.
Posted by: Matt Penfold | September 1, 2009 1:34 PM
He still does not explicitly state that he is using a net growth figure, or if he does I missed it. Until you can show he does, I stand by what I have said. In addition you cannot simply take a single net figure, as variance in the figure will have a huge effect of the final figure even if the net growth rate average is the same.
So please, tell me where in the video it is made clear the figure being used is net growth.
Posted by: Cyrock | September 1, 2009 1:45 PM
@Matt Penfold #111
You are stupid.
The dilemma here is if it is even worth answering you.
...
...
...
... nah.
Posted by: Kagehi | September 1, 2009 1:46 PM
Well, given that the Bible made up *when* it happened, and placed it 500 years *later* than the actual Egyptian record of events (old kingdom, I would guess, but I don't know what that 'ended', so..), its not hard to imagine them also making up some idiotic number for the people that did leave. The original number was probably something like 600, but written in some hieroglyph or something, where one misplaced line gave them a 1,000 fold error. lol
Posted by: Jo | September 1, 2009 1:46 PM
@Matt (Post #104)
"There was no working shown that this was how the growth rate was worked out, so sorry, but you fail for making assumptions unsupported by evidence."
The growth rate was gotten from the two data points - that's all you need when working an exponential growth problem, and it includes the birth and death rates (this is usually proven in an introductory course in differential equations).
What is being left out of the model is competition for resources - as population increases, so does competition, leading to the logistic equation instead of exponential growth.
Of course - that is then ignoring local environments and the fact that humans aren't a single homogeneous populations, but a bunch of geographically separated sub-populations with some diffusion between groups, with the rate of diffusion changing over time. There are several very cool population models out there that probably would have been equally misused to prove their point (you can fiddle with parameters to make the model do almost whatever you want - and those parameters may be very difficult to measure historically).
Of course- the exponential growth model is the first (and usually only) model taught and is only useful in very limited situations.
ex animo-
Jo
Posted by: Matt Penfold | September 1, 2009 1:49 PM
Classy argument Cyrock. I guess you take lessons from the creationists in how to make such a compelling case. Pity you not even managed to reach their standards.
Now go away you little oik.
Posted by: Judith | September 1, 2009 1:53 PM
But his mathiness proved the most important thing of all: if no one died, then
JESUS LIVES!
cough::poe::cough
Posted by: Cyrock | September 1, 2009 2:13 PM
[quote]Classy argument Cyrock. I guess you take lessons from the creationists in how to make such a compelling case. Pity you not even managed to reach their standards.
Now go away you little oik. [/quote]
What are you so angry about, my dear?
Jo took the effort I did not want to take. Look at his reply and learn something. You should not be so stubborn, don't you see even PZ changed his post?.
Posted by: Jack Bishop | September 1, 2009 2:14 PM
They may not be prominent in the sense of being Fields-medalist-class, but Jim Tanton (St. Mark's) and Bob Sachs (TJHSST) are both quite well-respected and regarded as peers by college academics. Those are off the top of my head; there are certainly other high-school teachers who are mathematically talented.
Posted by: Flex | September 1, 2009 2:14 PM
While we're picking on PZ over this post, I'd like to point out that Kilgore College is a real Junior College as well as a trade school. I'm from there and it would have been about my 3rd option after high-school. Luckily I got into one of Texas' lower State Universities. If they didn't offer the extensive vocational programs and the college level courses for transfer to a University, they would not be adequately serving the population of Gregg County. As it is, Kilgore College is a great resource for people who cannot get into college yet, and for those who are not college material. I would recommend not taking any math from this guy though.
Posted by: Anders from Sweden | September 1, 2009 2:22 PM
PZ be carefull what you post! I had a stupidity meter installed on my laptop. It hit the bottom! My memory was overflowed and then it went black with a tiny blue smoke from the battery. Now it's dead.
That moron is maybe a professor in math and knows it theoretical, but he hasn't got a clue how to apply it to reality. Just the " We start with two individuals to be nice". He should know that is almost doesn't matter if he start with 2, 200, or 2000 individuals if he thinks it is ok to use exponential growth for some million years. And their idea that a specie must have started with two individuals. Are they even allowed to walk free on the streets?
I have to go home now for something strong...
Posted by: Glen57 | September 1, 2009 2:28 PM
I don't mean to throw a wrench in these geniuses calculations, but according to biblical mythology, didn't Noah and his wife just have three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth? So after the flood, wouldn't there just be three child-producing husband and wife teams? Wouldn't Noah and his wife be out of the child-rearing picture? So using their growth rate figures we would have a population 25% smaller than we do now. And all those historical populations would be smaller still.
Posted by: Pierce R. Butler | September 1, 2009 2:54 PM
... flinking bugnuts insane ... diddle the books ...
Either our esteemed host has suddenly jumped on the let's-talk-nice bandwagon, or is sending us a coded signal that he's been kidnapped and is being forced to blog at gunpoint by the Mooney-Kirshenbaum gang.
Maybe we should set up an internet poll to discover which is the truth.
Posted by: SaintStephen | September 1, 2009 3:08 PM
And I'm quite certain these men don't think they're being deceptive. That's the really frightening thing.
Ken Miller needs to go on that show and slap them down. As a religious scientist, he has an obligation to defend science from this type of air-headed assault.
Kitzmiller/Dover was magnificent, Ken... but duty calls.
Posted by: John | September 1, 2009 3:11 PM
Leaving aside the terrible content, these people are really creepy. They have hair, dress, mannerisms, and speech patterns that for some reason made my skin crawl. It reminded me of the "danger stranger" films that I was shown at school in the 70s, where it pointed out that abductors don't necessarily look evil.
The "they don't actually look like this" shots were very like these two.
And for whom was this film intended? Surely high school students are not expected to be so easily fooled, are they?
Posted by: palochka | September 1, 2009 3:26 PM
Aaron @ #101
Isn't that pretty much half of the Salem hypothesis right there?
Posted by: Reverted | September 1, 2009 3:51 PM
LOL! I love how they go on and on about how there's not enough space in the universe ("light years beyond" blah blah blah)...
Shouldn't that right there suggest to you that maybe, JUST MAYBE, you've got just a teensy little problem with your assumptions?! (Creationists: project your own "theory" into the distant future. What will realistically, *physically* be FORCED to happen to population growth? Will it continue to grow exponentially forever?)
I mean, c'mon Creationists: suppose for just a moment that evolution really did happen. Are you seriously proposing that population growth is going to steadfastly hold to that stupidly simple math formula and enormously outgrow the entire universe? Or, do you think that perhaps you're omitting a few "minor" constraints from what would actually happen---like, for example, the space available, or the required resources (food, water, etc.), or life spans, or competition with other species (just to name a few)?
Posted by: Pharyngulette | September 1, 2009 3:58 PM
And naturally, these mathemagicians also allowed for the sudden dips in population from 1348, when around 30% of European populations died from Black Death coming around every few years, through the next couple of centuries..?
No?
Colour me shocked.
Posted by: dc-agape | September 1, 2009 4:58 PM
Yet we know from the Book of Numbers that the number of male Israelite people above the age of 20 was 600,000 prior at the time of the "Exodus" - meaning that the population of Israel was over 2,000,000. The math is wrong and their own Bible proves it!
Posted by: CatBallou
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September 1, 2009 5:19 PM
"Maybe we should set up an internet poll to discover which is the truth."
And then we could Pharyngulate it! Brilliant!
Posted by: Rufus von Balcone | September 1, 2009 5:22 PM
Shouldn't you be working on your book rather than trawling for Creationist nonsense? Loved your appearance on Chariots of Iron - the servers were pretty busy when I tried to download. Ah, the power of Twitter!
Posted by: R Hampton | September 1, 2009 5:23 PM
I want to see the mathematical model that explains the geographical distribution of Noah's descendants. When did Man first arrive in the Americas and Australia? If there were only 600,000 at the time of Jesus - at the height of the Roman Empire - what was the population of China or India or Mexico?
Posted by: arachnophilia | September 1, 2009 5:25 PM
on a similar note, but more of an interpretive direction, "starting with 1 man and 1 woman" isn't exactly correct either.
there are two creation stories. in the first one, the more famous one with creationists, god creates "man and woman" probably in plural. while the story phrases things in individual, it's almost certainly referring to whole groups. in the second story, god creates one specific man (named "man") and one specific woman (not named until the end of the first part of the story). however, it is implicit from the second part of the story that these are not the only people on the planet -- just special people. when one of their sons kills their other son, he's exiled, and worries about what these other people will do to a murderer. then he managed to find a wife among these other people. so... there must be other people.
...and then later in the book, there's a giant bottleneck where the entire population of the earth dies, except for 1 man, his wife, his 3 sons, and their wives. so your starting population is actually 8 or more, and at a slightly more recent date.
you know. if you've read the bible.
Posted by: Religion™ Brand Brain Staples | September 1, 2009 5:33 PM
I must be doing this wrong... every time I use his numbers with an annually compounded growth formula, I end up getting a population of nearly 36 billion instead of 6 billion. I had to go to 4150 years. I can get his result if I compound every 35.7 years though. :P
That being said... the magnitude of the inadequacy of understanding (or presentation) of population modeling was demonstrated with the line (paraphrased here) "that would mean there were 10,000 anniversaries before they even had their first child."
If he honestly doesn't understand why that's wrong, then he clearly needs to go back and learn something about population growth, because he clearly doesn't know anything, at all, besides the fact that they can grow at this point.
If he DOES honestly understand why that's wrong, then he's lying for the purpose of furthering his agenda.
He only has ONE scientifically verified data point: The modern population census. And he expects us to believe that he can knock down quite literally the entirety of science (since pretty much everything locks together, from astronomy to physics to biology and thus evolution) with that ONE data point, and a little handwaivy math.
It's kind of sad... he can be proven wrong in innumerable ways, and yet none of them will penetrate his Anti-fact-ium skeleton, notably around the cerebrum.
Posted by: richard james | September 1, 2009 5:54 PM
#109
I think our eminent professor misunderstands his own model.
Listen at 7.18 where he claims low growth rates are unfeasible as the "first couple would have over 10000 anniversaries before their first child". This is only true if he is talking about gross growth rates and immortals.
Posted by: Jeff
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September 1, 2009 6:09 PM
Are they even allowed to walk free on the streets?
Anders, not only are they walking around free - these are the sort of people who've been running the country these past eight years.
Posted by: 'Tis Himself, Quel Dommage
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September 1, 2009 6:10 PM
I wonder if this math professor teaches at the school where the Mock Turtle and the Gryphon took the four branches of arithmetic: Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision.
Posted by: Quidam | September 1, 2009 6:37 PM
A bacterial population doubles in 10 minutes in ideal conditions,
Therefore after 1 day there will be 2.2E+43 bacteria after 1 week 2.7E+303.
The mass of a bacterium is 9.50E-13 grams so after one week there will be a mass of 2.61E+291 grams or 2.61E+285 tonnes
Since the mass of the Earth is only 5.97E+21 tonnes, the Earth must be only one day old.
The Earth isn't young, it's neonatal.
Posted by: Zmidponk | September 1, 2009 6:38 PM
Hmm. Sorry, I just have to rip this to shreds.
Yes you are. However, if you're going WAY out of your field to do so and questioning it in such a way that it is blindingly obvious you don't have a fucking clue what you're talking about, all that will happen is you'll give proper biologists a good laugh.
No, creationism was 'the only game in town' right up until evolution overturned it by weight of evidence. This is how science works.
Then what are you doing on that show?
Good. Then what's your problem? Any decent science teacher will be doing science, which means they'll believe what the evidence indicates - which means they'll teach evolution.
Well, firstly, although you're broadly correct in that mathematics could be considered the 'language of science', that doesn't mean that all scientific hypotheses and theories need to be 'proven' using mathematics, and it is therefore not the case that a theory can be 'disproven' by caliming that no-one has provided such mathematical proof.
Secondly, are you aware of the concept of 'double standards'? I would assume you are, as you've just used them.
It's amazing. I tried to look up the formula you indicated, but only found creationist sites using it in the same way as you are. Could this possibly be because you're taking a formula created for a particular purpose and using it in a completely different and inappropriate way, I wonder? I haven't actually seen the textbook this is from, but it wouldn't surprise me one bit. Oh, and it isn't 'a precalculus book', the book is actually called 'Precalculus with Graphing and Problem Solving' (or, at least, I think it's that one, because the creationist sites simply call it 'Precalculus').
Would that be homo sapiens, or homo sapiens sapiens? Because if you're talking about modern humans, that would be homo sapiens sapiens, which only evolved about 200,000 years ago. Homo sapiens also includes several other, now extinct, subspecies.
So you're fudging the data, in other words, thus invalidating your whole 'experiment'. But let's ignore that for now.
So, in other words, you're taking data from 'a few centuries' and applying it to 5,000 centuries, much of which would have been a significantly different world to humans than it is in those 'few centuries'.
So, hang on, if you're saying that today, worldwide, it's 1.7% growth rate, but, on average, over the past few centuries, it's one half of one percent, does that not indicate that growth rate might be accelerating? If so, does that not completely invalidate your entire 'experiment'? Of course, you're not being very clear by what you mean, exactly, by it being 'less than one half of one percent on average', but '1.7% worldwide', so it's hard to tell if that is what you're saying.
And this is where your lack of knowledge of even basic biology shows. Even if your figures were valid (and you have provided what seems to be evidence that they aren't), there are more things that affect population size than 'how much can they reproduce'. Little, unimportant things like food and drinkable water. If a population climbs above what a given environment can support, famine and drought occur. This causes the population's death rate to rise above their birth rate. This converts a growing population into a shrinking one. This continues to occur until the population has shrunk to a sustainable size. I got introduced to this when I was being taught about 'food chains'. Which was when I was 8 years old.
Well, funnily enough, we actually have some (sort of, anyway), and they constitute some part of the evidence for evolution. They're called 'fossils'. The rest have done the same thing that all bodies do when they die - decompose.
Well the idea of the 'first couple', under the evolutionary model, according to what you said earlier, was an idea that YOU invented to do us 'evolutionists' a favour, so that's kind of a major problem to your objection.
To address your comments about the pyramid problem, first of all, you are relying on a random, anonymous internet quote to claim the pyramids were build 2500 years ago. More reliable sources place the oldest pyramid at around 2700BC - 200 years before the supposed worldwide flood, and the Great Pyramid of Giza being completed around 2560BC (and, incidentally, neither shows signs of water damage from a global flood).
That first quote you pulled up, even if it was accurate (which it's not - there have been artifacts over 5000 years old), this still means the ancient Egyptian civilisation was around at the time of this supposed flood - and showed no signs of being affected by it at all, far less being wiped out, as they would have been.
As for the second quote, let's put in some things you left out, shall we? The 20,000 figure is what was worked out by assuming a skeleton crew did the work for 20 years, the same crew, day in, day out. Assuming there were three shifts (as the Greek historian Herodotus was told), that's 60,000 men. There's also the point that even the person that came up with the figure, Mark Lehner, makes the point, several times, that he didn't 'replicate ancient technology 100%' when doing the experiment that allowed him to make a guess at that figure.
There's also the fact that even a figure of 20,000 (or even 5,000) still is a problem for your model for some of the pyramids, as your model postulates that there wouldn't even have been 20,000 (or 5,000) folk alive when some of them were built.
As for the second part of that, quoting 5,000 men, I can't find that at all. The nearest I can find is the same guy making that point that, according to his little reconstruction, it could have taken, '5,000 men to actually do the building and the quarrying and the schlepping from the local quarry. This doesn't count the men cutting the granite and shipping it from Aswan or the men over in Tura.'
Posted by: Canuck | September 1, 2009 6:41 PM
Since when do they call someone who teaches high school math "professor"? That's bullshit. I teach at university and I'm not yet a "professor", and may never attain that rank. Being a high school math teacher doesn't give you a lot of street cred where I live. You could be good, and smart, but you could just as easily be a largely incompetent boob. Depends on a lot of factors, but it in no sense guarantees one has any credibility to prove anything.
Posted by: Canuck | September 1, 2009 6:48 PM
Wow! Excuse me for the quick second post, but I can't believe that a math teacher thinks a simple exponent can serve as a model for population growth. If that was true, then the two house flies I killed yesterday would make a layer of flies a few feet thick all over the world in a matter of a year. Gee, maybe there's something else going on? Ya suppose?
Talk about your gross oversimplifications. Modeling systems, something we electrical engineers do a LOT of, is a non-trivial process for all but the simplest of things, and when you talk ecosystems you're into very complex models. These fuckwits know nothing.
Posted by: Michael | September 1, 2009 7:13 PM
I love how he starts with 8 people and a growth rate of 0.456%. That means after 10 years, the world had.....
8.37 people (yea! take that!)
Posted by: Longstreet63 | September 1, 2009 7:21 PM
Actually, this fellow is quite wrong. The Earth's population is shrinking steadily. I have proven it by extrapolating from the population growth rate of Europe in the 12th century.
By my calculations, while the world is clearly about 6000 years old, God created Adam, Eve, and 476 trillion unnamed individuals, who began dying like flies immediately.
The carpet of bodies was, in those days so commonplace that it was simply not mentioned out of courtesy. This is clear from many ancient texts in which the piles of decaying corpses are not mentioned at all.
QED.
I'd like my PhD now, please. Kthx.
Posted by: Longstreet63 | September 1, 2009 7:25 PM
Europe in the 12th century
Damn it. The 14th century.
Way to blow my PhD.
Posted by: Cath the Canberra Cook | September 1, 2009 7:31 PM
About the ads -
1. What ads? Firefox/Adblock FTW
2. I'm pretty sure that http://www.jobs.health.wa.gov.au is not a link to a creationist group.
3. I need a job, maybe I should turn the ads back on :)
Posted by: Jason | September 1, 2009 7:40 PM
"... examinar todo con un escepticismo saludable"
Even in spanish, the IRONY seeps right through.
"With 10 years as the head of this department... bla bla bla."
The 'argument from authority fallacy' comes to mind...
Posted by: MikeTheInfidel | September 1, 2009 8:35 PM
SEF said:
He also forgot about the flood, in 2348 BC.
Posted by: R Hampton | September 1, 2009 9:36 PM
Inscribed - in both Latin and Greek - on the walls of the temple Monumentum Ancyranum are census figures from the Roman Empire. The inscription is a copy of a tablet set in front of Augustus' mausoleum in Rome. (Of course these numbers do not include the populations of a few continents, but why be picky?)
8 B.C. . . . . 4,233,000
13 A.D. . . . 4,937,000
If the creationist math whiz had used these numbers, what would have been the average birth rate from the "Great Flood" to the birth of Jesus?
Posted by: Chris Noble | September 1, 2009 9:53 PM
The smauthor also neglects the large variation in longevity in the first 30-40 generations.
See Methuselah: Oldest Myth or Oldest man
It's published in the Journal of Scientific Exploration so it's very scientific.
Many of the earliest figures in the bible didn't start having children until they were over 100!
Posted by: george.w | September 1, 2009 10:17 PM
By this logic, and starting with observable growth in the mid-1950's, automobiles should have tailfins 300 feet tall by now.
Posted by: Citizen Z | September 1, 2009 10:42 PM
Well, obviously you can't just count fractions of a person. Let's be scientific here. Let's start at the beginning with the one man and one woman, like they did in the video. How long will it take the population to increase to 3 people? Using the formulation for population growth: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compound_interest#Simplified_calculation
...we know the initial value (2), the growth rate (0.00456), which means it'll take 89 years for Adam and Eve's first son to be born. We can also check to see how long it takes the population to go from 2 to 4, that comes out to be 152 years, and there's Abel! Now we have to do some recalculation, since according to science history, the human population went back down to 3 some time afterwards. Estimate Abel's age at the time of his murder (say 18 years old) at the hand of his older, 81-year-old brother, let's see... carry the two...
Posted by: Dust | September 1, 2009 10:47 PM
Mr. Perfessor High School Teacher Man sure did empathize that he was starting with "one man + one woman." LOL!
Apparently, he doesn't even read his own holey babble, there are lots of stories with multiple wives, concubines and adulteries. (Plus rapes and prostitution)
The 1+1 senario was flawed from the beginning, according to his main source material.
Posted by: a lurker | September 1, 2009 11:24 PM
MikeTheInfidel: "He also forgot about the flood, in 2348 BC."
Actually he did not. He started with 8 people 4,500 years ago which is when he assumed the Flood occurred.
Twenty years ago I scribbled in to a library copy of The Troubled Waters of Evolution by Morris calculations similar to what P.Z. just did (though using figures used by Morris). This fallacy is very old. This guy's mentioning of the pyramids is a half-ass attempt to preempt the calculation.
I am surprised that no one has pointed out that just how quickly populations could theoretically grow to astronomical numbers is a very important concept in evolution. It is one of the realities behind natural selection.
Posted by: Mobius | September 1, 2009 11:58 PM
Oh, Jeez. What a load of bull excrement.
I wondered where he pulled the figure of 0.456 from. Obviously out of his ass.
I did a few calculations of my own.
It took approximately 1500 years for the world population to double after the year 1 CE. That is an annual growth rate of about 0.04 percent. No where near his 0.456%.
It took approximately 40 years for the world population to double after 1960, about 1.7% annual growth rate.
And of course, hunter-gatherer populations, even today, show virtually no growth in population over time.
Methinks his assumption of a constant 0.456% rate is not valid.
As PZ calculated, in the year 1, using his figures gives a world population of less than the historical population of the city of Rome at that time.
It's worse than that. Using his figure, in the year 1500 BCE, the world population would have been about 750 total...to build all those lovely pyramids and everything else.
What a bunch of doofuses.
Posted by: bastion of sass | September 2, 2009 2:21 AM
Tsk.
The American mathematical community gains nothing from the condescending rhetoric of the New Mathematicians—-and neither does the stature of math in our culture. We should instead adopt a stance of respect towards those who would hold their faith dear, and a sense of humility based on the knowledge that although math can explain a great deal about the way our world functions, the question of God's existence lies outside its expertise.
What the New Mathematicians fail to grasp that in Hollywood, the story is paramount—-that narrative, drama, and character development will trump mere numerical accuracy every time, and by a very long shot.
Posted by: KM | September 2, 2009 3:28 AM
Well, Alexander did have the other 1/3 after all.Posted by: shonny | September 2, 2009 10:13 AM
Religion is a mental cancer, but the most easily curable:
Acquire and appreciate real knowledge, and it is gone.
Posted by: crockhamtown | September 2, 2009 11:40 AM
I can appreciate that a piece of skin can become light sensitive and that over eons of time develop into an eye. But for another eye to develop just in the right place for best effect on the other side of the face, must also take eons of time.
Not only that but there must have been many false starts for another eye to develop on other places on the body until the right place was found. AND both eyes are identical. What a fantastic coincidence.
Then we have paris of arms, legs, ears, kidneys, testicles, etc etc.
Can someone point me in the right direction to understand how pairs of body parts evolved.
Posted by: R Hampton | September 2, 2009 1:50 PM
Bilateral symmetry evolved before eyes and predates the Cambrian explosion as evidenced by the fossils of Vernanimalcula.
Posted by: Shane Killian | September 2, 2009 2:45 PM
Rebutted:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNkKuz11tyE
(It would have been up a lot sooner if YouTube's uploader had been working properly.)
Posted by: Tim | September 2, 2009 7:50 PM
I'll throw mine in with a few additional arguments, though with lower production values.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hvqp9xfzzeo
Posted by: Gwennyd | September 3, 2009 12:41 AM
ICK! I can't even stand to listen to their smarmy way of speaking!
all the "yes yes of course! we want to 'question' and 'scientifically investigate' things" agghh! They sound like 1950's style advertising dudes.
"Now now lets be kind to the stupid evolutionists" "oooh dear! ooh dear! they are sooo misinformed...poor sods - now lets study the biblical scenario that we know is 'real'" "precisely Jim, precisely - nothing but straightforward data"
Where did they 'git' this mathematician?
Posted by: nate_the_potate | September 3, 2009 12:04 PM
Clearly the growth rate of humans is a fundamental constant of the Universe. As opposed to, say, the decay rate of various radioactive materials.
Also, of course one can infer information about specific individuals from group statistics. That's how we know that at such and such ridiculously small growth rate, each couple would have to wait such and such ridiculous number of years before having a baby. In fact, in parts of western Europe where the growth rate is actually negative (locally, so not a contradiction of my first point!), every 10 years or so every mother takes one of her children and crams him back into her womb.