Fish Story

According to Christians, god flooded the Earth 4,359 years ago, destroying every living thing on Earth save for two of every species, Noah, and his family. This means that, according do the sole source that Christians rely on for their theory of human origin, Noah's three sons, and their three wives repopulated the Earth to the tune of ~7 Billion people in just under four and a half millenia. That's BILLION... with a "B."

Does anyone else see a problem here?

Let's break it down, shall we?

So far, we've got eight people... 8... as the entire population of the Earth in 2348 BCE (for those unaware, BCE is "Before Common Era"). We've got a lineage on Noah's sons, Ham, Shem, and Japheth, but no indication Noah had any more children. Let's go ahead and assume he didn't, given the unlikelihood of someone living six centuries, let alone being able to get it up at that age (hell, most octogenarians even need a little blue boost). I think that's fair.

Okay, so Noah had Ham, Shem, Japheth, and their three wives to start the world population again, and get it to ~7 BILLION people in a matter of 4,359 years. Japheth had 7 sons (again, no mention of daughters), Ham had 4, Including Canaan (whom many Christians claim was cursed and is therefore the origin of black people), but again, no gals, and Shem had 5 vaginaless offspring. this brings our total for one generation to 24. That's the original 8 of Noah's family, and 7+4+5 (16) grandkids. A generation is generally accepted as 25 to 30 years, but for the sake of ease (and to give Christians yet another edge in the argument) let's assume the shorter of the two - 25 years. the quick and dirty math suggests that two people can, in the course of 25 years, bring their number up to 24. That's a dozen people for every one original. By this extrapolation, Noah's kids could each add 11 to the pot - a total of 33 additional hominids that we add to the 24 for 57.

But wait... let's give the Christians an even bigger edge, and assume their biblical account to be true.

If we do that, we get 3 boys from Gomer, and 4 "offspring" from Javan (both sons of Japheth). Japheth's other sons had no kids of note, so that means Big J only had 7 grandkids. How he got those grandkids, I don't even want to think about, because the only logical conclusion you can draw from the biblical account is that Japheth's kids were tapping his wife and sisters-in-law. Ew. Regardless, that brings our total people count from the 1st generation of 24 to 31 so far in the second generation. Ham... oh, poor Ham. 3 out of Ham's 4 kids gave him grandbabies. Again, let's not think about how. We don't want to offend Christians by pointing out the obvious need for incest in their story. Cush had 6 boys, Mizraim had 7 "offspring" which I'll accept as girls so we can start to try to get away from the incest... oh, shit, we can't. Oh well. Anyway, Canaan was a very busy little fella and had 11 kids, 2 sons, and 9 offspring. Are you keeping track? Let's add those 24 to our tally and we've got 55 - 24 from the first generation, and 31 so far from the second. Now we come to Noah's youngest, Shem. One of Shem's kids gave him 4 boys. That's it. They weren't very busy at all. Slap those 4 onto our running tally of 55, and we've got a whopping total of 59. Almost 60 people in the course of two generations, or 50 years. This does not look good. It does, however, give a two person advantage to the bible... but we're not done with the math yet!

50 years has gone by! GET BUSY, PEOPLE! IT'S TIME TO BE FRUITFUL AND FUCKING MULTIPLY! It's already 2298 BCE, we've got about 3,000 years to get up to ~7 Billion! Two generations - 50 years - has gone by, and we've only gone from a world population of 8 to 59. We've only added 51. One person per year. I'll grant you, this is originating from two, so it's pretty good, let's see how it pans out. I'll tell you what... let's forget gender altogether and assume that out of the 59 people we now have on Earth, we have 25 even couples. Why 25? because Noah and his wife are dead by now, and Japheth, Ham, and Shem's peckers have withered (It's been 25 years, and we're assuming the bible is true, therefore, no more kids, right)? So 25 couples, or 50 people, reproducing at the given rate of 11 per couple per generation will give us 275 after the the first generation. Subtract the original 50 people (because Viagra hasn't been invented yet), and we have 225 viable reproducing people for the next generation, if we throw in an extra one (let's assume someone had twins) that brings us to 113 couples reproducing at the same 11 kids per couple per generation rate. at the end of four generations - a hundred years - we have 1,243 people. Now, Christians, I know at this point you start getting excited. I mean, it DOES look possible. Except for one thing. We can't exponentially increase on people.

Nope.

The original 59 are dead by now. That brings us to 1,184.

The last generation of 225 people can no longer reproduce. That gives us 959.

It's now 2248 BCE. Time is ticking away.

960 people (again, let's assume someone had twins) gives us 480 couples, which at the end of the next generation gives us a total of 6,239 people (5,280 new ones and 959 old ones).

It's now 2198 BCE.

If things go on like this, and we ignore the other extinction level events in the bible, it might be possible. If there actually was an equal amount of women to men... and stillbirths and defects didn't happen... if birth didn't kill so many mothers in premedicinal times. You could reach 7 Billion in a few thousand years. If it weren't for these and other things, like Sodom and Gomorrah, Countless civil wars all over the globe, World War I, World War II, The Korean War, The Vietnam War, Serbia, Bosnia, Lebanon, Rwanda, Darfur, Somalia, The First Gulf war, Afghanistan, Iraq (Again), and too many genocides to count.

You see, Creationists, your logic can work... if the world actually knew peace... which it doesn't.

Oh, and incidentally, you need women to reproduce. Sorry, guys, that's just science.