Idiotic creationists keep saying that
the Earth can't be older than 6,000 years
because the population would be a lot greater.
You all remember this lunatic:
"In 1985, there were
"5 billion people on planet Earth.
"In 1800, there was only one billion people here.
"Almost all textbooks agree,
"and almost all people who study this agree,
"there were around a billion people
"around 1800. Just, simple scientific fact.
"And everybody agrees the population is
"growing rapidly. Nobody argues with that.
"But the world is not overcrowded."
I rebutted this insanity in my video,
"Kent Hovind's Age of the Earth Rebutted."
But, creationists continue unabated.
Look at this one.
They claim to have math and everything!
"I've asked to come to to the studio today
"a dear personal friend of mine,
"in fact, a colleague,
"with 38 years of career mathematics
"professorship under his direction
"and 35 of those as
"math professor at Kilgore High School,
"more than 20 of those as
"head of the math department...
"an esteemed colleague and career mathematician
"who knows what he's talking about.
"I'd like to welcome Professor John Heffner.
"Let's crunch some numbers and see if the
"evolutionary model is substantiated...
"Here's several evolution scenarios...
"Homo sapiens have been around half a million years,
"and I started with one man and one woman...
"and the growth rate is under one-half of one percent.
"Now, we know that to be, uh, verifiable
"through the data that we do have,
"through the centuries,
"we can't go back very far, admittedly..."
Yeah, so he just HAPPENS to use a growth rate
that exists in the modern industrial age
where resources have been available like never before!
It's been known even before Darwin's day
that population growth is limited
by the available resources.
In fact, that's one of the facts that
led Darwin to his momentous discovery.
The natural tendency of mankind is to reproduce.
Humans can double their numbers every 25 years.
But they don't.
A struggle for resources slows growth
and death and disease,
war and famine check the population.
I know the argument.
Yes, but don't you see exactly the same struggle
takes place throughout nature?
I don't know why I didn't make the connection before.
Why are we not overrun with insects and frogs
given the rate at which they reproduce,
the number of eggs produced
by each and every female?
Nature's broom sweeps away
the ugly ducklings, the runts.
Yes, but it's not that simple.
It's not that simple.
Sometimes it's the ugly ducklings that are
better adapted to the situations of life.
They have longer legs and can run faster.
They have bigger beaks that can
crack harder nuts and seeds in harsh winters.
They survive, have more offspring.
Nature selects them to pass on
their traits to future generations.
And where do we fit in?
Hmm...
Well, the sun does not revolve around the Earth.
Nature does not revolve around man.
Man must fall into nature's cauldron.
He's no deity, no exception.
Once you accept that species
can pass into one another
the whole fabric totters and falls.
- They'll burn you at the stake for this. - Yes.
But now you have a theory.
So, if the creationists aren't even at the level
of knowledge that scientists were in the 1840s,
it's no wonder they have trouble understanding evolution!
Good evening.
"Even at that conservative rate,
"you would get that figure...
"2.45 × 10^990th power."
- Oh, uh... - Clearly wrong.
Yes, it is clearly wrong--
your bogus calculation, that is!
Hey, Heffner, I got a concept for you:
it's called, "Garbage in, garbage out!"
But, let's take "Professor" Heffner at his word.
What if we take his logic and
apply it to, say, bacteria?
Given established growth rates,
what's the maximum age we can come up
for the Earth with these data?
Bacteria are very small.
Some only measure half a micron across.
There are plenty that are bigger,
but let's give the benefit to the creationists.
Since a micron is a millionth of a meter,
that means that the volume of a single bacterium
is 1.25 × 10^(-19) cubic meters.
That's about 8 quintillion bacteria per cubic meter.
Wow, that's a lot!
Let's start with a single bacterium.
Many bacteria have a generation time
as short as 15 minutes,
but again let's be generous to the creationists
and use the figure for the longest generation time:
about a week.
So, after one week we have two bacteria,
after two weeks we have four,
after three we have eight, and so on.
The land surface area of the Earth
is about 150 trillion square meters.
If we consider bacteria growing to cover all
of the land on Earth to a depth of 2 meters,
that would be 300 trillion cubic meters.
We'd literally be swimming in bacteria.
How long would it take to get this many bacteria
with the above figures?
We would need a total of
2.4 × 10^33 individual bacteria.
Okay, THAT's a lot!
But with each bacterium doubling itself every week,
how long would it take?
111 generations of bacteria,
doubling each time, would result in
2.6 × 10^33 bacteria,
LOTS more than we would need.
But remember: we're considering each generation time
to be a week, the time of the
slowest reproducing bacteria
and much faster than most bacteria on the planet!
So, we'd all be swimming in 2 meters of bacteria
in just a little over two years!
And because their growth rate would be exponential,
in just another 22 weeks,
133 weeks all total, less than three years,
the bacteria would have replaced
THE ENTIRE VOLUME OF THE EARTH!
So, I ask you: with the relatively small amount
of bacteria that we have,
does that mean that the Earth
must be less than two years old?
By creationist logic, it MUST be true!