Human population growth indicates a young earth (Talk.Origins)

Claim CB620:

A reasonable assumption of population growth rate (0.5 percent) fits with a population that began with two people about 4000 years ago, not with a human history of millions of years.

Source:
 * Morris, Henry M. 1985. Scientific Creationism. Green Forest, AR: Master Books, pp. 167-169.

CreationWiki response:

As worded this claim is a straw man, since it is a total misrepresentation of what Dr Morris actually said. The 0.5 percent was not an assumed value but a calculated value. It is the average population growth rate needed to get what was then the world’s population in 4000 years. He shows it to be a reasonable average since it is ¼ the modern average growth rate. Morris makes quite clear that this is only an average and that in reality the rate would some times be higher and some times it would be lower. The fact that this growth rate is ¼ the observed current value shows that factors like wars and plagues are dealt with. Morris is simply showing that the current world population is consistent with the Biblical account.

This proves another part of what Dr Morris actually said, that being that the world population fits naturally with in a Young Earth creation Time frame but that add additional factors are to get it to fit with an Evolution time frame.

Dr Morris did not choose an average growth rate of 0.5 percent, but calculated it. Talk Origins above response is a joke on two accounts.
 * 1) Morris’ growth rate of 0.5 percent is an average, not a constant.
 * 2) Talk Origins is using a period of time that includes the devastation of Black Plague, which made the growth rate unnaturally low.

By the way if their growth rate lasted just 200,000 years the population would be 6.48 X10106, which is impossibly high. That why they need a near zero growth rate.

This one is an even bigger joke since Morris never said the growth rate was constant, but that it is an average. Immediately following the flood the population growth rates would be higher do to factors such as the longer lives that persisted for a time after the Flood and minimum competition for food and water.

By the way the date Talk Origins gives for the Pyramids of Giza assumes the Standard Egyptian Chronology, how ever there are reasons to conclude that the Standard Chronology is wrong.