How Could Everyone On Earth Come from Just Two People?
A participant in my discipleship program asked for help answering a “science” question: How could just two people (e.g., Adam and Eve) populate the world?
I want to be respectful in my answer, so I don’t mean this to come across as disparaging in any way, but I found some irony in the question. How so? People birth other people. No one has ever observed a person coming from anything other than another person. It is well established that the scientific method requires something to be observable, repeatable, and testable to be considered part of the realm of science (See here and here for atheistic institutions saying just that). Anything not observable, repeatable, and testable is no longer science. It might be history or philosophy, but it’s not science. I find it ironic that suggesting all the people in the world came from people (observable) is controversial. Yet, we don’t bat an eye saying that people came from goo (never been observed, and even the origin of the “goo” is highly speculative).
The Math
But that notwithstanding, there is further irony in that the math is elementary to do. For this exercise, I created a simple spreadsheet and started in year 1 with two people. I assumed a very conservative rate of growth of 1% per year. The very early stages of such a model wouldn’t operate this smoothly. The first couple (Adam and Eve) would have their first child within a year of their creation and could bear a child every year after that for ten or more years. By the 15th year, the first children of Adam and Eve would reach childbearing age, and you would see children begin to be birthed every year, moving forward at a growing rate. Again, a 1% growth would be very conservative. Using an ultra-conservative model like this, in year 50, you’d only have 20 people on earth. In year 100, there would still only be 33 people on earth. It would take you until year 443 to reach 1000 people. But in the 1137th year, you’d cross 1 million humans on the planet. And by the 1600th year, you’d cross 100 million people. And then you’d hit 1 billion people only 231 years later. Using this model, there would be more than 7 Billion people in the year 2027. Young-earth creationists put the age of the earth around 6000 years old. So you hit the population of the planet from only two people with 3973 years to spare.
Keep in mind that the earth’s population was eliminated by a worldwide flood and had to start over from only the eight people who were aboard the ark. The flood was a little before 2400 BC, which means we’d have to grow from 8 people to 7 Billion in 4400 years. The second sheet in my spreadsheet shows this. From the eight people on the ark, you would reach 7 Billion people by 329 BC, 2349 years early.
You may be asking, why isn’t the population much larger then? Because you have wars, famine, and disease that ravages sections of the population. The point of these simple models is to demonstrate that it is possible to get 7 billion people out of just two humans. An argument can be made against old-earth theories using this sort of math. If the earth truly were as old as many “scientists” propose, the population would almost have to be much larger than it is today.
The Genetics
The second question related to the first is, from where did the people come? If they came from the children of Adam and Eve, wouldn’t there be massive genetic issues? Adam and Eve had many many children beyond Cain and Abel. Adam did live 800 years, after all. The early children of Adam and Eve would have married.
Regarding genetics, the answer is no. There would not have been genetic issues at that point in history. The gene pool would have been at the height of its purity. God didn’t forbid marriage between close relatives until 2500 years later with Moses. Remember that Abraham married his half-sister (Genesis 20:2, 12), Isaac married Rebekah, the daughter of his cousin Bethuel (Genesis 24:15, 67); and Jacob married his cousins Leah and Rachel. I find yet another irony here. Evolutionists want us to believe that all life on the planet sprang from the same single-cell organism, making every gecko and jellyfish your long lost cousin, but they have an issue with every person coming from the same gene pool?
It is genetics and the discovery of DNA that has rocked evolutionary theory to its core. Darwin could have never imagined the existence of “computer code,” defining the makeup of every living creature. A large number of evolutionary scientists have disavowed evolution since the discovery of DNA. (See here, here, here, and here just for starters.) It’s just not possible for information to “evolve.” For a new computer program to be written requires new information which requires an intelligence to provide the information.
Conclusion
It is absolutely possible for 7 billion people to come from just a single ancestral pair. The genetics isn’t an issue. On the contrary, genetics demonstrates the veracity of scripture.
Praise be the Maker of Heaven and Earth. Let all God’s people sound the Amen!
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