First off this is my first post in this forum, which looks like it's got some great debates going on and I am looking forward to debating with some of you on this issue.
To the purpose of my post. There is a point of contention that I would like to raise with the possibility of the Great Flood. According to the Bible the Great Flood happened in 4001 BC. I would like to examine what seems to be a sheer mathematic possibility according to modern observations of the population growth rate that would have to occur to go from 2 to 6 billion people in a mere 6000 years.
The math is this, the average rate of growth per year would have to be somewhere around 1,000,000 people per year. That would make a birth rate of 999 births per 1,000 people (births per 1,000 people is the modern measure of birth rate globally).
Crude Birth Rate (CBR) is calculated the following way:
births over time period/population*1000= CBR
The highest modern birthrate is a modest 51.6 births per 1,000 people in Niger, with the world average being a staggering 20.3 births per 1,000 people. I think everyone on this forum can agree that with advances in medicine and technology our average birth rate is likely significantly higher than in the past and continues to increase.
That being said, the sheer mathematics of human population growth since the documented time of the Great Flood simply do not make sense and are not even close to consistent with modern and historical observations. I would like to hear an explanation by a creationist or simply anyone that believes in the Great Flood as to why this is.