If the earth is millions or billions of years old wouldn't it have been overpopulated a long long time ago?

Question

Dear evolutionists and others,
This is as honest question looking for an answer? Please don't go on the attack. Just nice calm replies please.

Answer 1

de de deee!

Answer 2

Why should it have ever been overpopulated until now? For one thing, we haven't been here as a species very long - only a few hundred thousand years (as Cro-Magnons) compared to the billions of years the Earth has been around. Although our evolutionary history goes back much further (many millions of years), those species were pre-human and did not do something very important that we can do.

In all of those other times, species came and went as their environments changed and they evolved to adapt. Until we came along, there was no other species in the history of life on Earth that could actually ADAPT the ENVIRONMENT to suit its needs. Thus, the environment controlled populations sizes of the carious species until now.

Because we can change our environment to suit our needs, we can breed successfully wherever we want to live. And this is the first time any species has been able to do that. This is why, in the last few hundred thousand years, we've come to overpopulated the entire planet.

Answer 3

The earth is old, but all species has its checks and balances to keep the population in control. Humans have always had them the same as what we, as a species, consider the lower life forms have had theirs. There have been savage animals, wars, diseases, famine, natural disasters and just plain meanness that wiped out millions upon billions of lives long before the multitude of years since mankind became a thinking, doing animal and so many since. Look at the way animal lives go in cycles and know that we will be facing another purge before long, (and no, I don’t mean tomorrow or next year or possibly in the next ten; before long in the timelines of cycles can be hundreds of years or seconds).

Example: The rabbit population of a certain area has sufficient food and an amenable climate, so their numbers increase. The coyotes discover the ready food source and their population increases accordingly. Something abruptly wipes out a number of the rabbits, say perhaps an unusual freeze of the food they need to survive. Now the food source for the coyotes is lacking and some starve while others are killed off by men that are afraid they’ll bother their livestock. Now we are back to the original population of rabbits and coyotes.

Actual facts on the way this works are very clear if you look up the wolf and how it was almost exterminated in the continental United States.

The same happens to humans, although in the past thousand years we have had a tendency to make our living conditions to suit our bodies more than animals are able to and in the past hundred years have had medications that staved off diseases, so our population continues to grow instead of being checked and put in balance. Natural disasters take their tolls, and so do severe diseases such as AIDS, but without checks we’ll end up climbing back up like the rabbit and coyote populations did in the example, eating everything in sight and overpopulating our habitat until a severe check is applied. It’s happened time and again; how many did the bubonic plague, the influenza outbreaks or the measles, small pox, polio, diphtheria, yellow fever, malaria and etc., etc., etc., kill over the past four centuries? And rabies for animals, how many still die in the wild from this check? Nature trying to provide that check to put us in balance again. And how many did mankind’s basic savage nature wipe out, both human and animal, to give nature a helping hand?

Now to address the fact that we may think we’re the cream of the crop, although it’s just a state of mind. Consider the remains of the millions of dinosaurs, zillions of fish, small mammals, birds, more insects and spiders and etc. than can be counted, that have died over the billions of years, to have so few be found preserved. We know that there are clear divisions in the timeline, like say the fossils of a thousand of one sort of fish on a layer of sediment compared to the fossils of twenty or thirty a layer up and none since then. Something wiped them out, completely, after a very short period of geological time, which is much longer than the age of man. The dinosaurs abruptly cease and off-shoots of their offspring slowly leave the fossil records within a few thousand years. The whales evolve and develop to become the kings of the seas, and man almost wipes them out in a few hundred years. Everything, even man, has a larger predator that is going to provide those checks and balances, especially if it’s nature.

So yes, the geology proves the age of the planet we live on, and the preserved clues from its fossils tells us the hows and whys we aren’t standing hip to hip with so many reptiles, animals, insects, birds, people and etc., populating the earth that we are unable to move.

Answer 4

When I first read this question I was inclined to answer, as others did, with a technical answer. But on reflection, the fact that you are asking this question means that you are somewhat naive in the science and history involved. By all means, read the technical answers. Or better, read "The Third Chimpanzee" by Jared Diamond as this provides an excellent history of the evolution of man not just from a physical perspective, but from a sociological perspective as well.

More to the point, it appears to me that you are looking for an arguement to avoid the massive evidence for evolution to bolster the teachings of creationism that you "want" to believe despite all physical evidence to the contrary.

While I myself don't feel a need for a theological creation theory, might I pose a few questions and perhaps suggest a compromise position? Might it have been God's plan all along to create the world through the process of evolution? Might the stories in the Bible be intended as alegory rather then literal truth? Is it possible that God and His plan is more subtle than you give credit for?

I truly don't want to interfere with the faith of my fellow man. However, if the Creationists could accept the idea of God creating His works through the medium of the scientific laws that He created, then I think that we could all get along quite well.

So, what do you say? Pax?

Answer 5

No,because vaccines weren't discovered until only very recently in human history. Vaccines are the most significant development which has allowed humans to multiply so successfully. Advances in agriculture and farming is older and had a very big impact on the human population explosion. But, mortality rates are lower in vaccinated populations than non-vaccinated ones. Wars,diseases,famines and natural disasters keep populations in check. Another thing you must consider is that if the Earth is 6 billion years old and humans are 500 000 or so years old and the number of humans that started off in the world was less than 10 000 and they were much more susceptible to disease,famine,ilife threatening injuries from hunting or fighting and lived in scattered groups that couldn't organize themselves to specialize like in our society and they had a much higher child mortality rate. Then, "over population" would not really happen as easily.

Answer 6

Well, as little as 200 years ago the average (that's average, NOT overly fertile) woman gave birth 13 times in order to raise about 4 children, so no. It's only been in the past 100 years or so that medical science has advanced to the point of noticibly reducing infant and child mortality rates. That, and the fact that our children are generally NOT starving or freezing to death because the post-industrial quality of life is better in developed countries than it was back then.
Also, there were no PEOPLE billions of years ago. Even 3 million years ago, the people there were lived in hunter-gatherer nomadic tribes until they figured out how to farm.

Answer 7

There is a system of natural limiting factors to stop populations getting out of hand. If a population of herbivores suddenly explodes, then either the food supply will run out, leading to a decline in numbers, or a natural predator will increase in number due to an increase of their food supply (that is, the herbivore), leading to a decrease in numbers. The Earth contains many closed ecological systems, such as islands, forests, lakes, each with these checks and balances.
These also pertained to early humans, before they advanced to use weapons effectively etc, and developed survival strategies like communities and so on.

Answer 8

Maybe the first few billion years, it was too close to the sun and uninhabitable. Then there is the theory of the various births and deaths of civilizations. Then theres the theory that earth gets hit by extinction types of meteors every so often
It takes a long time for the remaining gene pool to repopulate the earth again.
.

Answer 9

human beings were not here till later, back even some years back we did not have all that much technology and most kids did not survive the young days. we have a lot more living time then people in old days did. WARS! killed a lot of people. crusades and WWI1, WWII, civil wars, revolutions and the list goes on and on.
people also had to deal with natural disaster with no warning at all. Now days we know when a hurricane's gonna come. back then they did not.

Answer 10

95% of all the species That lived on earth are now extinct. Humans have been around only 100,00 years and wars and decease have kept the population in check, but we are rapidly reaching overpopulation.

Answer 11

No. Nature's system of Checks & Balances (i.e. Births & Deaths) has kept population under control before now. We're getting to the point where we can save the lives of people who would have died under the medical sciences of the past, and the world population is showing the strain.