LIVING VERSUS DEAD: The Earth may seem crowded with 6.5 billion people but it would take 100 billion living to come close to outnumbering all who have ever lived.
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The human population has swelled so much that people alive today outnumber all those who have ever lived, says a factoid whose roots stretch back to the 1970s. Some versions of this widely circulating rumor claim that 75 percent of all people ever born are currently alive. Yet, despite a quadrupling of the population in the past century, the number of people alive today is still dwarfed by the number of people who have ever lived.
In 2002 Carl Haub, a demographer at the Population Reference Bureau, a nongovernmental organization in Washington, D.C., updated his earlier estimate of the number of people that have ever existed. To calculate this, he studied the available population data to determine the human population growth rates during different historical periods, and used them to determine the number of people who have ever been born.
For most of history, the population grew slowly, if at all. According to the United Nations' Determinants and Consequences of Population Trends, the first Homo sapiens appeared around 50,000 years ago, though this figure is debatable. Little is known about this distant past and how many of us there might have been, but by the time of the agricultural revolution in the Middle East in 9000 B.C., Earth held an estimated five million people.
Between the rise of farming and the height of Roman rule,population growth was sluggish; at less than a tenth of a percent per year, it crawled to about 300 million by A.D. 1. Then the total fell as plagues wiped out large swathes of people. (The "black death" in the 14th century wiped out at least 75 million.) As a result, by 1650 the world population had only increased to about 500 million. By 1800, though, thanks to improved agriculture and sanitation, it doubled to more than one billion. And, in 2002 when Haub last made these calculations, the planet's population had exploded, reaching 6.2 billion.
To calculate how many people have ever lived, Haub followed a minimalist approach, beginning with two people in 50000 B.C.—his Adam and Eve. Then, using his historical growth rates and population benchmarks, he estimated that slightly over 106 billion people had ever been born. Of those, people alive today comprise only 6 percent, nowhere near 75 percent. "[It is] almost surely true people alive today are some small fraction of [all] people," says Joel Cohen, a professor of populations at the Rockefeller and Columbia Universities in New York City.
For this myth ever to be valid there would have to be more than 100 billion people living on Earth. "How cozy," Cohen says. "It just doesn't seem plausible," he adds.
Today there are more than 6.5 billion people walking on Earth, according to United Nations estimates. Recently, the population has been increasing by about 1.2 percent each year, down from the late 1960s peak of a 2.1 percent yearly growth rate. Some industrialized countries, especially France and Japan, have very low birth rates and their populations are actually dwindling, Haub notes. In developing nations populations continue to grow, but some countries, such as India, are experiencing a slowdown in their growth rate.
Cohen doubts that a doubling of today's population, to 13 billion, will occur, never mind approaching anywhere near 100 billion. Not even the U.N.'s highest projection predicts that much growth, he says. For 2050, the world body's estimates range from 7.3 billion to 10.7 billion people. The median, and most likely, projection of 8.9 billion relies on a gradual slowing of the growth rate. And the U.N. predicts the world population will stabilize at 10 billion inhabitants sometime after 2200. At this rate, the living will never outnumber the dead
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12 Comments
Add CommentIt's an interesting proposition. The creationsits will have difficulty (where do all the 'souls' come from and is there an inexhaustable supply etc) while the evolutionists will say that we grow at the extinguishment of other 'lower' species; since God doesn't exist so what!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMaybe a better view would be that life has existed from Time Immamorial (see Masonary) and we are just going through another evolution of the species and awaiting the next phase and attributes. Notwithstanding we will grow and other species must make way for that growth of the higher species. That's how it has been and will while ever there is this little blue-green plantet.
Here is a mental exercise I would like to see attacked by an expert. If you have two parents, 4 grandparents, and thus a binary progression, there would have to have been many billions of people only 10 or 20 genereations ago. We know there were not so many people, so there must have been a considerable intermarriage among families, cities and countries. What is the probablility that ones family tree contains the same individual twice in the 5th generation? The 30th generation?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisChina has limited its population for several decades to one child per couple. Their current numbers are still in the range of 1.3 billion. Why?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis exercise assumes correctly that you'd need two parents, but incorrectly that siblings are impossible.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWith a couple having even one additional child this breaks down. Even just a few generations back large families were much more common than today.
According to Wikipedia (take that as you will): China's One-Child policy was introduced in 1979. Considering that the average life expectancy in China is 71.8 years it's far too soon to see any effects from the policy.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlso there are some exceptions to this policy.
Note that it limits births and encourages (sometimes forces) abortions so it's primary effect is limiting population growth. Population decline will become more apparent further down the road. Basically check back in another 40 years.
Note also that the average life expectancy in China is increasing so this factors into the numbers as well.
That seems like a ridiculous question to ask a creationist "Where do all the 'souls' come from?" Rather, why not ask where a single 'soul' comes from and I can assure the most likely and most reasonable response you'll get is God. The logical extension of that is that every human soul comes from God. Being as we Christians see God as an omnipotent being creating over 106 billion souls individually should be a piece of cake.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm of the belief that human souls aren't waiting in a giant "heavenly vat" waiting to be implemented into a physical human body, but instead are created when that body is conceived. Prior to that our existence was only in God's mind in his planning of our construction and his intent of our creation. So that's over 106 billion souls (and lives filled with emotion, rebellion, pain and joy) he kept in mind and still keeps. No strain for an omniscient being right?
Basically, and unfortunately, it seems that the answer would be in the same kind of reasoning and faith common among Christians that you (apparently) scoff at.
Now if you were to ask how God makes a soul, you've got me there, I don't know. Being as the soul is a thing inferred (which by the way Evolution is also inferred not saying it's wrong but that it is inferred) rather than observed directly I doubt that any human being rightly knows the process and by comparison we have a lot more objective evidence for evolution than we do for the soul.
The evidence for the soul tends to be much more subjective in nature which thus causes some to disregard it's existence at all. But I think that's foolish.
Also, while it's generally a safe assumption that the Evolutionist doesn't believe in a soul, if one did he'd likely consider the soul in the same respect to the human body. That it is a 'more' developed and sophisticated soul than those of 'lower' evolution have and it's origin lies within the origin of species, or perhaps it evolved somewhere on the way like the pancreas.
This is a complex issue and I can only give my opinion as I understand it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn a national Geographic documentary and other sources I came across that it seems as if life (a characteristic that distinguishes objects that have signaling and self-sustaining processes (biology)) or soul is mass and not a "thing inferred"
".in experiments done by scientists soul weights and if it weighted it is mass, that is The physical volume or bulk of a solid body,and if it takes off when we die as the experiment suggests then souls are ready made or at the least those death still somewhere (after life) because the experiment suggests that right at the very second we die we lose weight when the only thing gone is what we called life.Now that is science and my view is that when you are religious or scientist is very hard to be both because the incoherency between these two philosophical principals (only 3% of the scientists community believe in any god)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this,perhaps is more inacurate definition of some words,mass is not spirit neither is infare,mass is or is not.if we involve faith then everything is off,Faith is a gift that I have not being bless with but when I look at our behavior the mega incoherency I find is too complex.When a priest get hurt it does not call god but it dial 911 or science,there is no evidence god contribute to the agricultural revolution,the construction of roads,going to the moon and now out of space,all the greatest revolutions "very likely to save our existence by now" have being done by science,so why the incoherence?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow souls are made? I think it can be explain just as how the universe and everything in it came to be,now in order to understand it we will have to re-define some words in our language,like the word "nothing"because if we coherently define this word we will have an explanation for everything.
Why? because if there is no empty space then the word nothing can't be define as the emptiness of an space and if it is not empty then it is something,if it is something then everything can come from it,including life.
We do business base on odds,or so I hope,not base on faith.The problem I see is that if we were waiting for god to make a move the probability the human species will disappear is too high to consider the creation of souls,so if we look at souls as created by god we will never have a chance to survive due to the chaotic universe we live in,as Steven Hawkins said we must look for an other planet to guarantee the survivor of human species and we do that by starting understanding that same science more than 95% of the world population use to do business,to care for our health,to guarantee food for the growing population and much more is the same science used by Steven to make his remarks but many of us want to believe that souls are created and the problem ,again, is that if we wait for that to be true it is very likely we will be extinguished,specially because the religion card is only used at the verge of losing our life's,human tent to ask for god only when we are about to pass but if we think we have a chance we call a doctor for accidents ,experts for disasters.. or science.Just imagine something that could happen in the next few seconds and an asteroid is detected coming our way with the potential to destroy our only spaceship "planet" earth,would you listen to NASA or would you seat and pray? but if I new we have a chance by shooting down the asteroids god would be the last I will think of and so would you assuming you are in charge TO SAVE US ALL,that is if you do business base on odds.There is an organization called Share international(religion),they say god created only 60,000 souls and according with the notes above we already sum up to over 106 billion souls,Jews orthodox say the world is 6,000 years old but science has found skeleton millions of years old,and as Steven Weinberg says "I don't have the capacity to understand religion because how can you teach at school the world is 6,000 years old and at the same time explain how oil(petroleum) is made.
So are souls created or they already exist?
The incoherence is too obvious to ignore.
Life was originally created by god on earth along,remember?,nowhere else,but now we have found forms of life even in mars,but it is even more incoherent to think that according with what we know now there are more stars (like the sun) in the universe than grains of sand on earth and we still want to teach our kids that we are the only life in the universe?
I just think we should analyze a little better,it may make the difference between life and death and I need you alive because I can't live with out you,we all need each-other.In my view souls are outcome of evolution we just need an special language to understand it.
"only 3% of the scientists community believe in any god" Source please, that doesn't match what I see.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs an Evolutionist I do 'believe' in the soul since it is just a word of primitives to describe a living thing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou may have your ideas about a soul from an emotional and religious study of the Bible.
Mine is from an historical and critical study of the Bible.
The word translated Soul is nephesh in Hebrew and psuche is Greek.
Dead souls, thirsty souls,hungry souls, animal souls and many more.
No Immortal Soul!
These words come from primitive people and are used to express common feelings they had.
Your Religious education that has not had the rigor of verification is at fault.
We invent Gods for events we cannot explain. Gods automatically die with the progress of knowledge. Why not skip to the end and start saying 'I don't know' instead of 'God did it?'
As we watch the conflicted opponents in the race for the Republican nomination we see the terrible toll Religion extracts from humanity.
Otherwise intelligent men are stumbling over themselves and all logic to gain the approval of the most deluded of the electorate.
The assumptions made by Haub in concluding there are More people that ever lived but are now dead than those currently alive are problematic.He seems to assume that y-chromosomal Adam (who is estimated to have lived 60000 years ago or so. and Mitochondrial Eve (who is said to have existed more than 100000 years ago ) were a couple. Biblical Adam and Eve were supposed to be a couple, but y-Chromosomal Adam and Mitochondrial Eve were separated by millennia.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMy understanding is that all the y-chromosomes in existence date from 60000 years ago making making him the most recent common ancestor MALE of all people alive today.(There were other men alive then but somehow their y-chromosomes did not survive to the present day)On the other end all the x chromosones from the mitochondria date from a much earlier common female ancestor.So what does this all mean.Simply that y-chromosomal Adam fathered children with several women (at least more than one) but only HIS y chromosomes are found in all males today. By the same token Mitochondrial Eve (who may possibly not have been a Homo Sapiens given that she was from an earlier period) possibly had children from more than one man but only her x chromosomes survive to this day making her the most recent common FEMALE ancestor
Clearly by this estimate there were even more
"people" alive back then than by Haub's estimate.
Further evolution involves the common ancestry of all living things, hence not all ancestors of modern homo sapiens can be called "people".Certainly "people " existed 60000 years ago. Can we also say "people" who were earlier ancestors of homo sapiens existed say 1million or even 50million years ago.Indeed the statement "living people outnumber 'people' who once lived but are now dead does not make sense from an evolution perspective.
The face value statement "Living people outnumber dead people" does not make sense either.We can speak of "living people" as they "exist" but we cannot speak of "dead people" as these do not exist any more.If we want to make the comparison we can speak of "people" who "once lived" or "existed" versus "People who exist currently". As explained earlier if we are talking evolution , there is a problem about what "people" refers to as much earlier ancestors of homo sapiens can hardly be called people.