I want to start this blog out with a disclaimer: This piece may be satire. Most likely, it was intended to be satire, as there is no way anyone could be this stupid, however, it was picked up by a Christian website (non-satire site) and is being used now as if anything on it were accurate or scientifically correct. I’m just going to break this down one by one.
The first part that I want to point out is that I see nothing in this image that has anything to do with atheism. Atheism is the non-belief in deities. That is it. Nothing more. What you’re talking about (14.5 billion-year-old earth; evolution; 3.7 billion years of life on earth) is science. So, in other words, you’re trying to use science to argue science, not atheism. The fact that most atheists accept scientific facts has nothing to do with atheism itself, as most Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Pagans, Buddhists, and Jews also have no problem accepting reality over Bronze Age myths written by people who sacrificed cattle to appease the sun. That being said, let’s get to the scientific breakdown of this enormously hilarious piece of crap.
Fallacy no.1: This piece claims that the total amount of water on earth is approximately 1.386X10^21 liters when the actual number, not that facts ever seem to matter to these people, is 3.26X10^20 gallons, putting the number at around 1.26X10^21 liters.
Fallacy no. 2: According to the most recent studies, the total estimated population of the Earth is 6.8 billion as of 2010. Therefore, I don’t see how you’re rounding when you’re getting that six-billion number. It might be time to step out of 2000, when that number might have been viable; which, in turn, leads us to Fallacy no. 3.
Fallacy no. 3: I wish I had the writer of this piece in front of me so that I could ask him exactly how he thinks breeding works. He/she apparently thinks we’re asexual. This whole thing relies on the assumption that population never grows. You see, population grows exponentially. For instance, while there are about seven-billion people on (not in) the world right now, in 1980, there were 4.4 billion. In 1950, the world’s population was an estimated 2.4 billion. In 1900, the world’s population was around 1.6 billion. Do you see what I’m getting at? In other words, we are not asexual beings where each person will have one child, and the population totals are what they always were and always will be. I guess Christians don’t understand breeding or exponential growth. In fact, just to drive the point home, the estimated world’s population in 2050 will be 9.85 billion.
Fallacy no. 4: Dysentery! About 97% of the world’s water is undrinkable because it rests in the world’s ocean. Ocean water is salt water and is undrinkable to humans, as salt is a diuretic and would dehydrate us. There are about 326 million cubic miles of fresh water on the planet earth, which would be enough to fill the United States with a lake ranging from about 143-145 kilometers miles deep. Of this, about 70% of the Earth’s fresh water is locked up in the polar icecaps, a number that varies from year to year, as the icecaps are quickly melting. Also, less than 1% of the world’s fresh water is accessible to humans, which is why 1/3 of the world’s population lives in water-stressed countries. There are actually about 5.274X10^15 liters of fresh water on earth.
Simple equation: If the average person needs to drink about two liters of water per day, that would bring the number to about 13.6 billion liters of water per day that is consumed in the world; discounting leaky water faucets, bathing, and the amount of water present in natural and man-made objects such as water towers, vegetables and so on. So, if we’re drinking 13.6 billion liters of water per day and there is 5.27X10^15 liters of water available, then we should be completely without fresh water within 387,500 days or roughly 1,062 years. In other words, according to the equation proposed by the nice gentlemen/woman who made this nice image, mankind should have only been able to last a little over a century on the planet earth. So, even his/her bible is wrong in saying the earth is 6,000 years old, as we would have all died of dehydration after the first thousand years, long before Jebus even had a chance to become a zombie in the first place.
How is this possible, then, that mankind has survived for 250,000 years on the planet earth? Well, refer back to what I spoke about earlier in regards to breeding and timeline. There weren’t always so many of us, in fact, throughout most of the period of our stay on earth, there have been very few of us by comparison to our world’s current population. At the dawn of farming, the agricultural revolution, it is believed that only about five-million humans populated the earth. At this point, there would be enough fresh water to sustain all of the humans on earth for almost 3 million years. Funny how quickly our population’s growth has shortened our feasible fresh water supply, isn’t it?
I would go into how water replenishes itself, but I believe with the fallacies of this piece, it’s completely moot. Especially because, Crazy Christian Person, you’ve actually managed to inadvertently make a point that ecological scientists have been making for generations now: There is not enough fresh water on the earth to sustain our population. We, as mankind, need to start limiting our bathing, fixing our leaky faucets, stop running water needlessly while doing dishes or brushing our teeth, and so on. So, in other words, while trying to prove science wrong with science, you managed to prove science right, though, with pretty bad science that I’ve simply corrected for you. You’ve also proven another point: People with no scientific backgrounds shouldn’t try to discuss science, as you only make an ass out of yourselves. This was actually dumber than the Second Law of Thermodynamics argument, which in itself, completely ignores that said second law only refers to closed/isolated systems, which the earth is not.
Smiling Atheist out, and don’t forget to follow, subscribe, or do whatever it is that you people do. Also, don’t forget that my book, Crusade: The Unchecked and Unbalanced Role of Faith in America is available on Amazon.com for $19.99, and also available on all Nook formats, including free Nook applications for PC, iPhone, iPad, Android, and others, for the low price of $5.99.
