Absurd Speculations by John Norton Loughborough

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Jun 7, 1877

Absurd Speculations.

By John Norton Loughborough

SKEPTICS who are eager to obtain evidence against divine Revelation sometimes resort to strange calculations. One of their claims is, that if all the dead were raised, the entire earth would be covered four or five times. The following which we clip from the San Francisco Morning Call, is going the round of public journals, and is a specimen of this species of wild calculation:—

“It is asserted by scientific writers, says an Irish newspaper, that the number of persons who have existed on our globe since the beginning of time amounts to 66,627,843,237,075,256. These figures, when divided by 3,095,000—the number of square leagues on the globe—leaves 11,320,689,732 square miles of land, which, being divided as before, gives 1,414,626,075 persons to each square mile. If we reduce these miles to square rods, the number will be 1,853,774,900,000, which, divided in like manner, will give 1373 inhabitants to each square rood, and these, being reduced to feet, will give about five persons to each square foot of terra firma. It will thus be perceived that our earth is a vast cemetery. On each rood of 1283 human beings lie buried, each rood being scarcely sufficient for ten graves, with each grave containing 128 persons. The whole surface of the globe, therefore, has been dug over 128 times to bury its dead.”

The above is a bare assertion without furnishing any basis for the calculation. The writer has not told us how many generations have existed since the beginning of time, or how many persons there were to a generation, nor whether he believes the race commenced with two persons, and was diminished, at the time of the flood, to eight.

In the time covered by the historic record of our world since the flood, the earth has probably never had more inhabitants upon it than at present; namely, 1,300,000,000. If we divide the supposed number of inhabitants given above, 66,627,843,237,075,256 by 1,300,000,000, the present number of inhabitants it would give us 51,252,187 generations with as many inhabitants in each generation as we have in the present generation.

Now if we count three generations to a century we would have 17,084,062 years as the time of the earth’s existence. It is undoubtedly the effort of all such wild calculations to prove that the earth has existed a much longer time than the Bible record would show. If we take the Bible record of creation and the existence of man upon earth we shall find the time to be about 6000 years instead of 17,084,062 years, should we take into consideration that the race began with only two, that those in early ages attained to great age and consequently were much longer coming to maturity; so that the generations would be much longer than at the present when men are shorter lived, and that the race was reduced to eight at the time of the flood, it would deduct much from the vast numbers of inhabitants which some contend for.

If we claim the race to be 6000 years old and allow three generations to a century we have only 180 generations from creation to the present time. Now, if, instead of making deductions for the fact of the race commencing with two, and being reduced to eight at the time of the flood, we allow that as many as the present generation pass off the stage every 33 years, we would only have as many inhabitants for the earth as 1,300,000,000 multiplied by 180, which is 234,000,000,000. Now, allowing one square rod for the sepulcher of each, we would have as many square rods for the whole as there are persons above. Now there are in a square mile 102,400 square rods. To furnish a burial place of one square rod each for 234,000,000,000 would require as many square miles as 102,400 is contained in 234,000,000,000, which is 2,285,156 square miles.

The American Encyclopedia for 1876 gives the square miles of the United States as 3,026,494 exclusive of lakes and rivers, so instead of the entire earth’s surface being dug over 128 times to bury its dead they could all be buried in the United States and each have a burial lot one rod wide by about one and one-third rods long, and surely this calculation is liberal enough and is entitled to more credit than one that makes bare assertions with no proof or data of calculation.

J. N. LOUGHBOROUGH.