Sex a sin?

Elsewhere on the Internet, on a topic irrelevant right now, I find this sentence:

He was utterly interested in sex, partly for the usual reasons, strengthened by a religious upbringing telling him sex was a sin, ….

And while researching this little article, I find this:

….web sites purporting to advocate … matrimony over the various other alternatives. The trouble is, most of these web sites are heavily slanted towards Christianity…
It seems clear that the purpose behind many of these sites is to prevent people from having sex, from “sinning”.

Yeah, yeah, the old story. The church is, once again, the big villain. But the Christian view is, unlike many believe, NOT that “sex is a sin.” The Christian view is that sex is a very beautiful and special thing designed to keep for someone special in marriage. And, interestingly enough, people who live by that idea, and keep sex for marriage, have happier sex lives and happier marriages, according to statisticians. They and there children are also less likely to be a drain on state welfare agencies.

Atheistic countries have the most healthy societies?

The atheistic propoganda brigade is claiming it all the time: 

Atheistic countries have a very high level of societal health and success. Just look at Scandinavian countries like Denmark and Sweden, for example!

 Their favorite source is Phil Zuckerman and this list (Table 1 on the web page) of his.  But let’s look closer at the list. (We don’t want to unquestioningly believe everything we hear, do we?)

If you look at the entry on top, Zuckerman claims that Sweden has 46-to 85% non-believers. If so, why put it above Vietnam, with 81% non-believers? Why not take the average and say “approximately 65,5%”  unbelievers? Why use the higher number? The same goes for Denmark, with (according to Zuckerman) between 43% and 80% unbelievers. (That in itself will change the top 5 unbelieving countries, even with Zuckerman’s numbers, to 1) Vietnam 2) Sweden 3)Japan  4)Denmark  5)Czech Republic.) It seems that Zuckerman’s statistics for Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland (each with about double as many unbelievers in Zuckerman’s high estimate than his low estimate) is very unreliable.

Okay. It seems Zuckerman has a rule of thumb: “When in doubt, use the highest estimate.” But is  this his rule of thumb? Not quite:

Several sources list the non-believers in China, North Korea, etc. higher* than those in Sweden, Denmark, etc. (For example, “Operation World’s 1993 handbook lists the non-religious in China at 59,1%, in North Korea at 68%, and in Cuba at 30,9%. They list the non-religious in Sweden as 34,9%, in Finland as 9,8%, in Denmark as 7,5%, and in Norway as 4% of the population.) (Another source, “The demand for Religion: Hard core atheism and Supply side theory” lists the amount of unbelievers –including those unbelievers who feel there “might be a God” and “might be a life after death” – in Norway as 16,9%- only a half to a quarter as many as Zuckerman suggests. In another peaceful, wealthy country, Austria, the page suggest that those “unbelievers” are only 8,3% – less than half, to less than a third, of what Zuckerman say. In Russia, however, the 30,8% of this page is well within Zuckerman estimates.)

Zuckerman may have had a reason to work that way, but readers should question his methodology before jumping to conclusions on his results. With his numbers instead of someone else’s, the results would be very much biased towards associating rich countries with atheism.

Another problem with using those numbers to devalue Christianity is that Christians do not claim: Religiosity, any religion, is better than non-religiosity. The Christian claim is: Actual commitment to Christ and his teachings (as opposed to merely following some religion, or even calling yourself a Christian) makes the world a better place.  You cannot counter Christian thought by showing how the Scandinavians are better off than the average “religious” nation. You would need to compare the least religious peoples (which are probably not the Scandinavians) with the nations who are most committed to Christ.

Some other problems include: Correlation is not causality. Sweden, Finland, Iceland and Norway are all countries where the Lutheran Church closely associated with the state. The statement “Unbelieving countries (like Scandinavia’s) are successful” may have no more or less cause and effect to it than “countries where even the state officially support the church (like Scandinavia’s) are successful.”

And it could be questioned whether you can really call their societies all that healthy. Is their success sustainable in the long term? Many people say no. Are their children growing up in happy, stable two-parent family environments? Very few of them are. Do their numbers on suicide, heavy drinking and depression give the impression of happy countries?

In summary, the few countries and societal indicators Zuckerman selects cannot, seriously, lead to any conclusion about societal unbelief compared to societal health in general, in all countries everywhere. To try and use it as a statement against a particular religion, for example Christianity, would be even worse. Using other statistics than Zuckerman’s, we should rather regard Vietnam, North Korea, and China as the world’s most atheistic nations. These will be better indicators of the level of societal health in non-believing countries.

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* Some of you may observe that, for example, the Chinese or North Korean governments would not be realistic sources for the amount of believers in those countries. True, but we do have at least some other information on the religious beliefs in those nations. Operation World specializes in collecting these statistics. Voice of the Martyrs makes it their job to speak to underground believers in countries where there is no religious freedom. Their conclusions about numbers of believers will be less than 100% accurate, but it is still a mathematical estimate, and not a totally uninformed “guesstimate.” Zuckerman may have unreliable statistics for these areas, but his statistics for places like Sweden and Norway is also obviously unreliable. Yet, he apparently treats his unreliable data in two opposite ways, seemingly using the highest possible number of unbelievers for successful Scandinavian countries, and the lowest ones for unsuccessful communist countries.

Meeting the Hitchens challenge? Easy!

Christopher Hitchens set out a challenge in his efforts against religion:

“Name me an ethical statement made or an action performed by a believer that could not have been made or performed by a non-believer.”

The point, presumably, is to say that atheists are ethically the same as believers, at least. But his challenge can be debunked as unable to make this point (of unbelievers and believers being similar). Or his challenge can simply be met instead.

Debunking the value of the challenge:

To prove an ethical difference, you need not show an ethical action that one group has absolutely never performed. It is enough to show that one group more often performs the ethical action.
Are there statistics that show an ethical difference between believers and unbelievers? A well-documented fact, for example, is that religious believers give more money to charity, and volunteer more time (even to secular charities) than the non-religious. Other examples could also be mentioned, but this one is sufficient for now.
We can easily conclude that there is, on average, ethical differences between believers and unbelievers. And the Hitchens challenge cannot argue away that fact.
Another thing commonly pointed out on this topic is that atheists, even when doing the ethical thing, cannot logically ground why they do it. They may say “this helps rather than harm humans” but why, logically, should humans not be harmed, unless some higher power exist who say they should not? 

 

 Meeting the challenge:

Before meeting the challenge, let’s first examine what counts as an ethical statement. An ethical statement is a statement like:
“It is ethically wrong to do [x]” or “[y] is a good moral deed.”
Therefore, any ethical statement which only believers can make will have unbelievers protesting something like:
“It is not ethically wrong to do [x]” or “[y] is not a good moral deed.”
It will, for the purpose of the Hitchens challenge, be an invalid protest. In fact, it will prove that there are indeed moral statements only believers can make.

And now, for an answer: The first ethical law, according to the Christian world view, is “love the Lord your God with all your heart and your soul and all your mind.” It is an ethical statement that unbelievers cannot make. It is an ethical action which unbelievers cannot perform. Christianity thus meets the Hitchens challenge head-on: Not with an obscure side issue, but by their biggest commandment.
(Do you want to protest that unbelievers do not find loving God an issue of ethics? You can’t. As I explained in the previous paragraph, that protest is a clear sign that the challenge was indeed met.)

 The Hitchens challenge is misleading, since the only valid type of answer sounds inadmissible at first glance. (Did Hitchens set his challenge up in a misleading way on purpose, perhaps?)

Yep- Sharing the Christian faith with your children is not child abuse

I already wrote a pair of articles (here) about the (unscientific) Dawkinsian notion that religious instruction to children amounts to child abuse. But there are more evidence than I mentioned, from larger test groups. Here, Tom Gilson points out what a large study concluded. He believes this should “cast serious doubts” upon the credibility of Dawkins’s best seller, “The God Delusion.” (Another author who casts serious doubt upon Dawkins etc. is Vox Day, who’s book ”The Irrational Atheist” is downloadable free of charge here.) Gilson also asks, here, why no scientist took the Oxford “Professor for the public understanding of science” to task for his anti-science conclusion. Are scientists being consistent?

Child abuse???

Vocal atheists try, these days, to convince people that religion is bad for children. Richard Dawkins go as far as calling it “child abuse.” Obviously, these anti-religious campaigners quote no studies. They back up their prejudiced views by emotionalism, sophisticated word choices, and whatever negative anecdotes they can find.

Now the question is: Does the New Atheists claims about child abuse have any basis in reality?

To study this, I would start with the known fact that child abuse has a negative effect on children. Apart from physical pain and injury, it is likely to have a negative influence on a child’s self esteem, school work, happiness levels, ability to relate to others, etc. If teaching children about God amounts to a form of child abuse, negative results would show up in studies on the effect religious training has on children. For that reason, I attempted to compile a real list of studies that compare, statistically:

 

a1) children who believe the Christian claims, or often have to go to church,

against

a2) those who do not

and

b) measures results generally regarded as good (like improved school marks, staying away from drugs, less depression), even by unbelievers.

Studies like that conclude that religious participation, Biblical beliefs, and having parents who talk about God with their children, all contribute very positively towards a child’s emotional well-being. (To shorten this post, I put a few of those studies here.) 

 My questions and comments to people tempted to believe Richard Dawkins on this:

 

What would you call something that makes children:

a) feel safer at home?

(b) less prone to depression or suicide?

(c) believe their lives have meaning?

(d) more likely to have a happy marriage later in life?

(e) less prone to crime, drugs or alcohol?

(f) more likely to do well in school?

 

I am unsure what to call it, but the term “child abuse” seems highly unsuitable.

 

 Do the New atheists want to take children from their parents for teaching them about God? And if they take children from a loving home with a positive influence (1), where will they place them? Do Dawkins suggest prosecuting parents for their positive influence? This sentence from his book, “the God Delusion” make it sound that way: “… we should no more allow parents to teach their children to believe, for example, in the literal truth of the Bible … than we should allow parents to knock their children’s teeth out or lock them in a dungeon.” Since the New Atheists apparently suggest prosecuting parents for religious instruction to their children, their view of religion as child abuse seems to be dangerous hate speech. This view should not be tossed aside lightly. It should be tossed aside with great force.

 

                                                 Conclusion:

 If you are a parent, please work hard on teaching your child Christian values. Read up on how to best teach it, to a generation who might even misunderstand basic words like “truth”, “judgment”, “God’s love” etc., due to their cultural conditioning.

If you are a Sunday school teacher/ youth worker/ Good News Club (2) teacher, please be encouraged: Do even more to teach real Christian values- not watered-down-for-kids versions of Christian values! Teach it, because your children need it. They need it spiritually, but also intellectually (3) and emotionally and socially and physically. (4)

 

Whoever you are, if you meet or read the sort of bigoted campaigner who try to tell you that teaching kids about God “corrupts their innocent minds,” or “is a form of child abuse” or whatever, tell them to their faces that they are being ridiculous. Inform the readers/listeners that hears such campaigners that the charges have no substance: These loud atheists are trying to “protect” children from a world view that apparently gives purpose, lessens anger and disappointment with life, improve their school marks, protects young people from drugs and keep them away from suicide.

 ————————————————————

 (1) “Positive influence” is not just an opinion here. I statistically made my point about how positive religious training is, on average, for the child.

(2) This link is to an American article, but CEF and Good News Clubs are active worldwide.

(3) Intellectually: They will be likely to have better school marks, and concentrate better.

(4) Physically: They will be less likely to use drugs, and less likely to hurt others. The former protects themselves and others, the latter physically protects those around him. Religious people also live longer and are healthier, on average.

 Other notes:

1) Rich Deem makes a similar argument here, and MikeGene makes a similar argument here.

2) This is a reworking of a piece called “Christianity is good for kids, says the statistics” that used to be on this blog, and replaces it.

Child abuse??? The statistics

(This post is the “boring”-numbers-part of a two-part feature. The point of the story is actually here.)

First example :

From the page I linked to, I get this quote:

“Positive Life Outcomes

Religious participation seems to be having a positive effect on youth… “In general, for whatever reasons and whatever the causal directions, more highly religiously active teenagers are doing significantly better in life on a variety of important outcomes than are less religiously active teens.”…………Data suggested that, compared to their less religiously active peers, more religiously active kids were less likely to: engage in illegal substance abuse; use the Internet to view pornography; get lower school grades ; get suspended or expelled from school; be described by parents as fairly or very rebellious; lie to parents; or to have engaged in sex before marriage. Less religious involvement also correlated to a poorer self-image, greater sadness and feelings of depression. Conversely, Smith and Denton said, the more religiously devoted teenagers were, the less likely they were to believe in relativistic morality, and the more likely they were to say they cared about the needs of the poor and the elderly, as well as “about equality between different racial groups.”

While admitting that other factors may enter into this equation — such as personality types — the researchers stated: “Something about religion itself causes the good outcomes for youth. By general implication, teens who increase their religious involvement should, net of other factors, reduce their chances of experiencing negative and harmful outcomes,” and vice versa.”

 

Second example:  

 In a report called Third Millenium teens, brought out by the Barna Research group in 1999, the following statistics was found:(1)

“Research shows that when young people lack a basic biblical belief system, it negatively affects their attitudes.(2)

As a result they are:

225% more likely to be angry with life

216% more likely to be resentful

210% more likely to lack purpose in life

200% more likely to be disappointed in life.

The research also shows that our young people’s failure to adopt a foundational Christian belief system negatively impacts their behavior. They are:

48% more likely to cheat on an exam

200% more likely to steal

200% more likely to physically hurt someone

300% more likely to use illegal drugs

600% more likely to attempt suicide.”

 

Third example:

 According to Patrick Fagan, 2006, teens from families with frequent religious attendance:

• averaged fewer sexual partners when compared to peers with low to no religious attendance
• were the least likely to have ever run away

 Patrick Fagan also says that teens from intact families with frequent religious attendance:

• were the least likely to have ever been drunk (22.4 percent) when compared to (a) their peers from non-intact families with frequent religious attendance (24.5 percent), (b) peers from intact families with low to no religious attendance (33.4 percent), and (c) peers from non-intact families with low to no religious attendance (41.2 percent).
• were least likely to have ever used hard drugs (8.5 percent) compared to (a) their peers from non-intact families with frequent religious attendance (9.5 percent), (b) peers from intact families with low to no religious attendance (14.6 percent), and (c) peers from non-intact families with low to no religious attendance (20.1 percent).
• were least likely to have ever gotten into a fight (27.1 percent) when compared to (a) their peers from intact families with infrequent religious attendance (32.1 percent), (b) peers from non-intact families with frequent religious attendance (34.3 percent), and (c) peers from non-intact families with infrequent religious attendance (43.5 percent).

 

Fourth example: 

According to John P. Bartkowski, children of parents who more frequently attended religious services:

• exhibited higher levels of cognitive skills than those whose parents attended church less often (according to teachers’ reports)
• were less likely to exhibit behavioral problems at school
• were less likely to act impulsively or to be overactive at home
• were less likely to have internalizing behavior problems (in terms of anxiety, loneliness, low self-esteem, and sadness)
• tended to have a higher level of self-control while under parental supervision in their homes, according to parents’ reports.

Bartkowski also says children whose parents had more frequent discussions about religion with them:

• exhibited higher levels of cognitive development
• decreased in the likelihood that their children would exhibit problem behavior in school
• were less likely to act impulsively or to be overactive at home

 

Fifth example 

According to a George Barna study with 8-12 year-olds:

a) there is a correlation between them claiming that the church have positively affected their life, and them doing well in school

b) Born again Christian children 8-12  (Children on whom “religious abuse” – by the New Atheist definition – had an impact, remember?) are more likely to feel safe at home, and to trust their parents. (I would call that rather unusual for “abused” children.)

c) The born again children were also much more likely than non- born again tweens to possess an upbeat life perspective.

 

And the effects in later life? It seems that highly religious people (often people whose parents “abused” them with ”religious indoctrination” when they were little, and who still continue this “pattern of abuse” by believing in God and praying) are healthier, happier and more happily married.

 

Go back to the “Child abuse???” post.

——————————–

(1) These numbers are quoted in Josh McDowell’s book, “The Last Christian Generation.”

(2) “Having a Biblical belief system” of course, goes a lot deeper than merely professing Christianity. Thus, the mere fact that a child calls himself a Christian do not mean he is necessarily this much better off in statistical terms.

 

 

There are times in the Bible when God orders the killing of people. Is that cruel? Does it contradict “thou shalt not kill”?

To understand my answer, take the following situation: An artist buys some expensive watercolor paper. He tells his young children not to cut it or draw/paint on it. Some days later, he himself take the paper, cut it up into the sizes he wants, and paint on it. Was he then “unfair” or “not practicing what he preach?”

No, he was not. The reasoning behind “do not draw on this paper or cut it” was not: “This paper has to remain in this condition forever.”

It was: “This paper is set aside for a purpose. I can use it for that purpose. My children cannot.”

 

Similarly, God made humans for a purpose. If we disobey God and kill, we kill people whom God could still have used. When God chooses to end a life, it is his perfect time. He made humans, he can take them into another realm when the time is right.

 

Superficially, preschoolers drawing a paintbrush over paper, and a skilled artist making a detailed painting, are both painting.

Superficially, God killing and humans killing are both doing the same thing.

But in both cases, only one of the two has a master plan.

Lies, damned lies and atheists in prison

There are some statistics that atheists love to repeat. One of them is this: “About 8-16% of America’s population are atheists, but only 0.21% of the prison population are.”

This page is apparently their source for that. It gives the numbers for prison inmates, and their reported religious groupings, on 5 March 1997. (I wonder why do no atheist ever mention a more recent study? Is this particular 11-year old study the one with results that best match their agenda?)

But wait a minute. These numbers apparently also say that 19,7% of the prisoners population chose not to answer this question, or was perhaps not asked. Now, the prisoners that were not asked are probably not much different from anyone else. We do not know how many of those were numbered in the sample.

But the prisoners who chose not to answer? It make perfect sense that an atheist will be less likely to honestly answer that question. (It may indirectly affect his chances for parole, for instance.)

The people who chose not to answer could, fairly speaking, include anything from absolutely no atheists at all to all atheists, without exception. Atheists could, if these statistics were accurate, anything between 0,21% and 19,95% of the prison population in the USA. Since many (probably the mayority of) people who are atheistic- they do not believe in God or the supernatural- fail to identify themselves with the label of “atheist”, you could assume their true number will be higher.(And Catholics, for example, could be anything between 38,16 and 58%. But it is unlikely that someone would hide his religion from prison authorities. I therefore hold that the number of Catholics will be closer to the former.)

 

Apparently the “atheists are 8-16 % of the US population” do not hold up to scrutiny either. Other studies claim that 98% of Americans believe in God, and that only 4% of them have no religion. (Note: Numbers for “no religion” or even “unbelief in God” do not equate, even closely, to self-claimed atheism. Many non-religious disbelievers in God would not label themselves as atheists. Using- and grossly inflating- the percentage of unbelievers in America for atheists in the general population, while using only self-proclaimed atheists for the prison atheists, is intellectually dishonest.)

Statement 1: The percentage of atheists in America is, at most, only 1/4 to 1/8 as many as the statistic users tell us.

Statement 2: The atheists in prison may be up to 95 times as many as reported. (The difference between 0,21% and [19,7+0,21]%)

Conclusion: It seems very hard to conclude that atheists are under-represented in American prisons. They may, or may not, have failed to mention their atheism to authorities. In other words, the statistics are inconclusive.

————

PS: It seems people with no religion are 105% overrepresented in British prisons. In other words, unbelievers in Britain seem to be more than twice as likely to be in prison. And while Christians account for 39.1 percent of the English and Welsh prison population, they make up 71.8 percent of the total English and Welsh population. Christians are, therefore, seriously under-represented, and nonbelievers seemingly very over-represented, in prisons in England and Wales. But those statistics are not necessarily perfect either.

About prejudice, Philip Pullman , Dawkins and Hitchens and the like

 

 

Here Peter T. Chattaway, film critic, interview Philip Pullman on “His Dark materials” books and the new “The Golden Compass“ movie, based on it. The interview statements seems to be a bit more toned down than Pullman’s earlier admission: “My books are about killing God” – Philip Pullman

I know that reviewers find the ‘Golden Compass’ movie not even entertaining. And readers say the first book of the ‘His Dark Materials’ trilogy is well-written, the second less well-written, and the third book (the most anti-religious of the three, in which “God” is killed) is very disconnected, failing to satisfactorily conclude the lofty themes promised in the first book.. Jeffrey Overstreet suggest some questions that you can ask in a discussion with children who read the book. (They are in the “Okay, so we shouldn’t start boycotts and complain.But what should Christians do?” section under “equip yourself and your kids ….. section of this link.)

 

 

Some of Pullman’s anti-religious remarks in the interview have led me to comment on the interview’s site.

 

Pullman: “If there is an exclusively religious sin (not exclusively Christian, but certainly clearly visible among some Christians) it is the claim that all virtue belongs to their sect, all vice to others.”

 

Me: If that is true, why does the “His Dark Materials” series put all virtue in the actions of unbelieving characters, and almost all vice in the believing characters? It would seem that this sin is not so exclusive to religious people, but appears in Pullman’s mind as well.

 

Pullman: “It [the claim that all virtue belongs to their sect, all vice to others] is so clearly wrong, so clearly stupid, so clearly counter-productive, that it leads the unbiased observer to assume that you’re not allowed in the religious club unless you leave your intelligence at the door. “

 

Me: Yeah, that’s the same thing that puts me off about Dawkins, Hitchens and the like – this “so clearly wrong, so clearly stupid, so clearly counter-productive,” view that all belief in God, and believers in God, are evil and/or stupid, and atheism the clever, moral thing. It “leads the unbiased observer to assume that you’re not allowed in the anti-religious club unless you leave your intelligence at the door. “

 

 

Why is it that some people are very critical of flaws they themselves share, but they only notice those flaws in others? There is no reason to think that prejudice is exclusive to believers- not if you have read anything by today’s most prominent atheistic writers, that is.

 

Could the world have repopulated from 3 or 4 woman as is implied in the most literal way of reading the Noah’s ark story?

I got a confession to make: I started the calculations below with the assumption: “Genesis should in some places be read figuratively. Now what objective way can I proof that to other Christians? I know! I’ll show them how it is mathematically impossible for the earth to repopulate quickly enough after Noah!” Oops. When I finished the sums, the result did nothing to prove my stated objective. Here are my calculations:

Why these calculations will be inadequate:

a) Many believers hold that the flood in Genesis could be correctly understood as a local, instead of global flood. As such, it may not have been needed to repopulate the world from the few women on the ark.

b) The geneaologies of Genesis mentions very long life spans, and men who apparently still fathered children for a long part of those centuries. It don’t mention women’s ages in those geneaologies. It is very likely to assume, though, that if men in those times literally stayed reproductive for centuries, that women could have done the same. That means that each of them could have concieved many more children than in the calculations below.

c) Some Bible scholars also believe that the Hebrew word for “son” could also mean “grandson,” “great-grandson,” etc. In that case, the earth had even more generations to repopulate before the Tower of Babel or before Abraham encountered other nations.

However, here are calculations using my modern assumptions on how long woman can stay fertile, and assuming the fewest number of generations: These two assumptions are as strict as can be. If I assumed longer fertility times (argument b), or more generations (argument c), I would have made the job of proving the Genesis account a lot easier.

(It may seem strange to assume that a woman can have, on average, 3 or 3,5 daughters in a lifetime – thus 6 or 7 children. But in the times before birth control it was not rare for woman to have much larger families than that. One of my grandmothers married at 28, the other at age 30 – yet they each gave birth 6 times.)

The numbers below only represent the girls and women of the new generation. You could assume that there are still older woman too, and about as many men and boys as woman and girls.

SCENARIO 1: Each woman has, on average, 3 daughters who reach adulthood, and get her girls on average at age 25

From the ark comes 3 woman of child-bearing age =3

25 years later: 3×3 young woman/ girls of next generation.

50 years later: 3×3x3

100 years later: 3 to the power of 5

 200 years later: 3 to the power of 9 =19 683

350 years later: 3 to the power of 15 =14 348 907

500 years later: 3 to the power of 21=10 460 353 203 (More young woman and girls than there are people in the world now.)

 

SCENARIO 2: Each woman has, on average, 3,5 daughters who reach adulthood, and get her girls on average at age 25 (Rounded off to whole numbers.)

From the ark comes 3 woman of child-bearing age =3

25 years later: 3×3,5 young woman/ girls of next generation =10 or 11

50 years later: 3×3,5×3,5 = 37

100 yr.: 3x(3,5 to the power of 4) =450

200 yr.: 3x(3,5 to the power of 8 ) =67 556

 350 yr.: 3x(3,5 to the power of 14) =124 186 354

450 yr.: 3x(3,5 to the power of 18) =18 635 714 698

(More than double as many young woman and girls than there are people in the world now.)

 

 

The bible first mentions contact with other nations again, after the flood, at a time when Abram was older than 75 years. (Before that, it mentions nations in 2 ways: Mostly in the sense of “So-and-so was the forefather of this nation.” Secondly in the story “the tower of Babel,” an explanation why the one group split up into nations.)

Since the exact ages of Abraham’s forefathers are mentioned when they became fathers, it could be calculated that more than 367 years have expired from the ark until the date Abraham gets into contact with other nations. By either of my scenarios, there could have been more enough people on earth for different nations to exist.

The descendants of Noah could well have splattered into several large nations by the time Abram encounters other nations.

Conclusion: It is possible to believe that the earth could have repopulated from a 3 woman in a few centuries. It may not be necessary to assume that it happened (other options are mentioned in the “Why these calculations will be inadequate” paragraph), but it is possible.