106 Billion and Counting

106,456,367,669 is Carl Haub's (Population Reference Bureau 12/2002) estimate of how many people have ever lived on Earth. With the estimate, he is clear to state all the critical assumptions - and the most sensitive of all is the start date (50,000 B.C.)and growth rate assumptions from 8000 B.C. to 1 A.D.

I discovered this trivia as I was researching Heaven. I'm sure the statisticians like me are thinking about bell curves and what proportion of people are in Heaven.

Father Domnic (a Trappist and strict Cistercian at St. Josephs Abbey in Spencer, Mass) believes that all of us are a whole and that unless we all go to Heaven, no one will (pg 137 of "Heaven" by Lisa Miller). Wow - that's an interesting belief with lots of side questions.

The Mission to Empty Purgatory (www.mtep.com) is asking for prayers to assure that at least one prayer for ever 1000 souls ever created is said and as of May 31, 2010 there are still 50 million to go.

With 6.8 Billion people on Earth today, they could change the goal to be one prayer per 16 souls if we could get the word out to everyone.