mitschlag

Millions of dead things buried in defined rock layers of great age, all over the world.

Sauron

It's the compartmentalized behavior so common with creationists.

They think that their past failures don't count, because they occurred on that "other board". Or, if they can win an argument here, it somehow erases the failure to support previous points.

The idea that the argument must stand up everywhere, in every discussion, apparently troubles them too much.

Dave Hawkins

I would appreciate it if the thread could be left open for at least one more day. I would like to see if I can find some of the texts referred to by Josephus and Faber.

Sauron

How about some evidence for your flood, Davey? So far we have zip on that. Without proving that a flood occurred, the rest of your argument is dead in the water.

There's an order to how these things have to be done, you know. Can't prove B, until you've proven A first.

The Evil One

All right, let's get back on topic.

FIRSTLY: I have yet to see any evidence that those authorities said the ancients lived ~1000 years. Greatly extended periods of time of one variety or another, yes; that's why Josephus cites them. Specifically ~1000 years, no.

SECONDLY: all the sources in AJ are from cultures with mythologies which are contradictory to afdave's Genesis account. afdave will (once he's finished doing his homework) need to explain, for example, why he finds Hesiod a believeable source when Hesiod says people lived long lives in the Golden Age, but not (for instance) when Hesiod says that the Golden Age was ruled over by a divine king principally renowned for castrating his father and eating his children.

Or when Hesiod says there were two global floods, after the second of which the world was repopulated by King Deucalion throwing stones over his shoulder whereupon they turned into people. (No genetic bottleneck for those wily Greeks!)

Etc. Etc. Etc.

ericmurphy

I would appreciate it if you would retract your claim that I ever said aging was not affected by environmental or genetic factors, unless you can provide evidence that I ever made any such claim.

You constantly accuse me of misrepresenting you when I quote you directly. If you can't provide a quote of me making the asinine claim that environmental and/or genetic factors have no influence on aging, I demand you retract your blatant misrepresentation of my position.

My real position is that you have so far failed to provide the tiniest scrap of empirical evidence for extended life-spans of ancient humans. And I hope you're not going to claim that's an off-topic remark.

Calilasseia

Plus, given that among the humans that have been reliably documented as living to ages in excess of 100 years, we have that interesting demographic fact that women outnumber men by about 10 to 1 in the top supercentenarians list I posted. So how come only the men get a mention in the bible? Are we to assume that only the men had the Super Divine Longevity Viagra™ and that the women were just left to die off and be replaced periodically with younger models when these crusty old gits wanted to produce some more sprogs? Or were the women similarly long lived, but not thought worthy of mention? I've already commented on the rampantly misogynistic stance of this book before, but it would be interesting to know if, once Dave surprises us all and provides empirical evidence of past superlongevity, he adopts one of the following views:

[1] Only the men were long lived;

[2] The women were long lived also, but weren't worth mentioning.

Chili

Don't choke on this one but the fact is that Pure Peason inside the Thousand Year Reing is for males only.

mfaber

So far what we have had NONE of from dave on this thread is ANY kind of empirical evidence to support even the possibility that humans could live as long as the alleged patriarchs of the Bible (corroborating evidence for that they lived would be?). Pappy Jack has already posted evidence that humans have NOT lived anywhere near that long:

Dave comes up with bovine scatology of this variety instead:

FIRST, QUOTE Eric where he, or anyone else for that matter, EVER made such a claim (strawman, MUCH!). Sorry Dave, but your attempt to rephrase the basic argument that there's NOT ONE jot of corroborating evidence, especially of the scientific variety, that supports your claims about the patriarchs isn't going to work No one here has made the argument that environmental conditions, nutrition, and genetics (especially like progeria) have no effect on aging. That would be absurd. I see that Eric has already objected to your flagrant misrepresentation of his position here, so let me second that objection and demand that you either link to where he made such a claim or retract it.

Second,
1. How does the particular study on stem cells (a review) have anything that could possibly be used as EVIDENCE to support the alleged age of the Biblical patriarchs? Connect the dots, for us Dave. IOW, what EVIDENCE from any of these articles that you lifted the abstracts from (did you bother to read the articles, Dave?) would support your claims (after "Consider the following..."?




There's a BIG GAP between your quotes posted and your claims, i.e., on what rational warrant should we think that your quoted material is sufficient evidence to support your extraordinary claims, e.g. existence of pre-flood conditions/vegetarianism accounted for unusual longevity of patriarchs? (how does anything you posted qualify as evidence for your claims?)

2. Why the use of the word "ALLEGED" (in caps, so dave can't pretend we didn't notice). This points to other claims that Dave has YET to give support with evidence.

• Where the evidence that there EVER were the conditions you claim existed "pre-flood"? This completely overlooks the FACT that you've presented no evidence that there was a global flood to have "pre-flood conditions" to.
• Where in the Bible does it say that anybody was necessarily a vegetarian? That notion springs entirely from your particular YEC interpretation.
  • Why should we credit the obligatory vegetarian "pre-flood" diet as fact and even assuming it was true, how would this make such a big difference?
  • Vegetarians now don't live appreciably longer than their omnivorous compadres, so why should we believe that such a diet, pre-flood or otherwise, would be instremental in increasing life-spans to the near millenium mark?

You can paint all the "maybe based on what ifs" scenarios you want, but if they don't have any evidence to support them then why should we bother considering them? Again I remind you that a "maybe based on IF X, Y, etc. HAD BEEN true" scenario is nothing but an ad hoc fallacy of the most blatant variety, i.e., it's not worth squat as corroborating evidence for the extravagant claims you are making. So NO, I have no intention of "thinking like a creationist", given what that kind of "thinking" usually involves (a lot of doing just the opposite).

The physical evidence as Pappy Jack has already brought up does NOT support any claim that humans have ever lived longer than 120 years (even with modern technology/medicine as an advantage). Let me add to what Pappy Jack has posted.

1.Evidence from the Croation Skeleton Collection
This is a collection of 3,160 individuals in the Skeletal Collection of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, dating from 5,300 B.C. to the mid-19th century. The mean age of death for these individuals was only 35.6 years. These skeletons were examined for evidence of cancer (looking for primary or secondary bone cancer). The point here is was to see if the hypothesis that cancer is much more prevalent now because people are simply living long enough to develop it. If that is indeed true, then one would not expect to find much evidence for cancer among the individuals in this collection.
More here from National Geographic Ancient Skeleton Collection Yields Cancer Clues

2. In any assessment of skeletal remains of we don't ever see people living such a long life as your alleged patriarchs:



Source: Angel, L. J. (1984) Health as a crucial factor in the changes from hunting to developed farming in the eastern Mediterranean. From Cohen, Mark N.; Armelagos, George J. (eds.) (1984) Paleopathology at the Origins of Agriculture (Proceedings of a 1982 conference). Orlando: Academic Press. (pp. 51-73)

3. [ off topic] Note that we have evidence of humans living X number of years as far back as ~30,000 BC which predates your alleged flood. Just for fun, realize we have the preserved body of Ötzi the Iceman found in melting ice near Hauslabjoch in the Ötzal Alps on September 19, 1991. This ancient corpse was dated by 3 independent labs at 5300 years old which is definitely "pre-flood". My question would be here is how did this corpse survive such a catastrophe as the your alleged flood (miles of water/sediment, continents drag-racing to present-day positions, mountain ranges rising in mere days, etc.). Why was it not buried with all the other "millions of death things" in that Flood Layer you keep alleging exists but have yet show us in the geological record?

More on Otzi who apparently died a violent death from Wiki
[/off topic]

4. The fact is that eukaryotic cells usually won't divide more than 50 or 60 times when they undergo cellular senescence and programmed cell death (PBD) or apoptosis. Normal cells usually won't divide more than 50 or 60 times. ] Hayflick first noted this phenomenon of limited cell division, known as Hayflick's Limit in 1961. The process of cellular senescence if important in a number of processes, including the elimination of possible cancer cells. Cancerous changes proceed when the orderly process of cell aging and apotosis are bypasses (deleterious mutations disable the process). One characteristic of cancer cells is that they are immortal, unlike normal cells. IMO, this process underscores the importance of DEATH as a fundamental, if apparently paradoxical, part of life as we know it.

More on cancer and apoptosis:
A. Suppressing Cancer: The Importance of Being Senescent

B. Cancer and cell senescence

C. Introduction to Apoptosis

D. Apoptosis (Wiki)

E. Apoptosis vs Necrosis Animation

F. Site with YouTube explanation of Apotosis

5. An additional fact is that extinction is also a fact of life on earth, with 99% of all species having gone extinct. This is NOT a problem for evolution as I outline here in this post (the Gambler's Ruin scenario).

The point here is that death/extinction is NOT some evil smacked down on humanity by some capricious, egomaniacal, blackmailer of a deity, but is simply a necessity for both shaping and maintaining life as we know on this planet. Death actually is the engine that drives life on this planet. Without death, all of the nutrients/elements that make up living things would be never be recycled to generate new life. The fact is that life on this planet is the result of continual recycling of the basic elements which would be impossible without death which releases these elements back into the environment.

Religions have taken advantage of the fact that what happens at death is unknown (for now) and humans have a tendency to fear the unknown. Christianity has exploited this fear by making death into some disease (part of "the Curse") for whom it promises a "cure" (hey believe and you'll live forever if you just believe!). I can see just why you would want to hawk the notion that there were some humans who lived so long, even though there's not a jot of physical evidence that supports such an extraordinary assertion. You need idea that some humans were especially "favored" to promote the idea that death is some kind of evil visited on the "less favored" humanity by that capricious egomaniaical diety you fear (a lot to fear from the Cosmic Don). But we're not that gullible nor that easily frightened(unfortunately for you).

Bottom line here is that a finite, often "short" (a relative term, "short" compared to what) life span (decades for humans) is the rule in nature because it's a necessary part of the life cycle (death, not just some inescapable evil, but a necessary part of life).

Pappy Jack

Phew - nice post: ko punch as always.:notworthy: