tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6410615559824660051.post5608065381483204824..comments2023-10-18T05:31:21.249-07:00Comments on Peregrinations: Strained ArgumentsRick Gerhardthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10478878021692544533noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6410615559824660051.post-88565350484143721712009-04-13T19:49:00.000-07:002009-04-13T19:49:00.000-07:00Hi Jordan:
That's a good question, one that conti...Hi Jordan:<br /><br />That's a good question, one that continues to puzzle believers. I can only offer a couple of suggestions, ways in which others (among those who believe in the inspiration and inerrancy of the autographs of Scripture) have dealt with it.<br /><br />Scripture seems to say that God intervened (in some unspecified way) to ensure shorter life spans after the flood. Some have postulated (as a physical explanation of this intervention) a nearby supernova explosion, which would have had the effect of quickening the aging process (both of individual cells and as a consequence of whole organisms).<br /><br />Alternatively, God may have directly tweaked the rate of cell apoptosis. Cell biologists have come to recognize that our cells are programmed to shut down after a certain number of generations, such that living beyond 120 years is no longer humanly possible. It may be that apoptosis was designed differently before and after the flood.<br /><br />One apparent difference between antediluvian and post-flood humans is that the former were vegetarians and the latter ate meat. It is a possibility that this corroborates the foregoing explanation. For people living several centuries, the buildup of toxins fom eating meat would have been detrimental, whereas given the shorter lifespans such a buildup is insignificant. <br /><br />These suggestions are plausible, but far from conclusive. I should note, however, that there are different sets of evidences that suggest that early humans did in fact live longer than people of more recent civilizations. These include the rapid rise of technology and civilization among the most ancient cultures, followed by fits and starts (loss of knowledge and technological skills) among more recent people. Longer life spans among earlier peoples would account for their more rapid advances.<br /><br />I know these suggestions do not constitute a completely satisfactory answer to your question, but I've never heard or read such an answer. The canopy theories of young-earth creationism fail for a variety of reasons, and there is no historical or scientific evidence for such canopies.<br /><br />Thanks again for reading.Rick Gerhardthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10478878021692544533noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6410615559824660051.post-46535617752994908622009-04-12T22:26:00.000-07:002009-04-12T22:26:00.000-07:00Another question related to flood models is, how a...Another question related to flood models is, how are the rather long lifespans (often 600-900+ years) of people pre-Noah explained in a local-flood model? The young-earth, global flood proponents often go for some sort of radical change in environment (i.e. canopy theory) as part of the global flood.Jordanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17992760922343915366noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6410615559824660051.post-83865557903944256752009-04-10T22:34:00.000-07:002009-04-10T22:34:00.000-07:00Hi Jordan:Yes. The point of having the animals on ...Hi Jordan:<BR/><BR/>Yes. The point of having the animals on the ark was to enable Noah to quickly restart husbandry and worship, and so that the local ecology could be reinitiated without waiting for animals to immigrate from regions beyond the affected area.<BR/><BR/>There's no way of telling exactly when the flood occurred, but all of the evidence, paleontological and archaeological, has the spread of humanity from the Middle East very recently (about 20,000 years ago). This is consistent with Scripture, as there is no mention of any place names outside of this area in the chapters preceding the flood account. (After the flood, humanity continued to disobey God's command to fill the Earth; hence the incident at Babel, where God gave this commandment a third time and helped to actualize it.)<BR/><BR/>Thanks for reading!Rick Gerhardthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10478878021692544533noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6410615559824660051.post-50782378257740688972009-04-10T14:15:00.000-07:002009-04-10T14:15:00.000-07:00So then the point of having all the animals on the...So then the point of having all the animals on the ark was to ensure that post-flood Mesopotamia still had the diversity to sustain existence for Noah et. al, rather than to ensure existence of all species period? Also, how sure are we that *all* humans were in the Mesopotamian plain? What about Africa?Jordanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17992760922343915366noreply@blogger.com