Why YEC can seem plausible

[Rhea]

That graphic paints a bizarre picture.

The sudden change in lifespan. Not a gradual mutation as the christians claim, but two distinct cliffs.
And Adam still alive when his 6-great grandson is born
(And of course the abusive practice of disappearing the women, like sop many used up vessels)
Then Shem outlives the next 8 generations save one person, and that 8th just barely outlives him. Didn’t that kind of traumatize many generations, thinking they would all die out?

And then, the ridiculous claim of 600-900 year old humans. Absurd.
Show us one fossil, one dug up skeleton of any age past 100.

It’s just obvious bullshit.

 

[steve_bank]

I looked at the Genesis genealogy, who beget who.

As I mapped it out it seemed obvious the writer was filling in time spans to an oral tradition.

A Jew on the forum said traditionaly 49=0meat ;a while'.

It rained for 40 days and nights, a while.

Jesus was in the desert for 40 days.

Moses in the desert for 40 years.

WE gave our time metaphors. In a heart beat, in a cold second, a New York minute. Literal interpretation of the bible as literal truth is beyond words in our modern supposedly educated society.

 

[funinspace]

That graphic paints a bizarre picture.

The sudden change in lifespan. Not a gradual mutation as the christians claim, but two distinct cliffs.
And Adam still alive when his 6-great grandson is born
(And of course the abusive practice of disappearing the women, like sop many used up vessels)
Then Shem outlives the next 8 generations save one person, and that 8th just barely outlives him. Didn’t that kind of traumatize many generations, thinking they would all die out?

And then, the ridiculous claim of 600-900 year old humans. Absurd.
Show us one fossil, one dug up skeleton of any age past 100.

It’s just obvious bullshit.

Well, the early Sumerian kings were said to live super long lives, so the proto-Hebrews wouldn't want to play second fiddle...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jushur

Jushur (cuneiform: 𒄑𒃡 ĜIŠ.UR3; Sumerian: Ĝušur) was the first king of the first dynasty of Kish according to the Sumerian king list. It claims he reigned in Sumer for 1,200 years as the first post-diluvian king.

Just a 4000 year old tablet:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumerian_King_List

 

[bilby]

That graphic paints a bizarre picture.

The sudden change in lifespan. Not a gradual mutation as the christians claim, but two distinct cliffs.
And Adam still alive when his 6-great grandson is born
(And of course the abusive practice of disappearing the women, like sop many used up vessels)
Then Shem outlives the next 8 generations save one person, and that 8th just barely outlives him. Didn’t that kind of traumatize many generations, thinking they would all die out?

And then, the ridiculous claim of 600-900 year old humans. Absurd.
Show us one fossil, one dug up skeleton of any age past 100.

It’s just obvious bullshit.

It seems to me that the bizarre ages and timelines in the Bible are readily explained by the conflation of lunar months, seasons, and years.

Some of the lifespans become perfectly normal when divided by 12.36 to convert from lunar months to calendar years; Others divided by four become plausible, representing a translation from seasons to years.

It's just more evidence that the whole thing is a big game of Chinese Whispers or Telephone.

Methuselah living for 969 months (78 years and five months) was probably an extremely impressive feat in the bronze age; But 969 years is just ludicrous.

 

[ideologyhunter]

It seems to me that the bizarre ages and timelines in the Bible are readily explained by the conflation of lunar months, seasons, and years.

Some of the lifespans become perfectly normal when divided by 12.36 to convert from lunar months to calendar years; Others divided by four become plausible, representing a translation from seasons to years.

It's just more evidence that the whole thing is a big game of Chinese Whispers or Telephone.

Methuselah living for 969 months (78 years and five months) was probably an extremely impressive feat in the bronze age; But 969 years is just ludicrous.

So...God gets months and years mixed up? Almighty God, creator of the Grand Canyon, the Horse Nebula, and spina bifida, can't read a calendar? Also, that divide by 12 thing...if you apply it to Genesis 17, where Sarai at age 90 is told by God Himself that she will be knocked up, the verse would have to read, "Abraham fell on his face, laughing, and said, Shall Sarah, who is seven and a half, bear a child?"

 

[bilby]

It seems to me that the bizarre ages and timelines in the Bible are readily explained by the conflation of lunar months, seasons, and years.

Some of the lifespans become perfectly normal when divided by 12.36 to convert from lunar months to calendar years; Others divided by four become plausible, representing a translation from seasons to years.

It's just more evidence that the whole thing is a big game of Chinese Whispers or Telephone.

Methuselah living for 969 months (78 years and five months) was probably an extremely impressive feat in the bronze age; But 969 years is just ludicrous.

So...God gets months and years mixed up?

Bronze age storytellers do.

Almighty God, creator of the Grand Canyon, the Horse Nebula, and spina bifida, can't read a calendar?

Or his storytellers can't. Or their translators take wild guesses at the meaning of words like 'season' or 'cycle', or 'period', or their equivalents in whatever languages they're using. Imprecise language is still common today, after a hundred and fifty years of precision engineering. Look at the thousandfold difference between a calorie and a Calorie, for example.

Also, that divide by 12 thing...if you apply it to Genesis 17, where Sarai at age 90 is told by God Himself that she will be knocked up, the verse would have to read, "Abraham fell on his face, laughing, and said, Shall Sarah, who is seven and a half, bear a child?"

Sure. But 90 seasons is perfectly reasonable. 90 seasons is 22.5 years.

Consistency is meaningless, the units of time being described could easily change from one telling of the tale to the next. Depending more on what's likely to wow the audience than on what was originally intended. Or just due to translation errors between dialects or languages.

 

[Rhea]

The months and seasons idea makes a lot of sense. If, for generations they told time by months (lunar cycles) and then, after 8 generations they started instead using seasons, but the storytellers still said, “age units”. Especially if the story telling had a skipped hand-down, like a dad died early and so the kid picked up from the grandfather, but was still quite young when the grnadfather died, too. I can see that.

 

[Rhea]

Also, that divide by 12 thing...if you apply it to Genesis 17, where Sarai at age 90 is told by God Himself that she will be knocked up, the verse would have to read, "Abraham fell on his face, laughing, and said, Shall Sarah, who is seven and a half, bear a child?"

Sure. But 90 seasons is perfectly reasonable. 90 seasons is 22.5 years.

Or, if they used half-year “seasons,” one solstice to the next, and then she was 45…

 

[excreationist]

That graphic paints a bizarre picture.

The sudden change in lifespan. Not a gradual mutation as the christians claim, but two distinct cliffs.
And Adam still alive when his 6-great grandson is born

There was a YEC explanation for that. There used to be a theory that before the flood there was a kind of "vapour canopy" which protected people's genes.... that's why before the flood everyone was mostly living to about 900 years....
Then there is

(And of course the abusive practice of disappearing the women, like sop many used up vessels)
Then Shem outlives the next 8 generations save one person, and that 8th just barely outlives him. Didn’t that kind of traumatize many generations, thinking they would all die out?

See the previous diagram... it is based on these:

It is from a long video:


But Wikipedia confirms what it is saying about the genealogies:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genealogies_of_Genesis#Genesis_numbers

And then, the ridiculous claim of 600-900 year old humans. Absurd.
Show us one fossil, one dug up skeleton of any age past 100.

It’s just obvious bullshit.

We currently have a relatively fast aging process.... a slower aging process isn't technically impossible as far as physics goes....
BTW https://www.nature.com/articles/news.2009.864
"....Every time human DNA is passed from one generation to the next it accumulates 100–200 new mutations..."

YECs believe that Adam and Eve were created with no mutations. I think that makes sense.

 

[excreationist]

.....It seems to me that the bizarre ages and timelines in the Bible are readily explained by the conflation of lunar months, seasons, and years.

Some of the lifespans become perfectly normal when divided by 12.36 to convert from lunar months to calendar years; Others divided by four become plausible, representing a translation from seasons to years.

In Genesis 5:17 says Mahalalel lived 895 years... let's try dividing that by 4: that's 223 years.... so then let's try 12.36.... that's 71 years.... but in verse 15 it says he was the father of Jared at the age of 65.... if you divide that by 12.36 that's 5.2 years.... or dividing by 4 you get 16 years.... I think literal years makes more sense.... after all it is called literalism.

It's just more evidence that the whole thing is a big game of Chinese Whispers or Telephone.

That doesn't explain why the ancestors of Noah all died within a couple of years before the Flood - I don't think that was an accident:

Methuselah living for 969 months (78 years and five months) was probably an extremely impressive feat in the bronze age; But 969 years is just ludicrous.

See my previous post (#389). YECs believe Adam and Eve were created with no mutations.... it is theoretically possible for humans to have a slower aging process.

Maybe it is ludicrous as a test of Christian's faith.... in a similar way that I think that the Bible only promotes a flat earth and never contradicts the idea of a flat earth.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Have you ever played the game Chinese whispers? If a story falls apart completely within minutes when you're in a ring with ten people, imagine when it's tens of thousands of people, over vast geographical distances, over hundreds of years?.....

Well I think the ages in the genealogies would have been finalised in the end rather than at the start.... to make sure no-one was living when the Flood happened that wasn't meant to....

This is another reason why the Flood story can seem plausible...

What exactly about this sounds plausible to you? I can't follow your logic. People don't normally have lives over 900 years. Since the Bible is anachronistic, ie jumps willy nilly forwards and backwards in time placing, to them, uniquely modern things into the distant past we know the Biblical authors didn't seem to care much about an accurate timeline. So again, what exactly sounds plausible to you?

https://www.google.com/search?q=ana...22i30j0i390.7969j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

 

[DrZoidberg]

That graphic paints a bizarre picture.

The sudden change in lifespan. Not a gradual mutation as the christians claim, but two distinct cliffs.
And Adam still alive when his 6-great grandson is born
(And of course the abusive practice of disappearing the women, like sop many used up vessels)
Then Shem outlives the next 8 generations save one person, and that 8th just barely outlives him. Didn’t that kind of traumatize many generations, thinking they would all die out?

And then, the ridiculous claim of 600-900 year old humans. Absurd.
Show us one fossil, one dug up skeleton of any age past 100.

It’s just obvious bullshit.

Well, the early Sumerian kings were said to live super long lives, so the proto-Hebrews wouldn't want to play second fiddle...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jushur

Jushur (cuneiform: 𒄑𒃡 ĜIŠ.UR3; Sumerian: Ĝušur) was the first king of the first dynasty of Kish according to the Sumerian king list. It claims he reigned in Sumer for 1,200 years as the first post-diluvian king.

Just a 4000 year old tablet:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumerian_King_List
View attachment 34321

After the power grab by Octavian/Augustus in Rome he ordered Virgil to write him the epic Aeneid where he inserts Julius Caesar (Octavians adopted father) as the descendent of Aeneas, the mythical Greek hero and founder of Rome.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_commentary_of_the_Aeneid

The ancients did this all the time. It's propaganda. They want to legitimate their own rule, so they put themselves in the lineage of some mythical king and backdate it as far back as possible. If you're going to make up some mythical divinely ordained mythical king, why not add some bells and whistles and give him a 1200 year old life? It's all just made up anyway. It's extra important for usurpers.

 

[excreationist]

Well I think the ages in the genealogies would have been finalised in the end rather than at the start.... to make sure no-one was living when the Flood happened that wasn't meant to....
[genealogy diagram]
This is another reason why the Flood story can seem plausible...

What exactly about this sounds plausible to you? I can't follow your logic. People don't normally have lives over 900 years. Since the Bible is anachronistic, ie jumps willy nilly forwards and backwards in time placing, to them, uniquely modern things into the distant past we know the Biblical authors didn't seem to care much about an accurate timeline. So again, what exactly sounds plausible to you?

It doesn't contradict the stories.... e.g. by having Lamech only live to 777 he didn't end up surviving the flood....
Also apparently Hebrew is right-to-left because it originated when stone carving was used - it is impressive that these calculations that make sure ancestors don't survive the flood may have been done without paper and pen.
https://blog.pangeanic.com/right-to-left-languages
edit: might not be accurate/relevant

...People don't normally have lives over 900 years....

The Bible only says that people from before the Flood lived to over 900 years. More recent people like Moses only lived to 120. So it agrees that people don't normally live that long.

 

[James Brown]

There used to be a theory that before the flood there was a kind of "vapour canopy" which protected people's genes.... that's why before the flood everyone was mostly living to about 900 years....

Vapour Canopy

Vapor canopy. This model, proposed by Whitcomb & Morris and others, proposes that much of the Flood water was suspended overhead until the 40 days of rain which caused the Flood. The following objections are covered in more detail by Brown.

• How was the water suspended, and what caused it to fall all at once when it did?
• If a canopy holding the equivalent to more than 40 feet of water were part of the atmosphere, it would raise the atmospheric pressure accordingly, raising oxygen and nitrogen levels to toxic levels.
• If the canopy began as vapor, any water from it would be superheated. This scenario essentially starts with most of the Flood waters boiled off. Noah and company would be poached. If the water began as ice in orbit, the gravitational potential energy would likewise raise the temperature past boiling.
• A canopy of any significant thickness would have blocked a great deal of light, lowering the temperature of the earth greatly before the Flood.
• Any water above the ozone layer would not be shielded from ultraviolet light, and the light would break apart the water molecules.

For a Creationist, every solution to a problem raises two more problems.

Why did God create this life-extending canopy if he's just going to destroy it later? Did it somehow contribute to the wickedness of man that Jehovah was so bothered about? What if there never was a Flood--would people still be living to 900 years today? What population pressures would this world have if your typical person lived long enough to have scores of children?

it is impressive that these calculations that make sure ancestors don't survive the flood may have been done without paper and pen.

I'm more impressed that people think the numbers can be relied upon in the first place. Some apologists wave it away under the banner of "oral tradition" while ignoring the immense problems that trying to orally retell accurate history for centuries can entail.

 

[ideologyhunter]

Amazing that adults today will believe old folklore from Palestine -- stuff that the writers' descendants by and large don't believe is true -- and even devise long twisted rationalizations to make the stories work. Tragic that this stuff is shoe-horned into their children's brains.

 

[Learner]

Perhaps the DNA is as some people suggest, was healthier and purer during those times which should therefore follow the direction of the entropic of universe, i.e. everthing including our genetics is degrading each generation which may mean "natural selection" could sound a little iffy.

Maybe I misinterpreted this.. Did you mean that your god is the thing that is degrading?

I was sort of hinting that rather than evolution it's devolution, that's happening through the generations, just as scientists who covers quite a few fields ( molecular-electronics to Organic chemistry) like Dr. James Tour who says (paraphrasing) " We do not "improve" genetically through time" (as the natural-selection process is said to do).

(Just a matter of time, It will be accepted more widely as people get into it and why there are reasons!)

 

[funinspace]

Well, the early Sumerian kings were said to live super long lives, so the proto-Hebrews wouldn't want to play second fiddle...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jushur



Just a 4000 year old tablet:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumerian_King_List
View attachment 34321

After the power grab by Octavian/Augustus in Rome he ordered Virgil to write him the epic Aeneid where he inserts Julius Caesar (Octavians adopted father) as the descendent of Aeneas, the mythical Greek hero and founder of Rome.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_commentary_of_the_Aeneid

The ancients did this all the time. It's propaganda. They want to legitimate their own rule, so they put themselves in the lineage of some mythical king and backdate it as far back as possible. If you're going to make up some mythical divinely ordained mythical king, why not add some bells and whistles and give him a 1200 year old life? It's all just made up anyway. It's extra important for usurpers.

Yeah, that was sort of my point. As well as later civilizations in Mesopotamia have obviously repeated and borrowed from the tales told by the earliest writers we have...aka the Sumerians.

 

[Learner]

Perhaps the DNA is as some people suggest, was healthier and purer during those times which should therefore follow the direction of the entropic of universe, i.e. everthing including our genetics is degrading each generation which may mean "natural selection" could sound a little iffy.

Do you mean your god was going to make DNA behave differently in a few hundred years and he never warned them?. That DNA didn’t used o mutate, but god was going to make it start, and he warned them against wearing cloth made of two different fibers but not about the *new* dangers of incest?

What was his point? He thought it would serve them right to have disabled children? And those children, what, it served them right for being born?

Wow, that’s cold.

From the very beginning God warned Adam.

God say's, "Now that you've sinned in the world, from this day onward....

Death Now Applies!

 

[Learner]

Well, the early Sumerian kings were said to live super long lives, so the proto-Hebrews wouldn't want to play second fiddle...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jushur

Just a 4000 year old tablet:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumerian_King_List
View attachment 34321

After the power grab by Octavian/Augustus in Rome he ordered Virgil to write him the epic Aeneid where he inserts Julius Caesar (Octavians adopted father) as the descendent of Aeneas, the mythical Greek hero and founder of Rome.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_commentary_of_the_Aeneid

The ancients did this all the time. It's propaganda. They want to legitimate their own rule, so they put themselves in the lineage of some mythical king and backdate it as far back as possible. If you're going to make up some mythical divinely ordained mythical king, why not add some bells and whistles and give him a 1200 year old life? It's all just made up anyway. It's extra important for usurpers.

Yeah, that was sort of my point. As well as later civilizations in Mesopotamia have obviously repeated and borrowed from the tales told by the earliest writers we have...aka the Sumerians.

Your post triggered something I remember some 20+ years or so ago, reminding me of people from Scotland, who wanted to learn an old Scottish heritage tradition that is forgotten in Scotland. It was an old tradition dance that is 'only retained' overseas in Nova Scotia. It's a phenomenon, that I suspect must be quite usual when people take those traditions even habits, to far off lands, whilst still retaining them many generations after.

I remember hearing of a similar thing when I went to the South Pacific many years ago. I learned there were people of a particular island, who speak with some a 200+ year old English dialect, or phrases. In the states there are places or a place (I can't remember off the top of my head) that still speak in a particular English accent .

What I'm alluding to here is: Hebrews were from the same area, and I don't think this is the type of issue that some people think, to be the "dambuster smashing" the Hebrew narrative. The stories are similar - Gilgamesh is like Nimrod of the bible, and there's the flood similarities. Hebrews coming from those areas around ancient Iraq and for them to have similar stories is not really borrowed or plagiarised imo.

Like the Scotttish tradition being retained in a far off land from where it originated from and the the place of origin losing the details of traditions. I would say it was the same for the Hewbrews. Just as an instant response and quich thought, I'll also say: Text written on stones and rocks will always be dated older than texts written on papyrus and skins,in which these two writing mediums would need regular copying to new and very portable writing mediums for nomadic people to write down about their lives and customs, as they travel from place to place on great treks and journeys.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Perhaps the DNA is as some people suggest, was healthier and purer during those times which should therefore follow the direction of the entropic of universe, i.e. everthing including our genetics is degrading each generation which may mean "natural selection" could sound a little iffy.

Maybe I misinterpreted this.. Did you mean that your god is the thing that is degrading?

I was sort of hinting that rather than evolution it's devolution, that's happening through the generations, just as scientists who covers quite a few fields ( molecular-electronics to Organic chemistry) like Dr. James Tour who says (paraphrasing) " We do not "improve" genetically through time" (as the natural-selection process is said to do).

You familiar with the Covid-19 pandemic? Because the Delta strain immediately confirms the evolutionary process.