Jon_ said:
Anyone have any resources that discuss theories about the plausibilty of man living nearly a thousand years?
Jon
YEC sources talk about purity of the original genetic code and the protection of the vapor canopy but neither mesh well with my understanding of how we age.
Humans are among the longest lived of species. Among birds those in the parrot family match us, among mammals elephants and I'm sure a few others. But even to get past 200 years you have to go to the reptiles and plants, I'm not sure about fish and invertibrates, beyond my recollection that fish in general never stop growing.
Frankly my understanding of how we age is quite muddy but I'll give it a shot,
one of the ways we age is that in our cells' genetic material there is a "counter" that is reduced each time the cells split and when the counter hits zero it stops reproducing.
A major problem with aging is the fact that cartiledge doesn't grow, so eventually the cartiledge that cushions our joints wears out.
I'm sure if you dig around long enough you can find something of interest. Unfortunately, more than half of what you find on the first go around is likely to be snake oil.
My own reason for being skeptical of the ages in the first few chapters of Genesis is the age at which the first mentioned offspring are born, often the father is well over 100 years old, and generally only a few children are mentioned as having been begotten.
Although I tend to favor hyperbola as an explanation, it is also true that there have been different numbering systems over the centuries and it is possible that there was a mistranslation between those numbering systems at some point.
Peace be with you
