| Topic: | Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Question for Laurence Truett | |
| Posted by: | Laurence Truett | |
| Date/Time: | 28/04/10 12:58:00 |
| Bible says 930 years actually... Bit of reading for you... "According to the Bible, God created the first humans—Adam and Eve—without sin and with the ability to live forever. God gave the first human couple everything they needed for their eternal health and happiness in the Garden of Eden; but He warned them not to eat fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil or they would die, as indeed would all their descendants after them (Genesis 2:16–17). When Satan’s deception prompted Eve to disobey this command and then Adam willfully disobeyed, their minds and bodies profoundly changed (Genesis 3). Not only did they become subject to death, but their firstborn child (Cain) became the world’s first murderer. Truly, the wages of sin is death, physically and spiritually. It is sobering to think that the Bible would have been only a few pages long—from creation to the fall into sin—were it not for the undeserved love of God who both promised and sent the Messiah to save us from sin and death (Genesis 3:15; Isaiah 25:8; Psalm 49:14–15; 1 John 5:13). For 1,500 years after creation, men lived such long lives that most were either contemporaries of the first man, Adam, or personally knew someone who was! The ten patriarchs (excluding Enoch) who preceded the Great Flood lived an average of 912 years. Lamech died the youngest at the age of 777, and Methuselah lived to be the oldest at 969. During the 1,000 years following the Flood, however, the Bible records a progressive decline in the life span of the patriarchs, from Noah who lived to be 950 years old until Abraham at 175 (see figure 1 and table 2). In fact, Moses was unusually old for his time (120 years) because, when he reflected on the brevity of life, he said: “The days of our lives are seventy years; and if by reason of strength they are eighty years, yet their boast is only labor and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away” (Psalm 90:10). Mutations and Genetic Bottlenecks A mutation is any change in the sequence of DNA.6 All known mutations cause a loss of information. The rate at which all types of mutations occur per generation has been suggested to be greater than 1,000.7 We inherit mutations from our parents and also develop mutations of our own; subsequently, we pass a proportion of those on to our children. So, it is conceivable in the many generations between Adam and Moses that a large number of mutations would have been present in any given individual. Genetic bottlenecks (or population bottlenecks) occur when significant proportions of the population dies or proportions become isolated. Such a bottleneck occurred at the time of Noah’s Flood when the human population was reduced to eight people (Genesis 6–9). Other smaller bottlenecks occurred following the Tower of Babel dispersion (Genesis 11). These events would have resulted in a major reduction of genetic variety. For every gene there are two or more versions called alleles. This is analogous to the color red (gene) but different shades of red—light and dark (alleles). It is possible for “good” (unmutated) alleles to mask or hide “bad” (mutated) alleles. However, in a smaller population with less allelic variation, this becomes more difficult to accomplish, and thus mutated alleles have a greater effect. Although Noah lived 950 years, his father, Lamech, lived only 777 years (granted we do not know if he died from old age). In addition, we do not know how long Noah’s wife lived, but Noah’s son Shem only lived 600 years. Considering that the longest recorded life span of someone born after the Flood was Eber at 464 years, it would appear that both mutations and genetic bottlenecks had severe effects on aging and life span." |