carolinajazz
Well-Known Member
This is an open discussion....but primarily a rebuttal for AKMVP!
FOR most persons the present length of man’s life-span is just a known fact. They feel it should be viewed as neither strange nor subject to change. “It has always been this way and it always will be,” they say. They do not claim to know the cause of aging and accompanying weakness and death. But they feel sure nothing can be done about it.
How do you feel about it? Have you investigated the subject to any degree? Has man’s life-span always been so short? Is it really unchangeable, and is it “unscientific” to think otherwise?
Did you know, for example, that medical scientists are still very uncertain as to just why men grow old and die? The book Science Year states that, at a four-day meeting of gerontologists (specialists in the study of aging), it was agreed that “the aging process is still largely a mystery. ‘We do not have the faintest idea what causes aging,’ said Dr. Nathan W. Shock of Baltimore City Hospital, Baltimore, Md.”
Not that there are no theories about aging. There are many. Most of them involve the death of cells. According to most current theories, during the growing years the body produces more cells than those that die. In a grown person it is estimated that every minute some three thousand million cells die and, in the same time, are replaced—almost. The evidence is that an imbalance develops between the death of old cells and the formation of new ones. The decline in cell production is believed to cause the body deterioration—loss of muscle tone, slowing of reactions, fading senses, brittleness of bones, wrinkles and, most serious, the impairment of organic functions—that we know as aging.
When does aging start? Dr. Shock, after ten years of research, is quoted as believing that “aging begins when growth stops,” that is, at about eighteen to twenty years of age. Then what? The article continues: “Almost all functions then start declining slowly. At 30, they begin deteriorating at a faster but still modest rate which remains constant until death. In plain language, we go over the hill at 20, and the downgrade steepens after 30.” On the basis of his studies, Dr. Shock likewise believes the cause is the death of cells.
The problem is that the scientists still do not know just why it is that human cells, after a period of years, fail to reproduce their kind and thus to maintain the body’s needed supply.
How Long Is It Possible for Men to Live?
Some people, as we know, do live to a hundred years or more today. In modern times, the oldest age at death generally accepted as authentic, according to the Encyclopædia Britannica (1968 edition, article on the human life-span), is that of Pierre Joubert, who was born on July 15, 1701, and died November 16, 1814, at the age of 113 years and 124 days.
Do you believe that is the maximum age anyone could live? The Bible, for example, states that “Moses was a hundred and twenty years old at his death. His eye had not grown dim, and his vital strength had not fled.” (Deut. 34:7) Perhaps you will accept this as also possible, since the difference is only some six and two-thirds years.
What, then, of Moses’ ancestor Abraham, who, according to the Scriptural Record, lived “a hundred and seventy-five years” before dying? (Gen. 25:7, 8) And what of Abraham’s ancestor Shem, who is reported at Genesis 11:10, 11 as living six hundred years, or his great-grandfather Methuselah, whose days prior to the global flood “amounted to nine hundred and sixty-nine years and he died”? (Gen. 5:25-27) Would you draw the line somewhere between certain ones of these men and view the other ages as “unscientific” or “unreasonable”?
Before you answer, consider the following:
In the article mentioned earlier, the Encyclopædia Britannica shows that the average years men now live and the number of years a man could live are two different things. How long could a man live? The Encyclopædia says the span of life possible to humans is “a theoretical number whose exact value cannot be determined from existing knowledge. Presumably there is a maximum life span for the human race, but until there is discovered some property of protoplasm that definitely limits the possible duration of human life, the exact duration of man’s span of life will remain unknown.”
Do you find this surprising? Continuing, the article says: “At first thought, this statement seems irrational. Surely no human being can live 1,000 years. Even though all may agree that the likelihood of an individual living 1,000 years is infinitesimal, there is no scientific proof that this statement is, or is not, true.”
People, then, may reject the possibility of Methuselah’s age, even joke about it. But they cannot do so on truly scientific grounds, for genuine science admittedly knows no certain or absolute limit to human life.
What age would you set as the maximum that a human could live? Suppose you were to set the positive maximum at 120 years. Would you then adamantly refuse to believe that a man could live 120 years and one minute? And if you are willing to accept an extension of one minute, then why not 120 years and one day—or one week, month, year, and so on?
Dr. Harold F. Dorn, who served in the Biometrics Research Branch of the National Heart Institute as chief during 1960 to 1963, used virtually the same illustration in the article on the human life-span in the reference work mentioned. In view of the evidence presented, his conclusion is: “Thus, based on existing knowledge of longevity, a precise figure for the span of human life cannot be given.”
....if necessary, more to follow!
FOR most persons the present length of man’s life-span is just a known fact. They feel it should be viewed as neither strange nor subject to change. “It has always been this way and it always will be,” they say. They do not claim to know the cause of aging and accompanying weakness and death. But they feel sure nothing can be done about it.
How do you feel about it? Have you investigated the subject to any degree? Has man’s life-span always been so short? Is it really unchangeable, and is it “unscientific” to think otherwise?
Did you know, for example, that medical scientists are still very uncertain as to just why men grow old and die? The book Science Year states that, at a four-day meeting of gerontologists (specialists in the study of aging), it was agreed that “the aging process is still largely a mystery. ‘We do not have the faintest idea what causes aging,’ said Dr. Nathan W. Shock of Baltimore City Hospital, Baltimore, Md.”
Not that there are no theories about aging. There are many. Most of them involve the death of cells. According to most current theories, during the growing years the body produces more cells than those that die. In a grown person it is estimated that every minute some three thousand million cells die and, in the same time, are replaced—almost. The evidence is that an imbalance develops between the death of old cells and the formation of new ones. The decline in cell production is believed to cause the body deterioration—loss of muscle tone, slowing of reactions, fading senses, brittleness of bones, wrinkles and, most serious, the impairment of organic functions—that we know as aging.
When does aging start? Dr. Shock, after ten years of research, is quoted as believing that “aging begins when growth stops,” that is, at about eighteen to twenty years of age. Then what? The article continues: “Almost all functions then start declining slowly. At 30, they begin deteriorating at a faster but still modest rate which remains constant until death. In plain language, we go over the hill at 20, and the downgrade steepens after 30.” On the basis of his studies, Dr. Shock likewise believes the cause is the death of cells.
The problem is that the scientists still do not know just why it is that human cells, after a period of years, fail to reproduce their kind and thus to maintain the body’s needed supply.
How Long Is It Possible for Men to Live?
Some people, as we know, do live to a hundred years or more today. In modern times, the oldest age at death generally accepted as authentic, according to the Encyclopædia Britannica (1968 edition, article on the human life-span), is that of Pierre Joubert, who was born on July 15, 1701, and died November 16, 1814, at the age of 113 years and 124 days.
Do you believe that is the maximum age anyone could live? The Bible, for example, states that “Moses was a hundred and twenty years old at his death. His eye had not grown dim, and his vital strength had not fled.” (Deut. 34:7) Perhaps you will accept this as also possible, since the difference is only some six and two-thirds years.
What, then, of Moses’ ancestor Abraham, who, according to the Scriptural Record, lived “a hundred and seventy-five years” before dying? (Gen. 25:7, 8) And what of Abraham’s ancestor Shem, who is reported at Genesis 11:10, 11 as living six hundred years, or his great-grandfather Methuselah, whose days prior to the global flood “amounted to nine hundred and sixty-nine years and he died”? (Gen. 5:25-27) Would you draw the line somewhere between certain ones of these men and view the other ages as “unscientific” or “unreasonable”?
Before you answer, consider the following:
In the article mentioned earlier, the Encyclopædia Britannica shows that the average years men now live and the number of years a man could live are two different things. How long could a man live? The Encyclopædia says the span of life possible to humans is “a theoretical number whose exact value cannot be determined from existing knowledge. Presumably there is a maximum life span for the human race, but until there is discovered some property of protoplasm that definitely limits the possible duration of human life, the exact duration of man’s span of life will remain unknown.”
Do you find this surprising? Continuing, the article says: “At first thought, this statement seems irrational. Surely no human being can live 1,000 years. Even though all may agree that the likelihood of an individual living 1,000 years is infinitesimal, there is no scientific proof that this statement is, or is not, true.”
People, then, may reject the possibility of Methuselah’s age, even joke about it. But they cannot do so on truly scientific grounds, for genuine science admittedly knows no certain or absolute limit to human life.
What age would you set as the maximum that a human could live? Suppose you were to set the positive maximum at 120 years. Would you then adamantly refuse to believe that a man could live 120 years and one minute? And if you are willing to accept an extension of one minute, then why not 120 years and one day—or one week, month, year, and so on?
Dr. Harold F. Dorn, who served in the Biometrics Research Branch of the National Heart Institute as chief during 1960 to 1963, used virtually the same illustration in the article on the human life-span in the reference work mentioned. In view of the evidence presented, his conclusion is: “Thus, based on existing knowledge of longevity, a precise figure for the span of human life cannot be given.”
....if necessary, more to follow!
