believer, you're being one of those annoying bible literalists again. if god set our limit at 120 years(where did he do that), then why does nobody ever reach it? the limitations of fast metabolism mammals i was talking about has nothing to do with genetics, it has much more to do with phisics and chemistry. most mammals have roughly the same number of heartbeats in a lifetime, and the faster your heart beats, the quicker you die, because there is a limit to how long a heart can work before it wears out. like i said, nothing to do with genetics. also, all bodies accum,ulate toxins throughout their lifetimes, whether they are working perfectly or not. this is another obvious source of limitation. i don't think you've answered any of my points, really.

Like our own system of law you don't have to consistently do something to have that crime attributed to you. For instance you don't have to rape 5 people to be called a rapist, just one. You don't have to kill 50 to be called a murderer just one.

Likewise man breaks God's law on a daily basis. How many times have you lied, looked at men/women with lust, taken God's name in vain, dishonored your parents... Each occurance of that is sin in God's eyes. Again like our own justice system you can't get off by doing a good deed.

So if I murder someone I can't tell the judge "Your honor I know I took that person's life but last night I helped an old lady across the street, or two weeks ago I helped some orphans in a burning building." Our justice doesn't work that way because a crime has been committed and punishment has to be delt.

The debt of sin against God must be paid to God, so in sending His Son, or rather in God becoming man and paying that sin debt once and for all He is in effect paying the debt by His life for ours. It's called grace, giving us forgiveness even though we don't really deserve it.

Now animal sacrifice was not for the forgiveness of sin, but for the covering of sin. Again blood is the source of life, and in order to repay the debt, innocent blood had to be spilt in place of guilty blood. This was never meant to be a permanate solution. It was meant as a means to cover our sins until God Himself could come and die to forgive our sins. Yes the sin debt was paid to Him, by Him, so that He could get the glory for having saved us. So that we could look to Him and say "Look at how much our God loves us that He would forgive us our sins without our deserving forgiveness."

According to the Bible the reason God doesn't destroy the earth again is the result of a promise made to Noah. In addition there is no need to wipe us out anymore since the debt of sin has already been paid for those who accept it.

Sorry to annoy you, but it's what I believe. Now as to your point of where this limit was set Gen 6:3 tells us that the fallen angels came down and slept with the human women, which in turn created a race of angel human hybrids. As a result God limited the lifespan of humans.

My theory is that this is where we get those stories of Zeus, Hercules, Persius... The Bible calls them men of renown, the heroes of old, which fits in with what we know of Greek gods who repeatedly took human wives. Again this is my theory, but it fits with both the Biblical account and what we know of the Greek and Roman myths.

Now as to your heart beat issue. We have no idea why our hearts cannot go beyond a certain time. We also have no idea if this was always the case. There are several accounts of people living to be 100-110 years old, so does that mean that their hearts are stronger than the average persons? Is it possible that a creator with enough knowledge to create us, could also limit our lifespan? Of course it is. We're extending life now and we really haven't even scratched the surface of what is possible.

Now as to the toxins, what toxins were around back then? Today we can point to any number of toxins in the air, in our food, pretty much everything these days causes cancer, but we have no knowledge of actual life that far back. It could be that our bodies have not been able to adapt to the rapid introduction of new toxins, and are more vulnerable to them. It could be that as we have "progressed" we've introduced toxins never meant for us to be exposed to.

I'm not trying to go round the pole with you, I'm just giving you a different point of view. We really, truly don't know what life was like, how the humans back then lived, or better yet how long, all we can do is guess. We can look at bones til we're blue in the face but that won't tell us everything about their genetic or physical makeup.

My theory is that the stories in the Bible, and christianity, and Mithras, and Horus, et al, are part of the same myths and stories.
All intertwined, all trying to explain the unexplainable, all looking for a 'way out' of the earthly life.

all myths.

If someone does something unforgivable, then why forgive it?

It could be argued that God is wrong to forgive the unforgivable.

I said 'according to the will of God, or of his loved and designated leaders'.


God seems to choose people who don't seem particularly worthy, to me.

For example, he chose Lot, who gave his daughters to strangers for sex. And he chose Moses, who told the soldiers to keep the young virgins for their own use.

And I have not yet heard an argument good enough to excuse mass murder ~ including infanticide.

Either God made some very bad choices ~ choices not to be expected of a perfect God ~ or these are not stories of God, they are just tribal folklore, mythology, & 'theology', with a bit of genuine history thrown in.

So if you child came to you later in life and said mom, I got a little drunk last night drove home and ran into a family of five, and now they're all dead. Or mom I got angry a someone and killed them. Will you stop loving your child?

I don't really think that there is anything that a parent wouldn't forgive of their child. You see it every day on tv, serial killer gets busted and what does mom say? He's a good boy, he's just misguided. That is a parents love.

And we're back to.....but I don't have a place to send my children for all eternity to roast, just because they are bad.

Your religion does.

it's the central tenet of Christianity - those that accept Jesus are saved, those that don't are condemmed to Hell.

So now you're judgeing God's judgement?

See that's the problem I see with most who don't accept the Bible. It's the old mentality of don't judge me for disobeying your rules, instead conform to my rules.

I dunno.....I'm not talking about the exact moment of death being genetically programmed, but the ageing process could be.

I'm no great expert on the biology of humans, but I do know something about - ahem - a slightly naughty plant called cannabis sativa. Janimal probably knows a bit about this lady, too.

Anyway, cannabis is an interesting plant, not just in its chemical properties but also in its life cycle. In its natural state, it grows for several months in the spring and summer in 'vegetative' mode, but once the days start to shorten, at around 12 hours of daylight, it goes into flower. It flowers, seeds (in its natural state) then dies.

However, naughty growers using artificial lighting can 'fool' the plant's cycle very easily by controlling the hours of 'daylight'. If a cannabis plant is kept on 18 hours of light per day, it will never flower.....and it can live in that state for years. So a plant that is naturally an annual can be tricked into living much longer, just by altering the conditions.

Wouldn't it be great if we had some sort of key to our genetic code that allowed us to turn off ageing in this way?!

Oh it's not just Christianity MBAS, most religions have a crime and punishment aspect to them. I was listening to an Orthodox Jewish Rabbi yesterday, and his statements sound oddly familiar. Essentially he stated that God has promised redemption of sins, and that those who deny that redemption will end up in hell, while those who repent and follow God will end up in heaven.

The key difference is that the promise he spoke of comes from a messiah that hasn't appeared. The promise Christianity speaks of comes from the messiah who has already come.

Now as for the acceptance part either way God has given us a way out of paying the price for our sins, if we deny that way out then we deny God's grace towards us, and thus deny God allowing us into heaven. Since there are only one of two places a soul can go we end up roasting.