What do you believe is the greatest age reached by a human being?

[C1ay]

i gues that means you wouldn't believe the evidence

 

What evidence?

[CraigD]

over 500, of course

Oh yeah goku? Who was that?

Can you offer evidence to back that up goku?

Note that the original post of this thread states

[The poll is] intended to measure beliefs concerning the maximum human lifespan. Although you are welcome to do so, it’s not necessary to cite a documented example of a specific individual supporting your belief.

Goku’s vote, and his explanation that it is due to belief in the literal interpretation of the Bible, thus, establishes only that Goku believes that a human being has reached an age greater than 500 years, not that there is any scientific support for his belief.

 

I’m slightly surprised that the only 201+ vote has been from a Biblical fundamentalists, as the belief is not unique to this community.

 

In the terminology of the study of longevity myths, Goku’s is known as a patriarch myth.

 

An interesting theory of Biblical scholarship, which I’d not encountered until researching this thread, is that they are due to mistranslation of the word for “month” as “year”. If so, the biblical claim of the age of the Biblical patriarchs (eg: 969/12 months = 80 years, 6 months, or if the months were the then-common lunar months, 969/12.4 = slightly over 78 years), while exceptional given the life expectancy in the time and culture they were written, are not scientifically implausible.

[goku]

That is correct. Yes, because it is not evidence, but a fairy tale. What you are proposing is akin to me saying that Gandolf the Gray existed in reality because there is a series of books known as Lord of the Rings.

 

do you believe there was a shakspear?

 

can you prove it?

[InfiniteNow]

do you believe there was a shakspear?

 

can you prove it?

 

Yes, and I can also prove that he wrote several pieces of literature. What is your point? That doesn't make any of the characters in his writings any more real or any more a part of this reality in which we exist.

[goku]

Yes, and I can also prove that he wrote several pieces of literature. What is your point?

 

you choose to believe there was a shakspesr, i'm not saying there wasn't, and the only proof you have is books. the bible is a book that you choose not to believe. you choose to believe evolution.

[InfiniteNow]

you choose to believe there was a shakspesr, i'm not saying there wasn't, and the only proof you have is books.

Not really, no. There are pictures, as well as accounts of others who knew him. There was his parents, and their parents, and all of the rest of his family. Also, the people who accepted his writings and helped get them published. There are countless ways to empirically validate that Shakespeare existed.

 

I'm going on far more than just the existence of his books.

 

With that said, even if I WAS just going off the existence of his books, that doesn't pose a problem, since I am trying to prove to you the existence of a human being who was an author while alive, not the existence of an ambiguously defined three letter word that has zero evidence supporting it.

 

 

the bible is a book that you choose not to believe.

Not quite. I simply see no evidence that any of what it says is true. I see no evidence that it proves there was a creator, and I choose to disregard it as a collection of fairy tales and delusions.

 

It's not that I don't believe it, it's that I treat it for what it is.

 

 

you choose to believe evolution.

Correction. I accept evolution as a valid approach to understanding the process of change in the inherited traits of a population of organisms from one generation to the next. It has nothing to do with belief.

[CraigD]

you choose to believe there was a shakspesr, i'm not saying there wasn't, and the only proof you have is books. the bible is a book that you choose not to believe.

The parallel goku is drawing here is, I think, incorrect.

 

William Shakespeare is believed to be the author of many plays and poems (there’s actually some debate that some, or possible nearly all, of the works credited to Shakespeare may have been written by others, though most present-day scholars believe that they were all at least co-written by him). Many of his plays have supernatural characters and situations – for example, in “A Midsummer Night's Dream”, we have the Amazon queen Hippolyta marrying the legendary Greek hero Thesius, while the king and queen of the fairies Oberon and Titania have a spousal fight involving spells, patients, mischievous goblin servants, passerbys with their heads magically turned into donkey heads, etc. However, few audience members in Shakespeare’s time nor ours believes that these events actually happened, or even that the characters in them actually existed. Most people believe Shakespeare lived roughly when and where reference books say he did, and that his stories are fictional.

 

The Bible, on the other hand, is believe by many people not only to have been written by various authors (there’s considerable debate among Bible experts as to when and by whom the various books of the Bible were actually written, and if and to what ends and extent they were altered in translation), but that the stories in it are literally true. Many, arguably most of its stories have supernatural characters and situations – for example, Numbers 22 has the legendary magician Balaam arguing with his talking donkey (who, despite having more lines than some of the characters in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, remains unnamed) about the presence of an invisible (to Balaam, initially, not to the donkey) angel (also unnamed) with drawn sword.

 

Most people believes that someone (or possible several people) wrote the story of Balaam sometime roughly when reference books say it was written. Unlike the Shakespeare story, however, many people – people who believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible – believe that these events actually took place, and that Balaam, his talking donkey, and the invisible-then-visible armed angel actually existed.

 

Not all people who describe themselves as Jews or Christians and believe in the existence of God as described in the Bible believe that the story of Balaam literally occurred. Many such people believe that, like Shakespeare, the story is fictional, and intended to make a point using metaphor and allusion.

 

It’s possible that some people believe “A Midsummer Night's Dream” to be non-fictional. What distinguishes the works of Shakespeare from the Bible is that these people are few in number, and likely considered by most to be mentally ill, while people who believe the story of Balaam to be non-fictional are many in number, and not considered by most to be mentally ill.

[C1ay]

the bible is a book that you choose not to believe.

 

Could it be that the bible is simply an unbelievable book?

[Little Bang]

The greatest age that man has reached is 1953 to 1961.

[modest]

The greatest age that man has reached is 1953 to 1961.

 

Clever, but subjective. If we're talking about America, I doubt women or minorities would agree with ya.

 

~modest

[goku]

I simply see no evidence that any of what it says is true.

 

not even the part where it says "from whence the rivers come, thither they return again"?

[InfiniteNow]

Oh yes, ESPECIALLY that part. :D

 

 

It's a collection of fairy tales, and a pretty disturbing set of stories at that.

Either way, you suggested someone was more than 500 years old, and then proposed to use the bible as evidence that this claim was valid. I accept that there is a story about someone greater than 500 years old in the bible, but not that such a person existed as a part of reality in anything more than just a story written by humans.

 

Can we get the thread back on topic now?

[DougF]

Well we have 9 votes for the 121 - 130, thats 56.25% of the vote,

 

I have heard stories about people in Russia living to be 125, but they were so old that they couldn't remember when they were born, and it was some of the locals in town that were bringing her age into the news as the oldest women.

 

Point being, I Think anything over 120 is just a story or wishful thinking.