Some days you have to speak out
In a recent discussion with a (Christian) friend, he made 2 claims which i felt compelled to rebut, not least because it perpetuates a flimsy understanding of History and Geography.
The first claim was that people in Biblical times had a longer lifespan compared to modern day people. Now, both of us agreed that lifespans were fairly low before the Industrial Revolution until developments in medical science and sanitation brought about the significant improvement in life expectancy. The difference was that whereas i estimated the life span of the average person hundreds of years ago to be say 30-40 years, he disagrees and argues that in biblical times, life spans where actually higher than current life spans. For the record, the current global life span average is about 67 years and in developed countries it is typically is in the 70-80s range. Thus the argument is that hundreds of years ago, people lived to such age. Meaning the average life span. We are not talking about the exceptional individual who is ahead of the curve but average life expectancy. Naturally, i couldn’t let such a ridiculous statement pass. Answer in Genesis actually argues that biblical ages are in fact true and that :
Today, man’s maximum life span is about 120 years, and our average life expectancy is still only 70–80 years—just as it was when the 90th Psalm was written 3,400 years ago!
In short, we are actually supposed to believe that people regularly lived till hundreds of year old in the olden olden days.
Wikipedia gives a far more believable list of life expectancies which range from 18 (bronze age) to an upper limit of 60 (bronze age, sweden). A quick look at the chart quickly shows that in the olden days, an average life expectancy of 30-40 years is a fairly good estimate about the life expectancy of people in olden days. In the Upper Paleolithic era (approx 40,000 to 10,000 years ago) the average life expectancy is around 33 years.
The second statement was that Sodom and Gomorrah existed and that ruins of which have been found. Again a most controversial claim. A BBC article on the subject notes that:
“There’s no agreement among archaeologists, scientists and Biblical scholars that Sodom, and its sister town Gomorrah, existed at all - let alone that it came to a sudden and apocalyptic end.”
Assuming the existence of such a city, accounts as to how it can/ was destroy is mixed at best with an “earthquake” theory and an “asteroid” theory being possible ways in which to enact destruction.
