(January 28, 2015 at 3:31 pm)SteveII Wrote:

(January 28, 2015 at 3:15 pm)downbeatplumb Wrote: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy

From the same article, if someone lived to age 10, then the average increased to 45-47. That means for every age 10-20 death, people were living 70 to 80 years.

That's for Classical Rome, genius. Not the Bronze and Iron Age, where your gospel finds its inception.

And incidentally, 45 is not 70, and I can't believe I need to tell somebody that those are different numbers, but you're grasping at straws so desperately here!

(January 28, 2015 at 3:15 pm)downbeatplumb Wrote:

Quote:In the Bronze and Iron Age LEB was 26 years

Quote:The most commonly used measure of life expectancy is life expectancy at age zero, that is, at birth (LEB), which can be defined in two ways: while cohort LEB is the mean length of life of an actual birth cohort (all individuals born a given year) and can be computed only for cohorts that were born many decades ago, so that all their members died, period LEB is the mean length of life of a hypothetical cohort assumed to be exposed since birth until death of all their members to the mortality rates observed at a given year

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy

To be fair, this is a little misleading. Life expectancy is a generally useless statistic. This would lead someone to believe that the average person's life span was 26 years old, or that most people were dying in their 20's. Not true. This speaks to high infant mortality rate. A lot of babies were dying, and that brings the life expectancy down. A better signifier of how long a person who survived infancy would live is average life span, or, more germane to this discussion, maximum human life span. For the former, it the best data for this seems to be that the Roman catacombs from that time include an overwhelming amount of 35-45 year olds. But, for the latter, there are plenty of examples of 70+ year olds from that time. Generally, the better off you were, and the more erudite you were, you stood a much better chance of surviving into your 60s-70s.

Median age could also be more useful in helping to understand how long you would live if you made it past, say, your 5th birthday.

(January 28, 2015 at 3:22 pm)Crossless1 Wrote: If the nonsense in the NT gets a pass from you, why not the miracle claims in the Quran, or the Gita, or the Book of Mormon?

How about Star Wars? They could read minds, communicate telepathically, see the future - like me - levitate and throw huge objects, and kill with their thoughts in that.

I went back in time and I wrote the bible. This is first hand testimony of authorship, before now the documents were largely anonymous. And I saw everything that happened myself, and wrote what I felt like. Some of it happened, some of it didn't.

I can't possibly provide evidence, because it's done now. I don't have the time machine anymore.

Everyone OK with that? I think this claim is as strong as those about the bible I've seen so far today.

To summarize, if you can't impugn the beliefs of the people of the first century who really saw that Jesus was born, brought a radical message of love and redemption, died, and rose again, then you cannot impugn those that hold the same view today. Your objections are all after-the-fact opinions and so have less (or no) weight. When you try to draw parallels with unicorns, Star Wars and your time machine, you are totally missing the point that Christians have the first Christians.

You're missing the point. What you or anyone else believes is irrelevant. What you can demonstrate to be true is all that counts.

Did you miss what I just said?

There was no jesus, I made him up. Sorry!

Is my testimony being ignored? :o Is it just your unsubstantiated claims that should be believed?

I'm gonna impugn all the way to the bank.

(January 28, 2015 at 4:25 pm)SteveII Wrote: To summarize, if you can't impugn the beliefs of the people of the first century who really saw that Jesus was born, brought a radical message of love and redemption, died, and rose again,

We're not saying that they didn't believe those things you tiresome dolt. We're saying that they were wrong.

Quote: then you cannot impugn those that hold the same view today.

I can, and I do.

Quote: Your objections are all after-the-fact opinions

Like the entirety of the New Testament and your so called 'evidence'?

Quote: and so have less (or no) weight. When you try to draw parallels with unicorns, Star Wars and your time machine, you are totally missing the point that Christians have the first Christians.

All of those things have the same amount of 'evidence' (besides the fact that star wars at least uses some kinda reasonable science ideas) as your claims about Jesus.

You make the claim, we say we do not accept your claim. Your response is "people really believed it back then, you can't prove them wrong, therefore it's reasonable to believe in my claims".

You have to be able to see the problem with that.

(January 27, 2015 at 5:58 pm)Esquilax Wrote: ...you bring up Neanderthal, a species for whom we have a genetic record, which is an objective indicator that it was a separate species from us.

If you look at a side view of both the Neanderthal and modern Australian Aboriginal skulls, you can basically overlay one on top of the other. Do you believe that modern Aboriginals are a separate species?