... with a thousand years?

I'm thinking about the impossibly long ages of people in the christian babble bible. Those tediously long genealogies, with 900 year-old-men begetting a multitude of offspring. The most famous, Methuselah, lived to be 969 years old. I'm wondering, what did Methuselah do for nearly ten centuries? Sit out in the desert and herd sheep? Where are his great accomplishments? No pyramids commissioned to be dedicated to his memory? You'd think that, with all that time, he might've discovered a cure for polio or built a spaceship or something? Invented rock and roll? No symphonies, no great conquests of the known world at the time? Alexander succeeded at that task with little more than thirty years. Not a damned thing!

Why isn't Methuselah in the history books? It's not that he didn't do anything worthwhile, but much more likely that he never existed at all. How do the christers explain it? "well, god saw that people were living too long, so he began reducing the lifespans of later generations." Wouldn't this imply that god made a mistake in letting people live so long, then had to go back and fix things? Or they say, "it was part of god's great plan." The christers responses are indeed so well-planned, so rehearsed. Whenever I have to endure the misfortune of talking to one, it's like somebody switched on a robot.

Here's a funny anecdote. I once asked a believer about the story of the Witch of Endor. You may be familiar with it. King Saul goes to a witch to conqure up the ghost of the dead prophet Samuel so as to learn about the future outcome of a war. My question to the guy was about the existence of ghosts. The guy explained that, in just this one case, god lets the ghost of Samuel return to earth to deliver the prediction of Saul's defeat. Supposedly the Witch is surprised by the appearance, as her intent was to con King Saul, and she had no real power over the supernatural. Supposedly, but there's no mention of this in the scriptures, so it's just personal interpretation.

I'm sure you've heard similar ridiculous stories from other people of the book. Likely, the list never ends. Maybe there should be a collaborative effort to collect such nonsensical tales into one volume. No doubt it'd be a hilarious expose of the susceptibility of the race of human man-apes to the power of myth and superstition.

Keep in mind that you don't have a thousand years. Who knows how long? I don't have the luxury of a soothsayer as King Saul did. The skull on my desk is a glaring reminder of mortality, and whatever I'm going to do, I'd better do it now. With that in mind, I'm outta here. It's guitar time, for any time is a good time to rock. Hail!

They did that already. It's called "The Holy Bible."

Hey, that's great! But I meant more like the explanations that believers give trying to explain, support, justify or offer evidence. That'd really be a laugh. You know, stuff like Noah had dinosaurs on the ark. How do they figure that?

Well, no sooner do I make this post, then we have this:

http://movies.msn.com/movies/article.aspx?news=741824

It seems that Anthony Hopkins is set to play Methuselah in a movie starring Russell Crowe as Noah, of flood fame. According to the article, god delayed the Great Flood by seven days to allow Methuselah, Noah's grandfather, time to die, or something like that. So I guess those animals that came from all over the world to gather in Noah's Ark owe Methuselah a debt after all! And what a big boat it must've been!