Ho hum. I’m getting lots of mail about this ridiculous story on WND and Fox claiming that Noah’s Ark has been discovered atop Mt Ararat. No, it hasn’t. This is yet another mob of incompetent evangelicals hiking all over a big hill in Turkey and credulously interpreting every rock formation and every chunk of wood as proof that they’ve found a big boat. It’s the same BS Ron Wyatt was peddling for years. It’s always the same stuff: distant photos of a rock formation that is vaguely boat-shaped, but nothing close-up to suggest that it is anything but a rock formation. Or sometimes it’s a photo of a glacial ridge, with the claim that the Ark is buried under that.
Then there are the occasional close-ups of something — this latest account has lots of those — that look more like recent construction: a cabin, a mine shaft, the reinforced walls of a well. Again, nothing competently photographed to show context or extent or overall structure, nothing that even looks like a boat. In particular, though, it looks nothing like a 5,000 year old boat left exposed on a mountaintop or churned up by a glacier.
They do have one other novel claim this time around.
The group claims that carbon dating proves the relics are 4,800 years old, meaning they date to around the same time the ark was said to be afloat. Mt. Ararat has long been suspected as the final resting place of the craft by evangelicals and literalists hoping to validate biblical stories.
Oh, yeah. Now the creationists are willing to say carbon-dating is valid.
Now if they find fossil kangaroo bones there…
But where’s the scat? If that many animals were on a boat for 40 days, there should be some well-preserved specimens. Unless Noah’s family spent an awful lot of time shoveling it overboard. But still, you’d think there would be stains…
I don’t think you understand though…he is 99.9% sure!! That only leaves a 0.1% chance that he is wrong, ipso facto ARK!
Also God let carbon dating be true this time to show that it is the exception that proves the rule.
Noah ark is real. They used radio-carbon dating which is real science like. Carbon dating is known only to be accurate when you are dating biblical artifacts, and then only when the results agree with the expected results. Also everyone knows that the unicorns slept in and missed the boat, how else do you explain the noticeable lack of unicorns?
It is little known that the surviving story in the bible is only the cliff notes.
The longer version is much more realistic and contains dinosaurs.
I think someone is suffering from a terminal case of confirmation bias.
Isn’t the ark supposed to consist entirely of wood? So, where do all these stonework come from?
I mean, we ARE supposed to take the biblical account of this accorately, right?
Looks like Noah had some mad skills with hand tools to make such smooth straight boards.
But it OBVIOUSLY is a giant, world saving boat … because we find those above 11,500 feet all the time.
Oh PZ, you don’t understand fundie xian thought processes.
Those are pictures of Noah’s cabin, mine shaft, well and so on. They also have pictures of Noah’s survey markers, GPS waypoints, oil drilling platforms, and his helipad.
They use the same biblical worldview lens to discover biblical mythology artifacts that they use to reinterpret science to make the universe 6,000 years old.
When the fundies tossed reason and truth into the fire of toxic religion, anything and everything became true. It is all Presuppositionalist Postmodernism.
Oh, there’s scat involved–tons of it, in fact…but it’s not on the top of Mt Ararat…
Well it’s, uh, wood, they say it’s old, and it’s on Ararat. What else could it be but Noah’s Ark? I mean really!
I like the competing finds of the ark in the article. Now that’s business as usual.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
So many things wrong with the reasoning here. What does the presence of petrified wood prove? Since when are there no right angles in nature? Why is the possibility of a settlement impossible simply because one hasn’t been found before?
For anyone who wants to see genuine ancient boats, the bus no. 30 in Oslo will take you from Nationaltheatret to Vikingeskipene (The Viking Ships, they have a website). Or use the little ferry from Rådhusbrygga to Dronningen. The museum also has other genuine artifacts.
http://www.khm.uio.no/vikingskipshuset/dyrehode/
No, no. They’ve got it all wrong. That’s Utnapishtim’s big-ass boat. Noah’s is on the next mountain over.
D’oh
As a child, I was told the remains of the Ark were on top of Mt Ararat, but the evil Turkish government wouldn’t let one single person explore the mountaintop because in proving that the Ark was real, it would prove their religion to be false.
I’ve lived a lifetime of facepalms…
Of all the Noah’s Ark expeditions so far, I am the most optimistic about this one.
25 or so years ago, I was sucked in by Ron Wyatt’s hoax version – he made his full length film fairly convincing.
Creationists *do* believe that carbon dating is useful, but of course it becomes more inaccurate as the sample gets older.
I’ll be waiting to get a response from creation.com or answersingenesis.org before I get too excited though.
God has been getting a lot of bad press from the new atheists recently… maybe he decided to throw a spanner at their denialism!
And isotope dating is not the only method which disproves Young Earth claims. some parts of Europe have tree ring data covering several tens of thousands of consecutive years (from multiple trees).
Logic H. Science #2
But where’s the scat? If that many animals were on a boat for 40 days, there should be some well-preserved specimens.
It was much longer than 40 days.
Gen 7:11 “In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.”
Gen 8:14-16, “And in the second month [of the 601st year of Noah’s life], on the seven and twentieth day of the month, was the earth dried. And God spake unto Noah, saying, Go forth of the ark, thou, and thy wife, and thy sons, and thy sons’ wives with thee.”
Genesis clearly states that they were on the Ark for 1 year and 10 days.
In the WingNuts Deluded babbling:
To: Noah’s Ark Ministries International
Subject: Discoveries on Mt Ararat
Fuck off.
Sincerely,
The UN
@Logic H. Science #2:
Indeed. Noah’s wife must have spent all 40 days shoveling shit off that boat.
Perhaps God provided specifications on a paddle-wheel-driven bilge pump, and the details were simply omitted from Genesis.
Or maybe the two scarab beetles were coffee drinkers. Something.
Well, it’s not like anyone actually knows what gopher wood is.
They did in the film. Mrs Noah was not pleased.
See this aerial photo? See that ridge right there? Looks like just an ordinary mountain ridge, doesn’t it? But watch what happens when I draw this oval around it….
#13
FYI world, we Swedes have an ever larger ship in our capitol! It’s not as old and i guess it didn’t float very well to begin with… but it’s much bigger!
Isn’t she beautiful?
It’s good to know that the global, world-ending flood took place smack in the middle of Egypt and Sumer’s respective early dynastic periods, just before the height of the Indus Valley civilization, just prior to the rise of Minoan Crete, etc., etc. Noah’s three sons must have gotten biz-zay!
Those are the lifeboats. They went with the cheapest subcontractor.
Wait… why? Wouldn’t your experience with the Wyatt hoax lend you to be less optimistic and more skeptical?
Oh? Why is that, scientifically speaking?
Right… I’m sure they’ll confirm what you’ve already decided to believe for you, evidence or not… it’s sort of their thing.
Wait… god wants to smite new atheists, and so his almighty omnipotence decides to do so with unsubstantiated accounts and of something that may or may not be a boat? Wow.
If this is the work of god, I’m not worried whatsoever about him sending me to hell… I’m pretty sure I could take him.
LMAO. These photos suck by Big Foot standards.
There shouldn’t be anything wrong with saying “the wooden boat decayed/Noah used the shit for construction and firewood”, but the faithful diligently search for EVIDENCE and PROOF. They want a Shroud of Turin and footprints inside dinoprints and miracle healing. Their scientist brain constantly revolts against their monkey brain.
The Almighty God decided to send pseudoscientist with a strong confirmation bias to a mountain with a collection of rocks and wood that could be anything to show deniers that they are wrong? How omnipotent…
To get the probability that it’s the real ark, multiply 99.9% by the reliability of the source. The product is certainly very small.
Ströh at #23 your link doesn’t work – Norway wins.
Let’s seem em submit some samples to a reputable researcher for some carbon dating. Who wants to bet that all requests of THAT kind are summarily dismissed? ;)
KJ
The Magic Faeries in the Sky heard of Isaac Asimov’s challenge regarding flying saucers (paraphrased) “Most of all, what I want to see is a flying saucer and its crew in plain sight …”. This is Magic Faeries’s umptweenth attempt to provide a historical artefact in plain sight.
I don’t understand, PZ. Are religious people sending you the story because they think it proves you wrong about…well, lets see… evolution, atheism, the literal truth of the bible, what have you, or are your fans sending you the story because it’s funny? Because I’d have sent it to you for the comedy value if I didn’t think you were pretty likely to find it on your own.
And to verify the legitimacy of the claim, they’re calling in another “Ark researcher.” Oh good, because another nutter’s voice will add so much validity to the chorus.
Sure. The chronology.
4500 BP The Egyptian 3rd dynasty is building pyramids.
4400 BP God floods the earth and kills everyone but 8 people.
4300 BP The Egyptian 3rd dynasty is still building pyramids apparently not realizing there was a world wide flood and that they were, in fact, dead.
There are many living plants older than the flood or even the universe. A creosote bush clone in SoCal is 11,000 years old. A spruce tree clone in Scandinavia is 8,000 years old. A holly bush clone in Tasmania is 40,000 years old and the last member of its genus and species. An oak tree clone in the Sierras is 14,000 years old.
Sounds like a qualified objective archaeologist.
90-degree angles are great design for a very large ocean-going vessel.
I guess another miracle was necessary for Crawford to get up there. But he probably didn’t build any structure (now or on future expeditions) with 90-degree angles to protect the find so it was just a minor miracle.
well the phenomenon that religious people do not “believe” in scientific methods is restricted to the USA. except of some insane catholics, most religious people from europe seperate religion and science as different things, beyond comparison.
but why do they need to find the ark or something else? it´s called believing not knowing, they should stick to what they… well believe.
“Creationists *do* believe that carbon dating is useful, but of course it becomes more inaccurate as the sample gets older.”
Actually, it’s only useful to a specific age range, and <6000 years is too young for a very accurate read.
Sorry. But thanks for playing.
Have no idea how that got chopped up, but what I said was that radiocarbon dating wasn’t useful for the young ages claimed here, and that “it becomes inaccurate as the sample gets older” is so vague as to demonstrate total incomprehension.
Now, I know the things that go on in the Middle East can be very traumatic, but it’s really not healthy to pretend that an entire region simply doesn’t exist.
I absolutely love that FOX put this story in their “Science and Technology” section.
I really don’t get it. Noah’s arc is probably the most ludicrous story in the bible, why would anyone choose that one to try for validation?
Even finding a complete 4K year old boat on a mountain wouldn’t lend credibility to the idea a 900 year old man built it and collected every species on earth to fill it.
Seriously, people! Sheesh!
I thought I saw Heddle lurking about.
Oh, sure. Apply to the Antichrist’s own One World Government for protected status. Betcha they number the site #666 and send Obama to communise it with socialised medicine.
Attaboy, Ross! You just keep believing. That’s what I’ve always liked about you; no matter how many times your god lets you down, you’re always willing to give him a second chance.
Now listen: I know you and I have had our rough patches in the past and I want to make it up to you. I happen to know a guy who’s come into a very large piece of Golden Gate-spanning real estate in San Fransisco, and I’m talkin’ very large: 118,000 vehicles per day, and the toll infrastructure is already in place! Unfortunately my friend has all of his scratch tied up in other investment obligations so he can’t really turn the gas on this one, and he’s lookin’ to unload it for a steal! (Not a real steal, since I know your god warned you about that.) Now, I’m not in a position to take advantage of it either, what with it being tax season and all, but since I like your moxy, I’m gonna do you a favour and broker the transaction for you. Now, all I need is some account info…
My understanding is that they simply dispute any carbon dating older than their preferred date for the flood, and insist that whatever is being dated is from the time of flood itself.
It wouldn’t surprise me at all if the carbon dating they performed actually gave an age of 30,000 years, which they simply “corrected” to 4800.
I can’t decide if it’s more likely that nothing was Carbon-dated at all; or that Babblical Carbon-dating means scratching around in the dirt until you find something that looks like it contains and some Carbon and looks the desired age.
“Noah’s arc is probably the most ludicrous story in the bible, why would anyone choose that one to try for validation?”
It’s a scam, is why. It works. I saw Tim LaHaye pitching the same story in the seventies and Ron Wyatt later on, and lots of others. I grew up in that nonsense.
What I love is that part of the story is always “Oh, the government of Turkey won’t let us at the mountain because it would disprove their religion!” Uh, pretty sure Nuh’s in the Koran, too…
Re: gopher wood, I once had the questionable pleasure of hearing a talk by a woman affiliated with some or other of these Ark “research” groups; she claimed that it had been “discovered” to mean laminated wood, which, of course, solves all mechanical issues with the Ark at one stroke. Lamination is a magic, I guess.
She didn’t even hint how this “discovery” had been made, an omission obvious enough to annoy some otherwise credulous members of the audience. There was no time for questions afterwards, so no-one could press her on the point either. Convenient, eh?
Feck! At least one and too many…
Stomps off to bed…
Wanna know how your god can put an end to our atheism? Showing himself in completely unambiguous form, demanding worship. Until then, your god is no more likely to be real then the Unconquered Sun or Pelor.
Of course, even then I think I’d refrain from worshipping him. His reasons to the Jews were pretty much “I’m the strongerest god, so you have to worship me!”, and that’s not a sound basis for respect.
One of the few things YECs say with which I largely agree is that a global flood would seriously skew radiocarbon dating. Exactly how is hard to guess, and it would depend upon a flood that really isn’t possible–as in, continents will not cease floating in heavier plastic rock.
Of course that doesn’t help with dating the ark to a convenient time period, since that wood comes from antedeluvial times. So yes, they are duplicitous on the radiocarbon dates.
And it wouldn’t explain anything about all of the other radiometric dates, astronomical dating, or relative dating, all of which are congruent and point to an old earth–and in the case of relative dating, to evolution (presumably sans the Designer’s tweaks, since while evolution can’t repeat itself in, say, complex vertebrate skeletons, a designer most certainly could).
Yet I will allow that radiocarbon “dates” would change in some manner due to a worldwide flood. That they have not changed so drastically (compensation is needed for radiocarbon dating, but nothing like YECs need) is further evidence that the flood never occurred.
It would be interesting if they found a huge boat up there, since it would truly be a mystery of how it got there. Sadly, such a wonder is highly unlikely.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
Jilian Swift:
Because the most ludicrous, if proved true, would be the most convincing.
There’s a fair lot of stuff in the Bible that’s true or at least plausible – that’s never going to convince anyone that the whole Bible is true*. But if something violently implausible were demonstrated to be true, there’d be a reason to think the other implausibilities are true too.
* Lots of people do believe the whole Bible to be true, of course, but they don’t do so because some things in it are independently verified.
Interesting. If the carbon dating dates it to about 4800 BC, it means that the century is a significant figure in their results. That takes us back to around 2790 BC. But Ken Ham said that the flood happened in 2348 BC. Wonder if Hammy would call these guys heathens?
rossnixon #16:
Answers in Genesis remains skeptical.
(HT: RogerE @ Sensuous Curmudgeon)
Oh yeah, AiG needs to know the research methods that were used.
Everybody have fun tonight. Everybody Wing-Cheung tonight.
Tree-ring chronology should establish the date of the wood samples. The record goes back much farther than that.
But the length-to-width ratio of the ark bothers me. Even modern supertankers are at risk for breaking up if they straddle large waves. Were the seas of the just-enveloped-in-water planet calm and smooth?
If there are any fossilized creatures around the ark, then there shouldn’t be any of those “kinds” of animals around today. If the animals on the ark died at the site, then they shouldn’t have been able to propagate their species (or “kind”). Now if they find a fossilized unicorn, or dragon, or dinosaur, or some animal we’ve never seen before (i.e. crock-o-duck) that dates to the time of the landing of the ark, then they will have an argument. But a shaky one because if the ark has landed on the mountain, then the water has to be receding, which means the great flood couldn’t have caused fossilization at the site. Which blows away their argument that the flood caused fossilization.
“The world was covered in water and everything perished apart from two of every kind of animal gathered up by Noah’s family, put onto a huge wooden vessel and kept safe from the encroaching waters for a period of time dating over a year. After that time the waters receded somewhere and the animals left the vessel and distributed themselves in a pattern which would seem to indicate common descent. The evidence for this is very powerful: We’ve found what is possibly a boat…”
Here in the USA, we call laminated wood “plywood” and it is quite common as a building material.
Who knew plywood had been invented 4300 years ago?
If they are just going to Make Stuff Up, might as well do it right and have the Ark being made of steel and nuclear powered. After all god is omniscient and can do anything. POOF!!! One nuclear powered live cargo carrier.
But is there a record for that region? Tree ring patterns are much more dependent on local climate than on global events. You can’t use a tree ring record from Germany to date wood from Turkey.
Gopher Wood?
I see you people aren’t well-versed in Biblical semiotics.
You see, gophers are known for digging holes and popping in and out of them. For this reason, ‘gophering’ is slang for the perception of feces moving in and out of the anus when the body is in the process of moving the bowels at an inconvenient time or place and the individual must intermittently constrict his or her inner anal sphincter to counter the peristalsis.
From this the only reasonable explanation is that ‘gopher wood’ is a type of wood the biblical writer pulled right out of his ass.
Glacial outcrops in Turkey? When was the last glaciation in that region? I suspect it would have been a hell of a lot longer than 6000 years ago.
It’s easy to call out the bullshit on the carbon dating claims – ask them what the samples were from and what lab did the analysis.
@The Other Ian: Why not use wood from Germany to date wood from Turkey? It’s the 14C you are looking at, and the global value does not vary much although the value can change significantly from year to year. Lining up tree rings as in dendrochronology wouldn’t work well though since the ring patterns will be very different, but the wood in Germany will still provide you with a clue of the annual variation in 14C. (Of course you can’t expect as good a result, but you can still do it.)
re 54:
But the length-to-width ratio of the ark bothers me. Even modern supertankers are at risk for breaking up if they straddle large waves.
Or look at the construction of the “Great Western”; at the time the largest wooden ship ever. It would have broken up had they not reinforced it with a steel skeleton. I don’t think plywood would have been sufficient to solve that problem.
But is there a record for that region? Tree ring patterns are much more dependent on local climate than on global events. You can’t use a tree ring record from Germany to date wood from Turkey.
But Noah probably did not build the ark with trees from Turkey. He most likely would have used cedar from Lebanon (if I remember my phoenecian ship building correctly)
They’ve been using this “expedition” to bilk money out of people for a while. They must be running another round of fund raising, so they make this 99.9% sure announcement to bilk them one more time.
I wasn’t referring to carbon dating there. I was specifically responding to the suggestion to use dendrochronology.
As an agnostic, socially liberal, economically moderate economist who doesn’t believe this is Noah’s Ark, my first question is: what on earth does FOX or WND have to do with anything? This story first came out overseas, and has been picked up by a variety of outlets.
It’s this kind of blindered approach to absolutely everything, this hyper-obsession with partisanship and religion, that just blows my mind, and makes you about as trustworthy as a Coulter or a Begala or a Limbaugh.
Where have people gone who can just think without rhetoric, or talking points, or obsessive anger?
According to creationists, the Phoenicians and all other people that we have archaeological evidence of came about after the flood. Everything before the flood is supposed to have been wiped from the Earth entirely. Noah could have gotten his wood from anywhere, and it not be datable by dendrochronology, period.
But in reality, the wood most likely had nothing whatsoever to do with Noah and was harvested locally.
It would be pretty interesting if the wood in question matched tree-rings (and genetics?) from 4400-year-ago Lebanese cedar trees (which we should have pretty good ring chronology for). So interesting that fraud would be an explanation worth looking for.
As long as we’re making stuff up, there was a special kind of tree called a gopher tree, and it had super-strong wood that rivaled laminated titanium composite box beams or something, and Noah used up all the gopher trees building the ark.
But if on examination it turned out that the trees were from Turkey, then – Oh balls. It’s another problem for the Arkists to explain away, considering that the big boat is supposed to have floated from elsewhere on the Med. And that thing didn’t drift very far, given the time available. Funny how a large boat, drifting aimlessly on boundless floodwaters for more than a year, is supposed to have just ended up within a few hundred miles of the starting point. Anyone would get the impression that the originators of the story were deficient in their knowledge of world geography.
I’ve seen those photos before – isn’t it the case that a variety of boat replica stuff has been built on Mt Ararat over the past century or so to fleece generations of gullible xtian travellers? The whole thing’s probably an ancient tourism scam. If they chip off some more ice they’ll find a concession stand and some souvenir t-shirts.
BigMKnows #18:
Awesome. Never read it that closely, just always assumed that the “40 days and 40 nights” story that everyone knows would be what was actually in the Bible. I guess the believers don’t read it all that closely either!
And LOL @ #59!
@#42 Jillian: “… and collected every species on earth to fill it.” Actually, it’s OK, I had this explained to me by one of my believer friends. Noah did not need to collect one of each kind of animal (and plant, by the way – what about the plants!). He collected “protoanimals” from which all the current animals are derived. For example, one variety of dog from which all of today’s varieties came – extend this to other species. This saved a lot of time and space and, of course, makes an otherwise ludicrous story completely believable. I know I’ve heard something vaguely like this idea before but I can’t quite put my finger on it …
The fuck are you talking about?
Oh, it’s okay, because it’s only micro-evolution. There weren’t any dogs giving birth to cats, because there already were cats.
Is carbon dating that valid after 50,000 years or so? It seems after that many half-lifes that there really isn’t that much carbon left in the substance, and if there is carbon wouldn’t that make the substance of a younger age?
These loons don’t even get their own sacred texts right. The account doesn’t say that the Ark settled on Mount Ararat. It says it settled on “the mountains of Ararat.” As in Ararat the territory. S’bit different!
60,000 years is the usual cut-off, I believe. That’s about 10 half-lifes, or 1 “milli-life”.
These “searchers” ought to go whole hog and find Big Foot on the ark. Saves everybody a lot of time.
Someone forcing you to read this blog at gunpoint? If so, post your phone number and we will call the FBI for you.
You are just a troll trolling. That automatically makes everything you have to say a waste of seconds of other people’s lives.
Thread over with and dead except for the trolls and troll feeders.
PS To state the obvious, this ark thing is just an affinity group scam. The xians have been falling for these for 2,000 years. I believe the Holy Grail is still in play and someone stole the last of 18 Jesus foreskins a few years ago. It might show up on ebay.
I have a crackpot book from the 70s about Atlantis and the Mayan calendar (50c at at thrift store – bargain!) and it says that Ararat is a typo and that they should be looking in the Atlas Mountains, which are a remnant of the continent of Atlantis. Or some crazy shit like that.
ratha #65
What does being an agnostic, socially liberal, economically moderate economist have to do with whether or not Noah’s Ark has been found? Incidentally, you are not the only agnostic liberal posting on this thread and not even the only economist.
So? Are you claiming, based on your moderate economics (whatever that is), Fox and WND didn’t report the story? Or the story is more or possibly less valid because Fox and WND didn’t report the story first?
Please explain the basis for this complaint further. Yeung Wingcheung et al claim to have found Noah’s Ark. PZ Myers, who (a) doubts the existence of said boat and (b) doubts it would be found even if it does exist, reported Yeung’s claim and commented on it. Are you saying Myers shouldn’t have posted about this? If not, why not?
Why did you write this non sequitur?
plus they were packed , very efficient, , and were probably , BABYS, MAYBE?and if you doubt this is possible, how is there are PYGMIES + DWARFS?
Also.
So they found some wooden structures on the mountain. Great. What does that prove?
CJO
Huh. Both fakes. The real Ark is in Manali in India.
Wikipedia –
Britannica –
PS I’ve been there. It’s a levelled hill top about 30m across. Must have been a very small ark.
The site is more interesting (apart from being a great place for bird watching and/or smoking the product for which Manali is more widely known) for the remains of a small C18th (I think) “palace”.
The local ruler had a thing about human milk, so he would kill babies and kidnap the mothers to give himself a constant supply. When the locals discovered this they killed him and destroyed the building.
Or so the story goes. The person who told me that story also told me he used to own a cow that would drink all its own milk, so he had to sell it (without telling the purchaser).
my favorite parts from the various articles:
I believe this is sometimes referred to as a “barn”.
And this (quoting an AP article) is by far the funniest passage:
Awesome.
Oh, and ratha @ #65,
As an atheist, socially liberal, economic moderate, I’d just like to let you know that your concern is noted.
From PZ’s original post:
This one sentence should tell anyone with a minimum of ten functioning brain cells, all that they need to know about the intellectual bankruptcy, vacuity and outright mendacity at the heart of creationism. The doublethink required to believe that science works when it reinforces your presuppositions, and doesn’t work when it fails to genuflect before your presuppositions, requires a level of internal dishonesty that would make a Mafia godfather blanch.
But then, that arch-charlatan Henry Morris exposed the principle lying at the heart of modern creationism in one of his tiresome, turgid and tendentious screeds. In which he wrote the following words:
With the above words, Henry Morris effectively told us all that the principle underlying modern creationism is simply this:
When reality and doctrine differ, reality is wrong and doctrine is right.
That is what creationists believe, at bottom, mainly because they’ve swallowed Morris’ cortical excrement on a grand scale, whether directly from him or from the assorted pedlars of drivel at AiG, ICR etc. Morris kindly demonstrated what adherents of YEC doctrine believe:
[1] That their doctrine is the last word on any topic;
[2] That we don’t have to bother learning anything else;
[3] That the real world conforms to their doctrine (even when it doesn’t);
[4] That humans must also conform to their doctrine (or else), and;
[5] That supernaturalist blind assertion counts for more than evidentially supported postulates.
According to the Morris branch of YECism, when samples of rock yield dates older than 6,000 years, the rocks are lying. According to Morris, when distant galaxies are measured to be millions of light years away, the photons they emit are lying. According to Morris, when families of genes provide evidence of common ancestry, the DNA molecules are lying. According to Morris, the only thing that is telling the truth is 3,000 year old mythology, and any apologetics written to support it, regardless of whether said apologetics is even remotely consilient with the original mythological narrative.
The above demonstrates that it takes a truly special combination of stupidity and duplicity to be a YEC.
The chance that the radiocarbon date even exists or has anything to do with a piece of wood from Ararat is about zero.
Fundies are notorious for lying continuously and they aren’t ever going to stop. Noah’s ark has been the subject of repeated hoaxes and scams for centuries and it will be for centuries more. So whatever happened to the Holy Grail, True Cross, or the Ark of the Covenant? Supposedly the CIA has the last one according to a documentary a few decades ago.
@85:
Morris himself was a compulsive liar. He claimed that the theory of evolution was made up by satan and handed to Nimrod at the Tower of Babel. He cites the bible for this.
When you look it up, nothing he claims is actually in the bible. He flat out lied.
He was also a racist who said the descendants of Ham were dumb and lazy.
But how can you remain skeptical ?
They have found white pellets and a crystal, asbestos, and fresh food !
What should also be noted about this lot is that The Media Evangelism Limited is a film production company… http://www.imdb.com/company/co0122382/
This is all very sill since the idea that a ship would be able to collect and carry pairs of all animal species is impossible.
Why go beyond that simple fact?
Don’t get sucked into this nonsense.
Because it’s just so much good, clean fun.
My favourite part is how the only righteous man on earth and his immediate family (all of them married) together managed to harbour every human-specific parasite and pathogen on the planet, including venereal diseases.
Ha! I almost did a spit-take. Buncha hypocritical fucks.
I was digging in my compost heap today and I found all kinds of single protazoa type bitches so I akxed them do you have much mass in the soil world sort of things and they said that indeed Moses fucked right up because the mutated bitch that is protazoa has much more mass than any army and every time you scratch your ass you will wonder.
By The Fucking Way:
How the fuck do anyone think that god knows everything and then he , whaT, knows everything ahead of time and what watches a rerun of what he did?
This photo and short summary is from a lovely little museum that has been built alongside Khufu/Cheop’s Great Pyramid. I’ve been to the museum myself. The boat was originally buried next to the pyramid; researchers haven’t determined if it was the actual funeral barge or one of the “sun boats” (for use in the afterlife).
The boat is nearly 5,000 years old. It is made of cedar from Lebanon. In fact, the keel is fashioned from only one (long) tree. The boat measures 43.3m long and 5.9m wide. I estimate that 8 people could journey on the boat, sans animals, for 40 days if they really had to. If they had all 10 oarsmen as well, however, things would be rather difficult.
The creationists could learn a lot just by looking at an actual boat made around the same time period in approximately the same part of the world as their supposed ark.
As far as mountains go, I prefer to ponder why Captain Kirk is climbing a mountain.
“Never read it that closely, just always assumed that the “40 days and 40 nights” story that everyone knows would be what was actually in the Bible”
It is. Forty days and forty nights is how long the rain lasts. The floods don’t subside for a year. You just don’t know the story that well.
Ha, bet you evilutionists didn’t know this:
Of course it’s weaselly. Indeed, scientists, historians long ago determined that there was “a flood.” Indeed many floods. But that’s not what a Bible thumper would understand it to mean.
There are various claims out there, including one that earlier dates from the wooden structure came out to about 1400 years ago. True? Don’t know. What seems to be the truth is that no independent radiocarbon dating of the structure to 4800 years ago is known.
They also won’t reveal the location, nor reveal any pictures from the outside. Hmm, I wonder why? What’s laughably missing from all of their “evidence” is anything that would indicate the damn structure is boat-like in any way. Considering how these “arkeologists” go about their work, I’m guessing there is no real evidence that the structure is a boat, and likely there’s evidence that it isn’t. But one would not “show faith” by pointing out anything contrary to this being Noah’s ark, especially any indication that it’s no boat at all.
Oh yeah, reports are that this expedition has official ties to the government of Turkey. And while it’s an officially secular state, well, they do teach creationism in their schools, and gee, wouldn’t dollars from slack-jawed ignorami be welcome in that part of the world?
Nothing, from the researchers to the “evidence” to Turkey’s involvement in this, passes any kind of smell test.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
Interesting:
I wonder why the Turkish authorities’ denial is left out of most accounts? It certainly doesn’t make their claims any more credible.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
As least that might keep those credulous evangelicals busy for a while.
—
As long as it supports their claims.
MadScientist #60,
Erm, there’s glaciers there right now.
Glaciers within a few degrees of the equator, now that’d be impossible I grant you. :)
At this site is a video you can view of the wooden structure on Ararat.
It gives the perspective of the finding, which would be mildly interesting in other circumstances (well, why is what is apparently a wooden building up that high?). I think it is obvious why no “outside pictures” have been shown, since it appears that they have not sensibly gotten outside of it (not so that they could see its shape, that is).
Any evidence that it’s “the ark,” or even a boat of any kind? None that I can see.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
On the WND page, they have a poll related to the article.
http://forums.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=777
“What do you make of the latest alleged discovery of Noah’s Ark?”
There were three Arks.
One was crewed by wombats and landed in Australia.
The second one, which had the dinosaurs, big ugnly warty Pliocene mammals and the unicorns hit an iceberg and sank.
The third one ended up on Mt. Ararat.
Plywood is one sort of laminated wood. It’s usually known as “plywood” in Swedish, so if she’d meant specifically it, one’d think she’d just said that.
OTOH, googling for “gopher tree laminated wood” (sans citation marks) finds a bunch of sites claiming that “gopher” means precisely “laminated” in Aramaic(!), so maybe it’s meant to be a literal translation of the Hebrew(/?Aramaic) phrase rather than a modern technical term.
Holytape @4
If I could afford that pic, I’d buy it. Lovely story, too.
Sorry folks – apparently this latest ‘find’ was a hoax, http://is.gd/bL2MD
What? No, it just can’t be…
John Scanlon #100
Erm, there’s glaciers there right now.
There are glaciers near the equator in Papua New Guinea, Ecuador, and Tanzania.
The Equatorial Glaciers of Papua New Guinea
From the blog Paleobabble,
http://michaelsheiser.com/PaleoBabble/2010/04/noahs-ark-paleobabble-update/
We have an interesting story from one of the participants:
I also got an email today from one of Randall Price’s students. The email contains a message from Dr. Price about this expedition. (Dr. Price, as some of you may recall, has been doing a lot of searching for the ark lately.) Here is an excerpt from his message:
I was the archaeologist with the Chinese expedition in the summer of 2008 and was given photos of what they now are reporting to be the inside of the Ark. I and my partners invested $100,000 in this expedition (described below) which they have retained, despite their promise and our requests to return it, since it was not used for the expedition. The information given below is my opinion based on what I have seen and heard (from others who claim to have been eyewitnesses or know the exact details).
To make a long story short: this is all reported to be a fake. The photos were reputed to have been taken off site near the Black Sea, but the film footage the Chinese now have was shot on location on Mt. Ararat. In the late summer of 2008 ten Kurdish workers hired by Parasut, the guide used by the Chinese, are said to have planted large wood beams taken from an old structure in the Black Sea area (where the photos were originally taken) at the Mt. Ararat site. In the winter of 2008 a Chinese climber taken by Parasut’s men to the site saw the wood, but couldn’t get inside because of the severe weather conditions. During the summer of 2009 more wood was planted inside a cave at the site. The Chinese team went in the late summer of 2009 (I was there at the time and knew about the hoax) and was shown the cave with the wood and made their film. As I said, I have the photos of the inside of the so-called Ark (that show cobwebs in the corners of rafters – something just not possible in these conditions) and our Kurdish partner in Dogubabyazit (the village at the foot of Mt. Ararat) has all of the facts about the location, the men who planted the wood, and even the truck that transported it.
elnauhual, you seem to have missed #106, presumably by not reading before posting.
Lazy of you.
mhhh at 106..!!!
yes… seems i took to long to post… but i was trying to cross check the references first
Randall price is credited as :
Director of Excavations on the Qumran Plateau in Israel (site of the community that preserved the Dead Sea Scrolls) since 2002 and has excavated at other sites in Israel since 1990
not the ordinary quack… bun an ilustrated one…
At least… he accpts this is an Hoax… two points for honesty… but we have to substract several for credulity…
[OT]
elnauhual,
Oops. OK, sorry.
Seems I was too quick to judge. :(
@rossnixon #16:
Yes, Ross, that is exactly what I did. And I am hereby calling you to find that spanner. You just have to find the atheist whom I hit with it and pay whatever he or she asks. It looks exactly like an ordinary spanner, but it is made of Jesus’ bone. You can recognize it in the same way you can tell Jesus’ flesh from an ordinary wafer.
You are completely free to accept or reject My mission for you, but I suggest you meditate on Matthew 10:28 before you decide.
(Chokes a little) Guh!
Excuse me sir, but I think I found the Ark in my back yard, in the mountains of central Illinois. It could have been what the original authors meant, after all. Do you think you could send me just one thousand dollars to mount an expidition?
Can I can see some breeze blocks in picture 3 ?
I’m as skeptical as anyone regarding this supposed discovery. But I’d also love to hear the comments on this page if it were to be confirmed that a very large ancient boat sits 13,000′ up on Mr. Ararat.
My obligatory link for all flood-related posts:
(By the way, check out the comments — some of them are about 2.5 on the face-palm scale)
I say give the Chinese crew a break. Let them secure the site, and allow more scientists to review it and see what happens. They say they have some evidence, some pictures…they say they saw planks and tenons. Perhaps it’s not all that much different looking in construction than this model 4926 Egyptian Dahshur Boat (which used planks and mortise and tenons): http://imrd.org/digitalexhibit/GC4926images.htm
Seriously, would there really be any surprise to find this boat? We have flood legends in dozens of countries on every continent (in addition to the Genesis account)…as if suddenly evidence of a great flood would be a surprise. Big whoop. No news here.
Seriously, would there really be any surprise to find this boat?
On top of a mountain? Why, yes. Yes it would.
We have flood legends in dozens of countries on every continent (in addition to the Genesis account)…
They’re myths. They need not be construed as referring to real events or even necessarily derived from legends, though it’s not hard to imagine that the source of such stories and the reason for their ubiquity is the tendency of human beings to settle near waterways and the tendency of bodies of water to flood periodically, sometimes catastrophically.
as if suddenly evidence of a great flood would be a surprise. Big whoop. No news here.
Oh, there’s plenty of that anyway. But that’s not what finding a large seaworthy vessel from antiquity on top of a mountain would be evidence for.
Too many of the global flood legends have an ark being built (Aztec, Chaldean, Australian, etc, etc)…and too many include catastrophic destruction, for me to be surprised if they found the boat somewhere (although it already sounds like this particular discovery may have already been exposed as a fake).
“the boat”
What boat?
On one hand, practically every boat ever built to navigate a body of fresh water has been “in a flood,” so it’s trivial to say “we found an ancient boat that was in a flood.” You found an ancient boat.
On the other, as I just said, the very fact of similar stories being told in diverse cultures about big-ass floods and big-ass boats gives us even less reason to think any such thing occurred, not more. What, there was a Mesoamerican Noah, a Mesopotamian Noah, an Australian Noah…?
There never was any boat. Boats float and so people use them to escape when their homes flood. When they invent fantastic tales about supernaturally large floods, they naturally include supernaturally large boats.
Yawn, myths are so creative. They steal from each other. Well known fact.
Funny how there is absolutely no evidence in the peer reviewed scientific literature for anything other than a local flood. Nothing to indicate a world wide flood at one time period that wiped out all life on earth. Local floods mean nothing, as they happen every year somewhere, and you know it. Quit lying to yourself, then you can quit lying to us.
I don’t see how it is helpful to ignore the possibility that many dozens of global flood stories could share a common origin. I’ve spoken to someone who spent 20 years in PNG, who said the story of Noah and the flood was already know by the tribe who he was with….there are 800 tribes in PNG, they each have their own verbal lanuage…most with no written forms. I think it’s very interesting, personally. I’ve heard some argue that they could have originated in the Epics of Gilgamesh (~4,000 – 5,000 years ago), but the same people who argue this would not be open to possibility that the flood in Genesis (sometime before that) and which was referenced by Jesus as historical fact (Luke 17:26-28 and Matthew 24:37-39), actually happened. It reminds me of the fact that Richard Dawkins is open to the possibility or life/genetic information being planted on earth by extraterrestials….but is absolutely not open to the possibility that life was designed by the God of the Hebrews.
Anything but the obvious, I guess.
I don’t see how it is helpful to ignore the possibility that dozens of global flood stories could share a common origin. I’ve spoken to someone who spent 20 years in PNG, who said the story of Noah and the flood was already known by the tribe who he was with….there are 800 tribes in PNG, they each have their own verbal language…most with no written forms. I think it’s very interesting, personally. I’ve heard some argue that these stories could have originated from the Epics of Gilgamesh (~4,000-5,000 years ago), but the same people who argue this would not be open to the possibility that the flood in Genesis (sometime before that), which was referenced by Jesus as historical fact (Luke 17:26-28 and Matthew 24:37-39), actually happened. It reminds me of the fact that Richard Dawkins is open to the possibility or life/genetic information being planted on earth by extraterrestials…but is absolutely not open to the possibility that life/genetic information was designed by the God of the Hebrews.
Anything but the obvious, I guess.
Wrong. Dawkins acknowledges that there could be a god. But there is no evidence for one. Which is the truth. And why Yahweh versus one of the thousand of other deities invented by man?
Here’s the problem with your tales, including the Noachian myth. Prove that they happened all at once from the geological record, and the fact that all the people and animals on earth except for one family died. There is no record of such a world-wide catastrophe. There is evidence for very localized flooding from many rivers over many time periods. So the problem isn’t with the geological record, but rather with those who put books of mythology ahead of facts.
Well, I may be wrong…but I was referring to an interview that I watched about a year ago, where Dawkins explicitly stated that he does not believe in any god, anywhere, including the God of the Hebrews, the Muslims, or the Hindus. But in the same interview, Dawkins himself suggested that the intelligent design of our current life forms by extraterrestrials, planted on earth, might be an intriguing possibility. He also put the possibility of “God” creating life at about 1% (“99% against” in his words).
But I must admit, I have not kept up with his writing since that time. So, if he has become more open to God as a creator or designer, then I apologize. Or perhaps you might be referring to to the late Antony Flew, who wrote, “There is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind” (published in Oct, 2007).
As for the evidence of a world-wide catastrophe, I have had only limited interest and reading. I have read a few arguments on both sides that sound intelligent. I do find Dr. John Baumgardner’s catastrophic plate tectonics models quite interesting.
No, no evidence for a designer deity. Too much wrong/not optimal with things. That’s what the scientific literature says.
Then you aren’t very cogent. Nothing about the flud is intelligent. No scientific evidence it happened. Belief without evidence is delusions. You appear to be delusional…