Posted on 07/07/2006 10:05:17 PM PDT by freedom44
High in the mountains of northwestern Iran, a Christian archaeology expedition has discovered a rock formation that its members say resembles the fabled Noah's ark.
The team discovered the prominent boat-shaped rocks at just over 13,000 feet (4,000 meters) on Mount Suleiman in Iran's Elburz mountain range.
"It looks uncannily like wood," said Robert Cornuke, president of the Bible Archaeology Search and Exploration Institute (BASE), the Palmer Lake, Colorado-based group that launched the expedition.
Photos taken by BASE members show a prow-shaped rock outcrop, which the team says resembles petrified wood, emerging from a ridge.
"We have had [cut] thin sections of the rock made, and we can see [wood] cell structures," Cornuke said.
Cornuke acknowledges that it may be hard to prove that this object was Noah's ark. But he says he is fairly convinced that the rock formation was an important place of pilgrimage in the past.
The BASE team has uncovered evidence of an ancient shrine near the outcrop, suggesting that this was an important place to people in the past, Cornuke says.
"We can't claim to have conclusively found the ark, but it does look like the object that the ancients talked about," Cornuke said.
Noah and the Flood
The story of Noah's ark is told in three major world religions: Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.
The Book of Genesis describes a great flood created by God "to destroy all life under the heavens."
But before the flood, God told Noah, one of his human followers, to build an ark and fill it with two of every species on the Earth.
But this location doesn't fit the description given in Genesis of the ark's passengers journeying from the east to arrive at Mesopotamia.
Cornuke and his team think that Mount Ararat might be a red herring.
"The Bible gives us a compass direction here, and it is not in the direction of Turkey. Instead it points directly towards Iran," Cornuke said.
Pilgrim Shrine?
Using the Book of Genesis and other literary sources, the BASE team journeyed to Iran in July 2005 to climb Mount Suleiman.
They chose Mount Suleiman after reading the notes of 19th-century British explorer A. H. McMahan.
In 1894, after climbing Mount Suleiman, McMahan wrote in his journal, "According to some, Noah's ark alighted here after the deluge."
McMahan also spoke of wood fragments from a shrine at the top of the mountain where unknown people had made pilgrimages to the site.
"We found a shrine and wood fragments at 15,000 feet [4,570 meters] elevation, as described by McMahan," Cornuke said.
Subsequent carbon dating of samples from the shrine showed the wood fragments from the site to be around 500 years old.
Lower on the mountain, expedition members came across the ark-like rock formation, which they estimate to be about 400 feet (122 meters) long.
Rocks From the Sea?
Not everyone is convinced by the BASE team's claims.
Kevin Pickering, a geologist at University College London who specializes in sedimentary rocks, doesn't think that the ark-like rocks are petrified wood.
"The photos appear to show iron-stained sedimentary rocks, probably thin beds of silicified sandstones and shales, which were most likely laid down in a marine environment a long time ago," he said.
Pickering thinks that the BASE team may have mistaken the thin layers in the sediment for wood grain and the more prominent layers as beams of wood.
"The wider layers in the rock are what we call bedding planes," he said.
"They show fracture patterns that we associate with … the Earth processes that caused the rocks to be uplifted to their present height."
The boat-shaped structure can also be explained geologically, says retired British geologist Ian West, who has studied Middle Eastern sediments.
"Iran is famous for its small folds, many of which are the oil traps. Their oval, ark-like shape is classical," he said.
Meanwhile, ancient timber specialist Martin Bridge, of England's Oxford Dendrochronology Laboratory, is doubtful that a wooden structure would have lasted long enough to petrify under ordinary conditions.
"Wood will only survive for thousands of years if it is buried in very wet conditions or remains in an extremely arid environment," he said.
Bible scholars think that Noah built his ark somewhere between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago, making preservation highly unlikely except in extreme environmental conditions.
And even if the wood had petrified, there seems to be little evidence of Noah's carpentry, according to Robert Spicer, a geologist at England's Open University who specializes in the study of petrification.
"What needs to be documented in this case are preserved, human-made joints, such as scarf, mortice and tenon, or even just pegged boards. I see none of this in the pictures. It's all very unconvincing," Spicer said.
Bridge, the Oxford timber specialist, points out that it would also be impossible for a boat to run aground at 13,000 feet.
"If you put all the water in the world together, melting both the ice caps and all the glaciers, you still wouldn't reach anywhere near the top of the mountain," he said.
No, the wood was covered in teriyaki sauce and other things to make it look really old. The whole Sun pictures thing and Navarra was a big hoax. Google it, lots of info.
Are all cultures equal? Hell no...
Only a cultural Marxist would think so.
Some just have an ax to grind with the Christians and the Jews... I do not. In fact, I have very little problem with the Hindu or the Buddhist (I have practiced the martial arts all my life, which is really a form of Buddhist movement meditation).
I think that a greater number of the people who bash the religious folks here are leftist trolls whose only purpose is to undermine the Republican party. I say this as an unapologetic atheist. I know how the leftist subterfuge works and the one thing they really hate, just like the Islamists do, is Mosaic Law...
Of course, what a lot of the leftists and misguided, myopic liberal-tarians don't want to admit is that Christianity (and they do hate Christians) is just their politically correct proxy for their war against Jews and what is written in the book of Genesis.
Some of them are so myopic and have such a need to do anything contrary to the Christians that what they forget in their own blind, raging ignorance is that Moses wasn't a Christian (this is just one way I spot them).
Cultural Marxism has a goal to feminize males, making them docile and compliant: marijuana is a chemical warfare agent. Homosexual monogamy is a psychological and biological warfare tactic.
No man may become a law unto himself under the guise of freedom of religion...
Some of these liberal-tarians forget, it is THEY who advocate “separation of church and state.” Let me cram it right back down their throats...
It was landmark U.S. Supreme Court precedent Reynolds v. United States in 1878 that made “separation of church and state” a dubiously legitimate point of case law, but more importantly; it confirmed the Constitutionality in statutory regulation of marriage practices.
Now, it ain't so palatable to them, is it? They are the ones here bashing the religious folks, now they want to claim some mercurial, ever changing definition of freedom of religion? I'm not going to live in their hell...
Some of the Bozos out there can't get past that word “God,” so they would just piss the entire country away and join the enemies of America; all because they have this polemic need to bash the Christians and do everything in contravention to them.
I say screw them and the filthy practices they want to live by. My children are not going to inherit their squalor if I can help it.
Are all cultures equal? Hell no...
Only a cultural Marxist would think so.
Some just have an ax to grind with the Christians and the Jews... I do not. In fact, I have very little problem with the Hindu or the Buddhist (I have practiced the martial arts all my life, which is really a form of Buddhist movement meditation).
I think that a greater number of the people who bash the religious folks here are leftist trolls whose only purpose is to undermine the Republican party. I say this as an unapologetic atheist. I know how the leftist subterfuge works and the one thing they really hate, just like the Islamists do, is Mosaic Law...
Of course, what a lot of the leftists and misguided, myopic liberal-tarians don't want to admit is that Christianity (and they do hate Christians) is just their politically correct proxy for their war against Jews and what is written in the book of Genesis.
Some of them are so myopic and have such a need to do anything contrary to the Christians that what they forget in their own blind, raging ignorance is that Moses wasn't a Christian (this is just one way I spot them).
Cultural Marxism has a goal to feminize males, making them docile and compliant: marijuana is a chemical warfare agent. Homosexual monogamy is a psychological and biological warfare tactic.
No man may become a law unto himself under the guise of freedom of religion...
Some of these liberal-tarians forget, it is THEY who advocate “separation of church and state.” Let me cram it right back down their throats...
It was landmark U.S. Supreme Court precedent Reynolds v. United States in 1878 that made “separation of church and state” a dubiously legitimate point of case law, but more importantly; it confirmed the Constitutionality in statutory regulation of marriage practices.
Now, it ain't so palatable to them, is it? They are the ones here bashing the religious folks, now they want to claim some mercurial, ever changing definition of freedom of religion? I'm not going to live in their hell...
Some of the Bozos out there can't get past that word “God,” so they would just piss the entire country away and join the enemies of America; all because they have this polemic need to bash the Christians and do everything in contravention to them.
I say screw them and the filthy practices they want to live by. My children are not going to inherit their squalor if I can help it.
In recognition of your record-setting achievement, a plaque, suitable for framing, will be sent to a local landfill in your honor.
I take it algebra wasn't your strong subject in grade school.
cough cough I'd like to thank my paremts, God and Mother Teresa...
Did you check out the rest of the site the article was on?
"How do we know?
Science!
We know about continental drift and where the landmasses were millions of years ago."
Remember, though, that the science of paleontological history, is itself based on an assumption, taken on faith.
That assumption is uniformitarianism - that things in the past occurred at the same rate and in the same ways that they do today. To use a concrete example, look at the Ideal Gas Law. PV=nRT. That "R" in there is a constant, like "c", the speed of light constant so crucial to Einstein. The uniformitarian assumption is that R and c 500 years ago, or 10,000 years ago, or 1 billion years ago, were the SAME, and that therefore we can know a great deal about the past by studying the traces the past has left us in the present - fossils and rocks and the like - and applying our constants and observations about the rate things happen TODAY, simply extrapolating that backwards as far as is necessary to produce the thing seen.
All efforts at chronological history in natural science repose squarely on the uniformitarian assumption, but that assumption is not itself science. It cannot be falsified. We have no time machine. We have absolutely no way at all to look back into the past, particularly the pre-historical or pre-human past, to see whether or not things occurred at the same rate as now...that the constants of today had the same value back then. We don't know, and we can't know. So we assume it. We HAVE to assume it, because otherwise the past is opaque to us. What else do we have to go on?
It is the assumption that allows us to then proceed scientifically. But the assumption itself is not science at all. It's faith. It's like a postulate in geometry. Once you accept the postulates, geometry flows logically and systematically. But the postulates themselves are unprovable, and unchallengeable. They are simply ASSERTED and ACCEPTED, and based on those assertions and acceptations, geometry is then possible.
The same is true of the science of the past. It IS science (at least if it is properly conducted it is), but it is not based on science. Science is, above all, empirical observation. We CANNOT empirically observe the past on planet earth. We can look at rocks and sediment layers and fossils, and rates of radioactive decay, and we can ASSUME that decay rates are constant over time in order to date things. We can do lots of science based on that uniformitarian assumption. But the assumption itself is a postulate, an assertion. IT is not science. It is faith.
This element doesn't exist in modern empirical science studying the here and now. But it becomes more and more important the farther back one moves in time. If the constants themselves have altered, perhaps through a process of punctuated equilibrium, we don't know and CAN'T know.
So, our scientific descriptions of the pre-Cambrian world are logical and scientific, but they do NOT ultimately REPOSE on logic. They repose on faith, in uniformitarianism, which is a necessary postulate, but an unprovable one (at least until somebody builds a time machine).
So, yes, we think we know where the continents were a billion years ago, and 10,000 years ago. And if our uniformitarian assumption is true, we are probably very close. But if the constants have changed (and there is astronomical evidence of some variation in the values of constants), then we don't know at all, because the tool we have used as our yardstick - the behavior of things NOW, TODAY - would fail us utterly.
We can posit the findings of our paleontology and call it science, and be reasonably confident in it. But we must not become so overmighty in our belief that we are operating from PURE science and PURE logic that our position is unassailable. All of our science of the elder days reposes on the uniformitarian assumption. It's a good assumption (what else could we possibly use) and a necessary assumption (if we don't assume it, we can't do paleontology at all). But it's not empirical science, and it's not itself based on rational deduction (we don't have a particularly good reason to believe that the constants have been constant forever; and we do have some astronomical data that some of them may not be).
It's faith.
We shouldn't forget that, because the knowledge of that truth ought to make us a little less proud when dealing with others who take their view of the path on faith.
Ooookaay...
1)yes: earth is not the center of the universe
2)perhaps I shouldn't have the used the word sponatneously to describe the origins of life.. I guess one could say that the theory holds that it 'evolved' into existence through chemical processes and reactioins undergoing darwinesque selection
3)Question: Now, I'm not saying life must've come into existence on Earth, but: If it came from somewhere else, how did it get there? From somewhere else yet? And how did it get there? Ultimately, at some point, life must've come from non-life. It can't have just been jumping around from place to place indefinitely: it must have started somewhere.The big question is where and when, and there's no valid reason that it couldn't have done so on Earth.
"If Terra did not spontaneously exist..." care to provide your line of reasoning here?
I guess you just disregard the scientific tests done by an institute specializing in timber that had no axe to grind. I could tell you a bit about Navarra that shows he was a very sucessful business man and an honest man with just a simple love for finding the truth. And I could also find the detail of the officers in the CIA who have seen the still classified satelite photos of what they call the Ararat analomy that they say looks like a huge ship as it was revealed due to alot of snow melt that year.
Dude, the whole thing was a hoax, it was fake, they found nothing, it was all done to make money for a movie.
I think someone got a hold of a piece of Navarra's beams and perhaps created a hoax but the original scientific findings were many years before the movie. I'm sorry you are overlooking alot of amazing facts. I guess we tend to believe what we want to. Hope you will have more of an open mind. I would be willing to send you the original book with many scientific findings. What about the CIA ararat anamoly? That was seen by many officers.
He who denies me before men, the same will I deny before my father. Who said that?
I think you would rather suspend disbelief and go on pretending that this fable was real.
It was a hoax, its well documented by many sources, look it up and read up.
Demonstrate infinity pilgrim...and while you're at it, also demonstate a time event that is not a kinetic energy event. Until then you won't be ready for the next grade...
there are so many archaelogical finds that show the historical truth of the Bible including Davids Temple and so many others. You can call it a myth all you want and I'm sure you believe that but if you would do what you are asking me to do you may see it differently. I know there is a conscience in us that gives us guilt and pain when we do wrong which is from God so I don't think Noah's ark is necessary for belief at all, but it is very interesting and confirming.
Yeah, there are archeological finds, however that is not germane to your point, there are no finds of an ark that carried every species on it. There never has been. There have been lots of hoaxes.
Noah's ark is a good story for 5 year olds or ignorant herdsmen, but to continue to take it literally is pretty ignorant.
Proof....you have none, and you can't answer the logistical questions I have about the ark fable.
stupid in the afterlife?
Don't tell me what I believe, you don't know what I believe.
What pisses you off is that I am asking you to prove your assertation that there was an ark, and that all animal life on earth descended from it. And other logistical questions regarding how the animals ate, and got there and got home. You have no logical answer.
Don't like my profile? Big whoop, I don't exist to please you.
Its funny, creationists always ask evolutionists to show proof, but if an evolutionist asks for some proof, you get all huffy and start saying that I don't believe in God. You can't say what I believe in, that is ignorant and arrogant on your part.
You really need to learn how to be consistent. Either you believe in fairy tales about arks and give up logic and reason, or you don't. You decide.
That doesn't make much sense to me. Throughout the history of the Catholic church they have singled out and honored Saints that perform miracles and yet your Catholic school taught you that the miracles in the Bible are just stories written for ignorant people?
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