Posted on 06/30/2006 8:26:43 AM PDT by DannyTN
Team believes it found Noah's Ark Returns from Iranian mountain with petrified wood, marine fossils
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: June 30, 2006 1:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com
A 14-man crew that included evangelical apologist Josh McDowell says it returned from a trek to a mountain in Iran with possible evidence of the remains of Noah's Ark.
The group, led by explorer Bob Cornuke, found an unusual object perched on a slope 13,120 feet above sea level.
Cornuke, president of the archeological Base Institute and a veteran of nearly 30 expeditions in search of Bible artifacts and locations, said he is cautiously, but enthusiastically, optimistic about the find.
Some of the team's photos can be seen here.
Also on the team were Barry Rand, former CEO of Avis; Boone Powell, former CEO of Baylor Medical Systems; and Arch Bonnema, president of Joshua Financial.
The team returned with video footage of a large black formation, about 400 feet long – the length of the ark, according to the Bible – that looks like rock but bears the image of hundreds of massive, wooden, hand-hewn beams.
Bonnema observed: "These beams not only look like petrified wood, they are so impressive that they look like real wood – this is an amazing discovery that may be the oldest shipwreck in recorded history."
The team said one piece of the blackened rock is "cut" at 90-degree angle.
Sealed with pitch
Even more intriguing, they said, some of the wood-like rocks tested this week proved to be petrified wood.
It's noteworthy, they pointed out, that the Bible recounts Noah sealed his ark with pitch, a black substance.
When the retrieved pieces were cut open, a marine fossil was discovered. In the area around the object, the team found thousands of fossilized sea shells, and Cornuke brought back a one-inch thick rock slab replete with fossilized clams.
With the discovery of wood splinters and broken pottery at the remote 15,300-foot level, the team says it also found evidence that ancients considered it an important worship site for hundreds, if not thousands of years.
Cornuke became involved in the search for the ark after meeting Apollo 15 astronaut James Irwin, participating with him in several searches on Mount Ararat in Turkey, but with disappointing results.
Cornuke began looking elsewhere, after finding clues in the Bible such as Genesis 11's reference to descendants of Noah coming to the Mesopotamian valley from the east. Cornuke believes that would put the biblical mountains of Ararat somewhere in northern Iran.
He also points to ancient historians such as Nicholas of Damascus and Flavius Josephus who wrote, just before and after Christ, that timbers of the ark had survived in the higher mountains of present-day Iran.
Cornuke noted that during World War II, an American Army officer and road construction engineer in Iran named Ed Davis said he saw the ark on a high mountain in the country after being led there by Iranian friends. After the war, according to Cornuke, Davis passed a lie detector test affirming he saw timbers from an ark-like object.
Before his death, Davis gave Cornuke a map showing the way to the object.
"It was right where Ed said it was in his map," Cornuke said. "After seeing it from a distance, I thought it at first unimpressive, but once we stood on the object we were all amazed at how it looked just like a huge pile of black and brown stone beams."
Noah tours
Cornuke's is the latest of many expeditions – most of them at Turkey's Mount Ararat – in search of Noah's Ark.
As WorldNetDaily reported, a new travel website is promoting summer tours to a Turkish site near Mount Ararat believed by many to be the fossilized remains of Noah's Ark.
Many believe this is Noah's Ark, already found on a mountain next to Mt. Ararat (courtesy: wyattmuseum.com)
Noah's Ark Holidays, which bills itself as an "ethical travel referral website" is behind the offer, with a pitch for the location in Dogubayazit, Turkey.
The late Ron Wyatt, whose Tennessee-based foundation, Wyatt Archaeological Research, also believed the ark is located at Dogubayazit, some 12-15 miles from Ararat.
Meanwhile, as WorldNetDaily reported in March, others who believe the vessel is on Ararat itself became excited with the release of a new, high-resolution digital image of what has become known as the "Ararat Anomaly."
Satellite image of 'Ararat Anomaly,' taken by DigitalGlobe's QuickBird Satellite in 2003 and made public for the first time in March 2006 (courtesy: DigitalGlobe)
The location of the anomaly on the mountain's northwest corner has been under investigation from afar by ark hunters for years, but it has remained unexplored, with the government of Turkey not granting any scientific expedition permission to explore on site.
In both the Old and New Testaments, the Bible speaks of Noah and the ark, and Jesus Christ and the apostles Paul and Peter all make reference to Noah's flood as an actual historical event.
According to Genesis, Noah was a righteous man who was instructed by God to construct a large vessel to hold his family and many species of animals, as a massive deluge was coming to purify the world which had become corrupt.
'Noah's Ark' by Pennsylvania artist Edward Hicks, 1846
Genesis 6:5 states: "And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually."
Noah was told by God to take aboard seven pairs of each of the "clean" animals – that is to say, those permissible to eat – and two each of the "unclean" variety. (Gen. 7:2)
Though the Bible says it rained for 40 days and 40 nights, it also mentions "the waters prevailed upon the earth a hundred and fifty days."
The ark then "rested" upon the mountains of Ararat, but it was still months before Noah and his family – his wife, his three sons and the sons' wives – were able to leave the ark and begin replenishing the world.
How about grasping the implications of assuming all natural processes have always taken place at the same rate? Can you dumb that down to my level, too? What is the speed of thought?
Somebody is finding that sucker about every three weeks now..
Eeew, I hate ramen.
Thanks, everyone, this has been the most enjoyable read in a long time!
The only people I've come across who've written about redshift variability are in the YEC camp.
http://www.ldolphin.org/setterfield/redshift.html
I admit I haven't looked for info in other sources. Jargon laden explanations = a heavy slog, a slog I'll take if the source is recommened. Any theories, theorists you favor?
Cryogenic storage, using a donkey-powered Bronze Age air liquifier with olive oil as a cryo-protectant. Or at least, that is how I would have done it.
The total water supply of the world is 326 million cubic miles (a cubic mile is an imaginary cube (a square box) measuring one mile on each side). A cubic mile of water equals more than one trillion gallons.
About 3,100 cubic miles of water, mostly in the form of water vapor, is in the atmosphere at any one time. If it all fell as precipitation at once, the Earth would be covered with only about 1 inch of water.
http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/earthhowmuch.html
I think you are missing the point that even if you allow for changes in the fundamental constants and process rates, for which one could argue there is some evidence, it still does not leave you with an obvious model that remotely suggests the world is less than 10,000 years old. That idea and its implication, when considered, do not plausibly have the ability to generate anything remotely like the outcome you are looking for.
Slow changes in constants are plausible but difficult to measure, and science is very open to the idea (it comes up often enough in the science journals). It is possible to construct relatively consistent models that show how that could occur and leave us with what we see today. But the only way you can get 10,000 years out of the existing system with the existing evidence would be very heavy-handed and irregular/inconsistent wholesale reshaping of the universe specifically for the purpose of creating that illusion. Science is quite okay with idea of a universe with constants that have changed, as it is not inconsistent with what we see within certain parameters. Science would reject the less than 10,000 year notion because there is no evidence that you could get there from here even if the universal constants changed significantly. All such changes have predictable consequences, at least in science.
If you believe God bludgeoned the universe into its current shape in less than 10,000 years, that is fine. But there is zero evidence that supports that as a remotely plausible scientific hypothesis.
Nice answer to a question I didn't ask. I asked about the scientific law stipulating that the amount of water on the earth was unchanging.
On a more serious note, cryogenic preservation has come a long way in the last decade or two. I have a couple friends who are top researchers in that field. Organ and tissue cryo-preservation is really not much of a problem. The tricky parts for doing whole living organisms are deceptively simple e.g. getting the entire organism to warm up and cool down at approximately the same rate. A living critter that is half thawed and half frozen is not a happy critter. Still, they complexity of the critters and systems they can semi-reliably do this to increase every year.
But the parent post made a good point: if one presumes that the story is intended to be taken literally, how does one explain away the obvious problems that emerge from said literal interpretation. Any fool can see that nothing that we know of can support a literal interpretation, and the only explanations proffered are far beyond what any rational or intelligent person should be expected to swallow. Do I believe a literal interpretation or my lying eyes?
That particular story needs all the scientific help it can get, no matter how implausible the science. Next you'll tell me that the Hindus really have it all figured out.
Amen, brother
BTW, catastrophism, a generally accepted process whereby the geological record was formed, tends to be a "heavy-handed" process. How much water can be found inside the earth at depths of 10-20 kilometers?
"Why bother? The usual sillies from the people whose thought balloons cannot be popped by any dose of reality whatsoever"
Their's is the "triumph of an ego"...if something is bigger than they are, why it just could'nt be real...for if it was real , then their superior, rational intellect could comprehend it.......
I didn't know humility was and odd view?
mans knowedge is inferior. just as car knowledge is inferior to man's
just have to spend a little time studing His creation to know this. Man seems to get all pride/boast-ful when we are able to copy his createativity.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8498621/
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