They aren't
Kangaroos of the Middle East Article by Dr. Richard Paley
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.
Terra (our planet) is not the center of the universe.
If Terra did not spontaneously exist, neither did life.
Life came from somewhere else as did the earth itself...
ping...
No, it is not...
It is no coincidence Islamic pagans hate Israel, Jews, Christians and Western Civilization.
The entire basis of Western Civilization is Mosaic Law, something both the Neo-Pagan Left and the pagan Islamic thugs cannot abide and wish to destroy.
The very idea that human beings have individual rights not subject to the whims of an earthly monarch, but subject to the laws of Yahweh, is directly from Moses.
Historically, this is proven over and over again with the succsessive conflicts between the forces of paganism and the Judaic culture. It is being played out here and all over the world today...
Observing this as an atheist, I prefer the paradigm of a Judaic culture to the chaotic death cult of New Age neo-pagan absurdity.
A greater number of "atheists" and "pagans" adopt the same hackneyed tenets of a false Judaic-Christian ideal (golden calf). They also subscribe to the Judaic fetishism of "sin," but will fight to their death in denial of it. Most of them are so wrapped up in their own polemics that they have become nothing more than pathetic anti-Christians with the same false hypocritical philosophy. They just slap a new label on it hoping nobody will notice - - they replace the idea of "avoiding sin" with "morals."
Morality and all of its associated ideals are rooted entirely in the presupposition some higher power defines what is correct in human behavior.
Today, "morals" are a religious pagan philosophy of esoteric hobgoblins. Transfiguration is a pantheon of fantasies as the medium of infinitization. Others get derision for having an unwavering Judaic belief in Yahweh or Yeshua, although their critics and enemies will evangelize insertion of phantasmagoric fetishisms into secular law.
Mosaic Law (of which the Ten Commandments is just a part) is the foundation of Western Civilization. Genesis is the primary focus of the Declaration of Independence, from where our Constitutional rights are derived. The Ten Commandments are the foundation of our judicial system.
Moses wrote Genesis. This is why such people will jump up and down screaming when the Ten Commandments are displayed or the Creationist idea of monogamy from the book of Genesis is introduced.
They aren't
Kangaroos of the Middle East Article by Dr. Richard Paley
Funny Stuff!
That kangaroos are not mentioned in the Genesis account of the Flood, either by name or description, is unsurprising due to the great number of kinds of animals that were in the Ararat area at the time. What's a kangaroo or two among a great throng of pandas, mastodons, velociraptors, and giraffes?
Velociraptors! LOL!
Believing the Biblical Flood:
Disbelieving the Biblical Flood:
Talk Origins FAQ on Noah's Ark
But I also need to point out what the refusal to face facts on the basis of "faith" can lead to.
This could very well be the stupidest article that I've ever read.
Look at it another way, if there is indeed life beyond this existence ...
but consider for one second if what YOU had learned and believed about this after life are wrong ....
Where will that leave you?
Really? Then how come there are genetic markers found *only* in people and the other great apes? I won't provide a link here, I'll simply trust you to educate yourself by looking up ERVs and GULO (to start with - there is a *lot* more than that).
Did you know that if a genetic marker is found in both species of Asian ape (orangutan and gibbon) it will also be found in chimps, gorillas and people? There are no known exceptions to this rule, and several hundred (maybe thousand by now) examples where it works. Some of these markers are in monkeys, and some aren't.
I not confused. You are.
And Some Christians take Genesis to be allegory, but do the Fundamentlists rolerate that view? No. Literal or go to Heck.
We are on about the same wavelength here, although I'm a christian and proud of it. I'm leaving my presbyterian church because they embrace homosexuals and condemn israel, after 50 years of membership I've had enough, I'm outta here. You mention infinity. n/0=n and nx0=n. How so? Law#1:Multiplication is repetitive addition(quantity). Law#2:Multiplication is vector comparison(quality). Law#3:Division is repetitive subtraction(quantity). Law#4:Division is vector partition(quality). Thus by Law#3 : 10/0=10-0-0-0-0-0-....-0-0-0...-0-0-0... = 10; try slicing a watermelon up into an infinite number of pieces by cutting off zero pieces; wearing out a lot of air, yes? Thus those that infer that infinity is some THING are idiots, pied pipers for the gullible children of the world. Infinity is nothing, no THING at all......And nx0=0? what is 2x3x0? 6 units as in lines or areas, or zero volumes? Thus 2 different and TRUE answers where knee JERK idiots only see one answer. Thus n/0=nx0, easy to see once you're head is screwed on right.
I want to thank you. Your 155 and 225 are the only 2 posts in this whole thread worth reading. You are exactly right and 100% logical with your statements. I wish I knew you cuz you think like me brother (or sister).
Lest you think that because I believe the Bible that I am uneducated, perhaps I should tell you that I have a MA degree in Biology and have been an instructor at our local community college for over 22 years. One of the first things that I tell my General Biology students when I introduce them to the scientific method is that it can not be applied to matters of faith or belief.
Many people want to pick and choose what they will accept when it comes to the Bible. IMO, if one does not believe what the Bible says is true, how can you believe anything it says? Also, if you believe that God is all powerful, a little thing like Noah and the Ark would not have been too hard to arrange. At the same time, I realize that the Bible was never meant to be a scientific treatise or a history book. It is the story of God's relationship with His people and ultimately how he loved the world so much that He sent His only Son to save it.
There WAS a flood.
Global warming caused it.
When the glaciers retreated at the end of the Ice Age, and the polar caps melted and became smaller, the sea level rose worldwide and stayed risen. All around the world it was experienced. Therefore, all around the world, there is the racial memory of it.
"In other words, their WHOLE WORLD could flood without it affecting the Whole World"
Well of course.
But that's not the claim made of (or the burden placed on) the text, by many.
"Who was there to remember this flood that killed every human except the ones in Noah's ark?"
The ones in Noah's Ark.
Whose descendants then peopled the world, and carried with them the memory of Noah's Ark (and the bloodline of Noah).
I don't know about that Sun pictures hoax story but I have Navvaro's book and it does not read like it was written by a hoaxer. If the only "evidence" of a hoax is the radio carbon dating, that's not very good. That dating method could be faulty in some cases as with the Shroud of Turin where a fire in midevil times gave it a false reading. The radiocarbon dating was taken from a sample that was added and was not from the original cloth. Anyways, there are other scientific ways of knowing the age of wood that are true. From Navarra's book; " Two traits may serve as a base for calculation, with all the margin for error proper in this case to ascertain the poassible age of the wood examined: the density and the color.
The density of the sample seems to have a value of 1.100, and as the normal density of this wood is between 0.800 and 0.850, it is evident that this sample is in the lignitization phase of fossilization.
The color, which tells unquestionably the raised percentage of tannin normal in oak wood, confirms on its part its previous state.
Consequently, one can suppose the age of the wood sample given varies around five thousand years"....Dr. J. Jimenez Herrera, director of Forestry Institute of Research and Experiments, Madrid april 9, 1956.
So the wood was in a stage of fossilization. Add to that that there are no trees anywhere near where Navarra found the beams and it makes a pretty compelling case.
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