Are these pictures of Noah's Ark?

[BobRyan]

Fox News reports a team claiming that they found Noah's Ark.


http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/04/27/noahs-ark-found-turkey-ararat/



Click this link to see slide show of pics.

http://www.foxnews.com/slideshow/scitech/2010/04/27/noahs-ark-discovered/


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAF-gB37Azw


Here is a better video of the expedition - but can't interpret it since I do not have that spiritual gift -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjpeQU7GIZc&feature=player_embedded#!


So does this evidence suggest to you that the ark was actually found?

If so - how does it help? What is gained by evidence?

In Christ,

Bob

 

[lori4dogs]

This is just one article that says this was a hoax. AOL is reporting that it is now thought to be a hoax as well.

http://www.entertainmentandshowbiz.com/doubt-cast-on-noah’s-ark-found-in-turkey-2010042948689

 

[lori4dogs]

AOL News is reporting:

"Ex-Colleague: Expedition Faked Noah's Ark FindUpdated

AOL News (April 29) -- It took nearly 5,000 years to unearth Noah's Ark -- and just three days for a serious challenge to the legitimacy of the find to emerge.

A former member of the expedition whose sponsors this week claimed to have found the legendary biblical boat buried beneath the snows of Turkey's Mount Ararat says the "discovery" was probably a hoax.

"If the world wants to think this is a wonderful discovery, that's fine," Randall Price, an archaeologist who in 2008 was working with the Chinese-led evangelical team, told The Christian Science Monitor. "My problem is that, in the end, proper analysis may show this to be a hoax and negatively reflect how gullible Christians can be."



Noah's Ark Ministries International, AFP / Getty Images
Noah's Ark Ministries International, an evangelical Christian organization, says this wooden compartment is a part of Noah's Ark. But an archaeologist who was on the expedition that found the object said the claim was likely a "hoax" that may "negatively reflect how gullible Christians can be."In a leaked e-mail that had made the rounds on the Web, Price, a longtime ark-hunter who directs the Center for Judaic Studies at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., says that in the summer of 2008, a group of Kurdish laborers, hired by a local guide working with the Chinese expedition, removed several large wooden beams from an old structure near the Black Sea, then hauled them to a cave near the peak of Ararat, long thought by believers to have been the spot where Noah's Ark washed up.

Price says that those photos of the supposed ark include cobwebs in the corners of the structure's rafters, "something just not possible in these conditions."

Meanwhile in ark-hunting circles, news of the alleged hoax is being greeted as hardly surprising.

"There are certain biblical artifacts -- like the Ark of the Covenant and the Ark of Noah -- that just seem to bring out a lot of amateur searchers," says Bill Crouse, president of Christian Information Ministries, who has himself spent years searching for Noah's Ark. "My concern is that well-meaning Christians jump the gun, and this thing becomes viral on the Internet. A lot of Christians are confused because they thought the ark was found two years ago, or two years before that. These things seem to come up every two years or so."

In 2006, for example, a national security analyst reported a "new and significant development" in the quest for the ark: a high-resolution satellite image of the northwest corner of Mount Ararat, where ark hunters had long been intrigued by a large, ice-submerged "anomaly" whose proportions seemed to match almost perfectly the Bible's description of Noah's Ark.

In 1993, CBS aired a documentary hailing the discovery of Noah's Ark, also on Ararat. It turned out that "The Incredible Discovery of Noah's Ark" was predicated largely on evidence provided by an actor who later acknowledged having made the whole thing up.

And in a story with strong parallels to the latest hoax, a French explorer named Fernand Navarra claimed to have found a wooden beam from the ark on Ararat in 1955. Navarra's guide, however, later said the explorer had hauled the 5-foot-long plank up the mountain with him.

Like the mythical Sisyphus, ark-hunters, it seems, keep on pushing their wood up the mountain, only to return to the bottom to start over again."
Filed under: World

 

[targus]

Here is a better video of the expedition - but can't interpret it since I do not have that spiritual gift -

Where's Saint Ellen White when you need her?

 

[BobRyan]

AOL News is reporting:

"Ex-Colleague: Expedition Faked Noah's Ark FindUpdated

AOL News (April 29) -- It took nearly 5,000 years to unearth Noah's Ark -- and just three days for a serious challenge to the legitimacy of the find to emerge.

A former member of the expedition whose sponsors this week claimed to have found the legendary biblical boat buried beneath the snows of Turkey's Mount Ararat says the "discovery" was probably a hoax.

Ok- so now some critical thinking.

The article says that some people hauled wood in a truck - to a site on a glacier that cannot be accessed by truck.

It says that they put pieces of wood where they could be photographed by an earlier expedition - that certainly is possible.

The article said that the video in that link I gave above is legit - it is from the real exploration of the supposed ark by the Turkish and Chinese team. In that video we see a lot of wood encased in glacial ice. We see wood beams exposed in the open space and running right into the glacial ice. The hoax-claim letter says that the site is in fact fully convincing the explorers - but they are being tricked. So this is not a case of the video showing people pretending to be impressed - but not really being fooled because they see what the camera is not showing you - a lot of props etc.

We see entire rooms built of large wooden beams within a larger structure that is still encased in glacial ice - supposedly carried there by dedicated "hoaxers" at the apparent risk of life and limb with beams long enough to have risked serious injury for anyone doing that handy little project.

The wood had to all be very old and had to be assembled into rooms, walls, floor and evening running entirely encased in glacial ice as some of the footage shows - without using nails etc.

We have other claims in that related video by people who claimed to have seen the ark in essentially the same location more than 40 years ago.

The claim is being made by someone that did not go to the site and see the wooden rooms explored - and by someone who said they loaned 100,000 to the expedition but did not get their money back - so "motive" is pretty easy to unmask.

I am not saying this is not a hoax in some way - just that critical thinking points out a lot of flaws in what that guy is claiming such that it is a leap of faith either way you want to go.

Also - past efforts to discover "The New World" did not invalidate the discovery of the American Continent when it actually happened.

Thomas Edison's prior efforts to "create the light bulb" did not invalidate the light bulb when all elements were correctly designed.

Thus the evidence has to stand or fall on its own merrits. Critical thinking does not cave in to popularism or shallow dismissal.

in Christ,

Bob

 

[Peggy]

Don't believe everything you read on the Internet or see on TV.

 

[Amy.G]

Don't believe everything you read on the Internet or see on TV.

You mean like the shroud?

 

[Thinkingstuff]

It seems to me that once the waters settled Noah would have taken apart the ark to build places they could live in rather than just leave it as is.

 

[webdog]

This will be interesting to follow going forward. While it may be a hoax, I think Bob is correct that to get that much wood up that mountain and somehow in-bed it into ice would sem like a pretty elaborate hoax.

The AOL article didn't say it was a hoax, btw, but "probably" a hoax. Skepticism is warranted, but at this point it has neither been proven or disproven.

 

[webdog]

It seems to me that once the waters settled Noah would have taken apart the ark to build places they could live in rather than just leave it as is.

I always thought he was too busy planting vineyards and getting drunk to worry about the ark

 

[Thinkingstuff]

I always thought he was too busy planting vineyards and getting drunk to worry about the ark

Good point. But since he was in a mountanous area how did he terrace the hills? With planks from the ark?

 

[webdog]

Good point. But since he was in a mountanous area how did he terrace the hills? With planks from the ark?

I think at that altitude, the first thing he would have done is move down the mountain to flatter plains. Growing vineyards on the side of a mountain would not be my first choice.

I'm also sure he didn't need the wood from the ark. With the global flood there would have been plenty of driftwood around from uprooted trees.

 

[billwald]

Does anyone claim that Noah used metal fastenings and strapping? I don't think wood has sufficient tensile strength to build a 400 foot ship with any carrying capacity in a seaway. Maybe a canoe or Viking style boat but not a barge. The problem occurs when a wave goes under the ship. When the wave is at the middle of the ship the ends are not supported and the wood fibers at the center cross section take the entire weight of the ship, the top half in tension and the bottom half in compression. The center fibers carry no weight.

If the ship has a central mast, the rigging provides a "pre-tensioning" force which relieves the tensile forces on the center section.

 

[targus]

Does anyone claim that Noah used metal fastenings and strapping? I don't think wood has sufficient tensile strength to build a 400 foot ship with any carrying capacity in a seaway. Maybe a canoe or Viking style boat but not a barge. The problem occurs when a wave goes under the ship. When the wave is at the middle of the ship the ends are not supported and the wood fibers at the center cross section take the entire weight of the ship, the top half in tension and the bottom half in compression. The center fibers carry no weight.

If the ship has a central mast, the rigging provides a "pre-tensioning" force which relieves the tensile forces on the center section.

Why do you think that there were waves?

Rain doesn't necessarily mean wind.

 

[BobRyan]

It seems to me that once the waters settled Noah would have taken apart the ark to build places they could live in rather than just leave it as is.

Noah lived for about 300 years after the flood and had no children.

Noah's 3 sons lived for 600 years after the flood (as I recall from Genesis) - so all the children in that first 40-65 years were from 3 families.

That means they "might" have torn up enough of the ark to quickly build 1 house. Then later maybe enough to build 2 or 3 more small houses - raising families. However at some point they have natural tree growth that is 60 or 70 years old and still only have between 5 and 10 families.

Arguably the new smaller trees not encased in pitch etc - might be easier to use for new home building and also gives them the mobility to move away from mountain-top living.

My guess is that they did not have the need to tear up the entire ark before they left for the plains. Or left for lower altitudes where the growing season was longer.



in Christ,

Bob

 

[BobRyan]

Does anyone claim that Noah used metal fastenings and strapping? I don't think wood has sufficient tensile strength to build a 400 foot ship with any carrying capacity in a seaway. Maybe a canoe or Viking style boat but not a barge. The problem occurs when a wave goes under the ship. When the wave is at the middle of the ship the ends are not supported and the wood fibers at the center cross section take the entire weight of the ship, the top half in tension and the bottom half in compression. The center fibers carry no weight.

If the ship has a central mast, the rigging provides a "pre-tensioning" force which relieves the tensile forces on the center section.

Indeed - the Bible says that there were very strong winds drying up the planet.

But "rumor has it" that the pre-flood gopher wood (Cypress tree) had nearly the consistency of stone before the flood..

in Christ,

Bob

 

[webdog]

Does anyone claim that Noah used metal fastenings and strapping? I don't think wood has sufficient tensile strength to build a 400 foot ship with any carrying capacity in a seaway. Maybe a canoe or Viking style boat but not a barge. The problem occurs when a wave goes under the ship. When the wave is at the middle of the ship the ends are not supported and the wood fibers at the center cross section take the entire weight of the ship, the top half in tension and the bottom half in compression. The center fibers carry no weight.

If the ship has a central mast, the rigging provides a "pre-tensioning" force which relieves the tensile forces on the center section.

The wood has enough strength if God gave it enough. Scientists have concluded based on the building directions it would have sunk in an hour...but they left the "God factor" out of it. In the same way God shut the door of the ark, He also kept it together and afloat, Noah and his family only needed to be obedient.

 

[billwald]

>But "rumor has it" that the pre-flood gopher wood (Cypress tree) had nearly the consistency of stone before the flood..

And God provided carbide bits for their augers.

 

[BobRyan]

>But "rumor has it" that the pre-flood gopher wood (Cypress tree) had nearly the consistency of stone before the flood..

And God provided carbide bits for their augers.

Far be it from me to claim that humans that lived for 900 years and had full access to Adam who was trained by God Himself in the are of sciences - were "dumb".

:laugh:
in Christ,

Bob

 

[Peggy]

If Noah's Ark was on Mt. Ararat, I believe that glacial forces would have crushed it into splinters by now.