Ark Model by Rod Walsh
A group of Chinese and Turkish evangelical explorers said Monday they believe they may have found Noah’s Ark — four thousand metres up a mountain in Turkey.
The team say they recovered wooden specimens from a structure on Mount Ararat in eastern Turkey that carbon dating proved was 4,800 years old, around the same time the ark is said to have been afloat.
A detailed report on the expedition is provided by Noah’s Ark Ministries International (You can select English for the site).
Creation Ministries International have provided a preliminary comment on it, together with updates as they come to hand, including:
It is still early days and all believers need to be careful not to jump the gun, i.e. go beyond the evidence and announce it as the Ark for sure. There will obviously be a lot more work to be done to establish whether this apparently manmade structure is indeed the remains of Noah’s Ark, or a subsequent construction, perhaps to commemorate the Ark landing.
There are lots of questions that need to be answered. For example, the mountain in Turkey that is called Mt Ararat looks like it would be a post-Flood mountain. It is difficult to imagine how this mountain, which sits alone in the middle of a huge plain, would have survived the receding floodwaters, which eroded thousands of metres off landscapes all over the world.
How could the Ark have come to rest safely on such a pointy mountain? We can imagine what would happen if a ship hit an underwater mountain of that shape today.
The reports say carbon-14 dating of the wood gave an age of 4,200 years but I would expect wood from the Ark to “date” by carbon-14 at somewhere between 20,000 and 50,000 years because the pre-Flood c-14 levels were much lower than today.
The idea of finding Noah’s Ark is pretty exciting. At this stage I don’t hold out a lot of hope about this latest claim but I have an open mind. I need to see a lot more detail to have these and other concerns adequately answered. There have been many claims in the past that have turned out not to be upheld.
E.g.:
Boat shaped structures on Lesser Mt Ararat
The Mt Ararat anomaly
An Iranian site
All the same, this news announcement provides a great opportunity to think and talk about Noah’s Flood and consider the evidence we would look for in the geology, landscapes and biogeography of the world as a result of this global cataclysm.
Update 29 April 2010:
Some earlier articles about possible landing sites for the Ark:
Cudi Dagh, a mountain range in southern Turkey near the borders of Syria and Iraq.
Zagros Mountains of western Iran
Update 2 29 April 2010:
I received the following from an email correspondent:
It appears the Ark story is a hoax. Please read [Noah’s Ark Discovery Exposed]:
This website is reliable, and Randall Price is a credible witness.
Emphasizes the need for caution.
Tags: Flood geology, Mr Ararat, Noah's Ark
Anyone who publishes a rebuttal to any of Dawkins’ books will be branded as a flea. From his own site:
Many “parasitic” authors have released books which use Richard’s name or titles to sell their own books …
So any critique is dismissed as “parasitic”.
The latest book given that status is Jonathan Sarfati’s The Greatest Hoax on Earth: Refuting Dawkins on Evolution. It’s a soundly-based, scholarly rebuttal of Dawkins’ straw-man arguments against creation in his The Greatest Show on Earth.
By calling it a flea, they attack the man and avoid facing the scientific problems.
The comments on Dawkins’ site show that his fans aren’t interested in the arguments either:
- Oh no! A chessmaster!
- How humble of the author to put a question mark at the end of his title!
- We should have all pitched in and bought Richard a 50 gallon drum of flea powder for his birthday.
- Jonathan Sarfati isn’t worthy of the label “flea”. He’s more like the fungal infection that sometimes infests fleas.
- Etc.
The irony is that by this definition, Dawkins falls into the category of “flea” with respect to the best-selling book of all time—the Bible.
Tags: creation, Evolution, Richard Dawkins
It is two and a half months since the tetrapod tracks found in Poland have upturned the neat fish-to-tetrapod transition that has been so popular for promoting evolution. This morning, there was still no word on the Wikipedia entry for Panderichthys so I added the following to “Include tetrapod tracks found in Poland and implications”.
In January 2010, Nature reported well-preserved and “securely dated” tetrapod tracks from Polish marine tidal flat sediments of early Middle Devonian (Eifelian stage) age that are approximately 18 million years older than the earliest tetrapod body fossils and 10 million years earlier than the oldest elpistostegids.[1] They force a radical reassessment of the timing, ecology and environmental setting of the fish–tetrapod transition, as well as the completeness of the body fossil record. Panderichthys cannot now be part of the fish-to-legged-animal transition, which is considered to have occurred much earlier at around 400 million years ago.[2] Thus the familiar sequence of dated lobe-finned fish is no longer applicable to the actual transition, each fossil in that sequence can at best only represent a “late surviving relic”, and its date is now irrelevant to the transition.
1. ^ Niedzwiedzki, G., Szrek, P., Narkiewicz, K., Narkiewicz, M and Ahlberg, P., Nature 463(7227):43–48, 2010, Tetrapod trackways from the early Middle Devonian period of Poland,7 January 2010.
2. ^ Editor’s summary: Four feet in the past: trackways pre-date earliest body fossils. Nature 463.
So now they know.
I’ve quoted the evolutionary dates above but of course these are based on long-age assumptions. From a biblical perspective these fossils were buried about 4,500 years ago during the Inundatory stage of the global Flood, as the waters were rising on the earth.
Tags: fish-to-tetrapod, Fossils, Panderichythys, Wikipedia
I wrote a note to a couple of the politicians who appeared on last night’s Q and A.
I saw you on Q & A last night and I appreciate the way you tried to stand up to Dawkins’ attacks on the Christian faith.
I thought it was interesting that not one person on the panel could answer Dawkins’ arguments but could only say, in effect, “Please be nice.”
I did a short take on the show here.
There were a lot of things that I found disturbing:
- The blatant attacks on the Christian faith, painting Christians as stupid, ignorant and mean.
- The applause of the audience when these attacks were made.
- The inability of anyone to effectively defend their faith against Dawkins.
- The misinformation about intelligent design. (Dawkins actually believes intelligent design is a valid scientific approach, but he will only accept certain types of designer.)
- The misinformation about science.
- The misinformation about the Christian faith.
- The attacking of groups of people (creationists, Christians) without any recourse to a defense by a members of those groups.
These things seem like ominous dark clouds gathering in our country. Atheism was given a great boost last night courtesy of the ABC.
All the best,
Tas walker
PS: Dawkins’ evidence for evolution has been refuted here
Update 25 Mar: typo fixed
Tags: Australia, Evolution, Richard Dawkins
Perhaps there is a journalist in Australia who is brave enough to ask it.
Why won’t he debate creationists?
If he is so sure of his science as he continually says, and creationists are so ignorant and ill informed, then why not have it out once for all? Even some of his fans from his web site are puzzled by his refusal.
Why does he pick off pastors, politicians, and bishops. Is it because they are a soft target?
It would be interesting to know. I wonder if any journalist in Oz has the courage to ask.
Or better still, is there anyone who would try to set up a discussion between Dr Dawkins and an informed creationist, such as ex-atheist Carl Wieland, or the scientist, Jonathan Sarfati, who has just refuted Dawkins’ book with “The Greatest Hoax on Earth: Refuting Dawkins on Evolution“.
What an excellent opportunity when Dawkins, Wieland and Sarfati will all be in Melbourne on the same weekend (see Countering the Rise of Atheism).
Tags: Australia, Evolution, Richard Dawkins
I’ve previously mentioned how the media give Richard Dawkins a dream run, never questioning or probing his assertions about evolution. They just lap it up. Seems like ABC (Australian Broadcasting Commission) is falling in line with the long tradition—making sure that the champion fighter against ignorance and creationism is not asked any difficult questions on the science of evolution.
I watched the video of the ABC QandA tonight.
The first question was “Is it possible to believe in God and in evolution?” The discussion did not define what was meant by evolution nor did it define what it meant by God. So it was a muddy question, muddy discussion and it was no clearer at the end of the discussion than before.
Another question discussed the teaching of ‘intelligent design’ in the science classroom. No one mentioned that Richard Dawkins is on record saying that there could be clues within the cell itself to indicate it may have been designed. The context of his statement was that aliens could have seeded life onto Earth.
It is a pity that no one was able or inclined to ask Dawkins any probing questions about the science of evolution and hold his feet to the fire on the huge problems with the scientific arguments. It is not as if the information is hard to find. Just visit Creation.com Q&A for academic articles on thousands of issues. But, ABC QandA basically gave Dawkins a free ride.
Right through the program Dawkins had Christians in his sights. He attacked God, he attacked the Old Testament, he attacked the New Testament, he attacked Christ, he attacked Christ’s sacrifice and he attacked his resurrection. And when he was pulled up by one of the panelists for being offensive, Dawkins showed no remorse, no apology but simply sought to thrust the insult even stronger, which he did by ridicule, misrepresentation and scorn. And the audience loved him and applauded him for it.
Perhaps it is against ABC policy to have someone who can take the fight on science to their champ on any of their shows. Perhaps it is against their policy to have anyone on their shows who can defend the Christian faith against such abuse and insult. Judging by the way the discussion went and the applause of the audience Christians were misrepresented and shown in a very bad light. You must give it to the ABC, they are very skilled in advancing their secular agenda.
Richard must be really enjoying the free ride he’s being given in Oz.
Tags: Australia, Evolution, Richard Dawkins
The Greatest Hoax on Earth: Refuting Dawkins on Evolution
Which is why Dr Jonathan Sarfati jumped at the opportunity. In his book, The Greatest Hoax on Earth: Refuting Dawkins on Evolution, Dr Sarfati deals with the evidence chapter after chapter, covering a vast range of disciplines in his trademark crisp, clear style. He convincingly shows, for those with ears to hear, that to believe the Bible’s account of Creation/Fall/Redemption straightforwardly not only does not commit intellectual suicide, but is the intellectually superior position.
Check out Dr Sarfati’s book.
The Australian media is portraying Richard Dawkins during his visit ‘down under’ as taking on the creationists.
Journalist Danika Armytage described it in her video report of 5 March 2010 like this:
“Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins is in Sydney this weekend to promote his new book ‘The Greatest Show on Earth‘. It’s an uncompromising assault on creationism, presenting his strongest case for Darwinian evolution.”
But, I have never heard Prof Dawkins actually debate a creationist in person? Have you?
He was offered a marvelous opportunity to make a spectacle of creationists while he is in Australia for the global atheist convention (see Atheists reject debate challenge). You would think that he would jump at the chance. But no, he declined. His long standing policy is that he does not debate creationists.
This reminds me of a football game where only one team is allowed onto the field. And they have a great time kicking dozens of goals in their match. And after the match the star footballer struts around triumphantly bragging about all the goals he kicked.
In his radio interviews Dawkins goes on and on about how mutations and natural selection change tigers and bacteria and viruses. He gives the impression that he has slaughtered the creationists. But what people do not know is that creationists agree with natural selection. It is no big deal. Natural selection removes genetic information from the genome whereas molecules-to-man evolution requires a mechanism that will increase the information. See Mutations: evolution’s engine becomes evolution’s end!
If the journalists covering ‘Dawkins vs creationism’ wanted to see a bit of competition they could ask him to give one example of a genetic mutation which actually added some information to the genome.
Or they could ask him about the origin of life. Richard Dawkins has already said publicly that neither he nor anyone else has any idea how a living cell could have originated by natural processes. In fact, he has publicly said that he thinks aliens could have seeded life onto earth and that science may be able to detect a clue to such intelligent design in the DNA itself. That would be interesting if a skeptical journalist would explore with Richard Dawkins what sort of clues he would look for in order to detect intelligent design.
Or they could ask him what he thinks about his ideal fossil, Tiktaalik, now that the tetrapod footprints have been found in Poland that are older and mean that Tik-tik is at best an evolutionary dead end.
Yes, Prof Dawkins is regarded by the media as a hero as he fights against creationism, portraying himself as the upholder of science and rationality. All the same, it would be good to see a contest occasionally where he was obliged to discuss the issue with someone knowledgeable who could ask some insightful questions.
I always find a game more interesting when there is a contest.
Tags: Fossils, natural selection, Richard Dawkins, Tiktaalik
BBC reports, 20 February 2010, the President of the US National Academy of Sciences saying that the recent controversies surrounding climate research have damaged the image of science as a whole.
“There is some evidence that the distrust has spread,” Dr Cicerone told BBC News. “There is a feeling that scientists are suppressing dissent, stifling their competitors through conspiracies.”
It’s not just a feeling. That is what they have been doing—big time.
It has been endemic for a long time and not just with climate research. The public have only now become aware of how corrupted the scientific establishment has become.
Those who have been following the creation-evolution controversy would already know about the problem. That is what the movie Expelled is all about, but it was mocked and denied by the likes of Oxford Professor Dawkins, the public face of the scientific establishment. The book The Slaughter of the Dissidents documents the chilling reality of censorship, intimidation and termination. The Geological Society of London, as does the Geological Society of Australia, aggressively censor views they do not like, as Earth Science Ireland also tried to do.
“People expect us to do things more in the public light and we just have to get used to that,” he said. “Just as science itself improves and self-corrects, I think our processes have to improve and self-correct.”
I don’t hold out much hope that the changes he has in mind are anything more than cosmetic. I may be wrong. But I will be prepared to acknowledge that there has been a substantive change when Science and Nature regularly publish papers critical of evolution and supportive of Intelligent Design. I will change my mind when the Smithsonian includes creationist interpretations of their fossil displays. I’ll admit I was wrong when the Geological Society of America, Australia and London allow creationist geologists to present ideas about Flood geology at their meetings.
I won’t hold my breath.
Tags: creation, Evolution, Flood geology, Geological society
When Climategate broke in November 2009 a catchy song appeared on Youtube called Hide the Decline. It mocked those scientists involved in the climate research who were exposed for manipulating scientific data. The song starts off:
Makin’ up data the old hard way
Fudgin’ the numbers day by day
Ignoring the snow and the cold and a downward line …
It’s very catchy and very funny. And it is hard to get the tune out of your head.
Climategate reminds us how personal philosophy, vested interests and politics can corrupt science.
And it is the same for the creation/evolution issue.
In early January a paper was published in Nature about tetrapod tracks in Poland that consigned the cherished fish-to-tetrapod transitional sequence to the garbage heap. One famous fossil that lost status in a big way was Tiktaalik. Paleontologists around the world are familiar with the paper. They expressed their surprise, amazement and disappointment at the discovery.
PZ Myers promptly posted on the topic Tetrapods are older than we thought.
Yet today Myers posts the old but catchy Tiktaalik song without a word that Tik-tik is irrelevant as far as the fish-to-tetrapod transition is concerned. Judging by the comments on his blog people are persuaded by the catchy song and don’t care about the evidence. PZ didn’t say a word about the problem like ,”Good song but pity it’s now a dead-end.”
The gatekeepers are busy on Wikipedia too keeping this new Polish find hush-hush. The edit history for Tiktaalik is particularly enlightening.
These sacred icons of evolution are untouchable. Like the mythical Phoenix they keep appearing in the evolutionary books and blogs decades after they are discredited. Reminds me of the word “ignoring” in the Climategate song.
Which raises some questions. Are we seeing a Paleogate coverup here? Do the Polish tetrapod tracks need a catchy song on Youtube?
Tags: footprints, Fossils, Tiktaalik
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