Steven Dutch, Natural and Applied Sciences, Universityof Wisconsin - Green Bay
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After scientific creationism, and in fact closely allied to it, probably the mostdurable religiously-inspired pseudoscience cult is the attempt to find Noah's Ark. Two ofthe major references in this field, which has been dubbed "ark-eology", are InSearch of Noah's Ark, by Dave Balsiger and Charles E. Sellier, Jr., and TheArk on Ararat by John Morris and Tim LaHaye.
Mount Ararat is a dormant volcano in eastern Turkey, 16,946 feet in height and locatedonly a few miles from the former Soviet and Iranian borders. Although the peak has longbeen considered the traditional resting place of the Ark, surprisingly enough the Bibledoes not mention the peak. The references to Ararat in the Flood account of Genesis isalways rendered "a mountain in Ararat" or "in the mountains ofArarat". The same word is also translated as "Armenia" in II Kings 19:37and Isaiah 37:38 in the King James Bible. In short, Ararat refers to a region, not asingle peak, and in fact the term corresponds to the Babylonian "Urartu", whichreferred to the entire mountain fringe of Mesopotamia. Nowhere in either In Searchof Noah's Ark or The Ark on Ararat do we find the slightest referenceto the Biblical meaning of "Ararat" or any attempt to locate the Ark anywherebut on the summit of the Turkish peak. Pretty clearly, expeditions like those of formerastronaut Jim Irwin who restrict their searches solely to Mount Ararat are about on thesame level as the drunk who drops his key in a dark alley and looks under the streetlightbecause the light is better there!
There is nothing inherently unscientific about testing the idea that the Biblical Floodaccount describes a real physical event, provided the investigator is willing to abideby the results of the evidence. Really large floods leave absolutely unmistakeableevidence. Even a conventional river flood can transport enormous boulders, so the absenceof enormous buried boulders from most of the earth's rocks is a fatal flaw in Floodgeology. There are some areas that have undeniably been swept by stupendous floods. Forexample, the Channeled Scablands of Washington State were swept by vast floods when alarge lake in the northern Rockies, formed when a glacier blocked a valley during the IceAges, suddenly drained. The whole region is criss-crossed with deep channels that areclearly visible on satellite imagery, though the floods were recognized fifty years ago.On Mars, there is evidence that vast floods spilled down the northern flank of the TharsisPlateau, again producing great scoured channels. It is easy to test the hypothesis of arecent global Flood; the entire earth should look like the Channeled Scablands. TheGenesis Flood account may well describe a local event, but all the evidence indicatesthere was no global Deluge.
Both In Search of Noah's Ark and The Ark on Ararat rely onpretty much the same accounts of Ark sightings. One of the most detailed accounts is thatof Haji Yearam, who supposedly saw the Ark in 1856. He in turn narrated the account toH.H. Williams, who wrote it down in 1915. The original account was destroyed in a fire in1940, so Williams wrote down his recollections of the original story in 1952. Yearam andhis father were supposedly hired as guides by "three vile men" who were"scientists and evolutionists". The scientists were hoping to disprove theexistence of the Ark, but when they saw the Ark, according to the account, they "wereappalled and dumbfounded and went into a Satanic rage". After unsuccessfully tryingto burn an archeological find that would have made them famous, they "took a solemnand powerful death oath. Any man present who would ever breathe a word about what they hadfound would be tortured and murdered." They threatened to track down and kill theguides if they ever leaked the story.
Shortly after writing down Yearam's account, Williams saw a small newspaper clipping inwhich one of the scientists, on his deathbed, confessed to finding the Ark. Unfortunatelythe clipping vanished in the fire along with the original account.
Considering the skepticism that creationists lavish on "gaps" in the fossilrecord, one might think that the total lack of supporting evidence, the third-hand natureof the account (written 37 years after Williams heard the story from Yearam, who in turnwas describing events that took place 59 years before that), and the histrionic,thud-and-blunder tale of the death oath would render this account worthless as evidence.It is refreshing to note that the ark searchers can be most compassionate toward sometypes of missing evidence. Morris and LaHaye write:
Ever since this story first came to light, researchers have been trying to locate the clippings or other corroboration of the London deathbed confession. However, the search has not yet borne fruit. It seems incredible, even more incredible than Haji's strange story, that such a newspaper clipping and such information has disappeared from the face of the earth ... The authors strongly urge each reader to personally instigate a search for this material and other missing information ... It's there. It must be.
French explorer Ferdnand Navarra made four trips to Ararat between 1952 and 1969. In1955 and 1969 he recovered pieces of wood from glacial crevasses near the summit. In 1956four tests done on the wood to measure the degree of chemical alteration indicated an ageof 5,000 years; most encouraging to Ark believers. Unfortunately, more recent radiocarbondating indicated much younger ages: 250 A.D. to 750 A.D. Balsiger and Sellier areperplexed: "We had heard that some research scientists had criticized Carbon 14 forgiving too old an age to many artifacts. But with the Navarra wood sample, the Carbon 14gave an age that was too young, something not often cited as a criticism." Howembarrassing! The one age that critics of radiometric dating want most to come out old,comes out too young. One might reasonably suspect that either the arguments against datingare rubbish or the wood is not from the Ark, or both.
Lahaye and Morris cite the spread in radiocarbon ages of 450 years as justification forjunking the radiocarbon dates altogether and adopting an age 3,500 years older. By 1980there were six radiocarbon ages for Navarra's wood. The results were reviewed by R.E.Taylor and Rainer Berger in the archeological journal Antiquity. Five of thesix ages fall within three-quarters of a century of 710 A.D. The remaining age, 270 A.D.,certainly does not justify claiming that the wood is actually 5,000 years old! If theearly Armenian Christians built a shrine or monastery on Ararat, the wood might well rangein age over several centuries as the building underwent occasional remodeling. The timbercould have been salvaged from an older structure, or simply be from the center of a largetree. The dead interior of a large tree will give older radiocarbon ages than the youngexterior. After discussing the likelihood that the wood dates from an early Christianbuilding or cenotaph to commemorate the legendary resting place of the Ark, Taylor andBerger conclude with a suggestion bound to enrage Ark believers: "Perhaps thiscenotaph was actually built in the form of a boat".
The Ark on Ararat has an extensive tabulation of worldwide flood listingsby region. One of the shortest lists is for Africa and the Middle East -- only 17 entriesof which only seven are from Africa outside of Egypt; eight if we count the Sudan, whichsomehow got listed under "Far East"! Only eight flood traditions from an area ofeleven million square miles! LaHaye and Morris simply gloss over the problem; Velikovskyexplains it away in terms of "collective amnesia", but in any event the lack offlood traditions from Sub-Saharan Africa is a fatal flaw in global catastrophe theories.Under North America, we find listings for the Arctic Eskimos, the Central Eskimos, theEskimos of Alaska, the Esquimax and the Innuit. "Esquimax" is simply themisspelled French equivalent of "Eskimo", and "Innuit" is merely whatthe Eskimos call themselves. Lists always look more impressive if you can repeat the sameitem five different ways.
Lahaye and Morris' analysis of the legends is interesting. 95% of the legends referonly to a flood, but 34% of the legends consider the flood as due to natural causes, andfully 82% refer to local features. Morris and LaHaye accept the legends at face value, asdid Velikovsky, when it comes to claiming evidence of a global catastrophe, and likeVelikovsky they explain away inconvenient details, such as references to local geography,as later additions. When it comes to the specific details of the Genesis account thelegends are not encouraging. Only 13% describe a sacrifice afterward, only 7% a rainbow,and only 9% feature only eight survivors. If the legend agrees with the Genesis account itcounts as proof, when it disagrees, for some curious reason, it does not count asdisproof.
The authors of The Ark on Ararat are John Morris and Tim LaHaye. We metMorris in the last chapter as the author of Tracking Those Incredible Dinosaurs.Lahaye is the founder of Christian Heritage College, the mother organization for theInstitute for Creation Research, and more importantly, is the author of Battle For TheMind, one of the leading books in the crusade against secular humanism. LaHaye iswidely considered to be one of the leading intellectuals in fundamentalist and evangelicalcircles. (I am happy to report that his writings in his principal area of expertise,marriage and family relations, are considerably better than The Ark on Ararat.)
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Created 3 February 1998, Last Update 3 February 1998
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