What would happen if we find Noah's ark?

[Beastt]

There will always be a search for Noah's Ark and people who will invest money into it.

What would happen if we did indeed find Noah's ark?

Might I ask that you tell us what you think would happen?

 

[Mr. QWERTY]

There will always be a search for Noah's Ark and people who will invest money into it.

Italics mine.

Maybe there will always be a search because it will never be found? Because it does not exist? Because it couldn't?

 

[SH89]

Might I ask that you tell us what you think would happen?

Lets assume that we do find Noah's ark, and we have proof that this boat is Noah's ark(e.g. same dimensions)

1) A literal flood/Ark would be more credible
2) Questions will arise
3) More research will be done on Noah's Ark/possibliaty of
4) Possibly a shift in the scientific community?
etc...

Assuming that we truly do find noah's ark, what do you think will happen?

 

[Grengor]

Basically what you said except the last part. The story of Noah's Journey, assuming it was somehow proven that the ark was Noah's(Oh I dunno... "I am Noah this is my Arc" sketched into the wall), would be more credible. The global flood? Still held down by all that pesky geological evidence shmevidence

 

[Phylogeny]

What happens if we did find Noah's Ark? The same thing that happened when we found the city of Troy (all 7 of them and counting....).

Uhm....life goes on.

Just because we find basis for old stories doesn't mean the supernatural aspect of it is true. Someone build a big boat once upon a time, maybe there really was a big flood that killed everyone but Noah and family, then again, maybe Aphrodite really did grant Paris his wish for the most beautiful woman in the world which led to a ten year war where gods and demi-gods alike participated in the eventual downfall of Troy.

Finding pieces of ancient artificat doesn't prove anything about God or the miracles performed, it's not even close to disproving evolution (I'm assuming this relates to evolution somehow as we are in the evolution/creation forum) but it *would* mean a great historical discovery for us all.....

 

[SH89]

Italics mine.

Maybe there will always be a search because it will never be found?

I don't think that is fair to say. It may not be found in say 10-20 years, but it may one day be found.

Because it does not exist? Because it couldn't?

I came along this verse today:[Jesus is speaking here] 38For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; 39and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.(matthew 24:38-39)

 

[loriersea]

If it were found? Obviously if an ark that matched the description of the ark in the Bible and was verified to be from that time period, and we determined it was Noah's boat and not Utnapishtim's boat (since Utnapishtim's ark was almost identical to Noah's, and he also used it to survive a worldwide flood, all of which was recorded in The Epic of Gilgamesh before Genesis was written), then that would lend some historical credibility to the flood narrative. It wouldn't change the fact that there is no scientific evidence supporting a global flood, or that there is no scientific evidence supporting young earth creationism. It would just indicate that there is some possible proof to ancient accounts of a man surviving a chaotic flood (which we know from all of the evidence must have been local) in a large ark.

Yes. That's the point of peer-review. You get opinions from a large sampling of respected sources. If any of them are significantly dissimilar to the others, they have to justify their findings to the others. As such, they're very cautious about presenting any kind of bias which can't be supported strictly on the evidence. It's a check and balance system.

I think there is a lot of misunderstanding about what peer review is. Just to be clear, a peer review, as you note here, is done by respected sources. It is NOT done by friends of the author or people picked by the author. My husband is a research psychologist. When he sends an article out for peer review, he doesn't know who it is going to. The reviewers are chosen by the editorial board of the journal he submits to, based on their experience in the area he is writing about. And, peer reviewers do NOT give people a free pass; they look for any possible error they can find and point it out. I know that the peer review process is very unfamiliar to people outside of academia, and so there are a lot of misconceptions about what it actually is, because it is so different from the review process that articles in non-scholarly periodicals go through. You do a good job of pointing out that it is unbiased, and I just wanted to add to that a bit.

 

[Uphill Battle]

If it were found? Obviously if an ark that matched the description of the ark in the Bible and was verified to be from that time period, and we determined it was Noah's boat and not Utnapishtim's boat (since Utnapishtim's ark was almost identical to Noah's, and he also used it to survive a worldwide flood, all of which was recorded in The Epic of Gilgamesh before Genesis was written), then that would lend some historical credibility to the flood narrative. It wouldn't change the fact that there is no scientific evidence supporting a global flood, or that there is no scientific evidence supporting young earth creationism. It would just indicate that there is some possible proof to ancient accounts of a man surviving a chaotic flood (which we know from all of the evidence must have been local) in a large ark.

[/font]

I think there is a lot of misunderstanding about what peer review is. Just to be clear, a peer review, as you note here, is done by respected sources. It is NOT done by friends of the author or people picked by the author. My husband is a research psychologist. When he sends an article out for peer review, he doesn't know who it is going to. The reviewers are chosen by the editorial board of the journal he submits to, based on their experience in the area he is writing about. And, peer reviewers do NOT give people a free pass; they look for any possible error they can find and point it out. I know that the peer review process is very unfamiliar to people outside of academia, and so there are a lot of misconceptions about what it actually is, because it is so different from the review process that articles in non-scholarly periodicals go through. You do a good job of pointing out that it is unbiased, and I just wanted to add to that a bit.

correct me if I'm wrong, but someone who writes on evolutionary theory is NOT going to have it peer-reviewed by anyone who doesn't already believe the precepts of evolution, are they? Same would go the other way, I would warrent. There is no such thing as unbiased. Everyone carries their personal bias into whatever they consider.

 

[Mr. QWERTY]

I don't think that is fair to say. It may not be found in say 10-20 years, but it may one day be found.

This link has some things to say about the ark: NCSE link

There are many refutations, but let me paraphrase one or two.

Before the ark, shipbuilding technology did not exist on earth. Then, from out of nowhere, a phenomenal ship was built by people who did not know what they were doing? Then, immediately after, humanity loses shipbuilding expertise? Noah and Shem each lived for centuries after the ark. Why did the highest shipbuilding technology revert to coracles?

Ok, we have all seen it a thousand times... where did Noah fit all the animals and their food/water/waste.

 

[GoSeminoles!]

There is no such thing as unbiased. Everyone carries their personal bias into whatever they consider.

Yes, every person has a bias of some sort. So what? Biases only matter if they affect the quality of the work. Liberals and conservatives, Christians and atheists, Americans and Italians may all look at the world very differently, but 1+1=2 regardless of who wrote the paper and who is reviewing it. If my work is biased, erroneous or even fraudulent, then some other scientist with a different bias will likely detect it and call me to task for it. Science is a self-correcting process and peer-review is its mechanism; not perfect, but better than anything else we have.

If you, Behe, Demski, or anyone else would like to disprove evolution, then go out and collect the data, present it at scientific conferences and submit it for peer-review. If you are right, you will prevail. Science reserves its highest awards for those who discover fundamental errors in old paradigms. Whining never discovered anything.

 

[Mr. QWERTY]

correct me if I'm wrong, but someone who writes on evolutionary theory is NOT going to have it peer-reviewed by anyone who doesn't already believe the precepts of evolution, are they? Same would go the other way, I would warrent. There is no such thing as unbiased. Everyone carries their personal bias into whatever they consider.

The original comment had to do with the fact that the discovery of the ark had not appeared in peer review journals. Nothing about evolution. I would guess that archaelogists and the like would be the reviewers, not evolutionary biologists.

As far as your comments about unbiased... that is very similar to saying teach the controversy (about evolution). It does not matter if you have 10 million pieces of evidence for, you should give equal weight to the one piece against. Silly. Peer review is about experts in the field giving their opinion. And if they can tear holes in another persons thesis, that may mean grant money for them in order that they can expand their arguments. So, peer review is not necessarily some collegial lets-get-together-and-complement-each-others-work, but more a process of pick-it-apart-and-find-all-the-little-oversights-and-unfounded-assumptions.

 

[Tenka]

Where will I drive to when I find my Ferrari? I know i have a Ferrari because my horoscope told me I would find fortune in an unexpected place this week.

I couldn't possibly not have a Ferrari.

 

[TeddyKGB]

Lets assume that we do find Noah's ark, and we have proof that this boat is Noah's ark(e.g. same dimensions)

1) A literal flood/Ark would be more credible

No no no no no. A boat on a mountain is evidence of a boat on a mountain.

The OT flood is contravened by science done by geologists, for whom the existence of a boat on a mountain has something less than no value.

 

[USincognito]

To reply seriously to the OP, if Noah's Ark were definatively found (and that piece of rock that the huckster Ron Wyatt "discovered" {decades, if not centuries after it was known to exist} isn't a boat - it's rock) then the entire sciences of geology, biology, etymology, paleontology and probably physics would come crashing down in a heap.

Unfortunately for Creationists, I doubt the literal mountain of evidence we've learned over the last 300+ years that the Genesis flood never happened and that the Earth is much older than 6,000 years will be snuffed out like that since we will never find Noah's Ark... and I'll bet my life on that.

Actually,its Mt. Ararat(one "r") according to nationmaster.com.

Mount Ararat (Turkish A?r? Da??; Armenian ??????; Persian ??????; Hebrew ????, Standard Hebrew Ararat, Tiberian Hebrew ??r?r??), the tallest peak in modern Turkey, is a snow-capped dormant volcanic cone, located in the far northeast of Turkey, 16 km west of Iran and 32 km south of Armenia. The Book of Genesis identifies this mountain as the resting place of Noah's Ark after the "great flood" described there.http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Mount-Ararat

Genesis 8:4
and on the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat

Given that Genesis was finally transmitted from oral to written tradition during the Babylonian captivity I'm not surprised that Genesis has so many references to previous Assyrian myths and geography including a mention of the "Urardu" who populated the mountain range of which Ararat is included. You need to check out mainstream evidenced history and Archaeology before trying to argue sematics about the name of the mountains.

 

[Matthew777]

A giant wooden box would, on its own, does nothing to prove a global flood.

Peace.

 

[loriersea]

correct me if I'm wrong, but someone who writes on evolutionary theory is NOT going to have it peer-reviewed by anyone who doesn't already believe the precepts of evolution, are they? Same would go the other way, I would warrent. There is no such thing as unbiased. Everyone carries their personal bias into whatever they consider.

I wouldn't consider that bias, but rather conformity to the basic guidelines of a discipline, which obviously is expected within any discipline, at least to some degree. If I were to write a paper on a geometrical theory for a math journal, it obviously would not be reviewed by someone who denied the validity of the Pythagorian Theorem, since that person would not be working within the accepted practices of the discipline. Now, you could argue that that is due to a pro-Pythagorian bias, but a less emotional assessment would be that geometry is based on certain principles, and if you deny them you are not doing geometry. Science, too, is based on certain principles, and biological science in particular is based on certain principles, and if you deny them, then you are not doing science.

 

[madarab]

Weren't there several medieval (or even earlier) monestaries on Ararat?

 

[USincognito]

Weren't there several medieval (or even earlier) monestaries on Ararat?

Not that I personally am aware of, but there is one on Mt. Sanai (or at least the traditional site of Mt. Sinai).

 

[BeamMeUpScotty]

Here's something I've posted several times and have yet to have a YEC debate the math:

According to Panda.org, which is part of the WWF, there are two types of elephants: the Asian and the African. Obviously if we believe the Bible, there would have been at least four elephants on the ark.

The Asian elephant eats around 300kg of fodder per day (see above source), while fully grown African elephants eat up to 200kg of food/day.

Now, we know from Gen 6:21 that Noah was commanded to take food for all the animals and his family, thus nullifying a possible miracle explanation for not needing to bring food. However, in the interest of being conservative, lets assume that Noah had younger elephants and thus needed less food than a full grown adult (although growing children need their vegetables!!!). So lets assume that the elephants needed half of their adult counterparts.

Therefore, collectively, the Asian and African elephants would need approximately 500 kg of food/day. That’s 1,102.31 pounds a day!! In the interest of simplicity and being conservative in our estimates lets just say 1,000 pounds of food/day. For the (approximate) year that they were on the ark, that would mean NoahCo would have needed 365,000 pounds of food just for the elephants!!! This is 1,825 tons, which will be important later.

Next step, calculating how much space was in the ark. This has been done repeatedly so I hope there is little contention here. Gen. 6:15 says, "The length of the ark shall be 300 cubits (aprx. 450 feet), the breadth of it 50 cubits (aprx. 75 feet), and the height of it 30 cubits (aprx. 45 feet-ed.)." This is 1,518,750 cubic feet. Let’s also assume for the sake of simplicity and being conservative that the ark was a perfect box with these dimensions (i.e., no space lost at the front or back due to needing to actually float, no need for going through sea/waves, no keel, etc). Also for the sake of simplicity and conservatism, lets assume by some miracle that there was no need for floors, which would take up even more space (this directly contradicts Gen 6:14, which instructs Noah to build rooms on the ark). This means the area of the ground floor would have been 33,750 sq. feet and that the total interior cubic feet are as stated above. Of course this is absurd as the animals, food, and NoahCo would have been stacked on top of each other for a year. I also assume that the animals do not have much chance to walk around and exercise. But let’s continue.

Next we need to know approximately how much space the food for the elephants would have taken up (and ignoring the fact that most of it would have gone bad eventually in a hot damp environment—remember there was only one door and a small window—I would have hated to be on waste removal duty!). This also assumes that the food for only the elephants is being stored on the ground floor, and also ignoring the fact that many animals are carnivores. That would mean that many more than just a pair of many types of animals would have been needed to have been brought aboard to feed any given “chosen pair”. Of course these "feed" animals also needed to be kept alive, many of which were carnivores also, which meant that even more animals would have been needed. It’s a geometrically unsolvable problem for such a situation.

Given that, Elephants are vegetarians; so lets assume that they were fed hay for the entire year (again ignore the monumental task of growing, harvesting, and storing of such an immense amount of hay by one family). According to this website, "Regardless of bale size and stacking method, any building with 16' sidewalls will accommodate at least 1 ton of hay in every 20 square feet of floor area." This means one ton of hay needs 320 cubic feet of storage. But it does say 'at least', and of course this is assuming ideal conditions. So again for simplicity and conservatism, lets assume one ton of hay needs 300 cubic feet of storage. That means the 1, 825 tons of hay needed for just the 4 elephants alone would have take up 547,500 cubic feet!! That’s about 36% of the space available on the ark, again assuming ridiculously conservative (and sometimes impossible, i.e., no floors) conditions. If we have adult elephants that eat twice as much (again at a very conservative estimate) that’s 72% of the space in the ark for just 4 animals!!!! There is no physical possibility that Noah's ark ever happened. Considering there are anywhere from 1.5-1.8 million KNOWN species, I would love to know how NoahCo ever took care of even the smallest fraction of them. Thank you for reading.

If you want a completely thorough refutation of Noah's ark, go here:

The Impossible Voyage of Noah's Ark
by Robert Moore

 

[Phylogeny]

Here's something I've posted several times and have yet to have a YEC debate the math:

According to Panda.org, which is part of the WWF, there are two types of elephants: the Asian and the African. Obviously if we believe the Bible, there would have been at least four elephants on the ark.

The Asian elephant eats around 300kg of fodder per day (see above source), while fully grown African elephants eat up to 200kg of food/day.

Now, we know from Gen 6:21 that Noah was commanded to take food for all the animals and his family, thus nullifying a possible miracle explanation for not needing to bring food. However, in the interest of being conservative, lets assume that Noah had younger elephants and thus needed less food than a full grown adult (although growing children need their vegetables!!!). So lets assume that the elephants needed half of their adult counterparts.

Therefore, collectively, the Asian and African elephants would need approximately 500 kg of food/day. That’s 1,102.31 pounds a day!! In the interest of simplicity and being conservative in our estimates lets just say 1,000 pounds of food/day. For the (approximate) year that they were on the ark, that would mean NoahCo would have needed 365,000 pounds of food just for the elephants!!! This is 1,825 tons, which will be important later.

Next step, calculating how much space was in the ark. This has been done repeatedly so I hope there is little contention here. Gen. 6:15 says, "The length of the ark shall be 300 cubits (aprx. 450 feet), the breadth of it 50 cubits (aprx. 75 feet), and the height of it 30 cubits (aprx. 45 feet-ed.)." This is 1,518,750 cubic feet. Let’s also assume for the sake of simplicity and being conservative that the ark was a perfect box with these dimensions (i.e., no space lost at the front or back due to needing to actually float, no need for going through sea/waves, no keel, etc). Also for the sake of simplicity and conservatism, lets assume by some miracle that there was no need for floors, which would take up even more space (this directly contradicts Gen 6:14, which instructs Noah to build rooms on the ark). This means the area of the ground floor would have been 33,750 sq. feet and that the total interior cubic feet are as stated above. Of course this is absurd as the animals, food, and NoahCo would have been stacked on top of each other for a year. I also assume that the animals do not have much chance to walk around and exercise. But let’s continue.

Next we need to know approximately how much space the food for the elephants would have taken up (and ignoring the fact that most of it would have gone bad eventually in a hot damp environment—remember there was only one door and a small window—I would have hated to be on waste removal duty!). This also assumes that the food for only the elephants is being stored on the ground floor, and also ignoring the fact that many animals are carnivores. That would mean that many more than just a pair of many types of animals would have been needed to have been brought aboard to feed any given “chosen pair”. Of course these "feed" animals also needed to be kept alive, many of which were carnivores also, which meant that even more animals would have been needed. It’s a geometrically unsolvable problem for such a situation.

Given that, Elephants are vegetarians; so lets assume that they were fed hay for the entire year (again ignore the monumental task of growing, harvesting, and storing of such an immense amount of hay by one family). According to this website, "Regardless of bale size and stacking method, any building with 16' sidewalls will accommodate at least 1 ton of hay in every 20 square feet of floor area." This means one ton of hay needs 320 cubic feet of storage. But it does say 'at least', and of course this is assuming ideal conditions. So again for simplicity and conservatism, lets assume one ton of hay needs 300 cubic feet of storage. That means the 1, 825 tons of hay needed for just the 4 elephants alone would have take up 547,500 cubic feet!! That’s about 36% of the space available on the ark, again assuming ridiculously conservative (and sometimes impossible, i.e., no floors) conditions. If we have adult elephants that eat twice as much (again at a very conservative estimate) that’s 72% of the space in the ark for just 4 animals!!!! There is no physical possibility that Noah's ark ever happened. Considering there are anywhere from 1.5-1.8 million KNOWN species, I would love to know how NoahCo ever took care of even the smallest fraction of them. Thank you for reading.

If you want a completely thorough refutation of Noah's ark, go here:

The Impossible Voyage of Noah's Ark
by Robert Moore

Who cares about logic? Goddidit!