Noah's Arc

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Boris,

In fairness to Mr. Nice Guy, were you to apply that standard to every lay person, the answer would be the same. NO.

But to folk trained to see such things subtleties, who knows? Apparently enough to convince some folk to lay down some serious cash for an expedition.

Lord knows I could never make out anything other than blobs when it came to my wife's ultrasound, but the technicians kept saying here this piece and that piece. And this blob represent this etc.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by Ogie Oglethorpe
But to folk trained to see such things subtleties, who knows? Apparently enough to convince some folk to lay down some serious cash for an expedition.

But it didn't convince anyone "trained" to see such subtleties, it convinced a group with a fervent religious agenda who are bringing unfounded presuppositions to the table with a healthy dose of wishful thinking.

Geologists have looked at the pictures and all gone, "so what?"

[SlowwHand]

Ogie, that's not true, and I think you know it.
A "self-respecting" atheist rarely changes their mind.
Why beat it into the ground? Why talk to a wall?

[Kropotkin]

Mr. Nice guy should change his name to Mr. Funny guy!

As for the subject at hand:
That's kind of a lousy picture if you're a believer (of the Ark being there), I've seen much better. Even if there's a reason to make comparitions with the infamous marsian face when it comes to peoples intereptation. Futhermore, there's afaik a old myth that mount ararat is the place where the ark hit ground, even amoungst locals. IIRC, Marco Polo mentions it.

[Japher]

Regardless, I don't rely on the media for the whole story, and in matters like this I rely on the only reliable source - scientific investigation.

But where are those examples I asked for?

You have to admit that much of early "scientific investigation" spawned from religious interpretations and attempts to obtain validity... In return, or once such validity could not be obtained, there were other sides of the coins who took the basis to soley prove religion through science, and I am sure they came up with some crazy ideas; called theories. Now, whether media hypes it or not?

String theory? Space exploration?

IMO, media loves to hype any type of speculation whether it is secular or not. Every time the sun taints a window, or a tree grows a knot, and it looks like the virgin Mary. As well as, everytime a rover finds something that might be sign that there may have been a chance that life existed on Mars.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov


But it didn't convince anyone "trained" to see such subtleties, it convinced a group with a fervent religious agenda who are bringing unfounded presuppositions to the table with a healthy dose of wishful thinking.

Geologists have looked at the pictures and all gone, "so what?"

IIRC the famous face of Mars required further inspection to understand what was going on. Wasn't it a pass from a mars explorer.

So your point regarding trained folk passing it off simply underlies the fact that they didn't have the opportunity to do a more thorough job of inspection.

Kinna like Tennet's boys and WMD.

Ohh and Sloww, I haven't actually looked at those photos since Mr. Spock had them on "In Search Of". Couldn't say one way or the other back then.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Originally posted by Japher


IMO, media loves to hype any type of speculation whether it is secular or not. Every time the sun taints a window, or a tree grows a knot, and it looks like the virgin Mary. As well as, everytime a rover finds something that might be sign that there may have been a chance that life existed on Mars.

I love the retired comic Bloom County. They had a fungus on a refrigerator door that looked like Elvis. The second coming of Elvis was being foretold, I tell you!

[Japher]

but Elvis isn't dead!

[chequita guevara]

Mt. Ararat is a volcano. Volcanos frequently have rocks of diferent hues all over them.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Yes we all know that!

He was raised again taken to the planet Zyrphidon where he caused miracles, preaching love, sex, drugs and rock and roll.

We, the devout Elvites, all anxiously await his permanent return as opposed to his quickie visits to sporting events.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Mr. Nice Guy
I have to admit this evidence does indeed look promising:

http://www.space.com/astronotes/astronotes.html

So sorry, but I think you'll be rather disappointed. This type of find isn't unique, so there's quite a bit of documented understanding of the processes involved in things getting buried in glaciers and then getting spit out later. Aircraft flying into mountains back in the bad ol' days before modern onboard navigation systems are the most common example, with plenty of USAF speciments in Alaska, and some civil aviation specimines in the Andes mountains.

FYI, I'm not an atheist, so your usual duck-and-run fundy arguments about evil atheists and media lies won't really cut it.

There's a bunch of things we know about glaciers, so unless you want to posit (without any Biblical proof or any reason God would do so) that this particular chunk of glacier on Mt. Ararat behaves differently from every other one in the world, you're going to have to live with a few unpleasant details for the Noah's Ark is here theory.

1) Glaciers move, and they do it at different rates depending on where you are, as a function of proximity to underlying terrain, terrain friction, ice depth, sun and wind exposure, deposition rates of new snow or rain, and subsurface water.

2) This variation in movement is more pronounced on a small scale.

3) The result of this is that large things in glaciers such as airplanes tend to get spectacularly torn up and distributed very unevenly (this is distinct from the debris field caused by initial impact)

Noah's ark was obviously wood, and depending on how literally you want to take the date, and how much of a Bishop Usher fan you are, somewhere around 4,000 to 5,000 years ago. Nothing in the Bible says anything about any special wood, time for drying, construction techniques, etc., so the best info we have is early Phoenician and Greek, etc. shipbuilding techniques and the known properties of indigenous trees. Whatever you get for serviceable boats, you don't get an icebreaker. We also have a lot of info (courtesy of some lost whalers and early Arctic and Antarctic expeditions, what happens to wooden ships that get caught in moving ice sheets. The ice tries to move in the direction it wants to, encounters the hull, and tries to go around. Which causes a lot of compression and shear stress.

What you've got in those photos is something (or somethings) at one hell of an angle, in or over a little ravine or draw in the mountain face (color and shape of ice tell you that, plus the visible terrain), which means there is more rapid ice movement on the top than near the mountain face, and more rapid ice movement over the ravine or draw than on the elevated portions of the mountain face. That means 4,000 years of wood being sheared, torn, and squished all to hell and back, and no way that any large scale structure would be even close to intact. Also, the upper portion would move more slowly than the lower portion, (due to terrain friction), so you'd expect the Ark (if it was there) remains to be spread in the direction of ice flow for over a mile, maybe more, depending on movement rates and microclimate over the intervening thousands of years.

In short, whatever that is is extremely unlikely to be any integrated structure of any grat age, especially a wood ship. Even if Noah's Ark was up there, the glacier would have mostly reduced it to a spread out mishmash of wood fibers, mulch, and the occasional odd sized something that looked almost like driftwood. Knees, pieces of keel, etc. could be identified with some luck, but only if you were able to completely remove the ice from that area, and if they'd managed to fall someplace where they were exceptionally sheltered from substantial shearing.

The best place to recover any such items wouldn't be near the top of the mountain, it woud be near the base of the glacier much further down the mountain, especially if that ravine or draw ran for any great distance. Glacial ice can flow pretty fast (quite a few feet per year) in the right conditions, so nothing that landed up high in the ice thousands of years ago is still going to be up that high now.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Ogie Oglethorpe
But to folk trained to see such things subtleties, who knows? Apparently enough to convince some folk to lay down some serious cash for an expedition.

People tend to see what they want to see, if they have any particular desire. Just ask Saddam and George Tenet, et al.

Lord knows I could never make out anything other than blobs when it came to my wife's ultrasound, but the technicians kept saying here this piece and that piece. And this blob represent this etc.

Some people are much more adept at pattern recognition than others. It's not an intelligence thing, it's just the way they process images. I've always found ultrasounds easy to read in great detail, even though I've never had any particular training for it. Musical notes or similar pattern recognition with sound, instead of visual images? I'm completely SOL there.

[Theben]

Originally posted by Japher


Damn!@!!

(See Theben's Sig.)

Always willing to obilige.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat


People tend to see what they want to see, if they have any particular desire. Just ask Saddam and George Tenet, et al.

I believe I made the same refrence.

And obvioulsy I suck at the whole visualization thing. I could never get the handle of those posters you were supposed to stare at and all of a sudden an image appears if you look at it just right. Never saw a single thing.

[chequita guevara]

There's a good business in convincing religious people to give you money. I wish I wasn't so moral.





Well, not really.