In case you somehow missed my latest Freethought Examiner article, here it is! Please read, enjoy the comments - phew! - and leave a few yourself.
The reasons for doubting this alleged discovery are many, including the plethora of previous purported "arks" dating back centuries, a fact that immediately causes one to turn a jaundiced eye toward this one as well. There are also various scientific arguments against a global or even local flood and the subsequent dispersion of all human and animal life from Mt. Ararat. Moreover, the Bible itself doesn't really state that the ark landed upon Mt. Ararat per se but only that it rested in the "mountains of Ararat." (Gen 8:4) Nor does it indicate where "Ararat" was at the time, so it may not have been in Turkey. Also, the current structure in question has been pointed out to look quite modern in its appearance, so freshly preserved that it could have been created in the past couple of centuries....
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Be sure also to read my updated article "The Myth of Noah's Ark."
Comments (4)
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FYI:
• Average diameter of Earth: 7,919.75 miles.
• The elevation of Mount Everest is 5.499053 miles.
• The elevation of Mount Ararat is 3.21 miles.
The number of gallons of water required to cover the Earth from its surface to the top of Mount Everest is - drumroll please - 1+ sextillion gallons of water! And for Ararat, a mere 697+ quintillion gallons of water!
There are between 326-358 quintillion gallons of water on, in, under, and above, our planet, but 98% of that amount is in the oceans - already at or below sea level, and thus unavailable for flooding purposes.
Do the math (I have!) - there's simply not enough water for any of the mountains with which I'm familiar, to have ever been covered with water. DisneyLand's Magic Mountain? It's a stretch, but a definite maybe --
pax vobiscum,
archaeopteryx
in-His-own-image.com
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Let's talk about cows.
One cow - ONE, count 'em, ONE! - produces 157 gallons - 21 cubic feet - of methane gas each day.
On the 1st day of the tenth month (Gen 8:5), the tops of the mountains were seen, and forty days later (Gen. 8:6), Noah "opened the window of the ark."
The animals in question were encased in a water-tight, and thus air-tight ark for 11 months and 10 days - assuming a 30-day month, that's 340 days, or 7,140 cubic feet of methane gas, per each animal the size of a cow. I have no stats on elephant farts.
The entire volume of Noah's Ark, by this god's own blueprints (Gen. 6:15) was 1,518,750 cubic feet. And that's an empty ark - adding animals would decrease the amount of vacant space.
Again, do the math (I have) - in the period of time that - according to the Bible - the ark was closed up, it would take less than 212 cow-sized animals, to have entirely filled the ark with methane gas, which is only 106 pair! And that's based on the volume of an empty ark - a loaded ark would have significantly less space and require still fewer animals to fill it with gas.
The window (Gen. 6:16) was small - c.18 inches by 18 inches - and it was closed for the entire eleven months and ten days. That was one dark ark! How did they see? Lanterns or candles you say? Fire and methane gas really don't play well together. Glow sticks --?
In Gen. 7:7, we learn that Noah sent out a raven, in Gen 7:8, he sent out a dove, and in Gen. 7:9, we learned that the dove returned, but there was never any mention of the raven. My guess is that he was so glad to get clear of all of that methane, he decided he'd fly til his little wings fell off, rather than ever go back!
pax vobiscum,
archaeopteryx
in-His-own-image.com
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In 1994, Peter A. Clayton wrote a book with a rather lengthy title: Chronicle of the Pharaohs, The Reign-by-Reign Record of the Rulers and Dynasties of Ancient Egypt (London. Thames & Hudson. 1994).
In his book, Clayton demonstrated that the Egyptian Pharaonic Civilization predated the biblical flood. Clayton gave the following dates for Egyptian Dynasties and their Pharaohs.
• Dynasty 0
3150-3050 B.C.E.
• Dynasty 1
3050-2890 B.C.E.
• Dynasty 2
2890-2686 B.C.E.
• Dynasty 3
2686-2613 B.C.E.
• Dynasty 4
2613-2498 B.C.E.
• Dynasty 5
2498-2345 B.C.E.
• Dynasty 6
2345-2181 B.C.E.
Clayton said that archaeologists have unearthed the tombs of the above Pharaohs for the associated six Dynasties (3150-2181 B.C.E.) and excavations showed no flood layer of silt above their tombs, deposited by Noah's alleged Universal Flood, or Utanapishtim's, or Xisuthrus', or Atrakhasis' or the primeval octopus', or any other.
Nor do the records or annals of Egypt - and those guys were anal about annals, meticulous record-keepers - make any mention of a universal, world-encompassing flood.
Clayton's conclusion was that if there had been a universal, globe-encompassing flood in the third millennium B.C.E., there is no evidence of it in Egypt, just a really long stone's-throw away from the Mesopotamian region where Noah's flood reputedly began.
In Clayton's own words: "The absence of the mention of such a flood in Egyptian records and annals, from the same general Middle-Eastern area where can be found 'the mountains of Ararat', combined with the archaeological evidence from the Pharaohs' tombs, created before the 2958/2348 B.C.E. flood occurred, reveal that the tale of Noah's flood is a myth."
Or, possibly just a myth-take --
pax vobiscum,
archaeopteryx
in-His-own-image.com
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Actually, there was an historical local flood that occurred during the reign of an historical king, Ziusudra, of the city of Shuruppak (which was located about 150 miles SE of Baghdad, Iraq), the tale of whom was the basis of the fictionalized fables of Atrakhasis, Utnapishtim and Noah, all of whom Acharya mentions in her article, The Myth of Noah's Ark.
The Euphrates River overflowed its banks, due to a 7-day rain storm, and flooded the area between the cities of Shuruppak, Uruk, and Kish, in what was ancient Sumer. River flood sediments there have been radio carbon-dated as 2900 B.C.E., at the end of the Jemdet Nasr period (3000-2900 B.C.E.) which ended with the river flood of that latter date.
All that remains of the history of this flood and King Zuisudra is contained on the front and back of a small fragment (above) of what was once a stone tablet, filled with cuniform writing.
The water reportedly rose 15 cubits (c.22.5 ft.), as was later copied into the Bible - enough to cover a 3-story building, but a tad short of the peak of 5.499053 mile-high Mt. Everest.
Ziusudra escaped the deluge in a commercial river barge, loaded with trade goods, beer and livestock - hardly lions and tigers and bears!
Chapter 8 of Genesis begins with a fairly innocuous sentence, that anyone could miss if they weren't looking for it - (8:1) "...God remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the cattle that was with him in the ark:..." "Cattle!" How ever did the Bible's censors miss that little tidbit?
The actual flood occurred between three and five hundred years before the time the Biblical flood fable purportedly happened, and was plagiarized by Hebrews who migrated from the Iraqi area and retained the fable in their forklore collection - the same place we keep Paul Bunyon, Johnny Appleseed, John Henry and recent Elvis sightings.
I once read a post that accused those who post of never referencing their information - I wouldn't want to be guilty of that:
http://www.noahs-ark-flood.com/
pax vobiscum,
archaeopteryx
in-His-own-image.com