Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Important science about the Bible

Noah's Ark has been found! Hold on. Some bits of old wood and rope on a mountain have been found! Isn't it obvious that it's related to a biblical story about a giant boat that held two of every animal on earth?
Noah's Ark has been found atop a mountain in Turkey, a team of Turkish and Chinese evangelical explorers said Monday, April 26.

The 15-person team claims to have recovered fragments of wood and pieces of rope from a structure on Mount Ararat in eastern Turkey that carbon dating has put at 4,800 years old, roughly coinciding with the time the biblical flood was said to have been occurred.
...
Yeung Wing-Cheung, a member of the team, told AFP, "It's not 100 percent that it is Noah's Ark but we think it is 99.9 percent that this is it."
Obviously. You found some wood, but the real clincher was the rope. I mean doesn't that just cinch it? How could anyone deny it? Sure, the "ark" doesn't look big enough to hold two of every hamster, let alone two elephants... and every other species on earth, but I'm sure a little biblical interpretation allows for the divine gift of a shrink ray. Plus, if this ark was found way up on a mountain are we supposed to believe that two of every animal scaled 12,000 feet down a rocky precipice after it settled up there post-flood? Yes? Ok then.

I'm not sure about evangelicals using carbon dating to scan the wood though. Maybe Chinese and Turkish evangelicals are different than American evangelicals, but I'm fairly sure they would burst into flame when coming into contact with such a concentrated form of science as a carbon dating machine. Plus, evangelicals don't seem to like carbon dating when it says things like "the earth has been around for more than 10,000 years", so why would they use it on Noah's Ark? Or is 10,000 years right around the point where carbon dating gets wonky because it's... interfluxing... with the... God... barrier? Or does He tamper with all carbon dating machines to make them date beyond 10,000 years as part of His giant practical joke on humanity that involves Him burying dinosaur bones and making science seem so credible?

If only this article quoted an actual scientist...

Nicholas Purcell, a lecturer in Ancient History at Oxford University, called the claims "the usual nonsense," according to the Daily Mail.

"If floodwaters covered Eurasia 12,000 feet deep in 2,800 BC, how did the complex societies of Egypt and Mesopotamia, already many centuries old, keep right on regardless?" he said.

Oof, too scientific. Don't crush their hopes too hard there, Nick. Just say "It looks like that's pine wood, I'm fairly sure Noah would have made his ark out of teak" or something and tell them to "keep looking".

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