Has Noah's Ark been found?

The Bible tells us about Noah's Ark, a giant structure which, according to the Biblical narrative, carried a few of each of many kinds of animals, while the earth was flooded. Every few years, there are claims that the remains of the ark have been located. I have heard such stories for at least a few decades.

Answers in Genesis is an organization that is fully convinced that the earth is only a few thousand years old, that there was a world-wide flood, and that God did, indeed, cause a large variety of creatures to escape this flood on the ark that was built by Noah and his family. The organization would be very pleased if Noah's ark were to be found. Members of that organization have examined a recent claim that the ark has been found, and are not convinced of the validity of such claims.

Here is a technical article published by Answers in Genesis, in November, 2011. The article, by Andrew Snelling, who seems to have considerable expertise in radioactive dating (I have no such expertise). He concludes that wood samples taken, supposedly, from a structure found in Turkey by a team from Hong Kong are not ancient, but modern. The wood tested was living during the 20th century, according to Snelling. Snelling was, he says, given access to the actual wood testing data, and he presents it in the article. I don't claim to understand the technical details in Snelling's discussion, but the conclusion he reaches is plain: "Given the present C-14 evidence, despite the tantalizing wooden remains the Chinese-Turkish team claims to have discovered on Mt. Ararat, such artifacts CANNOT have come from the Ark. So whatever they have found, they are NOT the remains of the Ark." (Emphasis in original.)

Here is a less technical news article, published by Answers in Genesis in May, 2010, about the same supposed discovery, which indicates that the organization doubts the claim, and questions whether the Ark would be expected to ever be found. The reasons given for such doubts include volcanic activity in the region where the ark is believed to have landed, and the likelihood that Noah and his family would have used the wood from the ark for other purposes.

Answers in Genesis takes the position that what the Bible says about the flood, and the ark, is sufficient. If the ark were to actually be discovered, that would be great, but we don't need such a discovery to believe in the Bible. As far as I can determine, the organization hasn't evaluated any claims of finding the ark since the claim made by the group from Hong Kong in 2010, discussed in this post. I am sure that if any important claims of finding the ark had been made since that time, they would have discussed them in short order.

The organization also points out that the Bible is vague about the location where the ark came to rest, saying, in Genesis 8:4, "the mountains of Ararat," rather than on a specific mountain. See here for that verse, in several versions of the Bible, which are unanimous on that point. The Wikipedia article on those mountains says: "The 'Mountains of Ararat' in Genesis clearly refer to a general region, not a specific mountain . . ."

Tomorrow, I expect, God willing, to post about another alleged finding of Noah's Ark.

In a previous post, I have set forth a number of questions about the story of the flood, which I can't answer satisfactorily. 

In the next post, I consider an older claim that the ark has been found.

Thanks for reading.

What's wrong with Young-Earth Creationism?

This started out as a response to an anonymous comment, asking the question of the title.

My problems with Young-Earth Creationism (YEC) are six-fold.

1) The Bible tells us, in Psalm 19:1-4, and Romans 1:20, that God has revealed Himself to us through nature. (That's not the only way!) To ignore that evidence, or distort it, is a serious mistake, just as it would be an even more serious mistake to ignore God's revelation in Jesus Christ. I'm not sure that we understand any of God's types of revelation fully and correctly, but we shouldn't ignore them, and should seek compatibility between them.

The post to which the comment was made illustrates this problem with YEC. Kurt Wise is one of the most prominent Young-Earth Creationists, a paleontologist with impeccable academic credentials, and he cannot find good scientific evidence for the young-earth position in the fossil record. There is abundant evidence that the earth is older than a few thousand years in that record. How does Wise get around this? He says, honestly, that he has a prior commitment to believing in YEC. In other words, he discards evidence that argues against that position.

A similar situation exists with a YEC study of radioactive dating, called the RATE project. A group of YEC scientists concluded that the evidence from radioactive dating seems to indicate that the earth is a lot older than a few thousand years old. But then they went further. They proposed that it really isn't so old, because there have been periods when the radioactive decay rate was a great deal faster than it seems to be now. In other words, they rejected the evidence they discovered. (See here for one of my posts on this subject, which gives documentation.) There have been several criticisms of the RATE project's proposal that the rate of decay changed greatly, such as in the latest issue of Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith (which is not yet available on the Internet). The critic in that article, J. Brian Pitts, cites arguments** that way too much heat would have been produced by so much radioactivity, and that a mechanism proposed by the scientists who worked on the RATE project would not have worked. ("Nonexistence of Humphreys' 'Volume Cooling' for Terrestrial Heat Disposal by Cosmic Expansion," PSCF 61:23-28, March, 2009.)

Unfortunately, unlike Wise or the RATE project scientists, many YEC advocates just dismiss all evidence that there is good scientific evidence for an old earth.

2) The Bible does not necessarily teach Young-Earth Creationism. For example, Genesis 2:5 poses what I believe to be serious problems for the Young-Earth interpretation of scripture. (See this post, or my posts on David Snoke's excellent book, A Biblical Case for an Old Earth, for more criticisms of the YEC interpretation. In particular, here and here are posts pointing out problems with the belief that the days of Genesis 1 were literal 24-hour days. And the YEC view is an interpretation.) Many God-fearing, Bible-believing scholars are not convinced that the Bible definitely teaches that the earth is only a few thousand years old, that the days of Genesis 1 were literal, or that the flood of Genesis was world-wide. The Young-Earth view, in its present form, is comparatively recent, becoming prominent only in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century, although many Christian scholars, well before that time, did believe that the earth was not very old. See the history section of the Wikipedia article on Young Earth Creationism.***

3) The days of Genesis 1 were not necessarily 24-hour days. Two of the major arguments from YECers, that they were such, are criticized effectively in a post from He Lives. The first such argument is that "anytime the word yôm is used with an ordinal number, it always refers to a twenty-four hour day." But David Heddle, the author of He Lives, points out that that is not always true. Hosea 6 is at least one exception:
1 “Come! Let’s return to Yahweh;
for he has torn us to pieces,
and he will heal us;
he has injured us,
and he will bind up our wounds.
2 After two days he will revive us.
On the third day he will raise us up,
and we will live before him.

The second argument for 24-hour days in Genesis is from the Ten Commandments: Exodus 20:8 “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 You shall labor six days, and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to Yahweh your God. You shall not do any work in it, you, nor your son, nor your daughter, your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your livestock, nor your stranger who is within your gates; 11 for in six days Yahweh made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day; therefore Yahweh blessed the Sabbath day, and made it holy.

But Heddle points out that Leviticus speaks of the Sabbath as a year, not a day:
25:1 Yahweh said to Moses in Mount Sinai, 2 “Speak to the children of Israel, and tell them, ‘When you come into the land which I give you, then the land shall keep a Sabbath to Yahweh. 3 You shall sow your field six years, and you shall prune your vineyard six years, and gather in its fruits; 4 but in the seventh year there shall be a Sabbath of solemn rest for the land, a Sabbath to Yahweh. You shall not sow your field or prune your vineyard. 5 What grows of itself in your harvest you shall not reap, and you shall not gather the grapes of your undressed vine. It shall be a year of solemn rest for the land. 6 The Sabbath of the land shall be for food for you; for yourself, for your servant, for your maid, for your hired servant, and for your stranger, who lives as a foreigner with you.  

Many Bible scholars believe that God's rest, described in the Exodus passage quoted above, is continuing into the present, therefore was hardly 24 hours in extent.

Heddle has more to say, and I invite you to read his blog post. 

This 3rd point was added on August 22, 2017.

4) There are well-informed YEC scientists, like Wise, or the people who worked on the RATE project, who are scientifically qualified, fair and reasonably objective in their discussion of the evidence for and against Young-Earth Creationism. But they are few and far between. There are charlatans, tax dodgers (see here), and demagogues out there, many with little or no scientific training, with web sites, radio programs, books to sell, and seminars to present in churches. It is much easier to get a following, including financial support, if you scream that anyone who doesn't believe in YEC is anti-God, and that there is abundant scientific evidence that YEC is true, than if you are fair and reasonably objective. Christians who don't agree with the screamers are seldom heard in the non-scientific media, or in conservative churches. As a result, conservative Christians, as individuals, in congregations, and in Christian schools, including home schools, colleges, and others, are being cut off from fair and honest examination of alternative Christian views of origins. They are providing ammunition for atheists who are anti-God. Further, they are cutting themselves, and their children, off from being able to reach well-educated sinners in need of a savior.

There may be a few people who have been won to Christ by a presentation of YEC. There are likely more than a few who have been driven away from Christ by such a presentation -- "If the Bible is so wrong about geology*, how can it be right about what it says about sin and redemption?" Glenn Morton, who had a career as a geologist with YEC training, describes how he "was almost through with Christianity," after he found that the Young-Earth geology he had been taught did not work, and discovered that other professional geologists with YEC training had found the same thing -- YEC geology doesn't describe the way things really are.

It is also true that there are screamers on the other side, people who say that Christian belief is incompatible with science, or that all Christians are willingly ignorant. That's just as bad, but this post is about what's wrong with YEC, not what's wrong with Richard Dawkins.

5) YEC advocates usually portray themselves as defending the Bible. That isn't really true. What they are doing is defending their interpretation of the Bible.

6) YEC and Intelligent Design (ID) are often presented as if they were one and the same. They are not. See here for documentation.

There are many Bible-believing, God-fearing, soul-winning, heaven-bound people who believe that Young Earth Creationism is the only option for Christians. I love them, and appreciate their sincerity and zeal. But most of them have been cut off from evidence, both scientific and Biblical, that argues against their position. There is such evidence, and it is part of God's revelation to us. YEC may or may not be right, but there are other views held by Bible-believing, God-fearing, soul-winning, heaven-bound Christians. Christians who haven't much background in origins, or science, should be told that such views other than YEC exist among believers. (There are problems with all of these views. In this post, I explain why I have problems with Intelligent Design. I'm not alone.)

7) (This point added on August 20, 2012) The genre of Genesis 1 is peculiar, and probably was meant to be largely symbolic. See here for some of the evidence for why I say that. This point is closely related to the second one, but since I'm adding it so long after the original post, I'm entering it as a new item.

What do I personally believe about origins? See here.

Thanks for reading!

*The Bible says little about geology, and I believe that what it says is correct. YEC advocates claim that the Bible says that the earth was covered by a world-wide flood, which is responsible for most of the earth's rock layers, and that this flood took place a few thousand years ago. That's one interpretation of what the Bible tells us. It's not the only one, and it is inconsistent with the evidence from geology. Some YEC advocates also claim that the Bible teaches that dinosaurs co-existed with humans, and other such nonsense. Here is some additional material about geology and YEC.

**This sentence was clarified on June 6, 2009. The article by Pitts is in this issue of Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith.

***This sentence was added, and the previous sentence corrected, on June 6, 2009. I thank Brian Pitts for a communication which led to these changes.

Radioactive decay and young-earth creationism

If you were given a bank account, which had had interest added to it for a number of years, and it was important to know how many years that account had been drawing interest, you would need to know a few things, including how much money was in the account to begin with, how much was in it now, the rate of interest, and that the rate had not changed, or, if it had, how much and for how long. (See here for a Wikipedia article on calculations involved with such interest)

In a similar manner, if we want to know how old the earth is, one way of determining this is from radioactive decay. However, to make such calculations, a scientist must know how much of the parent material was present to begin with, how much is there now (or how much of the radioactive product was there to begin with, and how much is there now), and the rate of decay. Constant, or nearly constant rates are assumed. Scientists who are experts in this area are virtually unanimous that the earth is billions of years old. Young-earth creationists do not accept this, based on their interpretation of the Bible. They have raised some scientific criticisms about knowing how much was there in the beginning, how much is there now, and about the measurement of the rate. Scientists who are not young-earth creationists have also raised some questions about these matters, but the current scientific consensus is that the data shows that the earth is very old. (I am not an expert in this area of science.)

In a previous post, I commented briefly on a critique of the RATE project, which project was sponsored by two of the leading young-earth creationist organizations, and was designed to examine the scientific evidence from radioactive decay, concerning the age of the earth.

I have since discovered that the first part of the RATE project report is available freely on-line (Warning -- this is a large .PDF file) from the Institute for Creation Research (ICR). As always, it is best to use primary sources, so I have done so. I have not read the entirety of this report, but have looked at the last chapter of the first volume, which I take to be critical. The report is entitled Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth: A Young Earth Creationist Initiative. (ICR and the Creation Research Society (CRS) 2000) There is a second volume, entitled Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth, Volume II. It is offered for sale by the CRS web site, but is there listed as being a publication of the ICR. (It can be purchased from the ICR, also.)

In the last chapter of this on-line book, which is "Accelerated Decay: A Viable Hypothesis?" (p. 345), D. Russell Humphreys begins thus:
Geoscience and nuclear data strongly imply that "billions of years" worth of nuclear decay took place within thousands of years ago. [sic] To explain this, I propose that since Creation, one or more episodes occurred when nuclear decay rates were billions of times greater than today's rates. Possibly there were three episodes: one in the early part of the Creation week, another between the Fall and the Flood, and the third during the year of the Genesis Flood.

He goes on to summarize the findings of the RATE project, namely that the scientific evidence, from more than one type of radioactive decay, is that the earth is very old. (He also summarizes other scientific evidence which suggests that the earth is not very old.)

Humphreys also mentions a problem with his hypothesis of accelerated decay. This problem is the danger, to living beings, of exposure to the radioactivity that would have resulted from such decay. The "three episodes" that he suggests, says Humphreys, would have been during times when living things would not yet have been present, or would have been protected -- during the Flood, for example, by the water over the earth.

Another problem would be the amount of heat produced by rapid radioactive decay. Humphreys, in part, says that the Bible describes such heat, so he doesn't take it as a serious problem.

Humphreys explicitly does not believe that the mainstream scientific belief that radioactivity shows that the earth is very old is a biased product of belief that natural selection has been operating for a long period of time.

What to make of this? Humphreys has made two very important admissions, as I have indicated above, in what comes as close as possible to an official publication of the young-earth creation movement. These admissions are that the age measurements of most scientists are not tainted by old-earth bias, and that the evidence, on the face of it, is that the earth is very old.

My reaction, and the reaction of the American Scientific Affiliation, an organization of Christian scientists (which was reported in my previous post) is that these are significant statements, and the authors, and their organizations, should be commended for making them. However, a further reaction is that Humphreys has proposed a system something like the epicycles proposed, supposedly to save the hypothesis of an earth-centered universe, in early astronomy. As the Wikipedia article on epicycles puts it:
"Adding epicycles" has, thanks to the Rube Goldberg attempts to make the obviously failed earth-centered model work, come to be used as a derogatory comment in modern scientific lingo. If one continues to try to adjust a theory to make its predictions match the facts, when it has become clear that the basic premise itself should be questioned, one is said to be "adding epicycles".

Proposing that there were three episodes when radioactive decay rates were orders of magnitude faster than they are today, so that one can hold on to the idea of young-earth creation, strikes me (and others) as scientifically unwise. It also may even be attributing deception to God.

Young-earth creationism may be right. I don't know. This report is important to believers in that explanation for origins, but it also exposes some serious weaknesses of that idea.

Thanks for reading.

* * * * *

June 13, 2007. The epicyclic nature of the RATE report is even worse than I thought. In a comment on my first post on this matter, Randy Isaac says that "The argument is further complicated by claims that some isotopes experience accelerated decay while others didn't."

July 25, 2007. I have discovered that Answers in Genesis, another important young-earth organization, apparently cooperated with the other two groups, at least initially, on this project. Answers in Genesis has reported favorably on the results, also. (See here)

Young earth creationism and radioactivity

The current print issue of Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith has a review of a study by two of the most prominent young-earth creation organizations, on radioisotope dating. (Articles in Perspectives are placed on-line within two years of publication.) The study, which I have not seen, is published as Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth, in two volumes, edited by Larry Vardiman and others.

The review, by Randy Isaac, currently executive director of the American Scientific Affiliation, which publishes Perspectives, appears to be a thorough examination of the results of the RATE (Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth) project, carried out by the Institute of Creation Research and the Creation Research Society.*

Isaac says that the study is remarkable in that it concedes plainly that current scientific evidence from radioactive decay is that the earth is much more than a few thousand years old. He explains the findings of the RATE project in some detail. The approach of the RATE project, he says, is to propose that the rates of radioactive decay were much greater during the flood, thus making the decay evidence indicate that the earth is much younger than it seems to be.

Isaac writes that "The authors report that faced with this evidence, a young-earth advocate must address at least two key scientific problems resulting from a one-year period of accelerated decay rates during the Flood." These problems are the heat that would have been produced by so much decay, and the amount of dangerous radioactivity which would have been produced.

For some (perhaps legitimate) reason, Isaac doesn't mention another serious question, namely why should decay rates have accelerated during the Flood?

Isaac commends the study for its admission (seldom made by advocates of young-earth creationism) that the evidence is in favor of an old earth, but criticizes it for its conclusion, which is that the two problems have been nearly solved. He says that they haven't.

The American Scientific Affiliation neither endorses or denies young-earth creationism. It allows members to believe any scheme for origins which is compatible with its statement of beliefs.

Thanks for reading.

* * * * *

On June 7, 2007, I posted again on this topic, this time with a link to part of the original RATE report.

*On July 25, 2007, I discovered than Answers in Genesis, a third important young-earth creationism organization, was also initially involved in this project, and has reported favorably on the results. (See here)