A Christian activist involved in a project to determine whether Turkey’s Durupınar formation contains remains of Noah’s Ark said finding the vessel would, in her view, be a “direct challenge to evolution.”
The U.S. group Noah’s Ark Scans is working with others, including Bakhtar Research and Engineering, to determine whether the approximately 515-foot-long boat-shaped formation contains remains of the biblical vessel. The team says it is testing core samples for the presence of wood. It was not established that the formation contained a ship.
Director of fundraising at Noah’s Ark Scans, Lauren Witzke, said the project was not just about finding the ship, but about challenging the theory of evolution.
“The compelling evidence for Noah’s Ark and the Great Flood is a direct challenge to evolution,” she said. News week. “This is the true moment when the entire history of humanity began again and creation was reborn. »
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine assert that “ideas of evolution by natural selection remain fundamental to modern scientific research” and cite findings from several independent scientific disciplines.
Referencing the biblical story of Noah’s Ark, in which God gives humanity a chance to start again after a devastating flood, Witzke said: “Noah’s Ark dismantles the idea that we are all simply the product of an evolving species over millions of years, and instead shows that we were a beloved creation, preserved and given a second chance less than 5,000 years ago.” »
She went on to say that the team would go after schools and educators whose programs focused on evolution if the team proved that Noah’s Ark is inside the Durupınar Formation.
“We won’t stop until school curricula are rewritten and all the teachers who failed Christians for rejecting evolution as a story of human origins are ‘re-educated’ or fired,” Witzke said.
The comments come as Noah’s Ark Scans founder Andrew Jones said he believed he had already found evidence of the boat in Turkey, including the same dimensions described in the biblical book of Genesis. He cites a preliminary report by Khosrow Bakhtar, of Bakhtar Research and Engineering, which interprets the radar data as indicating an artificial structure beneath the surface.
The team’s preliminary report has not yet been peer-reviewed.
Preliminary report from the “Noah’s Ark” hunters
Bakhtar said the processed images show what he described as “organized patterns, corridors, rooms and corridors lying inside the 515-foot boat-shaped formation in the Ararat Mountains.”
“Whatever object is beneath the surface, it’s extraordinary,” he said. “In forty years of doing this, I’ve never seen anything like this. It could be a ship. It could be a spacecraft. What I can tell from the radar is that it’s organized, it’s structural, and a solid geological mass wouldn’t have returned such a strong signature.”
“If it was geological in origin, we wouldn’t have seen it at all since we obscured the underground geological features,” he continued.
Jones cited these findings in an interview with Fox News over the weekend, saying “organized patterns” could be part of the Ark or a deck of cards.
“No solid bedrock or limestone has so far been identified in the holes drilled within the formation,” Jones said previously. “These current findings challenge claims that it is simply a natural form made of limestone or bedrock.”
They didn’t identify any wood materials either, Jones said. News weekas the team awaits lab test results. News week has not reviewed the scans and cannot independently verify the team’s interpretation
Two researchers attempted to answer this question in 1996, when geologist Lorence Gene Collins and Ark researcher David Franklin Fasold examined “evidence from microscopic studies and photographic analyses” and concluded: “This is an entirely natural rock formation” and “cannot be Noah’s Ark or even an artificial model.”
The researcher behind the 1996 study originally thought the Durupınar Formation could be the site of Noah’s Ark.
The current team studying the formation claims to use techniques that were not available to researchers in 1996. They claim to use ground penetrating radar, electrical resistivity tomography, lidar and coring. Previous investigators have also used radar and coring at the site.
Cores are taken from depths of up to 18 meters (59 feet), Noah’s Ark Scans said in its announcement. The 1996 study is based on drilling by investigators John Baumgardner and Salih Bayraktutan in the late 1980s, which reached about 10 meters (33 feet).
The 1996 study examined rock samples and their geologic relationships, as well as previous claims about the formation’s internal structure. Its authors concluded that the supposed artifacts and boat-like features had natural explanations.
And then?
Witzke believes the team has already “proved that we have an artificial boat-shaped structure beneath the surface that matches exactly the same dimensions in Genesis, in exactly the same location as noted in the book of Genesis.”
She said News week the next step is to examine “ancient animal DNA,” adding that Noah’s Ark Scans is in talks with scientists to specialize in identifying ancient and extinct animal genomes from degraded materials.
“We knew that once we confirmed that the Durupinar Formation was the resting place of a huge ship, we then needed to prove that it was indeed Noah’s Ark,” she said. “Of course, for some atheists and evolutionists, no amount of evidence will ever be enough and they will continue to mock and laugh. But here’s the thing, they also made fun of Noah, until it started raining.”
What is Durupınar training?
The structure, which has attracted people hoping to find Noah’s Ark since its outlines were identified in 1959, lies south of Mount Ararat in eastern Turkey, an area mentioned in the biblical account of the Ark. Genesis (8:4) says that when the floodwaters receded, “the ark stood upon the mountains of Ararat.”
Its ship-shaped silhouette has made it a focal point for some of the ship’s researchers, including Jones, who previously said: “We believe the Durupınar Formation is the remains of Noah’s Ark, and that’s exactly why we want to subject it to the most thorough scientific testing possible.” »
Others disagree, with the 1996 study calling the theory that the structure contained the remains of the ark “false.”
The study concluded that the formation “has been misidentified as Noah’s Ark.” The researchers said microscopic studies proved that the materials presented as man-made were actually all of natural origin.
Contact News week editors on this story: Ben Kelly and Geoff Rowland.
Gn world
