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| Probably not Noah's Ark. Photo credit unknown. |
by Louis Shalako
Show
me a plaster cast of a Sasquatch footprint on The Learning Channel, and I'll
show you a God-damned liar.
The
trouble with science is that scientists bring their own assumptions into the
equation.
They
bring their hopes, dreams, desires and aspirations along as well.
Years
ago, an expedition climbed Mount Ararat, and they returned bearing pieces of
timber, which were, “Believed to be pieces of Noah’s Ark,” according to Funk
& Wagnall’s Encyclopedia, (1986.) Only one problem: other 'arks.' For
example the Cornuke Ark, found in Iran.
"In
2006, a group of Texas adventurers announced that they had found the remains of
Noah’s Ark on the slopes of a rugged mountain in Iran. The fourteen-man
expedition, led by explorer and speaker Dr. Bob Cornuke, returned with video
and photographic evidence of a black object 400 feet long and 13,120 feet above
sea level, as well as samples of what he described as ‘wooden
beams.'"
"The
Web report by Brannon Howse reads, “The arkish object is about 400 feet long
and consists of rocks that look remarkably like blackened wood beams while
other rock in the area is distinctively brown. And one visible piece is “cut”
at a 90-degree angle. Even more intriguing, some of the wood-like rocks were
tested just this week and actually proved to be petrified wood, and it is
noteworthy that Scripture recounts Noah sealed his ark with pitch—a decidedly
black substance. Upon being cut open, one of these “rocks” also divulged a
marine fossil that could have only originated undersea." http://www.cbn.com/spirituallife/biblestudyandtheology/discipleship/noah_where_today.aspx
The
article goes on to debunk the 'petrification' process, which relies on groundwater
with a high mineral content.
Only
one problem: if all the ice and snow in the Earth's glaciers and at the pole
melted, it would only raise the ocean's level by a couple of hundred metres, or
about 216 feet. If all the water in our atmosphere fell at once in the form of
rain it would cover the entire planet to a depth of one inch. Where did all the
water come from, to raise an ark 7,000 feet for the object depicted in the
colour photograph above, and an astounding 13,000 feet for the Cornuke Ark?
Where did all that water go afterwards?
Years
ago, I think it was Erich von Daniken, (Chariots of the Gods) published a black and white photo of the
alleged ark. It was on Mt. Ararat. The object was squared at both ends, and
subsequent expeditions could not locate it. I'm going on pure memory here, and
any help with links would be appreciated. But if it's just alleged arks you're
interested in, there might be a few others out there.
Who
believes it? Do you believe it? I don’t believe it. What I do believe is that
if a person announced they were going off to Armenia, to climb Mount Ararat and
find Noah’s Ark, all of their friends would laugh at them. The stakes are
pretty high. If you succeed in finding Noah’s Ark, you make a lot of money and
you get to be famous. What if you don’t find anything?
You
become a laughing-stock. You have just wasted a lot of time, money and effort,
and some of that time, money and effort may have belonged to your family, your
friends, and probably your sponsors. You may have gotten money and assistance
from the National Geographic Society.
What
if you want to go back? What if you just can’t settle into your dad’s acounting
practice, or the family farm-corporation,* or the shoe-store where you worked
your way through college?
So
what are you going to do? You work very hard to convince yourself, to delude
yourself.
You
grab the first piece of timber you come across on your way down the mountain,
and you make careful statements about ‘what it might be.’ You get your name in
the paper, which sensationalizes the trivial, and trivializes the important.
You get to write your book, and you get to participate in the making of
documentary films. You get another grant from the Bible Society, the Explorer’s
Club, National Geographic, whatever—you will please note they all have an
interest of one kind or another. A self-interest. They’re interested in finding
Noah’s Ark, and they are most definitely not interested in not
finding it. In an old encyclopedia, there is a picture of, “the great
baths at Mohenjo-daro,” which was a Harappan site in the Indus River
valley.
That’s
on the Indian subcontinent. The text says the baths were used for religious
purposes. Yet the text also clearly states that no temples or palaces that can
be clearly identified as such, have actually been discovered at this site. How
do they know the baths were used for religious purposes? They don’t, or at
least; I don’t.
How
do they know it wasn’t mere luxury? We take baths for granted, but it is a
luxury, as any Third World citizen can tell you.
In
present day society, the Saudi Arabians have built a nation based upon
religious precepts.
Do
Saudis perform religious ceremonies in their bathtubs? I’ve never heard of it.
I will admit, that some people in the western world get up on Sunday morning,
scrub the kids nice and squeaky clean, dress them up in little suits and ties,
dresses, and Easter Bonnets, and drag them off to church.
So
what about Mohenjo-daro, and the assumptions made about the discoveries there?
Was the Harappan culture hung up on religion? What about the people who dug it
up thousands of years later? Were they hung up on religion? Were they social
elitists, hung up on ‘Empire?’ They obviously didn’t conclude, from the lack of
temples and palace complexes, that the people of Mohenjo-Daro ‘must have been’
secular democrats, did they? Yet this ‘evidence’ could be interpreted that way.
Based
on the evidence, no one ever concluded they were atheists! No temples,
huh...maybe they used the bathtub.
“Oh,
but the digs are incomplete,” you might say.
“Yes,
I know,” is my answer.
The
great baths of Mohenjo-Daro are evidence that the people of Harappan cultures
took a bath once in a while. Chunks of timber from Mount Ararat are evidence
that there may be, or may have been, trees, or other wooden structures, in the
vicinity, once upon a time.
In
Canada, people go to high school to prepare them for college or university.
Then they spend tens of thousands of dollars on 'higher education.' And God,
are they dumb. They get an education to prepare them to go out into the work
force. Does college or university teach you to think? I say no. It teaches you
to be sociable, employable, tractable, polite to your superiors, and it makes
you obedient. It gives you a certain discipline. It gives you the basics of
your profession. It doesn’t teach you to think.
I
learned to think in the toughest school of all, right out here in the streets,
where literally every piece of shit on two legs was trying to take advantage of
my good nature. Certainly I would have benefited from some higher education. I
would have been more adequately socialized, if I had stuck in high school, then
gone on to a college or university. I learned to take things with a grain of
salt, and to distrust anything that came down from on high.
And
I probably wouldn’t have made this discovery, or even half of the discoveries
that I have made in fifty short years.
Superstition
sells, and ignorance is popular. The mass media of our times need a large
audience, in order to sell advertising space and to make a profit for the
shareholders. How do you attract the largest possible audience?
Well,
you dumb it down, of course, to the level of the lowest common denominator. And
the lowest common denominator is pretty damned ignorant. So the next time you
go to a movie, and some spirit, some demon, some hokey religious clap-trap comes
flying out of some dusty old book in a temple, flashing across the screen,
roaring and gnashing its jaws; whatever you do, don’t ask yourself any
questions. Because to do so would be to go against the system that has been
very carefully built across the centuries.
I
think it was George Washington who said, “An educated populace is the first
bastion of democracy.”
But
our educators are all elitists. Our industries don’t want democracy—they want
an obedient and completely dependent workforce. They want to make money, with
no accountability.
And
you wouldn’t want to become an enemy of society, and you wouldn’t want to be
excluded from all employment, housing, marriage, or any other type of prospects
that the majority enjoy.
In
this country we talk about ‘celebrating diversity.’ That is the ‘official
position.’ What is common knowledge on the street, and what is the official
position is always different. When has the government, any government, ever
told the truth about any issue? In this country celebrating diversity means a
bunch of white people, all of whom have about the same income, all of them from
the same neighbourhood, sitting around a campfire, singing 'Koombayah.' (Or
whatever.)
When
has the government ever told the truth? On any single issue?
“Never.”
And
you can put it in a book and quote me on that one.
The
truth is somewhat different, as any immigrant, any gay person, any Arab or
Muslim person can tell you.
Any
thinker can tell you the real story, or should be able to, anyway.
Most
Canadians are perfectly happy to go with the flow, for it brings important
material benefits in their lives.
And
they never have to think. Thinking is hard. It can also be dangerous.
The
most dangerous thing in the world is an idea. Most Canadians are content to
leave well enough alone, and let sleeping dogs lie, and go out to the movies
once a week, and watch Tom Hanks beating up on the big, bad, Catholic Church.
Just for the record, if Michelangelo had wanted to leave a message for the
peoples of the future, he might have written it down someplace.
As
for paintings like, ‘The Last Supper,’ Leonardo Da Vinci was content to let the
painting speak for itself.
And
the message is a pretty simple one; if you have the wit to get it. Jesus broke
bread with his brothers, and then he went off to die for our sins, one of which
is arrogance. And ignorance is another sin.
What
part of that is so hard to understand? Yet even the Church doesn’t seem to get
it a lot of the time.
Movies
like, ‘The Da Vinci Code,’ are good examples of something I learned a long time
ago, but have never adequately been able to put into words until
recently.
A
fact is a fact is a fact. But how it is interpreted, depends largely on who is doing
the interpreting, and what self-assumptions they bring along with them, and
what it is that they wish to prove.
Facts
are interpreted according to what you want to prove--any trial lawyer can tell
you that.
What
if they’re just plain ignorant, like a Canadian journalist? Then you end up
with governments like that of Stephen Harper up here in Canada; or the recent
so-called, ‘health-care reform,’ in the U.S. which still leaves millions of
Americans in the hole. It's a criminal offence now, apparently, not to be able
to pay for your private health care insurance. So the insurance companies will
jack the rates.
They
don't want to provide health care to 'criminals,' after all. More
ignorance.
Science
and religion have a couple of things in common. They both can be abused by evil
men and women for personal gain.
That
ain’t news, but it sure seems to be the reality for so many people.
I
just saw a man on TV who claims that there are giant squid living in caves
under the Bahamas. He was on TV and everything and he seemed like a nice,
ambitious young film-maker.
He
admitted in the show, “It’s impossible to prove that something doesn’t exist.”
I can't prove your honour doesn't exist either. It is a reasonable deduction,
though. Maybe if you find some ruins, in the Sea of Japan or somewhere, you can
tell A & E that you 'might' have discovered Atlantis and could you borrow a
film crew and a few million bucks for a while, at least until you make it back in
royalties...
Oh
yeah; I trust his facts implicitly, although a few bones, teeth, fossils, dead
squid, or anything really; would have been of some help. Just for the record,
giant squid are a pelagic organism, although I hear there’s a really, really
big blue ox roaming the hills of Wisconsin.
Now
that would make a good subject for a documentary film by a truly scientific
researcher.
Notes:
*90
% of the farms in Canada are owned by corporations. Remember that the next time
some conservative claims they’re going to give a few hundred million dollars
to ‘save the sacred, holy, family farm.’
Now
ask yourself where all that money is REALLY going.
