I agree with your assessment. The University of North Texas (UNT)
claims to be public research university, not a Bible school. The UNT
History Dept. has a webpage on "Cutting Edge or Over the Edge?," with
many links to sites that debunk pseudohistory but also many sites
promoting pseudohistory. They link to both pseudohistory and scientific
sites on Noah's ark, but a majority are fundamentalist sites. Thus,
their History Dept. seems a bit suspect.

Garry Denke has not claimed to be speaking for the UNT. His claims seem
to be based on unpublished notebooks from 1999, written by a first
semester student at UNT.

The recent B.A.S.E. Institute claims that they discovered Noah's ark in
the mountains of Iran lack credibility. The photos show rock formations
that they claim are petrified wood. If Noah's ark was built only a few
thousand years ago as Bible literalists believe, it could not have
petrified because natural wood petrification takes many millions of
years and does not occur on mountaintops.

The B.A.S.E. Institute website also claims other incredible
discoveries. The President of the institute is Bob Cornuke, former
police detective and author of six books on Bible archeology. Wikipedia
says "He has no formal training in archaeology nor any accredited
higher education degrees." The recent news reports on the discovery of
Noah's ark might just be an attempt to publicize his "Ark Fever" book.
Ads for the book call Cornuke a "real life Indiana Jones" and promise
the book will soon be made into a major motion picture.

The fact that there are so few news reports on this recent Noah's ark
"discovery" indicate that most reporters don't take it seriously.

David R. Hershey

References

Cutting Edge or Over the Edge? by Dept. of History, Univ. of North
Texas
http://www.hist.unt.edu/web_resources/anth_edge.htm

New reports of Noah's ark "discovery" in Iran
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ta...q=Noah%27s+ark

The photos of the Noah's ark site in Iran.
http://www.arkfever.com/

Petrified Wood
http://www.intersurf.com/~chalcedony/Petwood.html

B.A.S.E. Institute website
http://www.baseinstitute.org/

Bob Cornuke
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Cornuke




wrote:
In article .com,
wrote:

The main problem is that you present no concrete evidence. The claim
that "Our core samples of Noah's ark are Quercus virginiana." is
unconvincing without a refereed publication. If you actually have wood
samples from Noah's ark, you don't need to worry about the name
gopherwood. You should be submitting your evidence to scientific
journals, not newsgroups and Wikipedia.

If the remains of Noah's ark had been discovered, it would have been
published in the world's leading scientific journals and all the major
newspapers. When I asked for a citation, you provided only a link to an
obscure newpaper archive that went back to 2001. You indicated the
article was from 1999 but provided no month, day or article title. You
seem to be quoting John's unpublished notebooks.

About 40 or so years ago an aerial photo was printed in Life magazine
showing the outline of a boat shaped structure exposed by a landslide
in an area of Turkey known both now and in antiquity as the mountains
of Ararat. Archaeological investigation revealed that it was a
monument constructed in the 5th century AD, associated with the ruins
of a monastery -- sort of an ancient tourist/pilgrim attraction. Some
fundamentalists pointedly ignore this and claim the photo as proof of
the historicity of the Bible story of Noah and the Ark.

While it's possible that these "researchers" obtained wood from these
excavations, I'd be surprised if what they have is any more authentic
than the tons of true cross wood sold as relics in medieval times.
Indeed, if the wood is really from Quercus virginiana, that would be
excellent evidence that it's a fake.

If these guys were real researchers, the first thing they'd do would be
to get a good carbon date from such excellent candidate material as
wood. If the University of North Texas is a legitimate accredited
university and not just a Bible school, I'm sure it wouldn't want to be
associated with such gullible or fraudulent "researchers".

In some ways these fundamentalists who despise science while longing
for the trappings of scientific proof resemble medieval philosophers,
who believed, as in many systems of magic, that names have an intrinsic
reality and power. So if a tortoise is called a gopher, and there are
trees where this tortoise lives, those trees must be gopherwood trees,
and since the ark was built of gopherwood, it must have been built
where gopherwood trees grow, i.e. the range of this tortoise. I am,
alas, not exaggerating the sort of thinking that passes for seeking of
proof among these people. After all, they know the Truth, so all they
have to do in aim in the right direction and they will, they believe,
get there, and their proof will be as good as any scientist's.