Noah's ark and geology

A natural rock structure near Dogubayazit, Turkey, has been misidentified as Noah's Ark. Microscopic studies of a supposed iron bracket show that it is derived from weathered volcanic minerals. Supposed metal-braced walls are natural concentrations of limonite and magnetite in steeply inclined sedimentary layers in the limbs of a doubly plunging syncline. 

Supposed fossilized gopherwood bark is crinkled metamorphosed peridotite. Fossiliferous limestone, interpreted as cross cutting the syncline, preclude the structure from being Noah's Ark because these supposed “Flood” deposits are younger than the “Ark.” Anchor stones at Kazan (Arzap) are derived from local andesite and not from Mesopotamia.

The development of scientific geology had a profound impact on attitudes towards the biblical flood narrative. By bringing into question the biblical chronology, which placed the Creation and the Flood in a history which stretched back no more than a few thousand years, the concept of deep geological time undermined the idea of the historicity of the ark itself. 

In 1823 the English theologian and natural scientist William Buckland interpreted geological phenomena as Reliquiae Diluvianae: "relics of the flood" which attested the action of an universal deluge. His views were supported by others at the time, including the influential geologist Adam Sedgwick, but by 1830 Sedgwick considered that the evidence suggested only local floods. 

Louis Agassiz subsequently explained such deposits as the results of glaciation. In 1862, William Thomson (later to become Lord Kelvin) calculated the age of the Earth at between 24 million and 400 million years, and for the remainder of the 19th  century, discussion focused not on the viability of this theory of deep time, but on the derivation of a more precise figure for the age of the Earth. Lux Mundi, an 1889 volume of theological essays which is usually held to mark a stage in the acceptance of a more critical approach to scripture, took the stance that readers should rely on the gospels as completely historical, but should not take the earlier chapters of Genesis literally. By a variety of independent means, scientists have determined that the Earth is approximately 4.54 billion years old .So-called "Flood Geology" was championed in the latter half of the twentieth and on into the twenty-first century by Christian fundamentalists who believe in Young Earth creationism. 

Historian Ronald Numbers argues that this ideological connection by Christians wanting to challenge aspects of the scientific consensus they believe contradict their religion was first established by the publication of the 1961 book, The Genesis Flood. The scientific community maintains that flood geology is a pseudoscience because it contradicts a variety of facts in geology, stratigraphy, geophysics, physics, paleontology, biology, anthropology, and archeology. For example, in contrast to the catastrophism inherent in flood geology, the science of geology relies on the Charles Lyell's established principle of uniformitarianism. In relation to geological forces, uniformitarianism explains the formation of the Earth's features by means of mostly slow-acting forces seen in operation today. In contrast, there is a lack of evidence for the catastrophic mechanisms proposed by flood geologists, and scientists do not take their claims seriously.

The Quran states that Noah was inspired by God, believed in the oneness of God, and preached Islam. God commanded Noah to build an ark. As he was building it, the chieftains passed him and mocked him. Upon its completion, the ark was loaded with the animals in Noah's care as well as his immediate household. The people who denied the message of Noah, including one of his own sons, drowned. The final resting place of the ark was referred to as Mount Judi.

Noah's ark in Biblical Hebrew:  vessel in the Genesis flood narrative, through which God spares Noah, his family, and examples of all the world's animals from a world-engulfing flood. The story in Genesis is repeated with variations, in the Quran where the Ark appears as Safina Nūḥ Arabic: سفينة نوح ‎Noah's boat.

Searches for Noah's Ark have been made from at least the time of Eusebius , and believers in the Ark continue to search for it in modern times. Many searches have been mounted for the Ark, but no confirmable physical proof of the Ark has ever been found. There is no scientific evidence that Noah's Ark existed as it is described in the Bible, nor is there evidence in the geologic record for the biblical global flood.

Noah's ark