Biblical Archaeology Infested with Kooks
Thanks to PZ Myers for pointing me to an article on the website of Archaeology magazine. It’s called “Raiders of the Faux Ark” by Eric H. Cline, who is a real biblical archaeologist.
The article addresses the problem that the field of biblical archaeology has many crackpots, cranks, and kooks. The author says that it’s time for the legitimate archaeologists to speak up and refute all of the junk science that the crackpots are passing off in the popular media.
I recently reviewed a documentary on the National Geographic Channel, called “Curses of Ancient Egypt”. A couple of readers questioned the relevance of my article. The bulk of the evidence (or lack thereof) indicates that the Exodus fable never happened, so why even look at a possible scientific explanation for the ten curses? My answer is that many Bible fantasies are based upon earlier legends that may have been inspired by real events (a localized flood being retold as Noah’s flood, for example). The more we learn about what is real or plausible or unreal or impossible, the better we can understand that book and its followers.
Furthermore, there are a lot of people making claims about biblical archaeology, and I want to examine whether those people and their claims are credible. This latter point is the focus of the Archaeology article. The author states:
We are also living in a time of widespread biblical fraud, dubious science, and crackpot theorizing.…Every year “scientific” expeditions embark to look for Noah’s Ark, raising untold amounts of money from gullible believers who eagerly listen to tales spun by sincere amateurs or rapacious con men; it is not always easy to tell the two apart.
…
And so the professionals are allowing a PR disaster to slowly unfold: yielding a field of tremendous importance to pseudoscientists, amateur enthusiasts, and irresponsible documentary filmmakers.
I’m not an archaeologist, but I do have a skeptical eye. I like to watch these documentaries and try to detect which ones make sense to me. In the case of my recent article about the 10 Curses, I concluded that the explanations proposed were plausible, even if the proponents’ motivations were somewhat dubious.
What About Bob?
What I find especially satisfying about the Archaeology article is what it says about “Dr.” Robert Cornuke. For this tale, we need to roll back the clock one year, to a review I wrote on a similar documentary, “Exodus Revealed” (see part 2 of that article for the bit about Cornuke).
That documentary looked at more of the Exodus fable, including the bit where Charlton Heston drowned Yul Brynner’s army in the Red Sea. The program profiled Robert Cornuke (whose Ph.D. makes chiropractors look overeducated), who runs his own special Bible Explorers Club. Cornuke claims that he has found a few things that look like artifacts, therefore Exodus is true. That seemed like a leap of logic to me, and I said so.
Now here’s where it gets funny. Just two weeks ago, one of Cornuke’s supporters somehow found my article, and he left an offended comment. I replied to his accusations, reiterated my belief that Cornuke’s scholarship appears shaky, and challenged him to support his assertions.
(Sound of crickets)
For some reason, he chose not to respond.
So today, I read this in the Archaeology article:
For example, in 2006, Bob Cornuke, a former SWAT team member turned biblical investigator—and now president of the Bible Archaeology Search and Exploration (BASE) Institute in Colorado—led an expedition searching for Noah’s Ark. Media reports breathlessly announced that Cornuke’s team had discovered boat-shaped rocks at an altitude of 13,000 feet on Mount Suleiman in Iran’s Elburz mountain range. Cornuke said the rocks look “uncannily like wood.…We have had [cut] thin sections of the rock made, and we can see [wood] cell structures.”
But peer review would have quickly debunked these findings. Kevin Pickering, a geologist at University College London who specializes in sedimentary rocks, said, “The photos appear to show iron-stained sedimentary rocks, probably thin beds of silicified sandstones and shales, which were most likely laid down in a marine environment a long time ago.”
Ah, poor Cornuke! The data doesn’t fit his pre-conceived conclusion!
December 6th, 2007 at 1:34 pm
Once again, Great article, Ron! I took at look at the Cline article and also thought that the following from was very telling:
“Biblical archeologists are suddenly finding themselves in a position similar to the evolutionary biologists fighting intelligent design – an entire parallel version of their field is being driven by religious belief, not research principles. The biologists’ situation makes the risk clear – they did not deign to mount a public refutation of the “science” of intelligent design for years, until it was almost too late, and thus anti-evolutionary science began making its way into the public schools.”
Now, THAT’s scary!
December 30th, 2007 at 4:15 pm
For laughs I subscribe to a newsletter put out by crosswalk.com. It’s a fundie christianist site. Recently they listed some recent archaeological finds that proved that the Christian Testament is completely true. One of the things they listed was “possibly Caiaphas’ tomb”. If it turns out that it really is his tomb, it only proves that someone named Caiaphas lived and died. Nothing more. But the best proof was finding a boat that could seat 13 people. That’s it. No “Jesus wuz heer” carved into the captain’s seat, no chewing gum with his DNA under one of the seats, just a boat that could hold 13 people. Now that’s proof. My dining room can seat 13. Does this mean that this is where the last supper took place?