Rumors and legends have persisted for hundreds of years that Noah’s Ark is resting on the slopes of Mt. Ararat in present day Turkey. Others have placed it in the bottom of the Persian Gulf.

Few have ever questioned the absurdity of the whole Noah story itself and the manifest improbability that it represents. However, given the size of the earth and the diverse fauna, including plants insect’s aquatic environments, polar environments, and great distances, Noah would have needed to build an ark 10 times the size of Sea-world. He would have needed thousand of scientists, biologists, environmental specialists… he would have needed refrigeration, and a squadron of aircraft and vehicles to travel to remote South American jungles, or to scorching Mongolian deserts, etc… However, the story says he had only his sons, it also says he lived to be 900 years old in roughly 10 thousand B.C. Many people will find such a reasoned critique of the story offensive, because, if you have no Noah, you have no cute Noah’s ark story, Simple…

Many people have devoted large portions of their lives pursuing belief in such legends. Like all long lasting legends, in order for this story to sustain itself there has to be absolutely no way of proving it. These stories are what people want to believe. The people who created them rely on the credulity innate to most humans. They then open the doors for others to manipulate these legends to gain advantage and control over others.

Anytime actual proof is raised as a question, some unfortunate factor is used to explain it away. For instance, time, geographic remoteness of the evidence, human conspiracy, or the notion that the experience can only be revealed if you believe in it. Instead, what is usually offered and accepted as evidence is too often a far off fuzzy picture, a half-wit eyewitness, or a shaky inference.

The same truth exists for the famous Patterson-Gimlin Bigfoot tape. The men who shot the footage admitted that it was a fraud. It has not changed people’s stubborn belief. Even though hundreds of people go looking for Bigfoot in the last 40 years and have not found any shred credible physical evidence, belief persists. The Loch-Ness Monster, a single picture taken by a doctor who on his deathbed admitted that he fabricated the story. Again hundreds of people search, thousands of dollars (or pounds -£) are spent and no monster. It makes no difference if trained biologists measure the amount of food in the lake and reasonably explain that such a beast could not survive. Alternatively, it could be the monster is choosing not to be found, one cannot be certain.

People fervently believe in gurus levitating, alien abduction, psychics, and faith healing. In all these scenarios, no evidence beyond the hearsay of a few questionable people exists. To question these stories is almost regarded as a sin, or like telling children there is no Santa. The more outlandish and illogical the legend, the more believable it becomes, and the longer it lasts.

So why spoil people’s silly beliefs? Not all of these legends have been used to take advantage of masses of people. While not all legends are harmful, the potential nevertheless exists for tragedy, when a person believes in something simply because they want to. When they base their beliefs on the flimsiest of evidence, they have opened the doors to tricksters, confidence men, and charlatans of all kinds. Beliefs of this type have convinced many to part with riches, ruin their children’s future, fly planes into buildings, and give up the pursuit of a type of happiness that is based on reality. A healthy dose of skepticism would go a long way to combat this, and might make a better world, even without Bigfoot.

El Burro