See Inside
Books and recommendations from Scientific American
Image:
The Rocks Don't Lie: A Geologist Investigates Noah's Flood
by David R. Montgomery
See what we're tweeting about
BoraZ I can co-sign: Alexis Madrigal: “Follow your own curiosity” http://t.co/8HLCJ1wX8W #sci4hels BoraZ How to Really March Against Monsanto. http://t.co/u93UxagQfT cc @Kevbonham @sci2mrow @patrickmustain @juliannewyrick BoraZ And @edyong209 's missing links http://t.co/DOA2Sf3yvo
Deadline: Jun 29 2013
Reward: $7,000 USD
The Seeker for this Challenge desires proposals for chemical methods that could rapidly degrade a dilute aqueous solution
Deadline: Jun 30 2013
Reward: $1,000,000 USD
This is a Reduction-to-Practice Challenge that requires written documentation and&
Powered By: 
YES! Send me a free issue of Scientific American with no obligation to continue the subscription. If I like it, I will be billed for the one-year subscription.
Rights & Permissions
17 Comments
Add CommentIf you can't wait for the August publication date, try "Noah's Flood" by Ryan and Pitman. It was published in 1998 and compellingly posits the same thing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGee, what's next? "An Ornithologist Investigates the Easter Bunny's Eggs"? "A Theoretical Physicist Examines the Physics of A Cow Jumping Over The Moon"?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis sort of stuff is why I no longer subscribe to SA. It's just pathetic, "investigating" garden faeries, fairy tales and bible myths. All it does is draw the fundamentalist lunatics out of the woodwork. It does not educate or inform a thinking/rational human being because a thinking, rational human being already knows it was a myth. It does however bring out the idiotic, superstitious human beings and generate a boatload of press for their conspiracy theories and fairy tales.
The next time someone writing for SA bemoans the press given to the anti-science campaign against climate change or other issues of critical importance, they can just refer to this article and see how the lunatic fringe gets that press coverage.
It's the 21st century. It's time to stop pandering to superstitious morons and start pointing and laughing at them until they're too embarrassed to make their idiotic claims in public.
The only thing that has advanced the species or society for the last 500 years is evidence based science. Evidence based science stands on its own by comparing to it *evidence*. It doesn't need to tested against fairy tales!
I want to thank dphaynes for your comments. I read them in their intirety and then went to Amazon and bought this book. It's interesting how threatened you feel by the authors observations. However I do appreciate your rant as it lead to my discovery of this amazing publication. May you live long and prosper. By the way that famous Vulcan line was borrowed from the Bible.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI read "Noah's Flood", too and actually was privileged to work with the authors. Their evidence for the salt water incursion into the Black Sea is overwhelming. The title throws a lot a people off, because the authors in no way make any claims about a "World-Wide Flood".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe same is true of a major flood in the Tigris-Euphrates valley, both from the rivers and from a rise in sea level, at about the same time.
Too bad that some people can't see that studying the results of previous major climate changes might help us better understand what we're up against today!
Seriously? You mean there is possible evidence of a big flood sometime in the past... gee, and here I thought flooding only occurred in the present.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou mean there was some poor ignorant farmer washed out by a big regional flood, and while many died, he happened to live to tell his grandkids about it, and somehow that story made it into a book of fairy tales where they warped it into a global flood with an Ark, and now, millions and millions of gullible fools think the fairy tales are real and think that evidence of a flood sometime in the past in that region now PROVES the crazy stuff they believe is true? Really?
No wonder fools like that will take reasonable scoffing at their foolishness as yet more proof that they should cling more tightly to that foolishness (ala tomanderton above)... it is a self proving, self justifying, circle of illogical stupidity... These same people are usually certain that Zeus, Horus, and Odin are man-made myths but somehow believe that THEIR fairy tale is ohhh sooo real. Somehow Egyptian god Horus being born of a virgin, curing the sick, walking on water, being killed, and rising 3 days later is just crazy to them, but Jesus doing it years later (ie, core parts of the bible and christian myth is a rip off of older myths from other religions) is the TRUTH. It boggles the mind.
Why is this recommended by Scientific American? This does not make me trust SA. While the geological data might be interesting, the entire premise of the book is utterly ridiculous and non-scientific.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thistomanderton, I'm sorry, but the Vulcan line pre-dates the bible. I think your god needs to talk to their gods.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have long been disillusioned by SA writing about such stupid stuff. Because that is what it is... stupid. Yes, obviously there were floods. Does it prove the bible? Most absolutely not!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI just want to echo the discouragement other have expressed here for the dumbing down of SA. At one time it was for people who were willing to work to understand what was written in it - and smart people could not count on succeeding with every article. Now, I might as well watch television.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI just want to echo the discouragement other have expressed here for the dumbing down of SA. At one time it was for people who were willing to work to understand what was written in it - and smart people could not count on succeeding with every article. Now, I might as well watch television.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this(fyi - hardcore atheist here)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI looked through the table of contents on amazon.com. While I am not personally interested in how religious history and science, the descriptions of the chapters seem to indicate that the book is not trying to prove that Noah existed but that there have been cases of cataclysmic floods and how they might have influenced early folklore (aka religion).
If the book was solely out to try to prove that Noah existed and built an ark and there was a big flood and the only people who survived were his family, well that book would belong in the same section as Twilight or 50 Shades of Grey.
There was a Nova recently that talked about cataclysmic flooding in eastern washington along the columbia. It was caused by ice dams breaking and releasing huge lakes in an instant. I'm sure similar things are likely to have happened in other places and it would freak out any surviving witnesses. Personally, I am not interested in reading stories analyzing what myths these people came up with when they saw these types of events. My parents are wacko Christians, and after spending thousands of hours of attempted indoctrination as a child, I have better things to do with my life now.
hi,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn concert with tharriss:
For all you that still go on about 'bible' I really want you all to read 'The Bible as History' please and get back to me on that.
Any thing remotely refering to 'Bible' had better be in light of a psychological investigation which points to the will of a few in a sea of million from a control issue stand point. Hence we see that in the eyes of Men/ Women of different ethic upbrings have gods who are greater that that of anothers god...too which I laugh(please note the lower script for the terms "god", "bible")
While 'The God-Particle' has made recent news it does not imply anything to do with a book which is an oral hand-me-down history over thousands of years, (Moses was a lineage of oral historians of a nomadic people...not one person!),sucessfully scribed into text to strenghten the will of a few in a sea of millions.
Maybe SA carefully scripts these columns to divulge our perspectives and re-enforce the common scientific perspective that the 'Bible' as a work of pen and ink not of 'The God-particle'. Perhaps this approach seems more fitting given the massive amount of data within the hallowed halls of SA. If it is not so then please let me be the first to laugh at SA.
Apart from a comment where it's stated, I doubt any of you read that book. Please, at least read a preface at Amazon.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFrom a fragment of book freely available, and a contents it looks like this book is about the back-and-forth influence of geology and religion. Where did you get the notion, that the author tries to prove, that the Bible is factual truth? Is it stated somewhere in the book, or you just "scientifically" presumed so?
And just for the record, I consider myself an atheist, and I do not believe in creationism. But I also don't believe anyone should comment about a book he has not read.
I mean come on,there was most certainly a gigantic decades long flood following the end of the last ice age.Why do people find it so hard to believe that there are stories about it in almost every culture?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisvivalaevolution.com
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI agree with psittacid. I could read Discover and sometimes get more scientific and thought-provoking articles. But I say only sometimes. I'll stick with SA for the time being but I will give some thought to renewing. It is not only the dumbing down, but the political biases are becoming irritating.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"tomanderton",
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIs it your belief that the conclusions of the authors of this book support a "world wide flood", as in the usual literal interpretation of the Biblical story of Noah? If so, then your belief is in error, as is the literal interpretation of the aforementioned Biblical story.