Dispatches from the Creation Wars

Ron Wyatt: Collosal Fraud

Posted by Ed Brayton on June 30, 2006
(17)
More »

And out come the wingnuts. Here’s the email I just received from someone named James Albright:

Dear Ed,

Noah’s ark was discovered by Ron Wyatt, whose ministry is named Wyatt Archeological Research. The news media is only taking attention away from the real ark through your ministry. Please stop this approach in the name of Jesus. Thank you.

Bro. James D Albright

Oi vey. Are there people out there who still take Ron Wyatt seriously? Con men simply don’t get much more transparent than this guy. Wyatt was a nurse anesthetist (now deceased) who claimed not only to have found Noah’s Ark, but to have found virtually everything in Biblical archaeology that might be important to Christians – Noah’s Ark, the exact place where the Red Sea was parted to allow the Israelites to escape Egypt, the true location of Mt. Sinai, the Ark of the Covenant and, most ridiculously, the actual blood of Jesus Christ!

This last one is the most amusing of them all. He claims to have found the Ark of the Covenant in Jerusalem in a secret cave under the actual spot where Christ was crucified, and it had Jesus’ blood all over it (the blood had dripped down from the cross).

Whilst in the chamber, Ron noticed a dried, black substance in an earthquake crack in the roof, above the Ark of the Covenant. He noticed that this black substance was also on the lid of the cracked stone casing. Obviously, this substance had dripped from the crack in the roof, and provision had been made for it to land on the Ark of the Covenant, as the stone lid had been cracked and moved aside. Ron wondered what substance could be so sacred, that God made provision for it to land on the Mercy Seat of the Ark of the Covenant. He remembered the earthquake crack at the foot of the cross hole, and suddenly an awesome realization as to what had happened, came over him. Ron traced the earthquake crack, and indeed it was the same crack as the one at the cross hole. The dried black substance in the crack was tested and proved to be blood, apparently the blood of Jesus Christ. The Bible says that when Jesus died there was an earthquake and the rocks were rent (Matt. 27:51). A Roman soldier speared Christ in His side in order to make sure He was dead, and blood and water poured out (John 19:34). Ron discovered that this same blood and water poured down through the earthquake crack and fell upon the Mercy Seat of the Ark of the Covenant.

Since the blood was dried, he had it rehydrated and then, allegedly, had it tested (where are those tests? No one seems to know – surprise, surprise). And here’s the result:

Human cells normally have 46 chromosomes. These are actually 23 pairs of homologous chromosomes. In each pair of chromosomes, one of the pair is from the mother and the other member is from the father. Therefore, 23 chromosomes come from the mother and 23 from the father. In each set of 23, 22 chromosomes are autosomal and one is sex-determining. The sex-determining ones are the X chromosome and the Y chromosome. Females are XX, so they can only contribute an X chromosome to their offspring, whereas males are XY, which allows them to contribute either an X or a Y. If they contribute an X, the child is female, whereas if they contribute a Y, the child is male. The fascinating finding in this blood was that instead of 46 chromosomes, there were only 24. There were 22 autosomal chromosomes, one X chromosome and one Y chromosome. This evidences that the person to whom this blood belonged to had a mother but no human father, because the normal contribution of paternal chromosomes is missing.

You really can’t write comedy like this. Needless to say, he brags of all these fantastic scientific tests that never see the light of day – but trust him, he’s got em! His assistant, Jim Pinkoski, is quite an amusing fellow. He’ll show you a piece of genuine petrified wood from Noah’s Ark. And when you point out that this “petrified wood” has no rings in it, he’ll tell you – with a straight face – that that’s because trees didn’t have rings before the flood. It’s all quite amusing and ridiculous.

Wyatt is so bad that other creationist and Christian groups have put up webpages debunking his work. Here are three major ones: Tentmaker, Christian Information Ministries and Answers in Genesis.

(17)
More »

Comments

  1. #1 plunge
    June 30, 2006

    Ed has a ministry? Does he have tracts that can be passed out in front of a local Taco Bell, by chance?

  2. #2 Sam Paris
    June 30, 2006

    That solves one mystery. The “H” in “Jesus H. Christ!” stands for “haploid”.

  3. #3 Dave
    June 30, 2006

    As a heathen (i.e., a Jew), I feel compelled to nitpick: it’s oy vey, not oi vey. Oi is what the skinheads in England chant.

  4. #4 Dave S.
    June 30, 2006

    Females are XX, so they can only contribute an X chromosome to their offspring…

    There were 22 autosomal chromosomes, one X chromosome and one Y chromosome. This evidences that the person to whom this blood belonged to had a mother but no human father, because the normal contribution of paternal chromosomes is missing.

    So…where did that Y-chromosome come from again? Was it God’s Y-chromosome?

  5. #5 llDayo
    June 30, 2006

    So, wait, he’s saying it’s possible for a fully developed human being to come from just the egg without the sperm fertilizing it?! That would explain all those other virgin births…

  6. #6 John Cercone
    June 30, 2006

    Ed, the way that letter reads to me, it sounds like he thinks you believe that ark was found, but you’re giving credit to the wrong man.

  7. #7 Ed Brayton
    June 30, 2006

    John Cercone wrote:

    Ed, the way that letter reads to me, it sounds like he thinks you believe that ark was found, but you’re giving credit to the wrong man.

    Yes, it does. Which makes him doubly clueless, doesn’t it?

  8. #8 Maj. M.T. Rational XXXIV
    June 30, 2006

    WND and Stop the ACLU both picked up on the ark story today. On STACLU I left a one-word response along with a link to the complete dismantling you gave the claim a while back.

  9. #9 kehrsam
    June 30, 2006

    To be fair to Mr. Wyatt, I heard him on the radio shortly after his Red Sea discovery, while he claimed the find proved the Charleton Heston bit, the evidence didn’t really point that way.

    At the time (1999) he claimed that he had discovered a 7-8th Century bc marker commemorating the crossing. As this is exactly the sort of thing Hezekiah or Josiah might have done, I found that one plausible at least. The rest of the claims are as ridiculous as ever, of course.

    And he (or the “Institute”) might be claiming more, now, of course.

  10. #10 Badger3k
    June 30, 2006

    A year or so back, we had a discussion on Internet Infidels on this, with a follower of Wyatt (he claimed to be working with Wyatts widow, IIRC). He claimed all kinds of stuff, on all the “scientific” tests that showed that Wyatt was correct, and sad thing, after constantly being torn apart by the facts, he still came back and declared “victory”. Pretty sad, but it was worth the broken irony meters.

  11. #11 Dave Carlson
    June 30, 2006

    Badger3k –

    I remember that guy. Those threads were pure comedy. The guy was certifiable, but boy do I miss the entertainment he provided.

  12. #12 Skemono
    July 1, 2006

    His assistant, Jim Pinkoski, is quite an amusing fellow.

    Whoa whoa whoa, wait a second.

    Jim Pinkoski? Jim ” PYGMIES + DWARFS??” Pinkoski? That’s marvelous.

  13. #13 Bartholomew
    July 1, 2006

    Bob Cornuke reckons he’s just found Noah’s Ark, in Iran (a “better” location, as I believe you pointed out in a previous post). The underwhelming evidence is here (scroll down):

    http://www.arkfever.com/

  14. #14 Dave S.
    July 1, 2006

    Bartholomew –

    That story has been covered here already, but now there has been an update courtesy of, who else…the WorldNutDaily!

    Apparently they have completed their tests, and gone is the term “basaltic dikes”. Yes sir, the objects tested positive for petrified wood. Sadly though, they don’t tell us what this test was or released the actual data. Maybe they just relied on the “looks like wood to me” test. They also say they found wood splinters and pottery shards 2000 feet higher, which apparently proves the ancients worshipped there.

    I’ll prognosticate here and suggest they analysed carbon in the samples, and found it to be in the range of 0.7 – 0.8%. That’s just a guess.

  15. #15 Chance
    July 1, 2006

    All this is really funny UNTIL you stop and think that these are actually real adults, spending real money, and wasting real time and lives looking for a supposed boat that carried the world’s wildlife for 40 day while the entire planet was underwater.

    Then it becomes almost a tragic waste.

    In my view this is one of the real damages of religion. We needn’t point to bloodshed in it’s name but rather the damage it does to legions of brains.

  16. #16 Matthew
    July 1, 2006

    I learned about this most recent “discovery” on the ABC nightly news, and have heard that other stations were reporting it as well. I really can’t understand why they would report this, and not see how embarrassing it is to them.

  17. #17 Knox
    December 28, 2006

    You people are barking up the wrong tree. Who really cares whether or not he found the Ark of the Covenant? I want to know what kind of flashlight he had. Totally reliable, it was his only source of light in an otherwise literally pitch-black environment and small enough to carry through very tight spaces. He supposedly passed out for at least 45 minutes upon discovering the Ark — presumably without turning it off first — so if you add that to the time it took for him to happen upon the right cave and return outside, that flashlight was the real hero of the story. I hope he wasn’t making that part up.