Space For Doubt

Ron Wyatt. That name might mean something to you if you are into archaeology or if you happen to be a Seventh Day Adventist.

Ron was a Seventh Day Adventist nurse anesthetist (died in 1999) with a passion for using archaeology to prove his fundamental Christian faith. This man did not possess a degree in archaeology. He was not trained by any professionals. He had no background of geology or anthropology that might help him in logically processing things he was “finding”.

And it showed. Embarrassingly so.

He became a pariah among the archaeological community and even within some fundamentalist Christian evangelical systems. His claims were so hyper-exaggerated and inflated, usually fully false, that the mere mention of his name associated with a new “finding” became an instant turn-off. No claim that followed that name was worth listening to.

Supposedly he found Noah’s ark. Supposedly he found Sodom and Gomorrah. Supposedly he found Egyptian chariot wheels in the red sea. The list goes on to nearly 100 claims of archaeological evidence that support literal biblical historical events.

Out of all of these claims, do you know how many had provable evidence to support them? None. Not a single one. Everything was fabricated, made up, or mischaracterized. No other person in the world has been able to corroborate his claims. In the pursuit of justifying the literalness of his take on the bible, he put on his tinfoil conspiracy hat, took a handful of crazy pills, and went on a 22-year long bender of middle eastern exploration. He was a charlatan whose works are the epitome of that which should be found only in tabloids.

Unfortunately we have to live in a world populated by many people who still believe him. Just look up some of the many YouTube videos, probably run by AI, that promote some of his claims. The comments underneath are largely people saying “How amazing! The bible is being proven true!” or “Once again the bible is proven right”.

Many thousands of people have drunk the Kool-Aid and “did their own research” on YouTube, coming to conclusions that are definitely not supported by the evidence. They then repeat those claims to their friends, who often believe them, and we find ourselves in this everlasting circus of having to forever debunk junk science.

Growing up as a 90’s kid, I remember people parroting around his claims as fact. I remember watching some faith-based media company’s reenactment video where Ron Wyatt describes his discovery of the ark. He said the ground opened up and let him in. He was able to walk through and explore the ark, but then when he left, the ground closed back up and he couldn’t find the entrance again.

When confronted by others on his endless errors, he would deflect, blame, and try to wriggle out of accountability. He accused people of stealing the evidence he “found”. The guy was just genuinely off his rocker.

The greater archaeological and scholarly community is not occupied by fools. They can spot a fake a mile away, and can smell deception before it arrives at their door. Criticism and suspicion are the norm, and everything must pass under the lens of multiple independent researchers and reach majority agreement before it is generally accepted. To come to a conclusion that something is proof of a biblical story is not a trivial one to make. Has the greater community accepted evidence that aligns with biblical history before? Well sure! A great example is the Merneptah stele, which documents that a people called Israel did in fact inhabit the region of Canaan in the 13th century BCE. That fact is well attested to and broadly accepted. Why? Because the evidence actually exists.

After many years of casual research on the historicity of biblical giants, I’ve also noticed an unsettling trend among many traditionally conservative Christians. That is the trend of everything being a grand conspiracy where an institution like the Smithsonian (they’re really hot about that one specifically) is intentionally scouring the globe for pro-biblical evidence. As the conspiracy goes, they then buy or steal this evidence just to hide it away in a vault somewhere so that it appears like there is no evidence for biblical historicity.

Some people want to believe that there is this global cabal of people set on discrediting or erasing any archaeological findings that support the bible. Now there may be a few here and there with a chip on their shoulder, but by and large, the “conspiracy” is simply to discredit misinterpreted or intentionally false findings. Can you imagine the fame and probable financial gain one would stand to benefit from if they truly did find Noah’s ark? If they found the Ark of the Covenant? If they found the grave of real giants?

The SDA church would have done well to issue a public statement after the first few obvious forged discoveries were claimed by this man. Something along the lines of “We do not back Ron Wyatt in any capacity, and we do not share in his opinions regarding the validity of what he found.” A clear distancing themselves from a fraud. Did they do this? No. They wanted it to be true just as badly, and gave a cargo ship’s worth of benefit of the doubt to him. Eventually two SDA archaeologists wrote a book that laid bare some of the foolery this man engaged in, however it was too little, too late. It wasn’t published until the year Ron died. Ron had become a pariah among the community, and by association, the SDA church become viewed negatively by many.

Why bring up this story? Well, it’s a cautionary warning of believing what you hear without additional thought (I also just want to help spread the word about this shady guy). What people believe doctrinally is no less subject to this phenomena than a casual browser of YouTube is to Ron Wyatt’s tall tales. Just because you have been fed that a text’s interpretation is such and such, does not make it absolute truth. Just because SDA doctrine has declared a text to be such and such also does not make it absolute truth. Want is not a substitute for truth, and it cannot be made into truth by any multiple of those who desire it.

Someone could of course be part of a group of people who so desperately want something to be true, like those who so badly wanted the trinity to have strong biblical support, that they insert some foreign text into the bible. (See KJV and NKJV Johannine comma) Unfortunately just like Ron Wyatt’s invented discoveries, all that will do is mark them and anything associated with them as fraudulent ideas best left in the dustbin of history.

Peace.