from the OP:
“If the ark of Noah is discovered, it will be the greatest archaeological find in human history, the greatest event since the resurrection of Christ, and it would alter the currents of scientific thought.”
no not really, and i'll tell you why.
Noah and his ark were as real as the sea!
that may be. there may have been a guy who put his whole family and a bunch of animals on a boat to save them from a flood. but considering the geological evidence and common sense, there was no worldwide flood. or at least not since man has existed. there is simply no evidence of a worldwide flood. and don't ask me for proof, i'll simply refer you to other threads on this board. there is a literal metric butt load of evidence for a scad of very traumatic local floods in various time periods in various places, but there is no such thing ever as a worldwide flood. also, consider a mixture of biological and geographical evidence. if noah only landed in one spot, how did animals get across the oceans? (as rqb said. i still don't know what to make of him...)
a boat is merely evidence of a local flood. the potential size of a boat that would have been able to accomplish the goals of noah's boat... it's never been built. the size of boat in the genesis record is big enough to hold the animals of a town maybe. now, i can't argue supernatural intervention, but that is outside the realm of evidence.
we know there have been very large and very devastating local floods. a find supporting that would do nothing to modern scientific current.
the thing is. the bible may well be a decent record (read: iliad) of certain events. however, even the iliad was wrong on a few things. the iliad was the first source to suggest that troy ever existed and we found it.
was the city built in 35 years like the iliad says? no. it was many cities overlayed and was there for a terribly long time. we don't even have any proof that it was called troy, really.
was there a wooden horse? probably not.
was achilles mostly immortal? probably not.
how long was the war?
how many ships did they send?
was it all for a woman who just conveniently is named similarly to the name of the greek people and thus it is perhaps a tale of the soul or the pride of the greeks being stolen or challenged by a foreign might or rival city-state?
these are all very questionable. but there was a city near the dardanelles that was destroyed by siege at least once.
so. was there a flood in mesopotamia? sure. there were lots. and even a few big ones. was it precisely when the bible suggests it is? probably not. did it cover the whole world. almost absolutely not. was there a guy named noah who put a few oxen on a boat with his wife and kids? sure. did he have two or seven of every kind of animal that has been alive since then? resoundingly, no.
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