Hi, jbozz! Welcome!
My real question is why should I trust these studies to be accurate, correctly set up, truthful and unbiased?
That can be countered by my question: why should I trust an old Hebrew myth to be accurate, when it's obviously swiped from an older Sumerian myth? Sure, the Sumerian one has guys living to be 34,000 years old - but the Hebrew one has 'em up to 969. Does that make the latter more factual?
And consider: the studies cited upthread would need some sort of reason to be deliberately inaccurate, untruthful, or biased. I'll bet that nothing about Noah even entered any of the researchers' minds - and if it did, why would you think they would be motivated to deceive? Tools of the Devil, perhaps? Statistically, I'd say at least occasional churchgoers, instead, assuming they were in the US.
"The Christian church, in its attitude toward science, shows the mind of a more or less enlightened man of the Thirteenth Century. It no longer believes that the earth is flat, but it is still convinced that prayer can cure after medicine fails." H L Mencken
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