Have any theists here traveled to the mid-east?

[Brakeman]

Have any one of you theists traveled to the mid-east and visited the burnt out cities of Sodom and Gomorrah? Where is it and what did you see? How about the ruins of the tower of Babel? Did you get pictures of it? Something that large surely didn't completely disappear in under 6000 years did it?

I'd love to see some vacation pictures of these places, the only stuff I can find on the net are the completely debunked claims of Ron Wyatt and his type.

[Minimalist]

The tower of Babel refers to the ziggurat in Babylon where the Judahites were allegedly exiled after the Babylonians overran the country in 586 BC.
Called the Etemenanki today it looks like this and is in the middle of Iraq



which seriously undermines its value as a tourist attraction since the constant barrage of bombs going off tends to drive the tourists away.

As for Sodom and Gomorrah this is little more than an etiological legend designed to explain the existence of burned out cities in the midst of people living in a region.

Xtian scholars claim that the ruined town of Bab edh-Dhra in Jordan is "Sodom" and the nearby town of Numeira is "Gomorrah" but archaeologists dispute the dating.


Bab-edh-Drah



Numeira

Doesn't really look like a touristy place, eh?

[Brakeman]

..
Doesn't really look like a touristy place, eh?

Well to a Xtian with a severe case of "fundementia" it would have quite the attraction to see god's power in action. They would be so impressed with finding the non-existent sulfur balls and lava flows at Sodom and Gomorrah and the imagined height of the Tower of Babel. The ziggurat doesn't really seem to fill the bill for the tower, as it is too small to have it's throng of builders represent all the resulting languages, and it's height is too short to reach heaven. Unless, well, heaven was really really low in those days.

[Minimalist]

It was probably higher when it was new....it is a seismically active zone.

Probably sufficient to overawe a bunch of Judahite hicks who never saw anything more than two-storeys before.

[Doubting Thomas]

What about all the Xtian "archaeologists" who claimed to have found Noah's Ark? Why is it that we don't have hi-def photos and video of this great find?

[Something completely different]

Morocco.

Plan on going to Israel within the next few years (as long as there still is some sanity in Tel Aviv)
And I do want to visit Jordan because I heard it`s a bit more liberal than the rest and Iran because I know some exile Iranians who described the underground music, theater and bar scene as an epic expirence which could come close to the US under prohebition, with the art it brings forth becoming better and better with the regime becoming more and more repressive.