Download 1 The Catastrophic Plate Tectonics Model Six of the world`s top

The Catastrophic Plate Tectonics Model
Six of the world’s top creation scientists, geologists Steven Austin, Andrew Snelling and
Kurt Wise and geophysicists John Baumgardener, Russell Humphreys and Larry
Vardiman, presented the Catastrophic Plate Tectonics Model at the 3rd International
Conference on Creationism in 1994.
Background History
Over 140 years ago, before the American Civil War, there was a Bible-believing
scientist who lived in Europe named Antonio Snyder. His idea was that possibly when
God created the land on the third day of creation, that it was originally created as one
large continent rather than the seven continents that exist today. (In Genesis 1:9, God
said, “Let the waters below the heavens be gathered into one place, and let the dry land
appear.” If the water was gathered into one place, maybe the land was in the other place,
possibly meaning one large continent with inland seas.) He thought that possibly the
seven continents that exist today resulted from the breaking open of the fountains of the
deep during the Great Flood (Genesis 7:11) and these continents were moved apart
catastrophically (large scale rapid change).
His idea was published the same year (1859) Charles Darwin published his book
Origin of Species which suggested that living things came from simpler kinds of life over
long periods of time rather than being created by God. Darwin’s book quickly became
popular and so not many people read or even noticed Antonio Snider’s work. Fifty years
later, in 1909, Snider’s idea called “plate tectonics,” was rediscovered by Evolutionary
scientists. Because they believe the Earth is billions of years old so that there is time for
living things to have evolved, they also think the continents moved apart very slowly.
This idea of the Earth’s crust existing as large shifting plates is still a theory (a
well tested educated guess) but it is commonly accepted today. If we accept this theory
and view it through the truth found in the Bible, we would believe the continents moved
very quickly during the Genesis Flood around 4,500 years ago rather than slowly over
millions of years.
The Earth’s Structure
The Earth looks like a beautiful blue marble from outer space. If you were to cut
it in half, scientists believe you would find that it has several layers, not unlike a hardboiled egg. The outermost layer is a solid shell called the crust, like the shell on our egg.
The crust is fairly thin, about the same thickness as the skin of a peach is to the whole
peach. (The crust is between 3-45 miles thick and the Earth is around 4,000 miles to the
center of the Earth.)
The crust rides on the Earth’s mantle, which is like the white of the hard-boiled
egg only thicker. The mantle makes up about 70% of the interior of the Earth and is
believed to be made up of warm to hot solid rock which is under extreme heat and high
pressure from the rocks of the Earth’s crust pressing down on it.
The center of the Earth is called the core and could be thought of as the yolk of
our hard-boiled egg. Scientists believe the real core has two different parts. The outer
part nearest the mantle is believed to be made up of mostly liquid iron with a little nickel
mixed in. The weight of the crust, mantle, and outer core presses the very hot iron of the
inner core from every direction because it is at the center of the Earth. Scientists believe
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that it is squeezed so tightly due to pressure from overlaying rock, that even though it is
hot enough to be liquid, it exists as a solid. This process is called pressure freezing
because it is frozen into a solid, not because it is cold (a lack of energy), but because it is
under such great pressure that it can’t move.
The crust is made up of two types of plates which are believed to ride on the
upper portion of the mantle called the asthenosphere. It is called astheno meaning
“weak” or “feeble” because it is ‘weak’ compared to solid rock due to the presence of
water within the minerals, so the asthenosphere exists in a state between a solid and a
liquid which geologists call plastic rock.
The continental plates, which make up the continents, are made of layers of fossilcontaining sedimentary rocks (believed to have been deposited during the Genesis Flood)
over granites and metamorphic rock. These metamorphic rock layers of the continental
plates are from sedimentary rock which probably washed off the original landmass (or
supercontinent) on the third day of creation when God called it out from underneath the
ocean. The estimated 30 miles of sediments that washed off the original continent show
no traces of fossils because plants and animals had not been created yet. These sediments
were deposited as sedimentary rock which, during the Flood, experienced the heat and
pressure required to change it into the metamorphic rock we find today.
Oceanic plates, containing basalt rock, are similar in composition to the rock of
the mantle, which is thinner but heavier than the rock of the continental plates.
The oceanic plates could be compared to floor tile (thinner and heavier) and
continental plates could be compared to carpet (thicker and lighter). These pieces of
“carpet” (the continental plates) and “tile” (the oceanic plates) are believed to ride on the
plastic rock of the asthenosphere. The continental plates ride high in the mantle because
they are composed of a less dense material than the mantle rock below causing them to
float. The oceanic plates are composed of the same type of rock as the mantle but are
much cooler. Because the molecules of cooler substances are more tightly packed
together than hotter substances of the same composition, the oceanic plates are denser
than the mantle rock, thus these plates sink deeper in the mantle than the continental
plates do. (Remember, most solids sink in liquids of the same composition because the
molecules of a solid are more closely packed together and so they are more dense than
the liquid of the same composition. Water is an exception to this rule because of
hydrogen bonding and therefore ice floats.)
The oceans exist over the oceanic plates because water always moves to the
lowest possible point (pulled by gravity), the oceanic plates (the tile) are lower in the
mantle than the continental plates (the carpet). (See drawing on the next page.)
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Popularly Accepted Plate Tectonics Model
Today, scientists teach that the Earth’s crust consists of many rigid plates that
make up a very large jigsaw puzzle. Each of these plates is believed to be moving slowly
in relation to neighboring plates.
Some plates move away from their neighbor (divergent boundaries) and the
molten rock from the mantle comes up and fills the space in between, then cools, almost
like if you get cut and the blood comes up and fills in the space in between, then makes a
scab. One of the places we see this is on the ocean floor. The Mid Atlantic Ridge is a
submarine mountain range in the Atlantic Ocean that is made from mantle rock that has
filled in and cooled where the plates have spread apart from one another.
If the plates move towards their neighbor something different happens. If two
continental plates move toward one another (convergent boundaries), the edges of the
plates crumple and are pushed upward, often producing mountains. When one plate sinks
under another, it is called subduction. If a continental plate pushes against an oceanic
plate, the thinner, heavier oceanic plate sink under the lighter, thicker continental plate
producing very deep areas in the ocean called trenches. A group of volcanic islands are
often found along these trenches made from the mantle coming up through the crack
between the two plates. If plates slide by one another, they form a fault where many
earthquakes occur like the San Andreas Fault in California.
Most, but not all, scientists today believe the seven continents came from one
large “supercontinent" called Rodinia which is Russian for motherland. Evolutionist
scientists believe this happened over hundreds of millions of years. They believe the
plates have always moved at the same slow speeds at which they are moving today, about
4 inches per year. At this slow speed, it would take an ocean floor or mountain range
over 100,000,000 years to form. Considering the Earth is only around 6,000 years old,
that’s a very long time!
Catastrophic Plate Tectonic Model (CPTM)
Let’s break this name down. Catastrophic refers to large scale rapid change.
Plate refers to the plates of the Earth’s crust. Tectonic refers to building or construction.
Model refers to a hypothesis or educated guess of how things might have happened. It is
an “educated” guess because it is based on many facts that are observed today but we can
only guess from those facts and what our Bible tells us as to what may have happened in
the past. Put it all together and we have an “educated guess on how the plates of the
Earth’s crust where built through large scale rapid change, Catastrophic Plate Tectonic
Model.
The CPTM suggests that the continental and oceanic plates of the Earth’s crust
moved very quickly in the past due to the violence of the Genesis Flood. We can only
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guess at exactly how the Flood started. A popular theory with many creation scientists
today is that God chose to use a group of comets or asteroids to open the fountains of the
deep which is the first event of the Flood mentioned in the Bible (Genesis 7:11). This
idea comes from the huge craters buried deep in the rock layers found around the world,
and are believed to have formed early in the Flood. However God chose to start the
Flood, the CPTM that we are studying suggests that three things happened. For
readability, the CPTM will be written as if it happened in the way described. Please
remember, this is a good educated guess, not fact. What the Bible says is fact!
Thing One – The Ocean Plate Takes a Dive
A sudden “crack” between the continental plate and the oceanic plate got things
going with a bang. The colder, denser oceanic plate dove into the plastic upper mantle
underneath the continental plate (subduction). This happened along thousands of miles
of coastline at the beginning of the Flood. As this oceanic plate dove into the mantle, it
would have been something like a piece of tile diving into very hot thick plastic rock.
This would have made the mantle heat up even more due to friction. The hotter the
mantle would become, the thinner it would become and the faster the oceanic plate would
dive into it in a conveyor-belt-like fashion. Scientists believe it was moving over 6 feet
per second or 5-10 miles per hour!
This motion of the oceanic plates diving into the mantle caused the continental
plates that were still connected to oceanic plates in other places, to be torn apart as they
were drug toward the many “dive areas.” Because the continental plates are lighter, they
would not have been pulled completely into the mantle like the heavier oceanic plates but
they sure had some kind of ride!
The broken pieces of the continental plates became seven smaller continents.
These seven crashed into each other at times during their several months of travel.
Scientists believe the entire original ocean floor dove into the mantle and was replaced by
new oceanic plates that formed during the Flood. When all the pre-Flood ocean floors
had been replaced, the continental “sprint” would have ended.
Thing Two – Movement and Change in the Mantle and Core
The cold ocean plates plunging deep into the mantle would have reached the
vicinity of the outer core, almost 1,800 miles down, in just a couple of weeks. The huge
cold slabs would have caused cooling at the mantle-core boundary compared to the
temperatures around it. This rapid cooling and temperature differences would have
caused the liquid metals in the outer core to circulate (typically hot things rise and cooler
things sink causing convection currents and circulation). This movement of the liquid
metal in the outer core would have caused an electric field something like what is carried
in a wire attached to a battery. Electric fields cause magnetic fields to change direction
and so the Earth’s magnetic field reversed several times during the Flood.
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The magnetic field of the Earth not only protects us from cosmic radiation but
also is what makes our compasses point north. So if you had been on the ark with a
compass, you might have noticed the compass change directions from north to south and
then back again every week or two. This change occurred several times during the Flood.
Where the plates moved apart, mantle filled in the ripped Earth and started to cool
forming new rock which would become the new oceanic plates. These rocks reflect the
magnetic field of the Earth at the time they cooled. They show this flip-flopping of the
Earth’s magnetic field during this time in a zebra stripe pattern.
Thing Three – The Rains Came Down and the Floods Came Up
As the oceanic plate dove into the mantle on one side of the Earth, new ocean
floors were being made on the other side where the mantle filled in the openings between
the plates that were ripped apart (divergent boundaries). This hot mantle would come in
contact with the ocean waters forming supersonic steam jets stretching for 43,500 miles
along the seafloor rift zone encircling the planet. These steam jets would have helped to
provide the water and cloud condensation nuclei (all the dust and dirt particles that were
eroded away and carried in the steam jets into the atmosphere) for forty days and forty
nights of global rain. This would have provided enough water to produce three feet of
rain per hour globally for the full forty days and forty nights. That’s an incredible
amount of precipitation!
The land would have been quickly and violently worn away by the intense rain,
huge waves, and rapid movement of the continents. This quick, violent wearing away of
the land is called catastrophic erosion.
It would take time for the new ocean floors to cool. During this cooling time, the
rock would have been thicker, lighter, and hotter than when it cooled into a thinner
denser solid state. Because it was thicker, lighter, and hotter, this new oceanic plate
would have floated higher in the mantle than the thinner denser cooler oceanic plate,
about 3,300 feet higher, causing it to float in the mantle almost at the same level as the
land. The continental plate was no longer higher than these new oceanic plates so the
ocean water was pushed inland (encroachment – the non-football version). (Please study
the drawing below to understand better how the ocean waters were pushed inland.) The
waters prevailed for 150 days!
&ow really use your imagination and try to picture Thing One, Thing Two
and Thing Three all happening at the same time; the oceans floors plunging deep
into the mantle, supersonic steam jets spraying into the heavens, the land being torn
apart and drug in different directions sometimes crashing violently into one
another, intense inescapable global rain, devastating tsunamis, monstrous
volcanoes, and the ocean waters being pushed inland due to the new hot ocean
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floors. This was truly a horrible judgment and not a good time to be caught outside
God’s protection that was found only in the ark!
The End of the Flood
The surface of the original supercontinent had been catastrophically eroded by the
Flood and covered by almost a mile deep of new rock in most places. The new rock was
fossil-containing sedimentary rock laid down underwater from pieces of rock and sand
carried away by the Flood waters. Igneous rock formed from all the molten rock of the
mantle and cooling lava. Sedimentary and Igneous rock were changed into metamorphic
rocks when they experienced intense heat from openings in the crust below them and
pressure due to being buried by all the debris carried in the Flood waters.
Planet-wrenching earthquakes occurred, collisions of continental plates birthed
mountain ranges, and the volcanoes continued their devastation as the continents settled
into their new locations. Some of these volcanoes covered millions of square miles like
the size of several average sized states.
When all the thinner heavier original ocean floors dove into the mantle, the plate
movement would have slowly stopped. The lighter continental plates wouldn’t have slid
into the mantle. The steam jets and global rains would have stopped. As the new ocean
floors cooled, they would have become thinner and heavier causing them to sink lower
into the mantle. This would allow the ocean waters to return to their place and drain off
of the land.
Summing Up
The CPTM suggests the thinner heavier ocean floors slid into the Earth’s mantle
to leave the less dense land plates floating. Because the ocean floors slid very quickly,
we believe the land was torn apart and moved very rapidly also. The old ocean floor was
replaced by molten rock from the mantle which was thicker and less dense, so it floated
higher in the mantle causing the Earth’s ocean waters to be pushed inland. Steam jets
were caused by cold ocean water touching the hot mantle rock in cracks between moving
plates. This provided the water in the atmosphere for global rains. As the new ocean
floors cooled, they sunk lower in the mantle and the ocean waters returned to their place
over the ocean plates and off the continental plate.
Please remember, we do not know for sure this is what happened but it is a very
interesting model that bows to the authority of the Bible and tries to explain the scientific
evidence known to date. A prediction of this model was that there should still be pieces
of the oceanic plates that have not yet fully melted deep in the mantle. Recently, new
technology has allowed scientists to detect the existence of these oceanic plates deep in
the mantle near the outer core. They cannot be easily explained if the earth is old and
everything moves very slowly because they should have long since melted away if they
have been there for millions of years. It is good supporting evidence for the CPTM.
To stay informed, subscribe to Answers Magazine offered by Answers in Genesis
(answersingenesis.org) and Acts and Facts offered by the Institute for Creation Research
(icr.org) for more developments within the Biblical Scientific Creation Model of Origins.
It is an exciting time to be a Bible-believing scientist!
Special thanks to Dr. Andrew Snelling for his article Can Catastrophic Plate Tectonic Explain Flood
Geology.
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Try Terrific Terms - Take a few minutes and make sure you understand what these
words mean by drawing a line from the word in the left hand column to the definition in
the right hand column.
1. catastrophic
a. educated guess on how things might be
2. plates
b. fast and violent
3. model
c. building or construction
4. tectonic
d. earth's crust
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Check Your Understanding - To check your understanding of the material, answer the
following questions by placing the correct letter in the space below.
___ 5. Rides high and dry in the mantle because it is made up of less dense granites
mixed with other things.
___ 6. Sinks low in the mantle because it is cooler and denser.
___ 7. Runs to the lowest possible place due to gravity.
___ 8. Weak due to a lot of water in the minerals of this rock.
___ 9. A "scar" from where the earth "bled" mantle and it cooled.
___ 10 . Plates bending upward produce these.
___ 11. An ocean plate diving under another plate leaving a very deep area.
___ 12. These are formed when mantle comes up through cracks between two ocean
plates.
___ 13. Plates sliding by one another form this.
a. fault
b. Mid-Atlantic Ridge
c. land plates d. water
e. ocean plates
f. upper mantle
g. mountains h. trench
i. volcanic islands
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___ 14. What does it appear God used to shatter the crust of the earth and start the
Flood.
___ 15. The ocean water coming in contact with the hot mantle rock produced these.
___ 16. The ocean plates plunging into the mantle of the earth caused this to be ripped
apart.
___ 17. Hot new ocean floors that were bleeding out of the torn earth would have ridden
higher in the mantle causing this to happen.
___ 18. Continents were sprinting at this speed in miles per hour.
___ 19. Cold ocean plates deep in the mantle caused temperature changes in the outer
core which set up an electric field which caused this to happen and show in the new rocks
that formed.
___ 20. The number of days it took the earth's new ocean plates to cool and sink into the
mantle.
a. jets of steam
b. tsunamis
c. ocean levels rise d. Rodinia
e. 5-10
f. comets
g. Pangaea
h. 150
i. plates deep in the mantle
j. reversing magnetic field
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