Genesis 1:9-10 implies there was one landmass before the flood. Geologists put forward several lines of evidence that the continents were once joined together. They call this super continent Pangaea, which is Greek for ‘All the earth.” Pangaea’s existence was first proposed in 1912 by German meteorologist Alfred Wegener as a part of his theory of continental drift. His now well documented ‘theory’ is today called, “plate tectonics” which shows the earth’s surface as consisting of a mosaic of rigid plates, each moving relative to adjacent plates. Plate tectonics is a powerful explanation of how the flood could have occurred.

At this point I need to give you a short Year 7 and 8 Geography and Geology (Science) lesson because it fits so well with the Biblical story. I teach both these subjects at school. Firstly, there are three kinds of horizontal movement of these plates; 1) extension (or rifting, moving apart), 2) transform faulting (horizontal slipping along a fault line), and 3) compression, plates crashing into each other – mostly by subduction (one plate plunging beneath another). Extension occurs as the sea floor pulls apart at rifts, or splits. Transform faulting occurs where one plate slips horizontally past another (e.g., the San Andreas Fault of California). Compression deformation occurs when one plate subducts beneath another, e.g., the Pacific Plate beneath Japan and the Cocos Plate beneath Central America, or when two continental plates collide to produce a mountain range, e.g., the Indian-Australian Plate colliding with the Eurasian Plate to form the Himalayan Mountains. Volcanoes and earthquakes often occur in regions of collision, transformation and subduction at plate boundaries.

If the movement were slow (a few centimetres a year) then the present arrangement would have taken millions of years. The plate upon which we sit is currently moving (they tell me) at about 2cm per year eastward. As we have noted, the Bible suggests the continents were once together (Genesis 1:9-10) but Biblical geology has a timeline of only thousands of years. Obviously, we now have the collision of two time frames.

A supercomputer model produced by a scientist at the Nasa Space centre has shown that tectonic plate movement, under God’s direction, could have occurred very rapidly, and “spontaneously.” This concept is known as catastrophic plate tectonics. This model begins with a pre-flood super-continent (“Let the waters… be gathered together into one place” Genesis 1:9) and dense ocean floor rocks. As the plates move rapidly, the cold dense ocean floor begins to sink into the mantle this friction generates heat (especially around the edges.) As the edges melt it begins to drag the ocean floor into the mantle (Like a conveyor). This process accelerates to metres per second. This key concept is called runaway subduction. The sinking floor displaces mantle, the edges of the supercontinent “Rift”, the “Super-continent” breaks up, then the rifting of the ocean floor exposes the hot mantle to ocean water which then vaporizes into the atmosphere as superheated steam geysers. The Bible indicates that water came from underneath “all the fountains of the great deep burst forth”? (Genesis 7:11; 8:2). This is important because there is not enough water in the water canopy for it to rain nonstop for 40 days and nights. This superheated steam would disperse, condensing in the atmosphere to fall as intense global rain (“and the flood-gates of heaven were opened” Genesis 7:11). This could account for the rain persisting for 40 days and 40 nights (Genesis 7:12).

The rifted ocean floor becomes hotter and therefore expands causing a dramatic rise in global sea levels forcing ocean water onto the land and covers everything, while depositing marine animals that are then covered in sediment and become fossils. This all happened in a matter of months not millions of years as Genesis indicates.

Is there any evidence that this could all occur rapidly I months and not millions of years? Yes there is…. MT ST HELLENS

The model also provides a mechanism for the retreat of the flood waters.
Psalm 104:6-7 describes the abating of the waters which had stood above the mountains. Verse 8 most naturally translates as, “The mountains rose up; the valleys sank down,” implying that vertical earth movements were the dominant tectonic forces operating at the close of the flood, in contrast to the horizontal forces’ dominant during the spreading phase. Plate collisions pushed up mountains.
Cooling of the new ocean floor would have increased its density, causing it to sink and thus deepen the new ocean basins to receive the retreating flood waters from the land.
Ararat” (Genesis 8:4), the resting place of the ark after the 150th day of the flood, are in a tectonically active region at what is believed to be the junction of three crustal plates.
Continental separation solves apparent geological enigmas. For instance, it explains the amazing similarities of sedimentary layers in the north-eastern United States to those in Britain. It also explains the absence of those same layers in the intervening North Atlantic Ocean basin, as well as the similarities in the geology of parts of Australia with South Africa, India, and Antarctica.

Conclusion
Early scepticism about plate tectonics has largely evaporated because the framework has such great explanatory power. The catastrophic plate tectonics model for the flood not only includes these explanatory elements, but also accounts for widespread evidence of massive flooding and catastrophic geological processes on the continents. Future refinement of the model may also help to explain the order and distribution of fossils observed in the fossil record in the context of the Genesis flood.