05 Jan Following The Evidence #108
Yesterday, amidst a geography lesson we discussed the value of plate tectonics as an explanation of how the flood could have occurred. However, is there any evidence that this could all occur rapidly in months and not millions of years? Yes there is! The eruption of Mt St Helens in 1980 produced a laboratory that demonstrated that deposition, sedimentation and fossil formation can occur rapidly in just months. Within decades the destroyed forests from the eruption were forming coal. However, one of the most startling features of this contemporary science lab is the rapid formation of great canyons cause by erosion in a matter of days. The sedimentary layers were exposed by the Toutle river wash out. Scientists can put dates on the various layers that cover several years, not millions of years that may have been the explanation. Had the eruption of Mt St Helens and subsequent erosion not been contemporary an evolutionary explanation would have been the most likely result. One paragraph is insufficient for such an explanation and I would direct the interested person to the following article. https://creation.com/lessons-from-mount-st-helens and this short documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGBBnhwsRKY
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, is 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.
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