Dr. A's course in Geology arrives at Continental Drift

In the Geology Course Dr. A has been presenting at EvC for some months now, he's arrived at a history of the concept of Continental Drift, which will lead next to a discussion of Plate Tectonics as the means by which the continents do their drifting.

He does a very good job on the history of the thinking in the field that led up to and finally accepted the proposition that the continents are in fact moving apart. In my opinion this is maybe the best post he's done in this series, showing with much clarity how science works.

But of course there's always something a mainstream scientific treatise has to say that a creationist must disagree with, and as is often the case, it has to do with timing:

First there is the fact that the continents are moving right now, as can be measured by GPS (the Global Positioning System), by SLR (Satelite Laser Ranging), and by VLBI (Very Long Baseline Inferometry).

Moreover, the continents are moving at the right rate. That is, if we apply geological dating methods to see how long ago the Americas parted from the Old World, if we measure the distance across the Atlantic, and if we measure the rate of drift using GPS, SLR, and VLBI, we find the numbers to be consistent.

If this in itself is not conclusive evidence that the continents have been moving for millions of years, it is at least highly consistent with that proposition.

In this part of his discussion he hasn't actually said (a flaw in his presentation) that "the right rate" is a constant rate, but given that the rate is known to be extremely slow (he doesn't give the figure -- another flaw -- but 2-4 inches per year is I believe the recognized rate), and that the rate as he says is "consistent with" millions of years of continental drift, we can assume that this very very slow rate which is observed to be occurring now is what they have in mind for the rate of travel over all of those entire millions of years. A uniformitarian assumption.

I don't know, I haven't done the calculations and it could be that it isn't really all that consistent with their assumptions, but I'll accept that it is for the moment.

But I did in an earlier post on this subject make the calculations based on the worldwide Flood as the starting point for continental drift. The idea is that the continents split apart as a result of geological disruption of some sort connected with the Flood, some 4300 years ago, probably volcanic eruptions along the lines where the land mass split into separate continents, a disruption violent enough to set the continents adrift at a much greater rate than that at which they are still continuing to move apart. The starting rate I came up with was 1-1/2 miles per year, or 20 feet per day, which slows to the current 2-4 inches per year in the 4300 years since the Flood.

As part of the evidence for Continental Drift, Dr. A presents a diagram of the distribution of certain fossils that only makes sense if the continents were once joined as the diagram shows they most likely were at one time. Since the vast majority of the world's fossils are a record of life forms that lived before the Flood and died in that catastrophe the diagram probably gives at least a rough picture of how those life forms were distributed in the pre-Flood world --assuming the Flood didn't carry them far from their usual habitat anyway. Second thought -- based on the long narrow shape of the fossil distributions -- is that the distribution might say more about the movement of the Flood waters than the original habitat of the flora and fauna. But either situation does require the land mass to have been united in some such pattern as the diagrim illustrates for the distributions to be coherent.

Where Did All the Flood Water Go?

Yahoo! Another question answered.

Been listening to a discussion on Jan Markel's Understanding the Times radio, on the subject The Top Ten Creation/Evolution Issues with Eric Barger sitting in for her. He is interviewing creationist Jay Seegert, who has the website the Creation Education Center, where he addresses the usual problems in the creation-evolution debates with his own emphases. On the program they don't get to all the ten most frequently raised issues, only five of them.

The question that got answered in a way that so captivated me was Where did the water go after the Flood? I've never known how to answer that question and hadn't really given it much thought either, but now that I've heard Jay Seegert's answer I think how obvious it is!

The answer:

There is enough water on the earth right now that if the land areas were all flattened and completely evened out the water would cover it to a depth of 1.7 miles.

Creationists always say there were not such high mountains before the Flood as after, and that the high mountains were raised up after the Flood by plate tectonic movement set in motion as part of the whole Flood scenario, but I haven't seen that made the explanation for what happened to the Flood waters until now.

Of course, the land was rearranged after the Flood, the mountains were raised to spectacular new heights and valleys were formed to new depths, especially on the sea floor where deep trenches now lie. THAT's where all the water went.

Here's an experiment I dreamed up myself to demonstrate this: Make a thick clay type paste out of flour and water (or use modeling clay) and pat it down flat in a container to whatever depth you want, so it has a level surface. Cover it with water to a depth of oh a few inches or whatever. Don't let it stand too long or it will dilute the flour paste. Then pour out the water into a container so you have the same amount. Then gouge out deep valleys in the clay and make high mountains of the gouged-out material, keeping the same amount of clay as before. Pour back the water, the same amount of water as before. You'll have dry land and sea.

Same amount of land, same amount of water.

HOW CLEVER!

I would do a dance of joy and celebration if my arthritis didn't hurt so much.

Seegert also said that this mountain-and-valley-building event is referred to in Psalm 104 which made me skeptical at first.

The King James doesn't clearly say that:

KJV - Psa 104:8 - They go up by the mountains; they go down by the valleys unto the place which thou hast founded for them.

"They" refers to the flood waters, but there isn't anything here to suggest the mountains were higher or the valleys deeper than before.

But some of the other translations do say that. One of those few instances where the KJV translation IS inferior to the newer versions.

Some of the other translations say the same as the KJV, but most of them say the mountains rose and the valleys sank:

NKJV - Psa 104:8 - They went up over the mountains; They went down into the valleys, To the place which You founded for them.

NLT - Psa 104:8 - Mountains rose and valleys sank to the levels you decreed.

NIV - Psa 104:8 - they flowed over the mountains, they went down into the valleys, to the place you assigned for them.

ESV - Psa 104:8 - The mountains rose, the valleys sank down to the place that you appointed for them.

RVR - Psa 104:8 - Subieron los montes, descendieron los valles, Al lugar que tú les fundaste.

NASB - Psa 104:8 - The mountains rose; the valleys sank down To the place which You established for them.

RSV - Psa 104:8 - The mountains rose, the valleys sank down to the place which thou didst appoint for them.

ASV - Psa 104:8 - (The mountains rose, the valleys sank down) Unto the place which thou hadst founded for them.

YLT - Psa 104:8 - They go up hills -- they go down valleys, Unto a place Thou hast founded for them.

DBY - Psa 104:8 - The mountains rose, the valleys sank, unto the place which thou hadst founded for them; --

WEB - Psa 104:8 - They go up by the mountains; they go down by the valleys to the place which thou hast founded for them.

HNV - Psa 104:8 - The mountains rose, The valleys sank down, To the place which you had assigned to them.

[ May 22 update: After getting a typical rejoinder in my Comments section I have to add that despite all the attempts by creationists to come up with an unanswerable defense of the Flood or any other creationist claim there is always going to be an answer back that purports to be scientific. You can't "bullet proof" your Christian children as Barger and Seegert seem to expect, by having any kind of science-based answer to these things. What is your college student going to do after he's learned all these creationist answers and still someone comes back telling him he's ignorant of physics?

As Seegert points out, this area of science is historical science not the kind of science you can replicate in a laboratory, and historical science can never be proved the way laboratory science can be. So someone like my visitor can always come along and claim that the speed at which the tectonic plates would have had to move since the Flood only 4350 years ago would have generated so much heat that the oceans would have boiled and nothing could have lived afterward. He can't prove that, it's all speculation, but it sure SOUNDS scientific. Perhaps others can make calculations to counter him, but meanwhile your Christian college students are again left without a "scientific" answer.

They have to be fortified primarily with the word of God which tells us Noah and his family and many creatures did survive and go on to repopulate the earth, and, so that they won't be taken by surprise, made familiar with the fact that "science" about events in the prehistoric past cannot be definitively known, and that's the best we can do in the face of all the imaginative but unprovable speculations the other side can always generate against us.

Later yet: HOWEVER, this got me pondering what WOULD be the physics involved and I remembered some of my own speculations and other answers I'd heard in the past, and posted them in the Comments section.]