Posted on 02/16/2005 4:43:26 PM PST by DannyTN
© Copyright 2005 Institute for Creation Research. All Rights Reserved
An ongoing enigma for the standard geological community is why all the high mountain ranges of the worldincluding the Himalayas, the Alps, the Andes, and the Rockiesexperienced most of the uplift to their present elevations in what amounts to a blink of the eye, relative to the standard geological time scale. In terms of this time scale, these mountain ranges have all undergone several kilometers of vertical uplift since the beginning of the Pliocene about five million years ago. This presents a profound difficulty for uniformitarian thinking because the driving forces responsible for mountain building are assumed to have been operating steadily at roughly the same slow rates as observed in today's world for at least the past several hundred million years.
But the uplift history of today's mountains is anything but uniformitarian in character. Observational evidence indicates that the terrain where these mountains now exist, in many if not most cases, was nearly flat and near sea level when the recent intense pulse of uplift began. The expectation of uniformitarian thinking generally is that most of the time denudation by erosion ought to be more or less in equilibrium with uplift.
This lack of agreement between field observation and uniformitarian expectation has led to conflict among specialists in the ranks of the larger earth science community. Theorists who address these matters, confident that their uniformitarian models are sound, tend to ignore the observational reports or reinterpret them as much as they can to match the predictions of their theories. Geomorphologists who focus on this topic, on the other hand, confident their observations correspond to reality, tend to dismiss the explanations of the theorists as hopelessly out of touch with the real world. However, because of the specialization that typifies most of science today, a sizable fraction of the earth science community is largely oblivious that the uplift history of today's mountains is even an issue at all.
This disconnect between the uniformitarian theorists and uniformitarian observationalists on the issue of mountains is nicely documented in a recent book by Cliff Ollier and Colin Pain entitled, The Origin of Mountains.1 The authors are geo-morphologists who focus on field data relating to the processes such as faulting, uplift, volcanism, and erosion that sculpt mountains. In their book they repeatedly relate how geological features they and other fellow geomorphologists observe in the field fail to match the explanations of their theorist colleagues. Yet in the end they offer no suggestion as to how the disparity between the existing uniformitarian theories and their observational data can be resolved, or where the errors in the theoretical framework might lie.
The Biblical record concerning the Flood that destroyed the earth and its inhabitants in Noah's day just a few millennia ago, however, provides a straightforward and credible way of resolving this uniformitarian impasse. In a nutshell, the catastrophic processes unleashed in the Flood not only deposited thousands of feet of fossil-bearing sediments on all the continents and moved North and South America some 3000 miles westward relative to Europe and Africa, but also increased the thickness of the buoyant crustal rock in the belts where high mountains now exist. When the catastrophic driving processes shut down, the zones with the thickened crust promptly moved toward a state of what is called isostatic equilibrium, resulting in many thousands of feet of vertical uplift of the surface.
The principle of isostatic equilibrium is similar to Archimedes' principle concerning objects that float. According to Archimedes' principle, the weight of a floating object equals the weight of the volume of fluid it displaces. For example, an ice cube, weighing one ounce and floating in water, displaces exactly one ounce of water. Because the density of ice is about 10% less than that of water, its volume for an equal weight is about 10% greater. From Archimedes' principle one can calculate the fraction of the ice cube that extends above the water surface. It is about 10%.
The principle of isostasy is very similar. It states that when in isostatic equilibrium, all columns of rock of equal cross sectional area (including any height of water that may be present) lying above some "compensation depth" in the earth weigh the same. The compensation depth is a point sufficiently deep in the mantle such that the rock is warm enough and therefore weak enough to flow plastically so as to relax any horizontal differences in hydrostatic pressure. This principle simply expresses the fact that when horizontal pressure differences are relaxed, the pressure at depth is equal to the total weight per unit area in the column above.
To apply this principle it is helpful to realize that the ground beneath our feet consists of two primary kinds of rock. One type, known as continental crust, rich in quartz and feldspar minerals, has a typical density of 2800 kg/m3. The other type is mantle rock containing denser iron-bearing minerals with a typical density about 20% higher, or 3400 kg/m3. Areas away from mountain belts such as the U.S. Midwest commonly display a crustal thickness on the order of 35 km. Mountain belts, however, frequently have crustal thicknesses greater than 50 km and sometimes as much as 70 km. Under conditions of isostatic equilibrium, continental regions with thicker crust usually display higher surface topography. For example, relative to a region with a 35 km crustal thickness, a zone with a 60 km crustal thickness, for the densities quoted above, would have a surface 14,500 feet higher.
So what is behind the uniformitarian puzzle concerning the uplift history of today's mountains? In terms of the time scale, it is useful to stress the vast difference between modern uniformitarian geology on one hand and the Biblical account of earth history on the other. Uniformitarians interpret the rock record since the abrupt appearance of multi-celled organisms in the rocks to represent more than 500 million years of time, while Biblical creationists interpret all but the topmost of these fossil-bearing rocks to represent the destructive work of a year-long global cataclysm that took place less than 5000 years ago. The Pliocene-Pleistocene timing of the main phase of mountain uplift, corresponding roughly to the Ice Age, while brief in the uniformitarian framework, still requires several million years on their calendar. By comparison, in the Biblical time frame, this uplift unfolds over several centuries following the main Flood cataclysm that itself lasted but a single year.
The case is compelling that the Flood involved massive tectonic transformation of the earth's surface. Many lines of evidence show that today's igneous ocean floorall of ithas formed via seafloor spreading since roughly mid-way through the Flood. This implies that all the ocean floor formed prior to that point in earth history, including all the ocean floor formed at Creation and existing at the beginning of the Flood and all the ocean floor formed during the interval in which Paleozoic sediments were being deposited on the continents during the earlier stages of the Flood, has vanished from the face of the planet. Seismology provides a clue as to where it went. Seismic images of the mantle reveal a ring of dense, presumably cold, rock at the base of the mantle beneath the subduction zones surrounding the Pacific Ocean.
It has long been my conviction, along with several of my ICR colleagues, that the only way to fit all these observations together in a consistent manner is to conclude that the Flood involved an episode of extremely fast plate tectonics that cycled the pre-Flood ocean floor, as well as that formed early in the cataclysm, into the earth's mantle.2 The energy to drive this event was readily available in the form of gravitational potential energy of the cold, pre-Flood ocean floor rocks. The stress-weakening tendency of silicate minerals comprising mantle rocks allows the process to unfold in a runaway manner.3 Laboratory experiments document that these minerals can weaken by as much as 8-10 orders of magnitude for shear stress levels that can occur in the mantles of planets the size of the earth.
Calculations performed over the past decade show that the pattern of flow generated by subducting seafloor around a Pangean-like supercontinent similar to the one we believe existed prior to and again during the Flood, pulls the continental blocks apart in a manner similar to that indicated by the earth's present day seafloor record.
In addition, the huge amount of subduction at continent margins during an episode of runaway sinking of ocean floor leads to considerable thickening of the continental crust via two main processes. One is the melting of subducted sediments as they reach a depth of about 75 miles. This magma penetrates into the crust above as sills and dikes, with some being extruded at the surface as lava and volcanic ash. The other main process is the physical dragging of warm and ductile lower crust inboard relative to the continent by the subducting ocean slab. Both processes serve to produce zones of thickened continental crust at a continental margin adjacent to where slabs of ocean floor are plunging into the mantle. The west coast of South America is a prime illustration, where the crust has reached thicknesses of up to 70 km.
During the rapid subduction, the overlying continental surface tends to be depressed, even below sea level, due to the powerful dynamical forces produced by the sinking ocean slab below, despite the buoyancy of the thick layer of continental crust above. But when the process of rapid subduction shuts down, these dynamical forces disappear, and the buoyancy forces take over to elevate the zone of thickened crust toward a state of isostatic balance. The uplift of high mountains at the close of this episode of rapid subduction is therefore a logical after effect of this runaway process. Within the Flood framework, the timing of the uplift, unfolding in the centuries following the cataclysm, is just what one should expect based on simple mechanics considerations. On the other hand, no mechanical response in terms of uplift during tens of millions of years of tectonic forcing followed by a sudden pulse of uplift poses a serious problem for the uniformitarian framework.
Yet an equally bewildering difficulty for a uniformitarian is the widespread presence of what are known as planation surfaces that pre-date this global pulse of mountain building. Ollier and Pain document dozens of examples where regions that were later uplifted to form mountain ranges were first beveled to nearly flat surfaces by intense erosion just prior to uplift. These authors puzzle how the tectonic forces could have ceased operating long enough for erosion to have abraded away hundreds to thousands of feet of rock to form flat topography and then be unleashed again to uplift rapidly the entire region by many thousands of feet. The Flood framework provides the obvious answer. The beveling flat of such broad expanses of terrain was the logical consequence of the runoff from the Flood. And it would have occurred just prior to when the uplift took place.
Whitcomb and Morris, 45 years ago in their classic book, The Genesis Flood, pointed out the remarkable timing of the uplift of the present mountains as being after the Flood. They write, "It is extremely interesting . . . to note that most of the present mountain ranges of the world are believed to have been uplifted (on the basis of fossil evidence) during the Pleistocene or late Pliocene."4 They then quote a paper that provides documentation from North America, Europe, Asia, South America, and Africa. Surely it is time for evolutionists as well as creationists to give attention to this evidence that so strongly supports a recent global Flood.
References
Ollier, Cliff, and Colin Pain, The Origin of Mountains, Routledge, London, 2000.
Austin, Steven A., John R. Baumgardner, D. Russell Humphreys, Andrew A. Snelling, Larry Vardiman, Kurt P. Wise, "Catastrophic Plate Tectonics: A Global Flood Model of Earth History," Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Creationism, 1994, Creation Science Fellowship, Inc., Pittsburgh, PA.
Baumgardner, John, "Catastrophic Plate Tectonics: The Physics behind the Genesis Flood," Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Creationism, 2003,
Creation Science Fellowship, Inc., Pittsburgh, PA. Whitcomb, John C. and Henry M. Morris, The Genesis Flood, Presbyterian and Reformed, pp. 127-128, 1961.
* Dr. John Baumgardner is Associate Professor of Geophysics at the ICR Graduate School and Director of the new ICR Computing Center.
I find that offensive, should I ask the mods to move this "article" to the SBR?
OK, give it to me in 25 words or less.
There's actually a whole page devoted to the Hot Spot flamewar (it's as big and nasty as academic debates get, really interesting.)
http://www.mantleplumes.org/
It turns out that a lot of what were believed to be hot spots really aren't, that a lot of "hot spots" actually don't extend all the way to the mantle, and most interestingly, a lot of hot spots seem not to be fixed with respect to the plates passing over them...they wander themselves.
Origin of the Rockies is interesting in that it's a bit more complicated than most mountain ranges....they're pretty far inland. I think the most current theory is a VERY shallow subduction of the Farallon plate.
Pretty cool. :-)
Thanks for the info. I OTHO, was the black sheep of the family. I did not continue the tradition of studying the Earth, but popped over to the space side of things. :-)
Well, actually there is. When the glaciers melted at the end of the last ice age, there "was" widespread flooding over large parts of the earth, and much land that was above sea level was submerged. A lot of that land was probably occupied by humans, and the oral transmission of the histories of the survivors probably was the source of the "universal flood" legends in many or most religions.
YEC SPOTREP - Survive
I was referring to the ENTIRE earth...
There's no evidence that at any point in the history of earth was there no land surface and nothing but Ocean.
There have been plenty of really big glacier-burst floods, and transgressions of oceans on continental shelves and such...I agree that some of these may contribute to the flood myths of the various societies that have them.
It's David Copperfield Science: what flim-flam patter do I use to get the punters to accept the illusion I'm creating of the Earth being only 6000 years old?
Can you say "Lysenko" boys and girls? (I knew you could.)
Look it up--that's what you are advocating. Held back scientific progress for a couple of generations.
LOL
These will make for fun reading. I grabbed them all off the internet. Can't vouch for the sources. But apparently the Chinese writings do include the flood.
1)Post flood origins of Chinese History"
2)Chinese ancestors came from Red Sea area?
3)Early records of Far Eastern civilizations present a similar pattern of gross unreliability. The historian, Henry Lucas, says in his book, "A Short History of Civilization:" "The study of early Chinese history is attended with almost insuperable difficulties. The numerous literary accounts of ancient Chinese writers cannot be trusted, and their statements that Chinese culture dates from hundreds of thousands of years B.C. should be received with skepticism. The oldest historical classic is the 'Shu Ching,' or, 'Book of History,' by Confucius. This purports to date from 22505 B.C., but is actually of late composition. "That the 'Shu Ching' contains elements of truth is not to be denied, but it is difficult to separate the grains of historical fact from the chaff of literary embellishment."
4)The records of Chinese dynasties dating back to the twenty-forth century BC place the ascent of Yao to the throne in 2357BC and record a great deluge occurring within his reign. Our date for the Noachian deluge is 2348BC, within the reign of Yao. His son and successor was Shumthe name of Noah's son was Shem. Another account shows Yao reigning after the Flood to the very year that Noah died, while his successor reigns 146 years after him, to within a few years of the death of Shem. The correspondence between these Chinese dates and Bible chronology is remarkable, and amounts to much more than mere coincidence.
5)It is reported that there is independent historical confirmation of a long day in the writings of other people. See Arthur Gook, Can A Young Man Trust His Bible?, (London: Pickering and Inglis Ltd.). Gook comments as follows: "There were three ancient nations in the East which kept records of their history---the Greeks, The Egyptians and the Chinese. Each of these nations has a record of an unnaturally long day. Herodotus, 480 B.C. a Greek who is called 'the father of history,' tells us that some priests in Egypt showed him a record telling of the lengthening of a day far beyond the twenty-four hours. In the Chinese ancient writings it is plainly stated that such an occurrence took place in the reign of their Emperor Yeo, and their genealogical tables show that an Emperor of this name was reigning in China in the time of Joshua. Lord Kingsborough, who has made a special study of the aboriginal Indians in America, states that the Mexicans, who reached a high state of civilization long before America was discovered by Europeans, have a record that the sun 'stood still' for a whole day in the year which they call 'seven rabbits.' Now, the year 'seven rabbits' corresponds exactly with the time that Joshua and the Israelites were conquering Palestine." p. 43. Return
He's not a Southern Baptist. He's with a group that left the Southern Baptists when the rest of us refused to water down the scriptures. His group is turning a blind eye to homosexual practices in their churches. They haven't actually condoned homosexuality yet, but they've adopted a wink, wink, don't ask, don't tell policy toward church leaders.
Do you think the Deity has no sense of humor? He created the platypus and aardvark, didn't he?
And he did this about a week ago Tuesday, 'long about 9:43 AM (Pacific standard time, of course; right in the middle of Rush).
But, being a perfectionist, he created a perfect fossil record, all the background details, and intact memories in each of us--so we won't know it was just last week!
This is what I believe. Disprove it if you can!
I believe the fossil record records something other than what the science of the last 200 years says it does. And I believe the Bible forecast that this would occur 2000 years ago in 2 Peter 3 when Peter said people would forget creation and the flood because they assumed everything continued as it has from the beginning. That's a perfect discription of the uniformitarin view.
I don't think I've lost all sense of Humor. But it does kind of gall me that DallasMike and crew continue to call themselves Baptists, when they don't believe what Baptists have always believed.
"A Biblical interpretation of China's village culture must necessarily cut 3,000 years off the current reconstruction of that nation's Neolithic era."
What's 3000 years amoung friends ...
Actually I see science moving back towards scripture every year.
There is greater recognition of the role of Catastrophism in the formation of the fossil record than there has ever been.
Also, there is greater recognition that there are problems with individual dating methods. Science is far from giving up the house of cards they've built, but there are individual admissions that certain technigues have problems.
The jury's still out, as far as I'm concerned. Too many holes. Ever hear of Peleg? Guy in the Bible. He was called Peleg because the land was divided in his time. Sudden continental drift? Punctuated Geological Equalibrium? But hey, here's an idea: Maybe we can all find out without all the name-calling and refusal to see another's viewpoint. Or are all the evolutionist/this-is-how-it-was-'cuz-science-said-so-even-though-there-are-holes crowd afraid of a little history?
No have idea what DallasMike and crew believe in terms of Baptist dogma, but am somewhat familar with scientific method and principles, and the results thereof pertaining to evolution.
Your wrote: "I believe the fossil record records something other than what the science of the last 200 years says it does."
I am one of those (even if on the periphery) who interpret the fossil record. I do other things now, but I once studied and taught physical anthropology/evolution. If there is some secret cabal that holds underground meetings to force everyone to espouse the same thing, nobody invited me!
I think that the vast majority of those who espouse evolution (note I didn't say "believe in" evolution)--when that vast majority of scientists who espouse evolution come to pretty much the same conclusion then there is most likely something there. If I could make a name for myself by publishing a scientific paper (i.e., one which withstands testing and criticism), I would be right there doing so, but would probably be trampled by a few thousand of my colleagues.
The point: Scientists want to get it right (and to be first to do so). There is no lasting credit in being wrong, lying, fabricating data, etc. In the long run, that is doomed to abject failure--the dustbin of scientific history. For example, Piltdown Man was outed after a few years, even if the official dismissal took a couple of generations.
There is no grand conspiracy to disprove any particular dogma or belief. Rather, scientists in the long run go where the evidence points, and they change their minds when they are shown to be wrong. That is the principle of "falsifiability."
On the other hand, belief in the Bible or creation science, etc., does not follow this principle. To those who believe, there is no way to falsify their belief. Fine. But, this is where they differ from science, and they should not call their field "creation science."
Anyway, its late and I haven't shaved. Thank you for a nice, polite discussion.
The Grand Canyon was formed by the land lifting up and the river trying to maintain its level, not by the river digging down that far.
The story of Noah basically came from stories in the Middle East that arose about the filling of the Black Sea. The Black Sea was a large lake in a depression that was right next to the Mediterrean Sea. Eventually the Mediterrean rose and reached the dropoff into the depression (Where Istanbul is- the Bosporous). It filled up quickly (matter of weeks or months)and the shore could have risen several feet a day. Ballard (the guy who found the Titanic) has found remains of ancient huts somewhere around 5000 years old several hundred feet below the surface. over time, these tales got transformed into the story of Noah.
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