Pangea

The Bible does not speak directly about continental drift and plate tectonics, but if the continents were once together, as Genesis 1:9-10 suggests, and are now apart, how does that fit into a biblical view of geology with a time line of only thousands of years? 11

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Some have suggested that the continents (with their loads of flood-deposited, fossil-bearing strata) separated to their present position, for example at the time of the Tower of Babel, because Genesis 10:25 says ‘the earth was divided’ in the days of Peleg. However, the Hebrew translated ‘the earth’ can as easily refer to people (nations) divided because of Babel. Also, the short time involved would lead to enormous difficulties in accounting for the heat energy to be dissipated, not to mention the destruction at the earth’s surface that would result from rapid continent-wide motion. This would be a global catastrophe as devastating as the Noachian flood itself.

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I find it rather amusing that in one instance, and following the thrust of Answer in Genesis, that part of a supposedly literal story would resort to figurative expanation of science.

There is a research scientist named John Baumgardner, who works at the famous Los Alamos National Laboratories. His Terra computer simulation of continental drift is considered the world's best. He is also a creationist. In a year when federal grants were scarce for geologic research, Dr. Baumgardner received 120% of his proposed budget. (Terra has implications for continental ballistic missile trajectories.) He is allowed to spend up to 50% of his time on creation research. His model for Noah's Flood based on Terra involves the volcanic undersea ridge erupting all around the world at once. It predicted the presence of huge "cool" spots at the boundary of the earth's core, years before new tomagraphic imaging techniques discovered them.

There was one problem. Creationists could not prove how this eruption could have been triggered. We believed that an asteroid or comet hit the earth, maybe several at once. This is not too far-fetched, when you remember the multiple impacts we observed on Jupiter recently. http://www.etcsa.org/GJackson/PtsOfOrigin20010306.html

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Victor said:

Personally I dont subscribe to such a theory.

~Victor

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http://www.answersingenesis.org/Hom...ntinental11.asp

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1. Much geological evidence is incompatible with catastrophic plate tectonics:
   • Island chains, such as the Hawaiian islands, indicate that the ocean floor moved slowly over erupting "hot spots." Radiometric dating and relative amounts of erosion both indicate that the older islands are very much older, not close to the same age as catastrophic tectonics would require.
   • Catastrophic plate tectonics says that all ocean floor should be essentially the same age. But both radiometric dating and amounts of sedimentation indicate that the age changes gradually, from brand new to tens of millions of years old.
   • As sea-floor basalt cools, it becomes denser and sinks. The elevation of sea floors is consistent with cooling appropriate for its age, assuming gradual spreading.
   • Guyots are flat-topped underwater mountains. The tops were eroded flat from a long time at the ocean surface, and they sank with the sea floor. Catastrophic tectonics does not allow enough time for the sea mountain to form, erode, and sink.
   • Runaway subduction does not account for continent-continent collisions, such as between India and the Eurasian plate.
2. Catastrophic plate tectonics has no plausible mechanism. In particular, the greatly lowered viscosity of the mantle, the rapid magnetic reversals, and the sudden cooling of the ocean floor afterwards cannot be explained under conventional physics.
3. Conventional plate tectonics accounts for the evidence already and does a much better job of it. It explains innumerable details that catastrophic plate tectonics cannot, such as why there is gold in California, silver in Nevada, salt flats in Utah, and coal in Pennsylvania (McPhee 1998). It requires no extraordinary mechanisms to do so. Catastrophic plate tectonics would be a giant step backwards in the progress of science.

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