Plate Tectonics explained, and Darwinists stuck on stupid exposed...again and again!
Did you know that creationists invented the scientific method, proposed and provided the majority of basic scientific laws of motion and electricity and heat and atomic structure and germ warfare and the term "natural selection?" Did you know that the first geneticist was a creationist? Creationists have been at the forefront of scientific discovery for many centuries. It was a creationist who headed up our rocketry program that led to man landing on the moon, and it was a creationist who discovered heliocentricism and postulated the true makeup of the Solar System and gravity? Only in the last century have Darwinists had the upper hand in science and they have made a complete mess of things, espousing Eugenics which has led to the murder of millions and spending untold wasted millions on scanning the skies for a message from ET and now spending much time and money and energy trying to censor creationism and ID.
Well, if you have read this blog for any length of time, you very well may know these things. If you have not been around or paying attention, a good place to start would be by reading David Coppedge.
Dmitri Mendeleev
1834 - 1907
The following quote is taken from Pioneer Explorers of Intelligent Design: Scientists Who Made a Difference by Dr. Donald DeYoung (BMH Books, 2006), p. 67.
One of 17 children, Mendeleev was told by his mother to “patiently search divine and scientific truth.” He firmly believed in Scripture, especially Proverbs 25:2 which says, “It is the glory of God to conceal a thing, but the honor of kings to search out a matter.” Mendeleev thus saw chemistry as a royal and godly pursuit. He was led to seek out the underlying order to the atomic elements based on their weights and other properties. In Mendeleev’s funeral procession in St. Petersburg, Russia, his appreciative students carried a large banner displaying the periodic table of the elements.
Coming from a religious family, Mendeleev naturally viewed the world as an orderly system amenable to scientific investigation. It is said he first got the idea of the periodic table in a dream, and the next day began working out the pattern. As he was building the table, his belief that the pattern he saw emerging would continue led him to take the intellectual leap of leaving spots blank in the table, in faith believing that elements would be discovered to fill the blank spots. He predicted the existence of gallium, germanium and scandium, for instance, and even was able to predict some their properties by interpolating from other known elements in similar positions on the table.
The story of the discovery of the periodic table is told in detail in A Meaningful World by Benjamin Wiker and Jonathan Witt (IVP Academic, 2006). They use it as one of many illustrations from history of how the arts and sciences reveal the underlying genius and meaning in nature.
After Dmitri’s death, element 101 was named Mendelevium in his honor. A crater on the moon also bears his name.
If you are enjoying this series, you can learn more about great Christians in science by reading our online book-in-progress:
The World’s Greatest Creation Scientists from Y1K to Y2K.
Copies are also available from our online store.
Creation-Evolution headlines is a fine resource that gathers information on new discoveries in science and also the ludicrous claims that Darwinists tend to make. For instance:
April 23, 2011 — The delicate yet effective choreography of DNA Damage Repair was described by Lawrence Berkeley National Lab in terms of amazement: “Safeguarding genome integrity through extraordinary DNA repair.” DNA repair is essential for health: “To prevent not only gene mutations but broken chromosomes and chromosomal abnormalities known to cause cancer, infertility, and other diseases in humans, prompt, precise DNA repair is essential.”
But can something evolve just because it is needed?
That seems an odd way to describe evolution. If evolution is a chance process with no goal or purpose, it would not care if something emerges or not. How can a mindless process “favor” a method? How would a mindless process “know” that the consequences of not having something would be terrible? How would that motivate a non-mind to produce machinery and complex mechanisms to avoid terrible consequences?Homologous recombination is a complex mechanism with multiple steps, but also with many points of regulation to insure accurate recombination at every stage. This could be why this method has been favored during evolution. The machinery that relocalizes the damaged DNA before loading Rad51 might have evolved because the consequences of not having it would be terrible.
Let’s extend this logic to other areas:
The constants of physics became fine-tuned because the consequences without it would be terrible.
Earth emerged because the consequences of not having one would be sad.
Life emerged because the consequences of not having it would be a lonely universe.
Eyes emerged because the consequences of not having them would be blindness.
Flowering plants emerged because the consequences of not having all that color would be boring.
Mathematics emerged because the consequences of not having it would make science inaccurate.
A college education emerged in your brain because the consequences of not having one would be hard on your career.
Fire trucks emerged because the consequences of not having them would be disastrous.
Missile defense emerged because the consequences of not having it could be catastrophic.
The machinery that repairs DNA might have evolved because the consequences of not having it would be terrible.
The consequences for intelligent researchers who misuse logic in support of evolutionary myths should be terrible. Instead of Charades, let’s play Truth or Consequences.
Next headline on: Cell Biology • Genetics • Darwin and Evolution • Dumb Ideas
Yep. Darwinism is consistently stuck on stupid. DNA repair mechanisms are yet another evidence for a designed world of organisms. Who do you supposed designed them?
A Catastrophic Breakup
A Scientific Look at Catastrophic Plate Tectonics
by Andrew Snelling, Ph.D.
March 20, 2007
When you look at a globe, have you ever thought that the earth looks cracked? Or, maybe the continents have reminded you of a giant jigsaw puzzle, with the coastal lines of South America and Africa seeming to fit together almost perfectly. But what did this “puzzle” of land masses look like in the past? Was the earth one big continent long ago? What caused the continents to move to their present locations? How did the global Flood of Noah’s day impact the continents?
Global investigations of the earth’s crust reveal that it has been divided by geologic processes into a mosaic of rigid blocks called “plates.” Observations indicate that these plates have moved large distances relative to one another in the past, and that they are still moving very slowly today. The word “tectonics” has to do with earth movements; so the study of the movements and interactions among these plates is called “plate tectonics.” Because almost all the plate motions responsible for the earth’s current configuration occurred in the past, plate tectonics is an interpretation or model of what geologists envisage happened to these plates through
earth’s history (Figure 1).
As hot mantle rock vaporizes huge volumes of ocean water, a linear column of supersonic steam jets shoot into the atmosphere. This moisture condenses in the atmosphere and then falls back to the earth as intense global rain. Click image to enlarge.
Slow-and-Gradual or Catastrophic?
Most geologists believe that the movement of the earth’s plates has been slow and gradual over eons of time. If today’s measured rates of plate drift—about 5–6 in (12–15 cm) per year—are extrapolated into the past, it would require about 100 million years for the Atlantic Ocean to form. This rate of drift is consistent with the estimated 4.8 mi3 (20 km3) of magma that currently rises each year to create new oceanic crust.1On the other hand, many observations are incompatible with the idea of slow-and-gradual plate tectonics. Drilling into the magnetized rock of the mid-ocean ridges shows that a matching “zebra-striped” pattern of the surface rocks does not exist at depth, as Figure 2 implies.2 Instead, magnetic polarity changes rapidly and erratically down the drill-holes. This is contrary to what would be expected with slow-and-gradual formation of the new oceanic crust accompanied by slow spreading rates. But it is just what is expected with extremely rapid formation of new oceanic crust and rapid magnetic reversals during the Flood.
Figure 1: Cross-sectional view of the earth
Click image to enlarge.
Figure 1: Cross-sectional view through the earth. The general principles of plate tectonics theory may be stated as follows: deformation occurs at the edges of the plates by three types of horizontal motion—extension (rifting or moving apart), transform faulting (horizontal shearing along a large fault line), and compression, mostly by subduction (one plate plunging beneath another).
Figure 2: Magnetic reversals
Click images to enlarge.
Figure 2: The magnetic pattern on the left side of the ridge matches the pattern on the right side of the ridge. Note there are “bands” of normally magnetized rock and “bands” of reversely magnetized rock. This sequence of illustrations shows how the matching pattern on each side of the mid-ocean ridge may have formed. In the Catastrophic Plate Tectonic model, the magnetic reversals would have occurred rapidly during the Flood.
Figure 3: Model of catastrophic plate tectonics after 15 days
Click image to enlarge.
Figure 3: Snapshot of 3-D modeling solution after 15 days. The plot is an equal-area projection of a spherical mantle surface 40 mi. (65 km) below the earth’s surface in which color denotes absolute temperature. Arrows denote velocities in the plane of the cross-section. The dark lines denote plate boundaries where continental crust is present or boundaries between continent and ocean where both exist on the same plate.
Figure 4: Model of catastrophic plate tectonics after 25 days
Click image to enlarge.
Figure 4: Snapshot of the modeling solution after 25 days. For a detailed explanation of this calculation, see Dr. Baumgardner’s paper, “The Physics behind the Flood” in Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Creationism, pp. 113-136, 2003.
A catastrophic model of plate tectonics (as proposed by creation scientists) easily overcomes the problems of the slow and gradual model (as proposed by most evolutionist scientists). In addition, the catastrophic model helps us understand what the “mechanism” of the Flood may have been.4 A 3-D supercomputer model demonstrates that rapid plate movement is possible.5 Even though this model was developed by a creation scientist, this supercomputer 3-D plate tectonics modeling technique is acknowledged as the world’s best.6
Catastrophic Plate Tectonics
The catastrophic plate tectonics model of Austin et al. described in this article begins with a pre-Flood supercontinent surrounded by cold ocean-floor rocks that were denser (heavier) per unit volume than the warm mantle rock beneath.7 To initiate motion, this model requires a sudden trigger large enough to “crack” the ocean floor adjacent to the supercontinent, so that zones of cold, heavy ocean-floor rock start sinking into the upper mantle.In this model (Figures 3 and 4), as the ocean floor (in the areas of the ocean trenches) sinks into the mantle, it drags the rest of the ocean floor with it, in a conveyor-belt-like fashion. The sinking slabs of cold ocean floor produce stress in the surrounding hot mantle rock. These stresses, in turn, cause the rock to become hotter and more deformable, allowing ocean slabs to sink even faster. The ultimate result is a runaway process that causes the entire pre-Flood ocean floor to sink to the bottom of the mantle in a matter of a few weeks. As the slabs sink (at rates of feet-per-second) down to the mantle/core boundary, enormous amounts of energy are released.8
The rapidly sinking ocean-floor slabs cause large-scale convection currents, producing a circular flow throughout the mantle. The hot mantle rock displaced by these subducting slabs wells up to the mid-ocean rift zones where it melts and forms new ocean floor. Here, the liquid rock vaporizes huge volumes of ocean water to produce a linear curtain of supersonic steam jets along the entire 43,500 mi (70,000 km) of the seafloor rift zones. Perhaps this is what is meant by the “fountains of the great deep” in Genesis 7:11. These supersonic steam jets capture large amounts of water as they “shoot” up through the ocean into the atmosphere. Water is catapulted high above the earth and then falls back to the surface as intense global rain, which is perhaps the source for the “floodgates of heaven” in Genesis 7:11.
As the ocean floor warms during this process, its rock expands, displacing sea water, forcing a dramatic rise in sea level. Ocean water would have swept up onto and over the continental land surfaces, carrying vast quantities of sediments and marine organisms with them to form the thick, fossiliferous sedimentary rock layers we now find blanketing large portions of today’s continents. Rocks like this are magnificently exposed in the Grand Canyon, for example. Slow-and-gradual plate tectonics simply cannot account for such thick, laterally extensive sequences of sedimentary strata containing marine fossils over such vast interior continental areas high above sea level.
Is Catastrophic Plate Tectonics Biblical?
The Bible does not directly mention continental drift or plate tectonics. However, if the continents were once joined together and are now apart, then the most likely time for their division was during the Flood. Some have suggested this continental division occurred after the Flood during the days of Peleg, when “the earth was divided” (Genesis 10:25). However, this Hebrew expression can also be translated to mean “lands being divided among peoples [nations],” which, according to the context, refers to the results of the Tower of Babel judgment.Conclusion
Many creationist geologists now believe the catastrophic plate tectonics concept is very useful as the best explanation for how the Flood event occurred within the biblical framework for earth’s history. This concept is still rather new, but its explanatory power makes it compelling. Additional work is underway to further refine and detail this geologic model for the Flood event, especially to show that it provides a better scientific explanation for the order and distribution of the fossils and strata globally than the failed slow-and-gradual belief. holds a Ph.D. in geology from the University of Sydney and has worked as a consultant research geologist to organizations in both Australia and America. Dr. Snelling is a professor at the Institute for Creation Research in Santee, California, and has written numerous scientific articles.
Adapted and condensed from Chapter 14, “Can Catastrophic Tectonics Explain Flood Geology?” New Answers Book by Dr. Andrew Snelling, November 2006.A Short History of Plate Tectonics
Antonio Snider’s original illustration of the continents rapidly separating during the time of the Flood.
The formerly joined continents before their separation.
The continents after the separation.Between 1962 and 1968 the current theory of plate tectonics was developed. Four independent observations were cited: (1) discovery of the seafloor’s dynamic topography; (2) discovery of magnetic field reversals in a “zebra-striped” pattern adjacent to the mid-ocean ridges (Figure 2); (3) the “timing” of those reversals; and (4) accurate pinpointing of the locations of earthquakes.3 Most geologists became convinced of plate tectonics during this short time because the concept elegantly explained these and other apparently unrelated observations.3
Footnotes
- Snider, A., Le Création et ses Mystères Devoilés, Franck and Dentu, Paris, 1859. Back
- Wegener, A., Die Entstehung der Kontinente und Ozeane, 1915. Back
- Cox, A. (Ed.), Plate Tectonics and Geomagnetic Reversals, W.H. Freeman and Co., San Francisco, California, 1973.
These observations included (1) the jigsaw puzzle fit of the continents; (2) the correlation of fossils and fossil-bearing strata across oceans; (3) similar matching magnetic patterns in volcanic rocks on each side of the mid-ocean ridges (evidence of seafloor spreading); (4) non-random distribution of most earthquakes, many occurring in narrow zones defining plate boundaries; (5) earthquakes indicating that deep ocean trenches were places where ocean mantle plunged into the earth (subduction); (6) the presence of volcanic belts adjacent to deep sea trenches (e.g., the Pacific “ring of fire”); and (7) the location of mountain belts at or adjacent to places where plates collide. Back (1) Back (2)
The Creation.com Baumgardner article provided the visual below:
A full treatment of plate tectonics here.
Plate tectonics help explain the advent of the remarkable Noahic Flood that covered the earth for 371 days with water and caused the death of all land-dwelling air-breathing vertebrates not kept safe within the Ark. In fact, modern creation science has been able to sketch a cohesive scenario that explains the Flood, the Ice Age that immediately followed it and how the Flood and the Ice Age are responsible for the fossil rock layers and for various canyons and valleys and buttes and other sedimentary rock formations around the world. The old Darwinist claims of uniformitarianism are long-falsified and the complete lack of a consistent geological column is due to the catastrophic nature of the sedimentary layers. I am confident that students of science who do their homework concerning the fossil rock layers will conclude that only catastrophism can explain them and only the Noahic Flood suffices as a sufficient cause for them.
It is only a matter of time before Darwinism becomes on of those odd beliefs that seem ridiculous to all but the few diehard adherents. Darwinists will be like buggy whips, very few of them around and most of them of no practical use. Just one more Cre-Evo post...because preposterous Darwinist claims are still more entertaining than the typical Hollywood movie...
Science Jelly Beans 04/23/2011
April 23, 2011 — Time to clear the deck again. Here’s a collection of sweet and sour news nuggets readers may wish to munch on.
- Fossils: big early spider: An exquisitely preserved spider has been found in Chinese Jurassic strata; see picture on National Geographic News. This pushes the origin of its genus back 130 million years, according to the article.
- Early man: waggle dance: Is the human mind a collective innovation, like the waggle dance of the honeybee? John Hoffecker [U of Colorado] got free rein to speculate about the “emergence” of the human brain by evolution in a Science Daily article that spoke of evolution six times and emergence three times, but never tied any genetic mutation to the ability to create stone axes, mechanical clocks, music, and space shuttles.
- Solar system: poisonous Pluto: According to Space.com, Pluto has a “surprisingly high” concentration of poisonous carbon monoxide in its tenuous atmosphere. Another surprise is that its atmosphere extends not just 60 miles above the surface, but 1,860 miles – one fourth the distance to its large moon Charon.
- Extrasolar planets: hot Jupiter shock: How can giant planets orbiting their stars closer than Mercury avoid being stripped of their atmospheres? Royal Astronomical Society reported that they create bow shocks that stream deadly ions around them. “The presence of a magnetic field could greatly reduce the amount of stellar wind the planet is exposed to, effectively acting as a shield and helping the atmosphere survive.” Incidentally, that’s what protects earth from a deadly fate. The L word life was brought up at the end of the article.
- Plant evolution: plot change: The ancestors of land plants were not stonewort-like algae after all. PhysOrg now tells us that the ancestors were actually conjugating green algae [Zygnematales] such as Spirogyra. Why the change? According to a multinational research team,
“It seems that Zygnematales have lost oogamy and their ability to produce sperm and egg cells, and instead, possibly due to selection pressure in the absence of free water, use conjugation for reproduction. Investigation of such a large number of genes has shown that, despite their apparent simplicity, Zygnematales have genetic traces of other complex traits also associated with green land plants.
Evolutionists must be getting warmer at least; PhysOrg also told its readers, “Researchers pinpoint key events in ancient plant evolution.” Those clever evolutionists are like magicians: “Researchers from the University of Florida and six other institutions have unlocked some of the key foundations for the evolution of seed and flowering plants.” Maybe your foundations don’t have locks, but the ones at Down House apparently do. - Dinosaurs: mighty mouths: Artwork of a giant Brontomerus delivering a sharp kick, sending a predator flying, accompanies an article on Live Science, “How dinosaurs got huge.” But the article is not about dinosaur kickboxing, really; it’s about what the giants had to eat to get so big. Apparently their teeth just raked in the vegetation without the need to chew it. Compare your diet with theirs: 100,000 calories a day just to stay slim.
- Marine evolution: divining plankton: According to PhysOrg, “Plankton fossils tell tale of evolution and extinction.” According to a Dr Thomas Ezard [University College London], “if we want to understand evolution fully, we need to acknowledge that not all species are one and the same. The astonishing abundance and diversity of these foraminifera provides crucial clues in awkward parts of evolution’s puzzle.”
- Fossils: tooth tales: In an article about how wear marks on teeth can provide clues to diet, PhysOrg got into all kinds of other subjects: when early man learned to cook, why gorillas prefer fruit with their sharp teeth, 14 hour days in the rainforest removing leeches, and attracting kids who love dinosaurs into careers studying evolution.
- Fossil politics: oyster climate change: According to PhysOrg, oyster reefs provide a record of past climate change millions of years ago. But according to Live Science, teens get a failing grade for not realizing that humans are responsible for climate change.
- Evolutionary theory: new law: If you thought evolution was a story of upward progress from simplicity to complexity, consider this new evolutionary law stated by Science Daily: “Successful Blueprints Are Recycled by Evolution.” This is “evolution with a twist,” said a team of evolutionists looking into “the question whether the gene regulatory programs that control this development have been ‘invented’ only once during evolution or whether they might have arisen anew in different species.” One odd finding from genetics of fruit flies: “Some of the fly species that we looked at are as closely related as humans are to other primates. Others are as distant as humans and birds.”
- Evolution and the human birth canal: According to a story on Medical Express, “Evolutionary changes that make us uniquely human – such as our large heads and narrow pelvises – may have ‘pushed’ human birth timing earlier and can be used to identify genes associated with preterm birth, a new study suggests.” It may not be clear to others if they have identified a cause, an effect, or neither.
- Marine biology: rock eyes: Chitons are “primitive” mollusks that have an ingenious sense: the ability to use calcium carbonate crystals as lenses. Live Science has a picture and description. “Chitons first appeared on Earth more than 500 million years ago,” the article claimed. “But according to the fossil record, the oldest chitons with eyes didn’t emerge until the last 25 million years, making their eyes among the most recent to evolve in animals. The eyes likely evolved so chitons could see and defend against predators, [Daniel] Speiser said.” It is plausible that these highly successful creatures never saw a predator for 475 million years – 97% of their tenure on earth?
- Solar system: fluffy cosmogony: How to solve the problem that particles don’t stick when they collide? Answer: make them fluffy, like cotton candy. That seems to be what Science Daily is suggesting. “Our study makes us even more convinced than before that the early carbonaceous chondrite rocks were shaped by the turbulent nebula through which they travelled billions of years ago, in much the same way that pebbles in a river are altered when subjected to high turbulence in the water,” someone from Imperial College London said. “Our research suggests that the turbulence caused these early particles to compact and harden over time to form the first tiny rocks.”
They appeared to just assume, however, that the rocks would stick together – an idea other studies have contradicted. But they hedged with the admission, “Our work is another step in the process helping us to see how rocky planets and moons that make up parts of our Solar System came into being.” - Origin of life: cultural entertainment: One would think that an article in Live Science would defend the idea that life emerged in mica sheets at the ocean floor. But one would be wrong. One will learn more about Helen Hansma’s taste in music and how her theory provides entertainment for the masses. The best advice she ever got: “Do an experiment poorly.”
Quotable quote: “My Mica Hypothesis for the origin of life is an entertaining and thought-provoking piece of science that interests a wide audience. It provides new ways to understand how ‘irremediable complexity’ was not necessary for the origin of life and its evolution.” Is this misquote of Dr. Michael Behe’s phrase “irreducible complexity” part of the entertainment? - Solar system origin: some truth: PhysOrg discussed “our unlikely solar system” by claiming that only 15-25% of planetary models end up with solar systems like ours – rocky planets on the inside tracks, and gas giants in stable orbits outside. “While you might be skeptical about the validity of a model that puts our best known planetary system in the unlikely basket, there may be some truth in this finding.” Whether models are the same thing as findings sounds like a good question for philosophers of science.
- Health: know thyselves: Science Daily depicted our normal flora as cheats that worked out a deal with our immune system. Quotable quote:
On a more philosophical level, [Sarkis K.] Mazmanian [Caltech] says, the findings suggest that our concept of “self” should be broadened to include our many trillions of microbial residents. “These bacteria live inside us for our entire lives, and they’ve evolved to look and act like us, as part of us,” he says. “As far as our immune system is concerned, the molecules made by gut bacteria should be tolerated similarly to our own molecules. Except in this case, the bacteria ‘teaches’ us to tolerate them, for both our benefit and theirs.”
Real science involves observation and practical application. Evolutionary theory is a useless appendage, a devil on the shoulder telling the scientist that the intelligent design so clearly evident is really Tinker Bell’s magic. Evolutionary theory gives MAD scientists* a fun game to play, a charade, a game of pretend, loosening their inhibitions as scientists, helping them feel comfortable that their entertaining myths provide “understanding” of the world. Or that some day it might. Hope rings eternal.
More, more about Darwin, More, more about Darwin, More of his SHL to see,** More of his myth who set us free.*MAD: Mutual Admiration of Darwin.
**SHL: Stuff Happens Law (09/22/2009, 09/15/2008 commentaries).
Next headline on: Fossils • Terrestrial Zoology • Solar System • Plants • Dinosaurs • Marine Biology • Cell Biology • Politics and Ethics • Education • Philosophy of Science • Darwin and Evolution • Intelligent Design • Early Man • Mind and Brain • Origin of Life • Health • Amazing Facts • Dumb Ideas
Who helped Copernicus the most to get his heliocentric message heard? Lutherans. That’s what a prominent historian of science said; see 04/30/2004.
