Alpha Series Plate Tectonics and the BiblePlate Tectonics and the Bible alpha6 connexions PeterDennis Alpha Series 2 The Bible is God’s witness to His people. It was written by His

Plate Tectonics and the Bible

alpha6 connexions

PeterDennis

Alpha Series

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The Bible is God’s witness to His people. It was written by His prophets, kings, farmers, tax collectors, fishermen, clergy, administrators and doctors, to His people, to all those who will one day inherit eternal life. It contains the words of life with life-stories, visions, songs of praise, poems and promises. Its words are eternal and cannot be altered. The Bible is authoritative, trustworthy, healing, forgiving, cleansing and full of faith and hope.

Woven among its pages are everyday observations of the world the people lived in thousands of years ago. Captured in a brief moment of time, those accounts tell us something of who we are, where we come from and where we are going. The Bible is also full of eye-witness accounts of the physical world around God’s people. He created the world and He is able to maintain it, despite having cursed it because of our sin.

There are a number of direct observations in Scripture concerning the environment. There are also a significant number of accounts which imply a bigger picture. One of those accounts is in regards to the Genesis Flood, of the time of Noah. Genesis 6,7,8. The Bible provides us with three chapters of detail, but the detail is limited to Noah and his family and his generation. But even in this small setting, there are a number of statements that guide us into a bigger picture, something happening beyond Noah and His environment. Those comments are like little gems hidden, waiting for someone to take up their cause and push them into the Son-light of God’s plan for the redemption of a fallen world on a global stage.

Jesus is the First Cause. He is the reason there is a planet, and He is the ultimate destination

The Bible and Plate Tectonics

for all those who put their trust in Him. The Bible reveals to us that God is One, Elohim. This word is plural and personal. God is not well described in the Old Testament because Jesus has not yet been revealed as the Saviour. Two thousand years ago, when Jesus was born and brought the message of good news, one of His teachings was on the Trinity: the Father, Himself and the Helper also known as the Holy Spirit. John 14:16. More about this relationship in the booklet of the same series, God. Jesus is God revealed to us. He is the only means we have of being forgiven of our sins and being adopted into God’s eternal family. On a number of occasions, Jesus declares Himself as God, for He said, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father ... I am in the Father and the Father is in Me.” John 14:9,10,11 and, “I and the Father are One.” John 10:30. “Before Abraham was born, I am.” John 8:58. Jesus is the One that created the world, the plants and animals, as well as Adam and his wife, Eve.

The idea of plate tectonics is a recent proposal. It is not mentioned in the Bible, but this does not mean the Bible is silent on the matter. There are a number of events recorded that infer a greater geological process.

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Back to the Beginning from the End

When God created the Earth and everything that is in it, both visible and invisible, He described it as ‘very good.’ It was until Adam and his wife, Eve, disobeyed the single commandment not to eat a certain fruit. From then, the planet was suddenly cast into a controlled chaos. A curse was pronounced upon the Earth, not because God wanted to curse everything He had made, but in His mercy He cursed it so we would understand how serious sin is and how painful it was to God that the most precious creation in His vast portfolio had turned its back on Him. Sin separates us from the holiness and purity of God. Somehow we had to learn the true cost of sin. The pain and sorrow God experienced came from loss of relationship with us. Although God was still fully in control of the situation, He was standing in the background, making sure life continued, waiting and ready to get involved when His people asked Him to. His divine purpose was to produce a people who would willing choose God, not from necessity or force, but from love and a desire for truth and relationship.

When examining tectonic processes of the past, we need to review the present. The planet is slowly running out of energy (this is not a significant problem), as the internal heat is lost through radiation into space.

Today, Earth is a fragmented sphere orbiting the Sun (similar to us). Its outer crust is broken up into a collection of large and small fragments called plates. New Zealand straddles two plates, the Indo-Australian and the Pacific. The South Island has a transform plate boundary that stretches from Milford Sound to Blenheim. The geology of Northwest Nelson was once adjacent to Southland. Within that fault line, there is a 480 km long lateral displacement of strata.

South Island’s Alpine Fault, showing the clear boundary between the Indo-Australian and Pacific

plates. Mt Cook is shown.Adapted from a NASA image

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Around the world, some plates are travelling northwest, some southeast, others are migrating north, some plates may even be in the process of splitting in half. The speed of the plates is measurable.

Earthquakes and volcanoes line many of these plate boundaries, in fact it was these two phenomena that alerted scientists to a connection.

In the middle of the Pacific Ocean, there are three patterns of undersea volcanoes that strongly suggest that the Pacific plate has changed direction midway through its original journey. The islands of Hawaii are the tail end of a bent line of volcanoes, with a kink halfway along the sequence. The submarine chain is called the Emperor-Hawaiian seamounts (above). The chain starts off the eastern end of Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula. This 1250-kilometre-long peninsula is above a subduction zone, where the Pacific plate is being pushed down under the Asia plate. The submarine chain clearly tells us there has been one major period of geological stability concerning the Pacific plate, during the migration of the plate. This is most likely connected to the Genesis Flood.

beside: the two parts of the Emperor and Hawaiian seamount

chains, broken by an abrupt change in

direction

Using this and many other little clues, we realise that something of great geological significance happened in Earth’s early history. Reading through the Bible we find possible answers.

In Genesis 1:9, the waters are described as being in one place. This may mean there was a supercontinent, however, this is a very large application of a single verse, particularly when considering that most of the context in the Bible refers to the ‘known’ world when describing general events. The famine of Egypt and Nebuchadnezzar’s dominion are two examples.

Getting back to the Emperor-Hawaiian seamounts. The seamounts before the change in direction are mostly spaced at regular intervals, as if the Pacific plate was on a conveyor belt. But after the change in direction, the first few seamounts are widely spaced, and then they get closer together. This suggests that the mechanism that was driving the Pacific plate was losing energy and slowing down. Currently, the plate seems to have stalled and the biggest island of the entire chain has produced Hawaii, the Big Island. A small extension of the island is now forming nearby underwater, to the southeast.

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Interpretation NeededEarth’s geological history is not an easy book to read. It requires interpretation. There are two pairs of glasses we could put on to read this book. The first and most popular is Man’s interpretation. It is a method of interpretation that seeks to reduce and even remove God from anything to do with this world. It is driven by a philosophy that removes accountability to our Creator, enabling us to live our lives without restrain. We see this in the ungodly laws currently being passed around the world. This method was attempted once before, at the time of Nimrod. It did not succeed then, and it certainly won’t succeed now. The Bible has already addressed what will happen to all lawless and ungodly people.

The second pair of glasses is the Bible. It is a historical record of what has happened over much of Earth’s history. It begins with a six day period of Creation. Then a period of at least 1600 years of relative stability. That ended with a global flood that completely changed the face of the Earth. There have been many isolated geological events since that time, such as the events that surrounded the Exodus of God’s people from Egypt and the influence of Venus and Mars at least 2700 years ago.

In regards to the first tectonic movements, there is a possibility that the initial movement began with the curse of the planet. This might be inferred by the breakup of the original supercontinent – if there was one, Pangaea. This initial breakup continued until the Genesis Flood of Noah’s time. This event could be connected to the first stage of the Emperor-Hawaiian seamount chain and even the separation of New Zealand from Australia.

The generalised sequence could then be outlined:

1. Pangea – formed at the beginning, during Day Two.

2. Pangaea broke up into two smaller supercontinents: Laurasia and Gondwana, at the time of the Curse, soon after

Creation3. The supercontinents of Laurasia and

Gondwana further broke up at the time of Noah. The process was rapid, in the order of months, initially with a lot of energy, injected by cosmic collisions. Mountain ranges, supervolcanoes, megatsunami and hypercanes resulted. New oceans opened up. Sea floor was raised up to the highest

mountain tops by tectonic movements.4. World climate changed, greenhouse

atmosphere was gone, Great Ice Age, subsequent climates ranged from tropical to temperate, to polar, began their regular

cycles.

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This was a global catastrophe, made famous by the account left us by Noah and his three sons. There are a number of indicators that suggest this geological event was global, not local as some claim.

The first evidence from the Bible is that the atmosphere collapsed and the fountains of the deep erupted into massive geysers. There are still vast subterranean regions with high water content. However, these are not in caverns.

The second evidence is that as the flood rose, the highest mountains / hills were covered. In Hebrew, the word Har is used. This word does not distinguish between hills or mountains. The topography of the world is likely to have been low lying before the Flood.

The third evidence is that Noah’s Ark landed on the mountains of Ararat / Urartu. There are two possible location sites for the final resting place of the Ark. The mountains of Ararat, the traditional site, are volcanic. If the Ark landed here, the mountain is likely to have still been erupting. A very unlikely scenario, considering the Ark was God’s greatest treasure at the time. The other possible location is the Zagros mountains to the southeast (shown in dark brown). These are tectonic mountains, formed by the uplifting of crust during the final stages of the Genesis Flood.

Genesis Flood – Biblical Record

The idea of a local flood is recent. In the 1920’s, Leonard Woolley discovered a thick layer of mudstone in Mesopotamia. His wife immediately declared that this was the sediment caused by Noah’s Flood. It is more likely to have been a sedimentary layer caused by the sudden collapse of a melt-water lake at the end of the Great Ice Age.

Pohutu geyser, Te Puia, RotoruaWere the geysers during the Genesis Flood

geothermal as they came from underground?

Zagros Mountains

Ararat

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Genesis Flood – Geological and Tectonic

Evidence1. Fossil Remains: the vast majority of fossils found around the world are encased in sedimentary rock. And of these, the vast majority of them are shells and animals that were ocean-floor dwellers.

Many of the fossil beds are extensive fossil cemeteries, where animals have been violently mixed together. Sometimes the animals that have been identified don’t even live together in the same ecosystem today. The reason is that they have adapted to new environments and climatic pressures. In one place, South Carolina, a hadrosaur and human were found together (above right). This has been described in a book written about the phosphate mining in 1870. Coal is another form of fossil. Most coal is the product of plant biomass changed by heat and/or pressure. 861 billion tonnes of coal is estimated to still exist underground (2008, World Energy Council). Coal has been formed from plant material, buried in flood conditions.

2. Sedimentary Layers cover approximately 75% of the Earth’s land surface. The layers extend hundreds of metres deep and are multi-layered with no evidence of ancient soils between them.

3. While the layers were still soft and plastic, tectonic forces reshaped them into folds and faults. Brittleness in old layers would have produced major shattering as the folding process occurred (below: Eastern Beach, Auckland). There are several other excellent locations around New Zealand that demonstrate this fact, including within the Southern Alps.

4. Fossils of fish, corals and limestone are sometimes found at the top of many significant mountain ranges, including Mt Everest, Mt Cook and in Tibet (below: fossilised coral from Tibet).

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5. Biogeographical Disjunction. This phenomena is particularly relevant to New Zealand (Astelia sp. maps show before and during the Genesis Flood). The South Island has been split by a 600 km transform fault. What has got our attention is that over 30 species of plants and animals have been isolated on either side of the fault, separated by over 460 km. This strongly suggests that not all plants and animals were liquidated at the time of Noah’s Flood. Some isolated parts of the landmass survived, but Noah did not see them and so he did not comment on their existence. The heat generated by the rapidly moving plates sterilised the earth killing everything within an estimated ten kilometres either side of the fault. The plates moving at walking speed and the divided populations had no way of continuing to breed as they rapidly moved apart, similar to a conveyor belt.

Another example of biogeographical disjunction is the separation of Hector’s dolphins in New Zealand. Before the Great Ice Age, the dolphins were located around central New Zealand. When the Great Ice Age happened, the sea levels sank and the population was divided into two: east and west.

left: original population before the Genesis Floodright: during the Genesis Flood

below: two resulting populations adapted independently

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three of the four species of banded penguin:

Galapagos, Jackass and Humboldt

6. Distribution of plants and animals. There are many examples of closely related animals on neighbouring continents, separated by hundreds or thousands of kilometres of ocean. These include: penguins; baobab trees, a.k.a. ‘upside-down tree’; beech forests; velvet worms; manuka; dolphins (opposite page); podocarps, such as totara and miro; pingao; kauri; whitebait fish; and many more.

Caecilians are a legless amphibian. As with other amphibians, their skin is sensitive to salt water. They would quickly dehydrate in salty water. The best explanation for their distribution in tropical countries is that they survived on dry land during the Genesis Flood.

There are many other examples of non-migratory animals that breathe through the nose, are sensitive to salt water and found around the world, in locations that are inaccessible to Ararat. New Zealand’s frogs could also be included in this group.

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Plate Tectonics – the theory

The theory of plate tectonics has been with us since the mid-1960’s. Before tectonic theory, there were ideas that came and went. Two of those ideas were Land-Bridges and Continental Drift.

Observations had been made for several centuries about plants and animals, both extinct and extant, that lived on neighbouring continents, but separated by thousands of kilometres of ocean. The outline of continents either side of the Atlantic Ocean had also been commented on, but an investigation into any deeper significance was not possible prior to WW2.

Two Christian scientists, Francis Bacon and Antonio Snider-Pellegrini, were among the first to comment on the similarities. Snider-Pellegrini even drew up a theoretical model of the continents moving (pictured above). Fifty years after Snider-Pellegrini, Alfred Wegener proposed the theory of Continental Drift. In his theory he presented lots of evidence that the continents had moved. But his theory lacked a

The marsupials are an interesting category of animal. They are found mostly in Australia (70%) with some in South America, one species in North America, with fossilised remains found around the world, including India. It would appear that before the Genesis Flood, marsupials were much more widespread than today. The Flood ended the wide distribution of them. Somehow they survived in Australia, and a small number of oppossum-like animals survived in South America (it had once been part of Gondwanaland with Australia). The American animals are easily explained as having crossed from South America, after the present continents rested in their current, final locations.

There are a number of reasons why the likelihood of Australia’s ancestral marsupials being in the Ark is very small.

In Indonesia, there are three biographical lines that have been recognised, of which the Wallace Line was the first and is the most well-known. During the Great Ice Age, the

marsupial mammals were already on the Australian continent and had free range up into New Guinea, due to low sea levels (at least 100m lower than today’s sea levels). To the west, along Malaysia and the western islands of Indonesia, only placental mammals can be found. They are the animals most likely to have been in the Ark, arriving at the Wallace Line a few hundred years after being released by Noah. If there were marsupials in the Ark, they have since become extinct. Placental mammals tend to be more competitive than marsupials.

sea levels during the Great Ice Age

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The evidence was mounting and needed to be examined in the light of Earth’s dynamic history. Although it was widely acknowledged that the continents were not and could not move through the crust, a new idea about the crust being divided up into large sections called plates, began to form. So, instead of the continents moving, it was the plates that the continents are on that are moving.

The edges of the plates were mapped out using data from volcanoes and earthquakes. One famous pattern, that includes New Zealand, is the Ring of Fire (next page). This is a dynamic region with many of the most destructive volcanoes and earthquakes that affect the planet, located here. How long this region has been operating is a matter of conjecture. It has certainly been active since the Genesis Flood. In New Zealand, our largest volcanoes were the result of the Pacific plate being subducted

The widening gap between South America and Africa is an example where secular Science

uses assumptions to push its own agenda. In this situation, because the Atlantic Ocean is widening at up to 10 cm per

year, the naturalist will assume it has been opening up at the same rate. The distance between Brazil and Cameroon is 4800 km. If the plates are travelling at an average

speed of 4 cm yr-1, that means the age of the Atlantic Ocean

between Brazil and Cameroon is 120 million years. This age is published as fact. Many people believe it and as a result, their

faith in God’s word dies. People cannot believe lies and truth at

the same time. The assumptions do not consider the fact of rapid tectonic movement in the past.

mechanism that would allow the continents to move through the crust. The vast majority of geologist scoffed at his ideas. It wasn’t until after World War 2 that his ideas were again revisited. The mine-sweepers and other high-tech ships were no longer needed to search for enemy submarines, instead scientists recommissioned them to study the ocean floor.

From that new lease of usefulness, the ships were perfect for mapping the sea floor. One of the momentous discoveries was the patterns of ocean trenches and mid-ocean ridges. They also found magnetic bands with magnetic polar reversals (above) across the ocean floors and undersea volcanoes forming chains that stretched for thousands of kilometres.

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under the Indo-Australian plate. Taupo, Mangakino, Maroa and Rotorua are two of the most significant volcanoes in our pre-historic geological history.

The Great Ice Age was due to a number of factors, some of which are still not understood. However, one of the biggest contributors to the Great Ice Age was the volumous eruptions of the supervolcanoes. These are a group of volcanoes that erupted over 100 cu km of tephra and other material during each eruption. The reason why they are so significant is that the eruptions released ash and gases into the upper atmosphere, the stratosphere. This is the next layer above the troposphere. There is no weather and very little gravity in the stratosphere, so any ash that is in this layer tends to remain there for years. If there is a large amount of ash, the small particules collectively reflect the Sun’s warmth and

energy away from the lower troposphere. The result is a cooler planet with short summers and long winters. The weather patterns change and snow storms leave an increasing amount of snow and ice that does not melt during the summers. It would only take a few decades before a Great Ice Age kicks in.

In the case of the Genesis Flood, plate tectonics was the mechanism that produced moving plates that subducted and produced supervolcanoes. Within a hundred years of the Genesis Flood, supervolcanoes around the globe were affecting the Earth’s climate. Earth entered a new phase of God’s plan for this planet. The beauty and majesty of vast regions covered in ice, of land features scoured out by huge rivers of ice, of more environmental and biological factors isolating and producing new species of plants and animals is amazing. History is truly His story.

Pacific plate

Nazca plateIndo-Australian plate

The Ring of Fire (shown in red) extends around most of the Pacific Ocean.

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Secular PitfallsThe problem was that the scientists that worked on the data would only allow themselves to think in terms of millions and billions of years. They demonstrated their bias and would not consider the Bible as having the answers about how, why and when these geological features formed. To understand why secular scientists refuse to consider the Bible, we must examine the writings of Paul. Among the eleven letters he wrote to Christians around the Roman Empire, several of them explained clearly the nature of the human heart that rejects God and His mercy. 2 Thessalonians 2:10-12, ‘because they did not receive the love of the truth so as to be saved. And for this reason God will send upon them a deluding influence so that they might believe what is false, in order that they all may be judged who did not believe the truth...’ In his second letter to Timothy, Paul wrote, ‘always learning and never able to come to the truth.’ 2 Timothy 3:7. And, ‘For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires; and will turn away their ears from the truth, and will turn aside to myths.’ 2 Timothy 4:3,4.

As followers of Jesus Christ, it is our mandate to declare the Truth as given to us in the Scriptures. Beginning with the words of Jesus, we must make Truth our highest priority. Jesus said, “I am the way and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by Me.” John 14:6. Again, Paul encourages Timothy to, ‘Pay close attention to yourself and to your teaching; persevere in these things; for if you do this you will ensure salvation both for yourself and for those who hear you.’ 1 Timothy 4:16. James, the brother of Jesus the Messiah, gave the sobering statement that teachers will incur a stricter judgement than all other people when we stand before God to receive whatever we have earned – either for blessing or for cursing. James 3:1.

Despite our failings, God still loves us and is giving us every opportunity to repent of our ways. When Paul wrote his first letter to Timothy, he deliberately said, ‘in the sight of God our Saviour, who desires that all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.’ 1 Timothy 2:4. Only faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of God and the only One able to take our sins upon Himself because of His purity, can bring us into right standing with God. Romans 10:9,10. The invitation is open to everyone, everywhere. A simple acknowledgement of sin and a choice to give Him our lives gives us a new life, a second chance. We then need to grow in that relationship by regularly reading the Bible, doing what it says and having fellowship with other born-again Christians.

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NOTES

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References and Acknowledgements

Scriptures:

Scripture taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE ®, Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

Christian Books and other Media

Baumgardner, J.R. (2002). Catastrophic plate tectonics: the geophysical context of the Genesis Flood. TJoC 16(1).

Dennis, P. (2012). Humans & Animals. NZ: Alpha6 ConnexionsDennis, P. (2012). Plate Tectonics and Earthquakes. NZ: Alpha6 Connexionshttp://mewarnai.us/452011-trinity-sunday

NB. TJoC is the abbreviation used in this series to refer to Technical Journal of Creation, a peer-reviewed Science forum journal that investigates scientific matters relating to a young Earth.

Secular Books and other media

Holmes, F.S. (1870). The Phosphate Rocks of South Carolina; Their History and Development. USA: Holmes Books Publishers

Photos and Images

All photos, diagrams and sketches are the work of the author except for the following:

Alpine Fault. NASA Public Domain 3Phosphate Rocks. Book cover, title page. 1870 Public Domain 6Atlantic Ocean opening up. Antonio Snider-Pellegrini. 1858 Public Domain 8Caecilian adapted from Wikimedia Commons 9Berean Christians studying the Scriptures. outsetministry.org Public Domain 13

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Titles in Alpha Series

• God

• Age of the Earth

• Christian Scientists

• Creation

• Evolution: reasons why it is unscientific

• Genesis Flood and Babel

• Genetics and the Bible

• Historical Dinosaurs

• Judaism, Christianity and Islam

• Plate Tectonics and the Bible

• Science: Relational or Religious?

• Signs of the Times