Is the Biblical History of the Earth Plausible?
by Ken Noel
Introduction.
I first began to study the creation versus evolution controversy nearly seventy years ago, as a boy. On one side were those who believed the Bible said that there was a God who was so powerful He could speak a word and it happened. That God was said to have created the entire earth, all the grass and trees, all the fish and and land animals in six ordinary days, just by speaking a few words. On the other side was a very popular idea that the world just evolved by a quite accidental meeting of molecules that became a living thing. That living thing grew, reproduced, changed form, and eventually became all the animals and eventually man.
Since nobody was around when either of these events supposedly took place, we have to deduce the truth from what we can observe. There are a number of things that might be evidence:
There are many different features to be examined, but these will do for a start. We need to carefully examine the circumstances we find, so our observations are not clouded by any preconceived notions.
The Shape of the Earth.
By the shape of the earth we are considering that the earth is roughly a sphere, 8,000 miles in diameter. About three fourths of the earth is covered by water. While the ocean is miles deep, in terms of the earth's radius, it is almost negligible. The deepest trough in the seas, the Marianas Trench, is less than 2/10 of one percent of the radius of the earth. Even adding the highest mountain to the deepest depth of the sea yields less than one fourth of one percent of the earth's radius.
The major land masses are Eurasia, commonly thought of as Europe and Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Australia, and Antarctica. There are also numerous islands. The earth's surface is broken up into sixteen "plates," about thirty miles thick, corresponding to the continents, plus numerous smaller plates. The oceanic plates have numerous fractures and hot spots in them. The Pacific Plate is surrounded by hundreds of volcanic peaks, known as the "Ring of Fire." There are even more active volcanoes under the sea than on land.[1] The middle of the Atlantic has numerous active volcanoes.
The sea floor seems to be spreading in some areas. One such area is west of Washington State. The spreading apparently forced the Juan De Fuca plate under the North American plate and is thought to have caused the eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980. In fact, sea floor spreading seems to be the main cause of volcanic eruptions around the Pacific ocean.[2]
Continental Drift
The spreading of the sea floor leads to another observation. The most obvious feature of the world globe is that the bulge of South America seems to fit nicely into the west coast of Africa. Careful testing of rocks in Africa and South America shows a close match. This shows that Africa and South America, while at one time close, have now drifted apart. There are other notable features, such as the east coastline of Africa which fits Madagascar. India seems to have had a collision with Asia and wrinkled up the Himalayas.
The idea of continental drift has led scientists to take the map of the globe apart and try to fit the continents together into one land mass. There were some distortions, but by and large it fits into a single continent they named named Gondwanaland. It covered about the same area as the present continents, just joined together. If the continental plates are rigidly anchored in the earth, how is it possible for continents to move?[3]
We have already noted that a great deal of heat exists beneath the earth's surface. This phenomenon exists in places other than volcanoes. The petroleum we have come to depend on for energy comes from deep beneath the surface in various parts of the earth. Oil wells have one thing in common: the deeper we drill beneath the surface, the hotter it gets. When the Russians tried to drill a well in the arctic, on the Kola Peninsula, they abandoned the project when they encountered super hot salt water encased in crushed limestone.[4] The oil from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska is still warm after traveling 800 miles in an exposed pipeline to Valdez. Also, five miles down at petroleum bearing depths, the pressure increases dramatically, often reaching as much as 125 thousand pounds per square inch.
At the extreme pressures and temperatures at the bottom of the well, conventional physics and chemistry no longer applies. Methane gas becomes semi-solid. Elements seem to become disassociated into protons and electrons. Solid objects become plastic and flow. This plasticity acts like skids to allow continents to slide. One well known example is that the Hawaiian Islands are moving northwest at about four inches a year.[5]
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Science has very little actual knowledge of what goes on inside the earth. However, it is evident from seismic information that the earth's crust is only about twenty miles thick. Below that it appears to be a semi-molten, largely iron rich, mass. Surely if these conditions exist, the continents could easily slide around.[6] |
Fossils.
Remnants of animal life exist at various places over the surface of the earth. These remnants of ancient life may be shells, or bones, or perhaps a fish that has been pressed paper thin under extreme pressure. Coal is vegetable material that has been compressed under heat and is found all over the earth. Coal seams may be as little as a foot thick, or as much as forty feet thick. They may be near the surface under rock outcroppings, or deep underground. Petroleum is formed from coal under heat and pressure. Natural gas is a volatile result of this process.
Fossil Bones at a Dinosaur Quarry
Fossil bones are found at many places. At the fossil museum in Vernal, Utah near Dinosaur National Monument we are confronted with a monster dinosaur skeleton. It stands about fifteen feet high and the tail is so long that the only way for the forty foot long room to contain it is for the tail to be curled halfway around the room. There are side exhibits of giant turtles, and many other fossil animals around the room.
But we are interested in where the bones were dug, a few miles away, so we leave the museum and travel to the national monument. As we approach the site we notice the Green river valley on our right. In the distance is a row of barren hills that appear to be twisted out of shape, with many colors in the rock layers. It can best be described as a tortured landscape, twisted and bent.
The quarry is located several hundred feet above the valley of the Green River, in a sandstone ridge half a mile away. The bones appear on a sixty degree slope. Even though many bones have been removed, there are still hundreds of bones left. Some are single bones, perhaps six feet long, without any obvious nearby companions that mate to them. Up near the top are five or six giant backbone parts. Lower down is an assortment of unconnected small bones. Scattered here and there are broken sections of ribs. One section of a breastbone from some smaller animal is lying all alone just behind the railing that keeps visitors at a distance, still partly encased in stone, as if it was ready to be taken to the cleaning room. Altogether the scene is one giant jumble of bones. Many are broken, and others with one or two mating parts. Looking at the explanatory displays, we find a story. These animals apparently died a natural death, were buried somehow, and somehow got pushed up where we find them now. But this doesn't agree with what we find today.
The male members of the deer family all have antlers that are shed each year. There are millions of deer. Why do we seldom find antlers lying around the woods? Also, why aren't the woods full of bones from animals that die each year? Weather and bacteria rot bones exposed to the weather. But what about the dinosaurs? The display said they were buried, and later moved. I personally have buried many dogs who died, usually in the garden plot where digging was easy. In a few months the skeleton had totally disappeared.
How to Make a Fossil
How did these thousands of bones become fossilized? If we look at a fossil, it is not mostly calcium hydroxyapatite, as bones are, but something entirely different which is heavier than normal bone. Analyzing the bone-shaped object, it has been infiltrated with silicon and other minerals. All the organic materials in the bone are gone. The only substances we find are calcium carbonate and silicates. The only way it could have been infiltrated with silicon would be burial in a silicon rich material. Most fossils are buried in sandstone which is mostly silicon dioxide.
The river valley doesn't fit the requirements. Besides, how in the world did all these bones get so high above the river? The "natural death on the river plain" explanation doesn't answer the questions. We will return to this shortly.
A Mammoth Mystery
In 1897 gold was discovered in the Yukon valley in Canada and Alaska. Miners by the thousand endured incredible hardships to cross the Chilkoot pass in 1898 on the way to Canada and the Yukon. Some of them went down river to the Alaska territory and staked out claims. There were multitudes of problems, not the least of which was frozen earth. There was lots of water around, so a giant nozzle was used to direct a stream of water to melt the frozen earth. The ground thawed and the men found lots of gold. But along the way they found something unexpected. The giant nozzle unearthed fossilized mammoth bones. The bones had become fossilized while the animal was still standing up. And there were not one or two mammoths, but a whole herd of them! Some of the tusks from these mammoths were ten inches in diameter. Why were these animals buried standing up? When animals die, they fall down. There must have been some unusual disaster to bury them before they died.
Another Mammoth Mystery
As early as 1799 explorers in Siberia found woolly mammoths in the northern reaches of Siberia. These were mummified remains. At least part of the remains were shipped to St. Petersburg where they are on display. The animal, in the words of Pfizenmayer, the scientist who actually recovered and studied the animal in his book Siberian Man and the Mammoth,
"Before I arrived at the site, Herz had partially dug away the hill of earth round the body, and so both the forefeet and the hind feet were exposed. These lay under the body so that it rested on them. When one looked at the body one had the impression that it must have suddenly fallen into an unexpected fissure in the ice, which it probably came across in its wanderings, and which may have been covered with a layer of plant-bearing mould. After its fall the unlucky animal must have tried to get out of its hopeless position, for the right forefoot was doubled up and the left stretched forward as if it had struggled to rise. But its strength had apparently not been up to it, for when we dug it out still farther we found that in its fall it had not only broken several bones, but had been almost completely buried by the falls of earth which tumbled in on it, so that it had suffocated.
"Its death must have occurred very quickly after its fall, for we found half-chewed food still in its mouth, between the back teeth and on its tongue, which was in good preservation. The food consisted of leaves and grasses, some of the later carrying seeds. We could tell from these that the mammoth must have come to its miserable end in the autumn."
Did this disaster also happen to the animals buried at the Dinosaur National Monument?
A Deeper Mystery
At the dinosaur quarry we were told that the dinosaurs died millions of years ago, and yet in Siberia we turn up with a mammoth in the flesh! But that is not the end of the story. There are other creatures that have been found. The University of Alaska at Fairbanks houses two creatures, "Blue Babe" a steppe bison, said to be about 36,000 years old, and the skin of a baby woolly mammoth. "Blue Babe" is blue because of the soil in which it was buried. It also bears scars evidently made when some animal attacked it.[7] There have been over 50 reports of frozen animals that have been found in Siberia and Alaska.[8]
Recapitulating the Mystery
A Common Disaster
These are just a few of the mysteries that we can name. They all point to a common disaster. The evidence for a common catastrophe has been so overwhelming that evolutionary scientists have changed their hypothesis. Many now postulate that some common disaster, such as a huge meteor strike that threw up a dust cloud that blotted out the sun for years, caused the death and extinction of the dinosaurs. But there is simply too much evidence to pass this off as a simple meteor strike. We will continue to explore the evidence for a much more catastrophic event.
The Genesis Flood
Now let's look at the story of the flood in Genesis. The wickedness of man was so great that God decided to destroy the earth and start over. Noah was told to build a boat to save every kind of animal in the boat. It had never rained before that time, but according to Genesis 7:11-12
11 In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.
12 And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights.
We do not know the exact meaning of the words "the fountains of the great deep were broken up." Whatever it was, it was a catastrophe to exceed all catastrophes. Perhaps it has something to do with the tilt of the earth's axis. Prior to that time the earth had apparently had an even climate from pole to pole.
Such an unrepeatable event cannot be absolutely verified, since none of us can directly observe it. We are dependent on the evidence we find in the earth today to allow us to reconstruct it. Genesis 1, in discussing the events of the second day of the creation week, speaks of waters under the earth. In 1909, a seismic discontinuity was discovered about ten miles below the surface. This is apparently where water was stored in a series of interconnected chambers. The Russian deep well findings agree.
Whatever the cause, something triggered a cataclysm. If the earth was suddenly tipped, as it is now 23.5 degrees from the vertical, this would unleash tremendous gyroscopic forces. The single continent would rip apart. The pressure ten miles down, based on oil well experience, is about 250 thousand pounds per square inch.
Tensile cracks in brittle solids[9] propagate at about half the velocity of sound, or about 2.6 KM per second.[10] The cracking would circle the earth in just over four hours. This would release water stored ten miles deep. As we have said, the pressure at the bottom of a gas well only five miles deep exceeds 125,000 pounds per square inch. At ten miles deep the pressure would exceed 200,000 pounds per square inch, far more than enough to spout water miles high. This hot water would boil into vapor immediately as the pressure dropped to atmospheric. This water vapor would become clouds which would transport massive quantities of water to the polar regions where the precipitation would become permanent snow and ice.
This fits the eyewitness account recorded by Noah and his family as "the fountains of the great deep were broken up".
17 And the flood was forty days upon the earth; and the waters increased, and bare up the ark, and it was lifted up above the earth.
18 And the waters prevailed, and were increased greatly upon the earth; and the ark went upon the face of the waters.
19 And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills, that [were] under the whole heaven, were covered.
20 Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered.
So the whole earth was covered with water for 150 days. All flesh died except what was in the ark. Genesis 7:17-201 And God remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the cattle that [was] with him in the ark: and God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters asswaged; Genesis 8:1
Burying the Dead Animals
The wind would begin to dry up the water, and there were no doubt carcasses of large animals that had not yet decayed enough to sink. As evidence of this:
6 And it came to pass at the end of forty days, that Noah opened the window of the ark which he had made:
7 And he sent forth a raven, which went forth to and fro, until the waters were dried up from off the earth.
The raven eats carrion. Floating carcasses would provide the raven with food and a place to roost.
Noah was not satisfied. He waited a week.
8 Also he sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters were abated from off the face of the ground;
9 But the dove found no rest for the sole of her foot, and she returned unto him into the ark, for the waters [were] on the face of the whole earth: then he put forth his hand, and took her, and pulled her in unto him into the ark.
10 And he stayed yet other seven days; and again he sent forth the dove out of the ark;
11 And the dove came in to him in the evening; and, lo, in her mouth [was] an olive leaf pluckt off: so Noah knew that the waters were abated from off the earth.
12 And he stayed yet other seven days; and sent forth the dove; which returned not again unto him any more.
Coming back to the dinosaur quarry, the wind would cause the carcasses to drift against any shallow place and settle there. As the water dried up the wind could pick up sand and form a dune over the bodies. This explains the jumbled up remains of some creatures while others might be more or less whole. It also explains the sandstone that caused the fossilization. The animals never were on the lowland plain of the river as it exists now. Genesis 8:6-12
The Issue of Continental Drift.
The gyroscopic forces unleashed by tipping the earth would cause the continents to slide rapidly. We do not know exactly how long it took, but it probably happened very quickly, not the millions of years the theory of evolution postulates.
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The Ice Age and Creating Mountain Ranges
The eruptions of mount St. Helens in 1980-82 gave an insight into the forces that exist when mountains erupt. The eruption is estimated to have put several cubic miles of dust and debris into the atmosphere. We cannot imagine the cataclysmic forces that would accompany the shifting of continents. If a small plate moving under Washington State caused St. Helens to erupt, what would whole continents wildly sliding do? Certainly the "Ring of Fire" would let loose, to say nothing of mountains such as the Rockies and the Himalayas being pushed up.
We are not through with Genesis yet.
3 And the waters returned from off the earth continually: and after the end of the hundred and fifty days the waters were abated. Genesis 8:3
Notice what the verse says: the waters returned from off the earth continually.
As a youth, I lived in central Oregon. From northern California to Canada the entire area is volcanic . It is cut by several canyons such as the Snake and the Columbia. The Metolius and Crooked Rivers join the Deschutes, going into an 800 foot canyon north of Bend. I used to go fishing in the Deschutes and Metolius canyons, and had a good chance to observe the geology when I climbed up and down the steep slopes. The top layer is volcanic ash, several feet deep. Then comes a layer of volcanic rock, about 20 feet deep. Next comes about ten feet of round water washed boulders and gravel. Then more volcanic rock, another layer of round boulders and gravel and so on to the bottom of the canyon. Is this evidence of the waters returning from off the earth continually? There were obviously volcanic eruptions, then gravel and more eruptions.
And the waters prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty days. Genesis 7:24
The first part of the flood lasted 150 days. During that time the continents could have assumed nearly their present positions. Every volcano in the world was erupting. Such a cataclysm cannot be imagined.
As an example of the effect of volcanic eruptions, consider this from the USGS:[11]
"While the Unzen eruptions have caused deaths and considerable local damage, the impact of the June 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo was global. Slightly cooler than usual temperatures recorded worldwide and the brilliant sunsets and sunrises have been attributed to this eruption that sent fine ash and gases high into the stratosphere, forming a large volcanic cloud that drifted around the world. The sulfur dioxide (SO2) in this cloud -- about 22 million tons -- combined with water to form droplets of sulfuric acid, blocking some of the sunlight from reaching the Earth and thereby cooling temperatures in some regions by as much as 0.5 °C. An eruption the size of Mount Pinatubo could affect the weather for a few years. A similar phenomenon occurred in April of 1815 with the cataclysmic eruption of Tambora Volcano in Indonesia, the most powerful eruption in recorded history. Tambora's volcanic cloud lowered global temperatures by as much as 3 °C. Even a year after the eruption, most of the northern hemisphere experienced sharply cooler temperatures during the summer months. In part of Europe and in North America, 1816 was known as "the year without a summer."
But the story doesn't end there.
1 And God remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the cattle that [was] with him in the ark: and God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters asswaged; Genesis 8:1
Blotting out a good part of the sun's radiation over the earth would cause massive cooling. In the polar regions the sun does not shine for a large part of the year. This would cause wind to rush to the poles because of the absence of sunlight. Warm water from the sea would carry large amounts of water to the polar regions which would fall as massive amounts of snow. Europe and Asia and a large part of North America became covered with great ice sheets, hundreds of feet thick. It pressed down the Great Lakes in North America. The sea level was lowered at least four hundred feet. The passage to the Mediterranean at Gibraltar was dry, and the level of the Mediterranean was considerably lower than it is now.[12]
At the same time the Black Sea was a small lake about six hundred feet lower than it is at the present time. The Bosporus had a dam across it.[13] As the massive glaciers began to melt, the sea level rose and began to flow over the Gibraltar barrier and the Mediterranean began to fill, slowly at first. As the water level rose, the pressure against the fragile barrier at the Bosporus broke that barrier and the Black Sea began to fill.[14]
Extreme Cold to Freeze the Mammoths
The cold that froze the mammoths without doubt arose from the cloud of dust from the many volcanoes eruipting all over the earth. This caused the massive polar ice sheets. Some of the glaciation remains in the receding glaciers today. The Knick glacier near Anchorage, Alaska at one time flowed in a forked channel between two mountains. The southern arm of the glacier had receded about a mile. When I was there in 1951 only the northern arm of the glacier bumped against a mountain on the south side during the winter, blocking the water from the southern arm of the glacier. A lake formed between the two glaciers. As the spring thaw wore on, the lake grew. Finally the pressure of the lake undermined the glacier and the dam would break. Since that time both glaciers have receded until the Lake George breakup is no more.
Questions Answered
The flood as described in the first chapters of Genesis answers most of the questions concerning the physical changes that have occurred in the earth. There may never be a full explanation of what happened, but the Bible story of the flood gives enough evidence to be a far more reasonable explanation than any other.
In Summary:
a. The continents were separated by massive gyroscopic precession forces. These forces tore open the earth and caused massive amounts of subterranean water to jet into the sky. This water then came down as rain. All animal life died except what had been preserved in the ark.
b. The poles began to cool setting up a massive convection current of wind.i. Warmer air at the equator lifted massive quantities of water from the ocean, creating vast hurricanes that buried the carcasses of the larger animals and jumbled the bones of their skeletons.
ii. Volcanic eruptions caused massive cooling of the earth by blocking sunlight.
iii. The warm air cooled at the poles dropping water as snow and ice, resulting in massive glaciers extending over a large part of the northern hemisphere.
iv. Ocean levels dropped over 400 feet, as indicated by old shore lines now buried beneath the sea. This created a land bridge between the Aleutian Islands and the Bering Sea for eastward migration of peoples.
3. Vast quantities of vegetable matter were buried deep under the earth. This is the source of coal, oil, and natural gas.
Conclusion.
The conjectures of evolution have changed a great deal over the years. One characteristic of evolutionary theory is uniformitarianism, the idea that things slowly changed over millions of years. It asks more questions than it answers.
The catastrophic destruction of the flood spoken of in the Bible answers more questions about the dinosaurs and other fossils than any evolutionary explanation.
The Bible records that there was a perfect world that was ruined by sin. God wants to restore that perfect world if man will only obey His commands. Evolution, on the other hand, denies the existence of God, and gives no hope beyond the grave, no hope for a better world. The Bible offers hope, and eternal life. Evolution offers only despair and eternal death.