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The Changing Earth
Chapter 5
I.
Origin of the Earth
a. A matter of opinion
i. Secular scientists believe:
1. There have been several ice ages
2. Mammoths died 8000-30000 years ago
ii. Creationists believe:
1. There was one ice age
2. Mammoths died 4500 – 5000 years ago
b. Earth’s story
i. Since there was:
1. No one to witness the earth’s beginnings
2. No records that are accurately dated before 5000 years ago
3. Old – Earth Geologists - Will base their models on completely natural processes
ii. Nebular Hypothesis – Planets formed out of a nebula…a cloud of dust.
1. All things formed should have the same directional spin
iii. Earth’s Formation a Secular approach
1. It is thought by secular scientists that after cooling for 30 – 50 million years that a small
rogue planet crashed into Earth. This re-melting caused dense matter to be added to the
earth’s core. Some of the debris later came together forming the moon.
a. After the Earth cooled from this event, the oldest existing rocks formed about 4
million years ago.
b. It is also though that icy comets bombarded earth, melting and providing earth
with water, which in turn provided their vapors as a different atmosphere.
i. Oceans rose and first continents formed.
iv. Problems with this approach
1. Rotation of sun is too slow for its matter if formed via a nebular disk.
2. Planet Mercury is too dense to be formed via gradual collection of matter.
3. Venus rotates backwards.
4. Uranus is tipped over on its side
5. Uranus and Neptune are too large and far away from the sun to form within the model’s
time frame.
6. Earth should wobble if it had been impacted by another planet’s collision.
v. Young Earth Geologists approach
1. God spoke the creation into existence over six days
a. Day 1: light and its separation from darkness
b. Day 2: dry land
c. Day 3: Grass, trees, and shrubs
d. Day 4: moon, sun, stars
e. Day 5: Sea creatures and flying creatures
f. Day 6: Land creatures and Man
g.
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II.
A History of Change
a. The Old Earth Geologists Story
i. The Rubik’s Earth Model
1. As continents grew, they broke apart and drifted to different places.
a. Scientists believe their drifting was very slow, just as the continent drift is today.
i. Tectonic plates
ii. Geologists have matched up patterns of fossils, minerals and magnetic
clues preserved in rocks to line up with tectonic plates at various times.
b. Supercontinents – These plates repeatedly crashed together forming
supercontinents and later broke apart.
i. Pangea – Name given to the super continent
1. The continents of today are from 180 million years ago.
ii. Panthalassa – Name given to the global sea
2. Ice Ages
a. According to old earth geologists, at least five major ice ages have happened
during the earth’ s history
i. Ice age – A glacial period when large portions of earth’s surface are
covered in deep glaciers.
1. Possible Causes:
a. Cycles in the sun’s heat output
b. A reduction of gases that trap heat within the earth’s
atmosphere.
c. A repeating wobble in earth’s orbit
2. Snowball Earth - Time secular geologists believe nearly all the
land surface was covered in ice.
a. Would have caused many extinctions
b. There are two continental glaciers remaining today:
i. Greenland
ii. Antarctica
iii. Some smaller islands in the Arctic
3. The Geologic Column
a. Rock’s record the record of Earth’s history.
i. While Uniformitarianism used to be the approach of Old Earth
Scientists, they now recognize there are periodic occurrences or
catastrophes which occur.
b. Stratum – Multiples layers found in rock.
i. Geologic column – A model of various rock strata believed to document
the history of the earth.
1. There is not one place on earth where you will find all the rock
strata stacked upon each other as modeled in the geologic
column.
2. Assigned Rock Ages
a. Absolute – based on measurements of nuclear changes
of elements found in the rock.
i. Based on the nuclear decay (at a constant rate)
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ii. From this, they have dated the earth as 4.5
billion years old.
b. Relative- Estimation of rock age by comparing a rock
layer position to nearby layers
i. Principle of superposition - Oldest stratum on
bottom with younger layers placed in order
above it.
ii. Stratigraphy – The study of rocks and their
relationships.
4. Problems with the Old Earth Story
a. Wandering Continents are based on 3 occurrences at adjoining plate edges;
i. Similar types or rocks and minerals
ii. Similar groups of fossils
iii. Similar alignment of magnetic crystals in rock
b. Magnetic crystals, however, found within a single plate can point in different
directions.
i. These varying magnetic crystal directions indicate the whole section of
crust rotated many ties between the times the rocks formed.
c. Ice Ages
i. The earth and oceans need much more heat than normal to evaporate
enough moisture for glaciers to form.
d. Radiometric Dating
i. Radiometric dating has shown to be unreliable:
1. Newly formed volcanic rock can date to be very ancient.
2. Old radiometric ages can be explained by recent changes to
rocks.
e. Fossil Dating
i. There is an expectation among evolutionists to find simple fossils of life
on the bottom strata followed by more complex fossils higher in the
geologic Colum.
1. There are no missing links to show the evolution of one kind of
life from to another. There should be thousands.
2. The progression of animal types from simple to complex in
geologic column can be explained in other ways.
3. Secular geologists often use fossils to determine rock’s age and
rock’s age to determine the ages of other fossils.
4. Tree trunk fossils often cut vertically through many rock strata
thought to be thousands of years old.
5. Fossil formation can only occur under pressure and rapid
sedimentation. According to uniformitarianism, we shouldn’t be
able to find many fossils at all.
6.
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III.
Young Earths Geologist’s Story
1. The flood of Noah is the most significant physical event in the earth’s history after
Creation.
a. It marks a dividing line between the earth that was originally created and the
world we know today.
b. All recorded history not found in the bible begins after the Flood.
c. Human lifespans dropped to 1/10th of what they originally were.
d. Read page 107 for Flood events
e. The post flood world was very different than the pre flood world
2. Ice Age Onset
a. Possibly a result of this altered world following the flood.
b. Read page 110 second paragraph.
3. Fading Ice Age
a. Less dense fresh water of melting glaciers may have rapidly froze, forming the
Arctic ice cap.
b. Possibly the more mobile animals left these lands for warmer places leaving the
slow moving, cold adapted mammoths and similar animals behind.
i. Most mammoths possibly died from exposure to the arctic cold and lack
of food. Being trapped as sea levels rose, they died, decomposed and
their ones were covered in wind-blown sediments.
ii. Preserved carcasses were possibly suddenly buried alive as they were
eating. The following frigid temperatures would have quickly preserved
them in a permanent deep freeze before they could decay.
ii. Diluvial Geoloic Column
1. Rock layers are interpreted differently from a creationist point of view.
a. Granite is believed to the basement continent foundation.
b. The flood transported immense quantities of soil, sediment, and rock and
redeposit them in different locations throughout the world..
i. These layers quickly hardened into new rock strata.
ii. Some rock contained dissolved chemicals that precipitated to make rock
strata.
iii. Later on, glaciers gouged out valleys, carrying huge amount of rocks
along.
1. As glaciers melted, these rocks, sand and dust formed new
layers of gravels and soils.
2. Rains, rivers and winds continue to erode soils and rock creating
new valleys.
c. A Diluvial Geologic Column
i. Creation Event
1. Lowest strata have no fossils.
ii. Lost World Era
1. Strata formed after creation but prior to Flood. They also have
no fossils lack of rapid burial of living things needed to form
fossils.
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iii. Flood Event
1. Represents the largest portion of geologic column.
2. Flooding stage -Rocks formed during flooding stage.
i. Rich in fossils of all land animals and plants alive
during Flood being quickly buried.
3. Recessive stage – when waters flowed off the land.
a. Top of geologic column contain loose sands, gravels and
soils.
b. Remnants of erosion and deposition as sediments.
i. Contain some fossils.
iv. While the rock strata is the same, there are different perspectives that
cause different interpretations.
b. Tectonics: An Agent of Change
i. Tectonics – Study of the Earth’s bedrock, earthquakes, volcanoes and mountains and the
forces/processes that formed them.
ii. Old Earth Geologist’s Story
1. Terms
a. Syncline – Downward folding of rock strata
i. Geosynclines - Involved large sections of earth’s crust.
ii. Geosyncline Theory – Theory from 1800’s and mid 1900’s that mountain
formation was from the accumulation of sediments forming thick strata
of rocks which were later pushed upward, folding and fracturing into
mountains.
1. Didn’t do a good job of explaining things.
2. Continental Drift
a. First originating in the 1600’s, this theory couldn’t explain how solid rocks could
mover.
b. Alfred Wegener of 1920’s proposed that all modern continents started as a
single large continent called Pangaea.
i. He linked the continental movements with mountain range formation.
ii. He noted similar fossil groups at the edges of the continents where they
would fit together.
iii. Most scientists at this time didn’t respect his theory because he couldn’t
explain how entire continents could move through the ocean crust.
3. Sea-Floor Spreading
a. WWII brought about the discovery of mid ocean ridges or deep trenches and
large extensions of continents far out in the oceans.
b. Ocean drilling programs revealed that the magnetic grains of rock indicate that
the earth’s magnetic field must have switched poles multiple times during its
history.
i. These reversals are recorded in hardened lava from different volcano
eruptions.
c. Sea-floor spreading – The formation of new ocean crust at the mid-ocean ridge
is called sea floor spreading.
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i. Hot, molten rock/ magma, oozes up through the spreading crack in the
ocean basin crust called a rift. As the rift sides slowly pull away, more
magma pushes up from below to take its place.
1. Low density rock rises until it hits the bottom of the lithosphere
where it’s plumes spread out, dragging the lithosphere with
them.
a. The rift then spreads apart.
ii. Cooling rock on both sides of the rift record the earth’s magnetic field
when it was formed.
IV.
V.
c. Tectonic Plates
i. Many continental and oceanic plates have been identified.
1. Seven major plates
Most plates include both continental crust
2. Seven minor plates
and oceanic crust.
3. Lots of smaller plates.
ii. Subduction - As the sea floor spreads, some oceanic plates slide under continental plates.
1. This bending of the ocean crust creates a trench in the ocean bottom.
Theory of Plate Tectonics
a. Plate tectonics theory –
i. Old earth geologists believe that late tectonics explains how mountains formed, the cause for
earthquakes and volcanoes and how the earth’s surface is shaped.
ii. Rate of speed for plate movement is less than a centimeter per year – more than 50 centimeters
per year.
1. ≤ 1 cm/yr - ≥50 cm/yr.
2. Says Pangea broke up 180 million years ago
3. Used to date the Rockies and Himalayas.
Young Earth Geologist’s Story
a. Flood and Plate Tectonics
i. While young earth geologists are in agreement as to the mechanisms of the Tectonic Plates
theory, they differ in the rate at which they have happened.
ii. Catastrophic Plate Tectonics (Read page 117)
1. A single large land mass like Pangea was initially created by God.
2. The start of the Flood saw the shattering of this super continent into large plates are the
fountains of the great deep opened up.
3. Runaway subduction begins to occur where oceanic plates rapidly slid under adjacent
continental plates at speeds of miles per hour instead of inches per year.
b. Problems with Tectonics
i. Most geologists believe the African plate has been basically stationary compared to all other
continental plates.
1. Thus the ocean crust west of African plate and on the east side of the mid-Atlantic ridge
didn’t move compared to the mantle underneath.
2. The ridge and western continental plates moved west as spreading occurred.
a. This is actually observed today
b. It agrees better with the catastrophic model too.
3. Too much heat would have been generated, enough to melt the plates
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a. Baumgardner’s model and laboratory tests show that the strength of the rocks
could drop dramatically reducing friction, allowing runaway subduction to
occur.
b. Heat could also have been removed by ocean water boiling off as super-heated
steam…potentially producing torrential rains.