Do facts change? No, real, observable facts don’t change-except in the most determined post-modern mind. So if the “facts” you’ve been given become altered, something is wrong. In my science classes at school-admittedly quite a long time ago now, I was taught “uniformitarian” doctrine: the present is the key to the past…
This post is a compilation of three related posts published previously.
1 Avoiding the Flood.
Change in geology and in nature occurs over eons of time at the rate of processes we observe now. This was the instruction I received at school. Well, all that proven “fact” seems to have changed considerably, and today, while you may well not have been told it yourself, the common view in the world of evolutionary theory concerning the history of the earth is that there have been several mass extinctions, and many “lesser calamities”. These have altered the course of earth’s history sometimes at rates very different to those we observe today.
One BBC “IN OUR TIME” episode focuses on what’s called “The Late Devonian Extinction”, but also relates the current belief among evolutionists that there have been several global mass-extinction events in earth’s history. Mass-extinction events affected, say the expert panel of evolutionists, the entire world. They were “world-wide” (1).
Evolutionists have numerous explanations for what they see as many unrelated extinction events-some global and some regional, ranging from stagnating oceans to asteroids, vast eruptions to global climate change, a “single gene transfer event” to burning coal (3). Let’s also not forget, for a little levity, cartoonist Gary Larsen’s theory that the dinosaurs smoked too much.
Many of these mass extinction events and “lesser calamities” are said to have occurred in a “geologically abrupt” period of time. The current definition of “geologically abrupt”, according to experts interviewed on the BBC’s “In Our Time”, is anything up to millions of years, but ICR relays a statement by one evolutionist, MIT graduate Seth Burgess, related to timing. “Mass extinction can take 10,000 years or less—the blink of an eye, by geological standards”.
However, as Frank Sherwin points out:
“Such a statement does not line up with the fossil record that clearly shows the sudden and catastrophic formation of fossils, a process that kills creatures in their prime and entombs their fresh carcasses in just minutes or less” (2).
Fossils have to be formed quickly or the carcass will rot or be scavenged and decomposed. The creature, (or its footprint) must be buried in sediment before it decays or gets eaten.
In Our Time evolutionists also revealed the consensus view that there was once a “super-continent”, in which most of the earth’s land-mass was in one place. That’s interesting, because the Bible was saying something similar thousands of years before evolutionists came up with the idea:
And God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.” And it was so (Genesis 1:9).
If the water was all in one place, presumably so was the land.
THE FLOOD
In evolution every theory for extinction and fossilization is on the table….except, of course, the one which has been recorded in the Bible for thousands of years-long before any talk of mass extinctions in the secular world under modern evolutionary theory. The Bible records a time when the entire globe was flooded as a judgment on violent and perverted humanity. The Flood account was there in black and white before Darwin and Lyell and others formed their ideas, which by design swept away the account of the Flood and a God of judgment. However, the evidence remains, for anyone willing to recognize it.
1 BBC Radio 4, In Our Time: “The Late Devonian Extinction”.
2 https://www.icr.org/article/worlds-most-catastrophic-extinction/
2 From “In Our Time: The Evolution of Crocodiles”
The images I’ve posted of animals floundering in water, mud, lava and ash, and of elephants leaving footprint trails in mud, are all secular representations of proposed mass-extinctions. How close they now are to the real mass-extinction event, and yet, willfully so far away.
The discussion of the demise of numerous ancient crocodile species was, to me, further confirmation of the Biblical story of origins. The supposed evolution of the croc has been largely affected, say the experts, by two of the claimed mass-extinction events.
REAL CLIMATE CHANGE
Not only that, but crocs once thrived because the world was, said one expert, “much hotter”. There were “more deserts”. Later, “The Miocene was a few degrees warmer” than temps of today. Earth was, in the age of the crocs “much warmer”. Crocs lived on the poles because there was “no ice at the poles”, even up to “thirty million years ago”. How’s that for climate change? Of course, we also had the ice age (which I believe) and, say the experts, other ice-ages. Eat that hamburger I say, with no shame!
APOCALYSE THEN
There were, during these mass-extinction events, “apocalyptic eruptions”. In fact, in the age of the croc, the Triassic Period, two hundred and fifty million years ago (that number varies depending on where you find it) there was, said the experts, a super-continent which they call Pangea. All the continents, they said, were in one place until they began to drift apart. With all the resultant “cataclysmic” eruptions, the sun was blocked out, they said, and entire ecosystems died. The second mass-extinction, sixty-six million years ago, was apparently caused by an asteroid, with the power of billions of nuclear bombs. To think that once, not long ago, the mantra, “The present is the key to the past”, was taught to millions as “fact”. Isn’t it amazing how proven facts change!
INSTRUCTION MANUAL
Creationist scientists of today can demonstrate that the Flood was accompanied by movement of the earth’s crust and huge eruptions, but evolutionists want to see a different story:
“…in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. They will say, “Where is this ‘coming’ he promised? Ever since our ancestors died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.” But they deliberately forget that long ago by God’s word the heavens came into being and the earth was formed out of water and by water. By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed (2 Peter 3:3-5).
So now, having realized that the world as it was has been destroyed, evolutionists, determined to block God out of the equation, have constructed a series of disasters to explain away the evidence, all over the world, that there was once a judgment on the earth. Go and look at the layers of sedimentary rock all over the world, filled with the fossils of animals buried quickly in that sediment, and you will see evidence that the Bible really is the word of God.
*IN OUR TIME, BBC Radio 4 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000zmhf
3 FROM “THE END OF JURASSIC WORLD”
Along with stories of earth-changing events are smaller-scale attempts to account for the rich fossil record, such as “dinosaurs falling into swamps” stories which I’ve written about before in a couple of posts by that name, if you would like to search for them in the box at the top. I’m referring to fossil evidence demonstrating how dinosaurs, sometimes entire herds of them, drowned in mud together, and how entire schools of whales ended up in the middle of continents. Other extinction theories include such titles as “fatal gene transfer”, a clever little device indeed.
There are a number of different theories these days as to why the dinosaur died out completely. Perhaps the most well-known is the one in which a huge asteroid, supposedly evidenced by the Chicxulub crater in the Gulf of Mexico, caused large scale devastation and global poisoning of certain prone species, including the dinosaur. Brian Thomas summarizes the evidence against the theory (note 1).
Smithsonian.com discusses some of the theories which have been proposed in the past in an article titled “THE TOP TEN WEIRDEST DINOSAUR EXTINCTION IDEAS” (see note 4). They then assert that there’s now a short list of generally accepted causes for the demise of the dinosaur:
Today, paleontologists have discerned that most dinosaur lineages disappeared by about 66 million years ago after intense volcanic activity, climate change and a catastrophic asteroid impact triggered one of the worst mass extinctions in our planet’s history.
According to uniformitarianism all processes on earth have always continued at the same pace as we see them happening now, so that if it takes a year for one millimeter of silt to settle in a lake bed, it must have taken an awfully long time for hundreds of feet of it to form-certainly more than the Bible gives it, right?
However, even in the theories of evolutionists, uniformitarianism has been all but debunked in many ways. In my own part of the world there is abundant evidence of past rapid super-eruptions of lava-sometimes tens of feet deep per flow in which the lava is said to have flowed like water over thousands of square miles: not the sort of thing you see every day.
When Mt. St. Helens erupted in 1981, the resultant explosion, melting of snow and ice, mudslides and pyroclastic movement created first layers of sediment which quickly hardened into rock, and then a canyon was carved two-hundred feed deep in those layers, by runoff erosion. This event was a small indicator of the enormous forces which shaped our earth, formed continent-wide sedimentary layers, “mass extinctions” and fossilization, and then runoff canyons, in association with buckling of the earth’s crust.
In 1923 geologist J Harlem Bretz published a paper claiming that the area I now live in was inundated by enormous and sudden floods at the end of the last ice-age. He said that the waters were up to 1000 feet deep. and rushed at high speeds down to the ocean, dramatically altering the landscape. You can see the results of rapid and large-scale water erosion for thousands of square miles all around here. However, in my travels and research, I’ve found that similar huge water-erosion features exist all over the West, and of course, in many parts of the world.
Bretz’ peers were unwilling to accept his proposal for some time, because it smacked too much of the Biblical Flood. Again, it’s not every day you see a thousand feet of water engulfing thousands of square miles of land, so perhaps the present is not always the key to the past.
ICR has noted that evolutionists believe five major catastrophic events have occurred during earth’s history. Some now claim a sixth, while others insist there were three: so much for hard scientific facts (note 3). Incredibly, according to evolutionary scientists, the worlds worst extinction event, the “Permian Extinction”, said bye-bye to 70% of land species and 95% of marine species! (note 2).
CATCHING UP WITH THE BIBLE
What amazes me is that it’s taken this long for our would-be intellectual masters to arrive at the conclusion that enormous, cataclysmic events have transformed our world, because as long as three thousand years ago the Bible already had an explanation for worldwide mass extinctions and rearrangement of the surface of the earth: the global Flood. The Flood was no elongated rain shower, as some believe, but Biblically, re-shaped the world’s surface entirely. The reason for the demise of the dinosaurs has always been there for everyone to see. That is, everyone who wanted to see it.
And all flesh died that moved on the earth, birds, livestock, beasts, all swarming creatures that swarm on the earth, and all mankind…(Genesis 7:21 ESV).
Physical evidence for the Flood is abundant in rock layers all around the world, where billions of creatures (and colossal amounts of vegetation) are found to have been rapidly buried, sometimes exquisitely preserved, and in some locations in mass graveyards. Billions-yes, billions of tracks of dinosaurs and many other animals have been found all over the world-tracks made in mud or sandstone and then buried and fossilized. Interestingly, the tracks commonly appear in straight lines as though these creatures were on their way somewhere in a hurry, not foraging, mating or just living out their lives peacefully in swampy terrain. At the same time, the earth is covered in layers of sediments up to continent size and even more. They are claimed by evolutionists to be the deposits of ancient oceans. Instead, they lend themselves, as does the fossil evidence, far more obviously to the Biblical Flood.
I want to repeat a reference I found on a secular site-not written by a creationist or a believer, which is not uncommon in its descriptions, but is very provocative in relation to the Bible’s Flood account. It’s from an article titled “World’s Largest Dinosaur Graveyard Linked to Mass Death”:
“Scientists have revealed what may be the world’s largest dinosaur graveyard. The dinosaurs may have been part of a mass die-off resulting from a monster storm, comparable to today’s hurricanes, which struck what was then a coastal area. The findings could help solve a mystery concerning why the badlands of western Canada are so rich in dinosaur fossils.“ (note 5).
The Flood is recorded not just in the Bible as a catastrophe in earth’s history, but also in various forms in many cultures around the world, including the Mesopotamian culture-the oldest known civilization on earth.
\NOTES
1 http://www.icr.org/article/did-dinosaurs-die-from-impact
2 http://www.icr.org/article/worlds-most-catastrophic-extinction/
3 http://www.icr.org/article/newly-discovered-sixth-extinction-rewrites/
and
https://www.icr.org/article/3973
5 http://www.livescience.com/8340-world-largest-dinosaur-graveyard-linked-mass-death.html
Fuel for Faith 