Unless you’re a hardened and determined relativist real, observable, empirical facts don’t change. Therefore if the “facts” you’ve been given become denied or altered, something’s wrong. In my science classes at school-admittedly a long time ago now, I was taught “uniformitarian” doctrine: the present is the key to the past…
(I’ve published this post before: this is an improved edit).
Change occurs over vast stretches of time at the rate of processes we observe now: this was the instruction I received. It was, at the time, considered to be obvious, proven fact. Well, as we all know facts change, especially in the worlds of politics and evolution. Today, while you may well not have been told it yourself, at least as any kind of admission of fault, the common view in evolutionary theory today concerning the history of the earth is that there have been several or many earth-shaking events or catastrophes.
This “In Our Time” episode, with a thoroughly evolutionary viewpoint, speaks of at least five “mass extinctions”, and “many lesser calamities” over the course of earth’s history. These have altered the geology or/and the biology of earth sometimes at rates very different and much faster than normal change which we observe today.
Host Melvyn Bragg and his panel of committed evolutionists state plainly that some of these events were “world-wide” (1). That is, events and abnormal processes sometimes affected the entire earth. If you dig, you will also find that other processes not covered in this episode have shaped our world on a colossal scale. For example, the north American continent has, according to present theory, been submerged under oceans and then re-appeared, many times over in the course of earth history. Herds or pods of fossil whales have been found in the middle of Africa, because, it’s claimed, there “must have” been an ocean there for millions of years.
WE’VE BEEN TAKEN FOR A RIDE
Secular geology has therefore taken us on a circuitous route away from catastrophism and back again, being careful to strip us of our faith in God in the process. It first took us away from what had been the prevailing belief in geology, that a global Flood as recorded in Biblical Scripture (and in many legends from around the world) rearranged the surface of the earth; through the temporarily “proven fact” of uniformitarianism”, and finally on to a sanitized and naturalistic version of global catastrophism.
Mass-extinction events affected, say the evolutionists on “In Our Time”, the entire world. Hmm, mass extinction events…affecting the entire globe. That sounds familiar indeed.
A MYSTERY?
Some of these events can happen “instantly” says our intrepid host in his introduction, but some can take millions of years. The Late Devonian extinction was the slower kind, but was still “devastating”. Roughly three hundred and seventy five million years ago, says Melvyn, half of the species on earth disappeared, which event is still something of a “mystery”. How does that square with slow and gradual processes, or with “the present is the key to the past”? Obviously it doesn’t.
Evolutionists have numerous explanations for what they see as many unrelated extinction events, ranging from stagnating oceans to asteroids, vast eruptions to global climate change, a “single gene transfer event” to burning coal (3). Oh, and there was Gary Larsen’s theory: 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
These mass extinction events, by all contemporary evolutionary accounts, saw thousands of species wiped out. But as Sherwin asks, how did literally billions of fossils form, sometimes in completion or even in perfect detail? Huge animals were entombed, and even in entire and enormous herds, as I noted in my post “The Real Reason Dinosaurs Became Extinct” (6). They’ve been found all around the earth: most commonly buried rapidly or instantly in sediment, and normally ripped apart or twisted by force. Isn’t it a well known fact that dead organisms on the surface will rot or be eaten long before they can be fossilized? How many fossils of large animals are being formed now over long time periods? Try to find one!
Most interestingly, and least commonly broadcast, is the fact that land-dwelling animals, including dinosaurs, were commonly fossilized alongside marine animals. Dr Clarey documents some of these finds (5). How does this happen in slow and gradual processes? Did sharks live with dinosaurs? Wouldn’t this have to happen in some monumental catastrophe?
THE SUPER-CONTINENT
In Our Time evolutionists also revealed, in the course of “The Late-Devonian Extinction”, the consensus view that there was once a “super-continent”, in which most of the earth’s land-mass was in one place. The pre-Devonian world, say the experts, could you go back and see it, would immediately look very strange. For one thing, the arrangement of the continents was completely different to that of today:
“Most of the continents, in fact, were in the southern hemisphere, forming a super-continent…”
What is now Britain, and Europe, and North America, were all joined together. There was no Atlantic Ocean, says the expert.
That’s interesting, because the Bible hints at a super-continent thousands of years before modern scientists considered it, and most creationists have taught it for a long time (7).
How do we know about this mass extinction? asks Melvyn on “In Our Time”. We know by looking at the fossils in the rock layers, replies the expert. As Ken Ham has succinctly observed, there are billions of dead things buried in rock layers all over the earth, and this fossil record speaks of a global catastrophe in which nearly all life on earth died, as recorded in the account of the Flood in Genesis chapters 6 and 7. Evolutionists observe different types of layers and different types of fossils in the layers. This can be explained perfectly by the geological and physical process of the Flood, and you can read about that process in a semi-technical work called “Carved In Stone”, by Dr. Timothy Clarey, published by ICR.
TRUTH IS NEVER EXTINCT-JUST BURIED
In evolution every theory is on the table except the one recorded in the Bible for thousands of years, long before any acknowledgment of mass extinctions in the secular world. The Flood account was there before Darwin and Lyell and others formed their ideas. They and others wanted to remove the Flood from consideration, thereby removing God also.
CROCS
“The Late-Devonian Extinction” episode dove-tails nicely in my observations with another, titled “The Evolution of Crocodiles” (4). I’ve reviewed this one in a separate post, but here’s the gist of it.
The discussion of the demise of numerous ancient crocodile species in this episode 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! We are being herded with a colossal lie and fear-mongering.
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) all the continents were in one place, until they began to drift apart. With all the resultant “cataclysmic” eruptions, the sun was blocked out, say the experts (creationists agree here) 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 including myself as “fact”. Isn’t it amazing how proven facts change!
THE SECULAR FLOOD
The images I’ve posted of animals floundering in water, mud, lava and ash are all secular representations of proposed mass-extinctions. How close they now are to seeing the one real mass-extinction event recorded in Genesis 6, and yet willfully so far away.
Thanks for reading. I’ve reviewed several other “In Our Time” broadcasts : you can search “In Our Time” in the little box near the top of this page.
NOTES
1 BBC Radio 4, In Our Time: “The Late Devonian Extinction”.
2 https://www.icr.org/article/worlds-most-catastrophic-extinction/
4 IN OUR TIME: “The Evolution of Crocodiles”, BBC Radio 4 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000zmhf
5 Institute for Creation Research: https://www.icr.org/article/dinosaur-fossils-found-marine-rocksagain
6 https://nickyfisher.com/2014/08/09/the-real-reason-dinosaurs-became-extinct/
7 https://www.icr.org/article/plate-tectonics-after-fifty-years
Fuel for Faith, Food for Thought 