Creation Moment 6/23/2024 - GOE = GOM

Thus saith God the LORD, He that created the heavens, and stretched them out; He that spread forth the earth, and that which cometh out of it; He that giveth breath unto the people upon it, and spirit to them that walk therein: Isaiah 42:5

"Once upon a time, 2.4 billion Darwin Years ago (give or take 100 million), oxygen levels in the oceans were very low. Slowly, bacteria and algae found ways to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen escaped, but the oxygen accumulated in the oceans and the atmosphere. This dramatic turn of events is called the Great

Oxidation Event (GOE, also called the Great Oxygenation Event). As oxygen became available, microbes found it useful for more efficient metabolism. Millions of years later, when oxygen reached near modern levels, an explosion of life resulted! Oxygen kickstarted the evolution of complex body plans. Then larger animals were able to live on land, and eventually the oxygen-enriched atmosphere led to the emergence of human brains that figured all this out.

Sound familiar? This useful scenario has died and come back to life repeatedly (8 March 2021) after being dealt a death blow as far back as 2013 (2 Sept 2013). That was after it was “dethroned” in 2009 (17 April 2009). It should be called, therefore, the Great Oxidation Myth (GOM), repeated uncritically by evolutionists (see 16 March 2017). Articles and papers this month show again that this Zombie Science is back up, denying it was ever dead. But as we will argue, The GOM creates more problems than it supposedly solves.

What the geologic record reveals about how the oceans were oxygenated (University of Utah, 12 June 2024). Chadlin Ostrander gets his 15 minutes of fame in a press release photo. He performed divination on shale rocks, announcing that stable isotopes of thallium have spoken to him about the rise of oxygen in the rocks. But it’s complicated. It wasn’t a smooth rise. The spirit of the shales told him that, contrary to earlier beliefs about the GOE, oxygen went up and down on a teeter totter for some 200 million Darwin Years! Imagine that! Isn’t it better to have multiple GOE zombies walking around than just one?

"For the first half of Earth’s existence, its atmosphere and oceans were largely devoid of O2. This gas was being produced by cyanobacteria in the ocean before the GOE, it seems, but in these early days the O2 was rapidly destroyed in reactions with exposed minerals and volcanic gasses. Poulton, Bekker and colleagues discovered that the rare sulfur isotope signatures disappear but then reappear, suggesting multiple O2 rises and falls in the atmosphere during the GOE. This was no single ‘event.’

"Earth wasn’t ready to be oxygenated when oxygen starts to be produced. Earth needed time to evolve biologically, geologically and chemically to be conducive to oxygenation,” Ostrander said. “It’s like a teeter totter. You have oxygen production, but you have so much oxygen destruction, nothing’s happening. We’re still trying to figure out when we’ve completely tipped the scales and Earth could not go backwards to an anoxic atmosphere.”

Algae to Earth: ‘We’re not ready! We need more time to evolve! The Stuff Happens Law is too slow!’ The Earth and cyanobacteria rode their teeter totter for 200 million more Darwin Years. Finally, the microbes were ready to evolve, and Earth allowed oxygen to accumulate so that something could happen. And happen it did! Almost 20 new complex body plans emerged without transitional forms in the geological blink of an eye." 

CEH