*Now that his theory is widely accepted, most schoolbooks and museums present it simply as fact, without detailed justification.
Christians need to be careful of both extremes, especially on a topic so central to our understanding of earth history.
---Just because evolutionists developed a theory doesn’t make it wrong,
---but scientific “consensus” doesn’t mean we should blindly accept everything they say without some fact-checking.
---No one wants to sound like Wegener’s original close-minded, shrill opponents.
Q: Have you ever wondered why some of the most powerful earthquakes strike places like southern California but leave other regions unscathed?
Q: Have you ever wondered why some of the most powerful earthquakes strike places like southern California but leave other regions unscathed?
Q: Why do active volcanoes explode in the Pacific Northwest but skip the Midwest?
Similar patterns are repeated around the globe and demand an explanation. They are important clues indicating that the earth's surface really does move.
Most of the world’s active volcanoes occur in linear belts that coincide with earthquake zones. This is especially obvious at the outer edge of the Pacific Ocean. Volcanoes are so plentiful here that this circle is called the “Ring of Fire.” Active volcanoes belch out steam, ash, and lavas from the upwelling of hot molten rock (called magma) from inside the earth.
Q:Why are so many volcanoes here and not elsewhere?
Not only do earthquakes track around the rim of the Pacific Ocean, they also encircle the globe in an interlinked pattern. A line of earthquake zones runs down the center of the Atlantic Ocean and then east into the Indian Ocean, where it splits in two, one branch heading northward towards Arabia, and the other branch heading eastward into the Pacific Ocean. Clearly something is happening at these special zones.
Geologists believe that this interlinked pattern of earthquake zones and active volcanoes marks the edges of “plates” that divide the earth’s outer skin, or crust, into more than a dozen pieces. (Strictly speaking, the plates include the uppermost mantle beneath the crustal pieces.) They claim that the movements of these plates cause earthquakes and volcanoes.
The study of earth movements is technically known as “tectonics,” so the study of plate movements is called “plate tectonics.” (Note that it is no longer accurate to call it “continental drift.” We now know that the ocean floor crust is also moving. In fact, the Pacific, Nazca, Cocos, and Scotia plates are moving even though they consist almost entirely of ocean floor crust.)
The differences are very distinct.
The continents are made up of many different rock types, but if we were to grind them all up, the average composition would be similar to granite. On the other hand, drilling into the ocean floors has revealed that the oceanic crust beneath the ooze is made up of basalt (dark volcanic rock). Granites contain a lot of silicon and not so much iron and magnesium, whereas basalts contain a lot less silicon but much more iron and magnesium.
Cooled oceanic crust is heavier than the hot mantle beneath it. So it tends to sink. The continental crust, in contrast, is much lighter (less dense), so it floats. As a result, the continents “ride” higher than the ocean crust. If they collide, the ocean crust would slide under the continental crust because it is heavier.
The high pressure and temperature in a collision would cause a melting reaction that would ultimately send hot magma from the upper mantle toward the surface. Scientists have checked the chemistry of many lavas on the edges of continents and found that they are generally mixtures of ocean basalt rock and continental granitic rocks, producing intermediate rocks called andesites and dacites.
Wherever oceanic plates are pulling apart, geologists would expect to find lava that rose from the uppermost mantle beneath the rift to produce new oceanic crust. The best example is the boundary down the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The rifting has produced a topographic feature known as the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. When scientists tested the lava in this region, they found it matches typical oceanic crust.
Plates also push against, or collide into, one another. This has two results.
If two continental plates collide, they buckle and crumple in the
collision zone to produce mountains. The best example is the Himalayas. Here geologists find lower continental crust material (granites) intruded into buckled metamorphosed sedimentary layers.
If an oceanic plate collides with a continental plate, it is pushed down underneath the edge of the continental plate (technically known as subduction). One of the best-known examples is off the coast of Peru and Chile. Here the Nazca plate is being pushed down under the South American plate. The result is the Andes Mountains. Here geologists find lavas that are a mixture of oceanic and continental crust material (called andesite).
Another possible interaction is plates sliding past one another. Here geologists find earthquakes but not volcanoes. The most infamous example is the San Andreas Fault of southern California, the boundary between the Pacific and North American plates. Every time these plates move along that fault zone, devastating earthquakes result.
Q: Since scientists weren’t present to study the original lavas when they flowed out of mid-oceanic ridges, how do they know the lavas came from the boundary between two plates and then pushed the plates in opposite directions?
Cooled oceanic crust is heavier than the hot mantle beneath it. So it tends to sink. The continental crust, in contrast, is much lighter (less dense), so it floats. As a result, the continents “ride” higher than the ocean crust. If they collide, the ocean crust would slide under the continental crust because it is heavier.
The high pressure and temperature in a collision would cause a melting reaction that would ultimately send hot magma from the upper mantle toward the surface. Scientists have checked the chemistry of many lavas on the edges of continents and found that they are generally mixtures of ocean basalt rock and continental granitic rocks, producing intermediate rocks called andesites and dacites.
Wherever oceanic plates are pulling apart, geologists would expect to find lava that rose from the uppermost mantle beneath the rift to produce new oceanic crust. The best example is the boundary down the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The rifting has produced a topographic feature known as the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. When scientists tested the lava in this region, they found it matches typical oceanic crust.
Plates also push against, or collide into, one another. This has two results.
If two continental plates collide, they buckle and crumple in the
If an oceanic plate collides with a continental plate, it is pushed down underneath the edge of the continental plate (technically known as subduction). One of the best-known examples is off the coast of Peru and Chile. Here the Nazca plate is being pushed down under the South American plate. The result is the Andes Mountains. Here geologists find lavas that are a mixture of oceanic and continental crust material (called andesite).
Another possible interaction is plates sliding past one another. Here geologists find earthquakes but not volcanoes. The most infamous example is the San Andreas Fault of southern California, the boundary between the Pacific and North American plates. Every time these plates move along that fault zone, devastating earthquakes result.
Q: Since scientists weren’t present to study the original lavas when they flowed out of mid-oceanic ridges, how do they know the lavas came from the boundary between two plates and then pushed the plates in opposite directions?
Scientists found the lavas had formed a unique pattern when they cooled, known as magnetic “stripes”.
Molten material rises wherever plates are separating. As the lava cools, magnetic portions point toward the earth’s magnetic north. New deposits point in a different direction if the magnetic north has flipped. The unique pattern of matching magnetic “stripes” on the
seafloor—on either side of the mid-oceanic ridge—shows it has been spreading.
It appears that in the past the earth’s magnetic field changed direction. So when each new surge of seafloor basalts upwelled and cooled, it should have recorded a different magnetic field direction. This is possible because basalts contain magnetic iron in a mineral called magnetite. When the magma cools, regions within the magnetite crystals (called magnetic domains) align themselves with the magnetic field and “freeze” into the rock, recording the direction of the earth’s magnetic field at that time.
Another amazing prediction of plate tectonics is the existence of the plate that drove into the western edge of North America, pushing up the Rocky Mountains and then disappearing under the continent. Scientists predicted this plate should have sunk deep into the mantle under western North America. They were able to test their prediction after the development of seismic tomography (using seismic waves to make a 3D image of the earth’s interior). As expected, they found the missing plate, known as the Farallon plate, deep in the mantle.
Genesis 7:11 says the Flood began with the breaking up of “the fountains of the great deep.” This catastrophic bursting of hot waters and upwelling molten rock would have caused a massive rift in the seafloor (“the great deep”). Such rifting would have rapidly spread around the globe, including across the pre-Flood supercontinent, tearing it apart to make today’s continents.
Shortly thereafter, the cold pre-Flood ocean crust would have started to sink, being subducted under the less dense continental crust, which continued to “float.”
Molten material rises wherever plates are separating. As the lava cools, magnetic portions point toward the earth’s magnetic north. New deposits point in a different direction if the magnetic north has flipped. The unique pattern of matching magnetic “stripes” on the
It appears that in the past the earth’s magnetic field changed direction. So when each new surge of seafloor basalts upwelled and cooled, it should have recorded a different magnetic field direction. This is possible because basalts contain magnetic iron in a mineral called magnetite. When the magma cools, regions within the magnetite crystals (called magnetic domains) align themselves with the magnetic field and “freeze” into the rock, recording the direction of the earth’s magnetic field at that time.
Another amazing prediction of plate tectonics is the existence of the plate that drove into the western edge of North America, pushing up the Rocky Mountains and then disappearing under the continent. Scientists predicted this plate should have sunk deep into the mantle under western North America. They were able to test their prediction after the development of seismic tomography (using seismic waves to make a 3D image of the earth’s interior). As expected, they found the missing plate, known as the Farallon plate, deep in the mantle.
Genesis 7:11 says the Flood began with the breaking up of “the fountains of the great deep.” This catastrophic bursting of hot waters and upwelling molten rock would have caused a massive rift in the seafloor (“the great deep”). Such rifting would have rapidly spread around the globe, including across the pre-Flood supercontinent, tearing it apart to make today’s continents.
Shortly thereafter, the cold pre-Flood ocean crust would have started to sink, being subducted under the less dense continental crust, which continued to “float.”
Scientist John Baumgardner has shown that plate movements would have been extremely fast during the Flood event, compared to what we observe today.
Most of the continents were moved by seafloor spreading and runaway subduction during the Flood year.
Today, we merely see residual movements of the plates, but enough to powerfully explain where all the earthquakes, active volcanoes, mid-ocean ridges, and deep-sea trenches
occur on earth."
AIG