Moving Plates, Part 2

Last week we talked a little bit about plate tectonics and the global flood.  Today I want to talk a little bit more about this topic so that next week we can get into some more specific evidence for the catastrophic global flood.  Remember how I mentioned that earth is broken up into plates of “lithosphere” and that dense ocean plates sink under the less dense continental plates?  Well, for the rest of our time talking about plate tectonics we will pretty much just be talking about ocean plates.

People didn’t really know much about what the ocean floor looked like before submarines became important in war (honestly, we still have a lot of underwater exploring to do with all of the incredible creatures and the vastness of the ocean).   Scientists used sonar attached to ships to measure how deep the ocean floor was at different places.  When a complete map of the ocean floor could be made, the results were surprising.  Instead of finding that the ocean got deeper toward the center, like a bathtub, they discovered underwater mountain chains and trenches.

The Mid-Atlantic Ridge is an underwater mountain chain that runs through the middle of the Atlantic Ocean almost from pole to pole.   The reason why we have the Mid-Atlantic Ridge is because two sections of ocean plate are moving away from each other and towards the continents on either side where the plates are getting subducted.  It’s like the continental plates are sucking in the ocean plates.  When the two sections of ocean plates get pulled away from each other this leaves a gap between them.  Hot magma from the mantle comes to the rescue, filling up that gap and cooling to form new additions to the ocean plates.

Because the newly cooled magma is still warmer than the rest of the ocean plate, it sticks up further than the rest of the ocean plate (which has had a little more time to cool), creating a mountain chain underwater.  This is an important idea for the flood.  What if plates were moving faster, being subducted faster (a concept called “Runaway Subduction” – more on that later), and consequently adding on new, relatively hot ocean plate faster during the catastrophic flood?

Think about it a little bit: new and relatively hot ocean plate rises up higher than cold ocean plate.  During the flood this process would be happening rapidly, which would mean that you might get a higher and wider mid-ocean ridge, causing the ocean to become shallower and displace water onto the continents.  There is enough water in the oceans to cover the entire earth two miles deep, if mountains and oceans were completely leveled.  Also, such extreme plate tectonic activity would also create a lot of underwater volcanos, like the “fountains of the great deep” that we read about in the Biblical flood account.

This is just a theory, and not all creationists agree with it entirely.  Creationists are scientists so you can’t expect them to completely agree on things like this.  In the next few weeks we will talk about another ocean plate – the Pacific plate, and several evidences in support of this idea.  I hope you are enjoying this series.  If I am going over your head, please ask questions for clarification.