Symposium on Creation

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The Noachian Flood and Mountain Uplifts:
By Donald W. Patten

Section V: THE NOACHIAN FLOOD AND MOUNTAIN UPLIFTS

Part I. The Cosmology of Job

The Book of Job is perhaps the oldest literary resource which is in our possession. In the Book of Job, one finds, next to the gospels, perhaps the most moving and profound blend of drama, pathos and triumph in all literature. The ethic involving Job, his character, his sufferings and his victory is immense in scope. However great this system of moral and spiritual values this ethic in the Book of Job may be, this chapter will bypass this traditional consideration. Rather, it desires to concentrate on the cosmology in the Book of Job, the earth history and the natural science.

Job lived about twelve generations after the flood, approximately the same era as did Abraham.¹ This was an era when worship motifs were generally, and apparently increasingly being directed toward the sun, the moon and the "hosts of heaven," the planetary deities and the sky-gods rather than to the Creator. To this Job objected, and rather strenuously, Job 31:26-29, as did Abraham in Ur of the Chaldees,² which was becoming engulfed in themes astrological, complete with astronomer-priests, ziggurats and nature worship.

In terms of a time perspective, Abraham lived ten generations, and Job lived perhaps eleven or twelve generations after the Flood. By comparison, the writer happens to be the tenth generation of his family living on American soil; his earliest American ancestor was in the first wave of the Puritan migration to Massachusetts Bay in 1629. In a sense, we are about as close to the days of the Massachusetts Commonwealth and Plymouth Rock as was Job to the days of the Flood.

However in another sense, Job was closer to the stories and traditions of the Flood. In those days, life did not fade or burn out as rapidly as today; greater longevity was normal, and generations overlapped many other generations, thus allowing a closer and more vivid account of the early post-diluvian era than we might expect. Thus while Job lived perhaps eight hundred to nine hundred years after the Flood, he was perhaps closer to the Flood in a cultural sense than we are to the founding of our culture some three hundred years ago.

In making an examination or a review of the cosmology of Job, and of some of the natural science contained in the Book of Job, let us recognize first ourselves and our view of cosmology, and note the characteristics of our age. We must do this in order to be certain not to misinterpret the cosmology of Job, for we may easily project, even subconsciously, our concepts into Job's, and call them Job's concepts.

We have lived in an era, the twentieth century, which has happened to be drenched in atheism, in Darwinism and in uniformitarianism. The modern assumption is (to quote the prophet Peter) "all things continue as they were in the beginning" (II Peter 3:4).

Under this cosmological view of gradualism and uniformitarianism, the ice epoch, the so-called ice age came (whatever the cause) very slowly and later gradually retreated, again very slowly, requiring vast amounts of time. Similarly mountains were supposedly uplifted millimeters per millennium until they attained great heights, from which they were subsequently eroded. Modern thought tosses around millions and tens of millions of years like chaff in the wind; the general assumption is "oceans of time for everything" in earth history. This assumption is termed "uniformitarianism." It affects astronomy; it affects geology; it affects biology; it affects world politics; it affects theology.

But although the modern twentieth century world of ours embraces uniformitarianism as an operating assumption, it need not follow that (a) Job's cosmology was uniformitarian, nor (b) need it follow that Job's observations were uniformitarian. Listen to the speeches in Job concerning astronomy and the cosmology of that era. Let us begin by doubting whether Job was a uniformitarian, and let us ask this question periodically. Was Job a uniformitarian?

One of the key thoughts, a crystallizing thought of this chapter, comes from a phrase tucked away in Job 12:8a, "Speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee." We may be considering quickly-drowned mammoths here, and quickly-frozen mammoths later. We shall be considering petrified forests, complete with petriied worms and worm holes, apparently suddenly inundated and suddenly fossilized.

We may be considering fossil bears twenty feet tall, fossil ostriches as large as giraffes, fossil pigs as large as rhinos, fossil sloths weighing ten thousand pounds. We shall be considering turtles found in the fossil record, which possessed shells some ten and twelve feet in diameter:. Turtles today generally require a moderate climate and a marine habitat. Now we cannot say that Nebraska and South Dakota possess these characteristics today, but they possess fossil turtles of these dimensions, and much more in the way of fossil animals.

In one location in Nebraska, some eight thousand animals are found, with their skeletons not intact, but rather dismembered or shredded. Among the animals so found, some 90 per cent are today extinct, and about 10 per cent have survived as species. The problem of geologists with these bones is to put the right leg bone with the right thigh bone in order to avoid creating some Rube Goldberg animals, because most of the animals so buried have never been seen by modern men.

"Speak to the earth and it shall teach thee." We can gain many insights from the Bible relative to earth history, particularly in the books of Genesis and Job. But the crust of the earth, this vast cemetery of fossils and strata also speaks compellingly of former catastrophes. We might bear in mind dragon flies in the fossil record with wingspans of thirty inches, and birds with wing-spans of twenty and thirty feet. We may bear in mind the Lewis Overthrust in Glacier Park, near the writer's birthplace, where a range of mountains rolled over, or tumbled over upon each other for a distance of thirty to forty miles. We may consider the scallop-like or arcuate pattern of mountain uplifts as they grace the crust of our planet in a great circle pattern, and we may note that a similar pattern of orogenetic uplift occurs on the Moon, our planet's binary partner. "Speak to the earth and it shall teach thee."

Orogenesis, or orogeny, is a term which refers to the process of mountain uplifts, or the folding of the earth's crust. Diastrophism relates to the methods of deformation which have sculptured and engraved our planet in the manner in which we find it. Listen to Job 9, and see if you hear anything that sounds like orogeny or deformation.

Again our question is presented, "Was Job a uniformitarian or was he something else?"

In Job 12:15, apparently the era of the Flood and the immensity of the watery catastrophe comprise the background.

In Job 22, Eliphaz, the miserable comforter with numerous platitudes, discusses the height of heaven, the circuit of heaven, and the generation "whose foundation was overflown with a flood."

Abraham, like Job, was faced with cultural trends generally favoring astral pantheism, and adoration or worship of the planetary deities, the sky-gods. Both men realized with determination the necessity of opposing the same. Job describes this type of pantheism as follows:

Note the similarity of Abraham who, like Job, was something of a twentieth century non-conformist (I did not say twentieth century A.D. ). The following comes from Josephus' account of Abraham in Ur of the Chaldees, and his protest, particularly to worship along lines of astral pantheism.

Where Josephus gets his authority to seemingly quote Abraham, I do not know. However it would appear that the issue involved the Babylonian pantheon, which was later translated into Greek as Apollo, Aphrodite, Ares, Pallas Athene, Electra, Zeus and others. Part of the issue, to Abraham, concerned whether or not the planets merited worship. But another part of the issue revolved around regular versus irregular motions in the heavens, or predictable versus unpredictable movements.

This was an issue for Job in Arabia. It was an issue for Abraham in Chaldea. It was an issue in ancient India, Japan, Germany and Polynesia, and many other parts of the world according to ancient tradition. Most ancient peoples had something in terms of astrally-oriented architecture such as sun dials, sun caves, temples designed in favor of eclipses, solar discs made of gold, and similar items. The Tower of Babel reportedly contained an astral temple at the climax. And so many ancient peoples had their astronomer-priests, astrologers, star-gazers, or a similar collection of persons who pretended to know something of future events.

Abraham protested against pantheizing the planets. What was his award for this protest? Apparently it was a one-way ticket to the Wild West of that day, Palestine.

Interestingly enough, Josephus draws from a Babylonian named Berosus for the following comment about Abraham:

Again, Josephus describes Abraham and his temporary visit into Egypt in a rather interesting manner in terms of intellectual pursuits:

For what value it may contain, Josephus reports that the Chaldean engineers who constructed the ziggurats including the Tower of Babel did not, like many modern uniformitarians, debate the issue of whether or not there had been a great, devastating flood. They merely debated the issue of whether or not there might be another, and if so, they might rather badly need a place to flee, a place of great height on the flat, Mesopotamian plain; thus the ziggurats, which were pitched with bitumen, as was Noah's ark "that it might be liable to admit water."⁷ And perhaps in their anticipated crisis, there might be further need for astronomical measurements and placations, thus the astral temples at the top of the towers. This gives something of the cosmology of Chaldea in general, and of Abraham the non-conformist. Now we shall ask a broader question, "Were the Chaldeans very uniformitarian in their thinking?

With this we shall return our attention to Job 38, and part of the Lord's speech, a section which may contain some rather profound items on natural history and on natural science (verse 29).

(This will be our key question, or crystallizing thought in the next chapter, relative to the Flood and the Ice Epoch, even as the key thought in this chapter is, "Speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee.")

With this key question about the ordinances of heaven, we shall turn to the second part of this chapter, the ordinances of man. The cosmology of Job has briefly been sketched with its catastrophism and its astronomical or celestial orientation.

Part II. The Ordinances of Man

The ordinances of heaven and their application to the earth in the frame of history is the point of issue. Uniformitarians in particular, and anti-spiritual scholars in general have maintained that the planets and their satellites have been revolving in their current orbits for millions, if not billions of years. They have been maintaining this for the last 150 years, or perhaps 200 years, a rather limited span of time. This has been since the days of Kant, Laplace, Hutton and Lyell, who maintained, on the basis of their authority, that the planets have been revolving for that long. Why? Their reason is based on the fact that the nebular hypothesis, originated by Kant, so requires.

Uniformitarianism, we maintain, is the ordinance of man, and anti-spiritual man at that. This lecture is to contrast in your thinking just exactly what may be the difference between the ordinances of heaven" (in terms of Job's cosmology and the "ordinances of man" in terms of uniformitarianism).

Uniformitarianism is the notion of "oceans of time for everything" in earth history; however it takes many forms. One form is the astronomical form, and the Nebular Hypothesis, first proposed by Immanuel Kant in 1755, and later by Laplace. Another form is the geological form, geological uniformitarianism, and the geological time scale, as proposed first by Hutton and expanded by Lyell. A third form is the biological form, Darwinism, as set forth by such figures as Darwin and Huxley. Whether in astronomy, in geology, in biology or in other areas, uniformitarianism requires time in vast increments, and assumes the same.

Kant first formulated the uniformitarian hypothesis in 1755, in his work, General History of Nature and Theory of the Heavens, when he was thirty-one years old. He had been raised in the Pietist Lutheran tradition in Germany. He swerved sharply from this tradition toward an agnostic and intellectual tradition in his early twenties. He taught mathematics, astronomy and physical geography prior to developing this hypothesis. After it, he went on to develop a professional skepticism and he became the leading figure in German rationalism. He originated the school of higher criticism which has been so heavily used against the evangelical and Biblical viewpoint.

Kant never declared himself to be an atheist; he claimed to be an agnostic. Notice in his hypothesis, he presumes if there is a Creator, He wound up the solar system some two billion years ago, and went away, and left it. While Kant declared for agnosticism, many of his students declared for open atheism. And from this school of German rationalism develop such thinkers as Hegel and Nietzsche, who strongly influenced Hitler. Feuerbach, another atheist, along with Hegel strongly influenced Marx, who influenced Lenin. This gives you something of the heritage of Kantianism, a sort of Pandora's Box.

In the eighteenth century in Europe, anti-spiritual scholars, atheists and agnostics, found themselves pretty consistently on the defensive. That was an era of relatively strong Christian thought, when such anti-spiritual scholars would consistently find themselves faced with the issue of the Deluge, or Flood.

They might refute the idea. But then, at the same time, people were finding fossils in every nation in Europe. A German soldier found some twenty mammoths in a bed near the Neckar River, some twenty feet below the surface. Others were finding fossils below sea level in the coal mines of Germany or Wales. Sometimes the fossils were small and sometimes their size was quite impressive. Hippopotamuses were found in England, marine crustaceans were found in the Alps, ten thousand feet and twelve thousand feet above sea level.

People would say that this was caused by the Flood. Cuvier taught that there had been great inundations several times in earth history. Atheists, in endeavoring to refute the Flood, or creation, or moral responsibility, were in a difficult plight. They badly needed some hypothesis which was simultaneously anti-Genesis and was seemingly scientific. And in the hypothesis of uniformitarianism, they found that for which they were seeking, a proposition which was simultaneously anti-Genesis and seemingly scientific.

Perhaps Voltaire is a good example of that era. Any mention of the Flood and its implications of judgment brought his ire and ridicule. And then someone found a fossil practically in his backyard, and he practically had apoplexy.

But with the coming of uniformitarianism, based on Kant's nebular hypothesis, Christianity suddenly became "anti-scientific" because the nebular hypothesis and uniformitarianism were equated to "science." Uniformitarianism was embraced and propagated with enthusiasm, but it remained an assumption, one which is rarely questioned. And when it is questioned, such questions are squelched or relegated to limbo by the uniformitarian establishment because somehow, the status quo, especially this status quo, seems sacrosanct.

This chapter will not take time to examine the radical inconsistencies of the nebular hypothesis in astronomy, but they are massive and severe.⁸ But one will be mentioned, one among a large number. There was supposedly a gaseous nebular which condensed into the sun. A few globules did not make it into the center, inexplicably, but they cooled and formed planets. Now the planets happen to contain 98 per cent of the motion of our solar system, and but 1 per cent of the mass. This is a very thorny incongruity within the uniformitarian approach. Other problems relate to orbits of satellites, orbits of planets, retrogradely revolving moons, planes of satellites, ecliptic planes, tilts of axes, etc. When the entire proposition is meticulously examined, the nebular hypothesis explains very little, if indeed anything about origins of the planets, satellites, asteroids, meteor streams and comets.

However, students throughout the world are taught, almost without exception, that mountains were uplifted gradually, and in a time frame of tens or hundreds of millions of years ago, slowly but surely. This writer was taught this early in his college career, at the same time, incidentally, while he began to read the Scriptures. There was a differential in viewpoint to be sure, but the degree or the totality of the difference became apparent only gradually.

Part III. Mechanics of Orogenesis (Mountain Uplifts)

Uniformitarianism never made much sense, so questions were asked. Why were dinosaurs quickly drowned and buried in sediments? Why were mammoths quickly drowned in North America, and quick-frozen or flash frozen in Siberia, even with sub-tropical vegetation in their mouths and stomachs? Why were petrified forests found one hundred miles from the South Pole by Admiral Byrd? Why were land mammals found fossilized in locations below sea level, and why were sea animals found fossilized at high elevations? More questions were asked, and there were no uniformitarian answers to these really elementary and basic issues. Meanwhile Genesis and Job began to be read.

And then more questions were asked concerning Genesis and the Flood. How was the ark floated, if the Deluge story were valid? Was the ark nearly as large as the Queen Mary in water displacement, if not in configuration? If so, how could even a swollen river system in the Middle East float it? And even if it could, would not such a flotation be downstream, and in the direction of open sea or the wide ocean?

Why is every continent covered with sedimentary strata indicating (a) sudden, (b) massive, and (c) repeated inundations? Why are fossil crinoids found scattered across the semi-arid Middle West when they must grow in a habitat at least 500, and up to 6,000, feet below sea level? Did it rain for 40 days and nights? If so, how was the ark floated for 150 days, and why are the waters described as continually rising for 150 days? Why is the Deluge story repeated in various ways throughout the cultures and nations of both hemispheres? This is but a brief sampling of questions which may be raised, questions which merit solid explanation.

By rejecting modern uniformitarian thought, one is prepared to consider the subject of earth history in terms of sudden upheavals, or catastrophes, the evidences of which are manifold. By a brief study of the solar system, one is reminded of the possibility of much cosmic chaos. And by a brief study of Genesis and Job, one is reminded of the astronomically-oriented cosmologies of the ancients.

With this line of approach, we may recall that many of the events of the Bible such as the Flood have been severely questioned and criticized, always in the "garb of scholardom" and never in the "rags of prejudice." The walls of Jericho according to uniformitarian thought could never have suddenly collapsed (although it was subsequently realized that Jericho is located astride one of the major fault zones of the earth.) And with Kant's uniformitarian rationalism, the sun and moon never could have suddenly stopped in their celestial procession, because the nebular hypothesis contained no room for such a possibility (Joshua 10:11-13; Judges 5:20; II Kings 20:11 ). And the Flood, the Noachian Flood, could never have occurred, except as a local flooding river system, because rain just could not accomplish a phenomenon of that magnitude. In the name of scholardom, and all that is rational, it just could not be.

Part IV. A Brief View of Our Solar System

Let us take just a brief journey out to the nearer stars in our galaxy. Among the twenty-nine nearest known stars, there are but thirteen star systems. This is because most of the sun's neighbors are binaries. A binary is two or more stars which revolve around each other, or more technically, around a point containing nothing. The sun's second-closest neighbor, Barnard's Star, is a two-body binary with one of the two stars being dark and the other luminous. Planets are suspected in the Barnard Star system also.

The sun's nearest neighbor is a group of three interacting stars known as Alpha Centauri, Beta Centauri and Proxima Centauri. Alpha and Beta revolve around a common point; we may roughly say they revolve around each other. And the more remote Proxima revolves around the revolving inner two.

Let us now envision a comet such as Halley's Comet, approaching the sun, a unitary star. It turns on the sun and returns to its original distant location (its aphelion). Its orbit is stable. But consider a comet approaching the center of a binary system, with its two or more components. Consider the turning and weaving, the wobbling which would occur. Such disturbing influences result in perturbations, changes in an orbit.

Now let us briefly look at Pluto, which approaches the sun at a distance of about 2.7 billion miles and retreats to 4.5 billion miles. At perihelion (its closest approach to the sun), Pluto is 35 million miles nearer (into the Sun) than is Neptune. Pluto's year is about 248 of our years. Thus once every 2½ centuries, Neptune suddenly becomes the outermost planet, the ninth planet for a brief season. The eccentricity of Pluto's orbit is a phenomenon which has lead astronomers to widely suspect that Pluto and Neptune may have interacted historically.

Neptune's two satellites revolve in retrograde motion (the only two major satellites in our solar system with retrograde motion.) Halley's Comet has retrograde motion, and Halley's Comet turns (has its turn point) in the region of Neptune's orbit. Nereid's orbit is extremely eccentric, and it looks as if it almost escaped the Neptune system whereas Halley's Comet possibly did. This whole system of Neptune, Pluto, Nereid, Triton, Halley's Comet and other comets is suggestive that great disturbances of perturbations have occurred in the vicinity of Neptune at some time in the past. This is an example of suspected gravitational interaction some 2.5 billion miles distant from the earth, a fairly remote example, by most standards.

Next, let us briefly examine the region of Saturn, with its brilliant rings. It has been known for nearly 300 years that Saturn's Rings were bands, some 41,500 miles wide, and some 180,000 miles in diameter. In 1948, they were first measured in terms of thickness; they are 10 miles thick. From this modest thickness, plus the known reflectivity of Saturn's Rings, it was immediately realized that the rings must be composed of ice particles, and not rock particles as are the asteroids and the meteor streams.

In astronomy, if two bodies were to approach, the gravitational interaction would increase in magnitude, and in geometric proportions relative to distance. (The inverse of the square of the distance.) If they were to approach to a distance of 2.44 times the radius of the larger, the internal gravity of the smaller would be overcome, and it would fragmentize at approximately this distance, assuming the two bodies are of similar density. This distance is known as Roche's Limit. It is generally suspected that some icy celestial wanderer came too close to Saturn at some time in the past. It came so close that it passed Roche's Limit and fragmentized. The result was a vast catastrophe, in this case, an icy catastrophe; the remains are Saturn's Rings.

This is another example of gravitational interaction, of a greater magnitude than the circumstances surrounding perturbations in the Neptune, Pluto, Nereid, Triton complex. Yet Saturn is some 800,000,000 miles distant from the earth, a location which is yet rather remote by most standards.

Coming in closer, one passes the orbit of Jupiter and moves into the belt of asteroids, battered fragments of a former planet. In the case of Saturn's Rings, the body causing the fragmentation is obvious, Saturn. In the case of the asteroids, the body causing the fragmentation is not obvious, for it is no longer revolving within the zone of asteroids.

Coming in closer to the earth, one passes the region of Mars. Mariner has revealed that Mars does not possess canals; however it does possess craters, and they are astonishingly numerous, and many are astonishingly large. In fact they are so numerous that there are craters superimposed on craters, which are superimposed on craters in a triple overlay. To quote a phrase by Prof. Talmage Wilson of Seattle, it would appear likely that Mars has had one or two bad nights out. Further, there are circumstances relating to the two minuscule moons, Deimos and Phobos, which are further indicative of perturbed orbits, gravitational interaction and celestial catastrophism within the Mars system.⁹

Mars, Deimos and Phobos are some 40,000,000 miles from the earth, a distance which is not very great in astronomical terms. But is this the closest location where evidences of ancient catastrophism exist? The closest body to the earth is the moon, its binary partner, some 240,000 miles distant. Is the moon also pocked with numerous craters? The answer is, yes, and some of them are l50 miles in diameter. Further, our space probes indicate that the back side of the moon, which earthians never see, is pocked with craters more numerous than is the moon's face.

Catastrophism in the realm of Neptune, some 2.6 billion miles distant is one thing; catastrophism in the realm of Saturn, some 0.8 billion miles may be much the same in terms of magnitude, but catastrophism in terms of the earth's nearest neighbors, in one case only 240,000 miles distant, this is catastrophism of quite a different dimension. There are ample evidences of celestial catastrophism in the solar system, and there is little reason to suppose that the earth has escaped.

It might be noted at this point, for future reference, that the moon not only contains craters. It also contains mountain systems which have a similar pattern to the scallop-like or arcuate uplift patterns of the mountains on the earth. In fact they also rise to similar elevations.

Part V. A View of the Deluge in Terms of a Celestial Catastrophe

Many of us have assumed that the Flood was caused by rain because it rained for forty days and nights as the flood commenced. However, it may be that while the rain was simultaneous with the Flood, it may not be the cause; it may be just a little addition. In geography, there are what are termed "cause and effect relationships," but there are other relationships which are termed "associative relationships." For instance, corn and pumpkins both ripen in the autumn; however, the ripening of corn does not cause the ripening of pumpkins; they are both dependent on other factors which affect both in common: the seasons. This is an "associative relationship."

Genesis teaches that it rained for 40 days and nights; however Genesis also teaches that the water rose for 150 days and nights. Thus, if rain were the only cause factor of the Flood, there are 110 days which are involved with little or no rain. Moreover Genesis teaches that the waters increased, and increased continually.

Genesis also teaches that the ark did not end up near the sea shore or an ocean shore. Today if a large boat comes to the end of its days, it is usually at the end of a dock or pier. But this, the most famous barge of ancient times, did not come to rest at the edge of any sea shore. Perhaps the second most important vessel of ancient times was the Argo piloted by Jason; it presumably came to its end somewhere on the shores of the Aegean, or possibly the Black Sea.

But the ark came to its final resting place some ten thousand feet above sea level, far from the shores of any sea, be it the Black, the Aegean, the Red, the Mediterranean or any other sea. Today, in the Puget Sound country near Seattle, we have ferry boats plying across the sound. However if we were to take a hike high up into the Cascades, this is about the last place one would expect to find a ferry boat. Yet such is the resting place of this large barge, the ark. This is remarkable to say the least. The resting place of the ark is reported to be in the Armenian Mountains, in the region of Mt. Ararat. The Armenian Mountains comprise a mountain complex or a "knot," located near the heart of Eurasia.

This is utterly inexplicable in terms of viewing the Flood as caused by rain. For instance, rain is substantially caused by evaporating ocean water, and rain usually falls in its greater proportions in marine locations. This location, the Armenian Mountains, is about fifteen hundred miles from the Indian Ocean, about two thousand miles from the Arctic Ocean, about three thousand miles from the Atlantic Ocean and about five thousand miles from the Pacific. To say the least, it is hardly a marine location.

In fact, it is in a zone called the horse latitudes where deserts are much more common than are forests, a zone where, by and large, it just does not rain very much. The Armenian region is surrounded by regions of deserts and steppes including such deserts as the Arabian, Saharan and Nubian deserts to the west, and the Gobi and Sinkiang Deserts to the east. To the north are the deserts and steppe-lands of Turkestan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, and to the south and west are the dry interior plateaus of Anatolia and Iran. By and large, this is a region where it just does not rain very much. Yet this is the region where the ark was grounded. Some theologians have endeavored to explain the flood in terms of a period of prolonged cyclonic storms and intense rain. Their endeavor, be it very sincere, has been to reconcile Genesis to uniformitarianism. However it just makes no sense geographically, and it seems to make little sense theologically.

In reviewing the story of the Deluge, one also comes upon the interesting observation that the fountains of the great deep began to surge forth, and continued in their surging for 150 days. Now if we view the Flood in terms of a gravitational interaction, a celestial catastrophe, then we may think in terms of tides, tides of subcontinental dimensions, tides which could perhaps float an ark or any other type of driftwood to an elevation of many thousand feet above sea level.

Tidal movement is related not only to gravitational interaction, but also to the rotation of the earth. The earth becomes somewhat football-shaped, or egg-shaped, due to the stresses of gravitational interaction. There are two nodes or high tides, one facing the extra-terrestrial center of gravity, and the other directly opposite to it. On the rim region, there is a zone of low tides.

Thus there are two high tides daily, actually every 24½ hours to be more accurate, and two low tides also daily. Genesis says that the waters increased continually, something which is quite similar to describing of tidal activity, which also increases daily, and twice daily.

When I was a youngster in Montana, I noticed in the late summer that the tumbleweeds would dry up, and begin to blow with the warm August breezes. They would bounce and roll, and roll and bounce until they became caught, perhaps on some barbed wire, perhaps on a snow fence or some sage brush. Perhaps we can view the ark somewhat similarly, as being floated on the Flood chaos until it finally became caught, and caught at high-tide in a hedge of mountains. The Armenian Knot region happens to be the second highest knot complex in the Eastern Hemisphere, next to the Pamir Knot where the mighty Himalayas, the Karakorums, the Tien Shans and the Kun Luns all meet.

Thus if we look at the flood in terms of tides rather than rain, many things become far more logical and this includes the manner of flotation, the direction of flotation, the 150 day period of gravitational crisis, the daily increasing of waters, and several other features.

With tides five thousand and ten thousand feet high sweeping the earth daily, sedimentation and stratification would suddenly become great factors reshaping the surface of the earth. Tides ten thousand feet high will create pressures, two tons per square inch and more, pressures which would fossilize animals and petrify forests in a matter of hours.

In a quarry in England a tree was found, about one hundred feet long, and at a forty degree angle. It went through strata after strata, each supposedly laid down millions of years apart. At the top, the tree was about one foot in diameter. At the bottom it was five feet in one diameter and two feet in the other diameter, as if it had come under immense pressures. Obviously if the strata were laid down millions of years apart, the top would have long since rotted. This is but one of thousands of inexplicable items for uniformitarianism to explain; in my opinion the understanding of the Flood in its cosmological perspective helps immensely.

Part VI. The Uplifting of Mountain Systems

If we consider the Flood to be tidal in nature and a result of gravitational interaction, a celestial catastrophe, then we must follow through and realize that not only one of the earth's three fluids, but rather all three would be in tidal movement simultaneously. This includes the air (the atmosphere), the oceans (the hydrosphere), and the magma (the lava or the fluid part of the lithosphere ).

There is an interesting perspective in Genesis concerning the animals coming onto the ark several days before the fulness of the chaos enveloped and floated the ark. I notice by way of coincidence that animals have a strange way of sensing seismic disturbances before they occur. Perhaps they can feel the micro shocks or the micro vibrations.

In Madison County, Montana, there was a severe earthquake in 1959. This was near Yellowstone Park. Rangers in the area noticed birds migrating out of the area the day before the earthquake occurred.

In 1924 there was a severe earthquake in Honshu, Japan. It was very destructive. It was predicted by an old Buddhist priest, who understood from tradition that a certain species of fish acted strangely before earthquakes. (Japan is located in the zone of earthquake activity and volcanism known as the Pacific Rim of Fire.) He predicted it would be a particularly severe earthquake because the fish had been acting strangely for months.

In 1902 Mt. Pelee on Martinique blew up. Martinique is one of the islands of the Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean. The day before this happened, an old Negro sheepherder noticed his sheep on the side of the mountain in an extremely disturbed state. He made his way to the mayor of St. Pierre, and said that something dreadful was about to happen. The mayor did not take the muttering old sheepherder very seriously; however the next day forty thousand people were engulfed in hot, incandescently hot gases and falling cinders. The animals apparently had anticipated this catastrophe, perhaps by feeling the early micro shocks of the event.

I note, by way of comparison, the remarkably strange behavior of the animals the week before the Deluge. If we understand that the lava within the earth's crust was beginning to heave and ebb, we can begin to perceive the seismic chaos, and the seismic crescendo which was approaching.

We consider the oceans as vast. They contain some 280,000,000 to 300,000,000 cubic miles of water, ample to float an ark 5,000 feet above mean sea level, if in marked tidal upheaval. Some uniformitarians and some theistic evolutionists have rejected the Flood story because, they suppose, rain just couldn't achieve such a phenomenon, and up to a point, they may be right.

However tides which can swamp a sandcastle at the sea shore might also be able to swamp the Alps, the Andes, the Pyrenees or the Ararats. It is merely a matter of magnitude. It is not the lack of a mechanism.

If the oceans are vast, they are vast only when compared to smaller features. When compared to the ocean of lava within the earth's crust, the hydrosphere might be described as "peanuts." The earth's crust is from five to thirty miles thick, about as thick relatively as an onionskin to an onion, or a layer of paper to a globe. Within that is heavy, hot, plastic-like, viscous magma, reaching deep toward the core of the earth. There is evidence that the center of the earth may contain a core, perhaps one thousand miles in diameter of a more solid material.

But essentially on the inside of the earth's crust one finds an ocean of lava, or magma. This magma has a volume relationship to the oceans of about 5000:1. Moreover it is much heavier, cubic foot per cubic foot, than is water. Its weight compared to the hydrosphere is about 30,000:1. And this mass, we must consider, was also in tidal upheaval during the Flood crisis period.

Fluids, when in tidal activity, tend to amplify their force if they are enclosed or contained. Whereas normal tides may be from two to six feet on the open ocean, tides in higher latitudes and along continental shelves are amplified. The Bay of Fundy experiences tides as high as fifty and fifty-five feet; the Thames Estuary approaching London experiences tides of well over thirty feet. This is an example of amplification of tidal force by constriction. Within the earth's crust, we may view the entire ocean of magma as constricted; hence we may view the potential thrust force not in terms of tons per square inch, as we measured compression of the oceans, but rather the force of upthrust might well be megatons per square inch, the very magnitude of forces which are required to uplift mountain systems.

This writer comes from the high plains of Montana, near the majestic sawtooth ranges of Glacier Park and the Canadian Rockies. When he was a teenager, he worked in the forest service. He stood on top of the Bitterroot Divide and viewed the mountain systems as they stretched for 100 miles and more into Idaho on the right, and other ranges as they stretched for 100 and 150 miles toward the high horizon in Montana. He noticed the pattern, a pattern resembling the branches of a Christmas tree in relation to the stock. This is known in geography as a dendritic pattern. He has viewed the Continental Divide and the mountain ranges and peaks associated therewith.

When he arrived in college, the issue of uniformitarianism was presented relative to mountain uplifts. Millions of years for this and that were constantly and casually tossed around. But it never did make sense. With his geographical background, he furthermore knew that these patterns of mountains, and their apparent recentness and violence, recurred, spanning all the continents.

Without going into the many factors and propositions of diastrophism, we may be safe in saying that all uniformitarian explanations for mountain systems are based, either consciously or subconsciously, on Lyellian thought. They all assume (1) millions, tens and hundreds of millions of years for orogenetical development, (2) causation is from the downward direction, anywhere from twenty to two thousand miles downward, and (3) all uplifts are local in scope relative to any given year or any given millennium.

On the other hand, if one postulates tides in the oceans, he must simultaneously postulate tides, and far greater tides within the magma. Thus he must view the earth's thin crust as being in a sort of bellows-like activity, tortured from without (by water compression, sedimentation and stratification) and from within (by faulting, fracturing and upthrusting) all simultaneously. Beyond this, there is also the atmospheric factor, and a dabble of rain also involved. All three fluids were simultaneously in upheaval. This then means that not only was the ark uplifted by oceanic tides, but also the Armenian Mountains, along with many others were uplifted by magma tides simultaneously. Hence Mt. Ararat may well have not existed before the Flood.

Concerning the scope of the Flood, with the following diagram, you can view the pattern of recent mountain systems, and ask yourself whether or not this pattern is global or local. In the writer's view, it is a "dead ringer" for a pattern of celestial catastrophism, gravitational interaction acting upon a rotating sphere. Notice there were two zones of uplift; this is suggestive that there were two crisis periods or crescendos during this 150 days and nights of geophysical chaos.

Concerning mountain uplifts, let us look at little Switzerland and its Alps. Switzerland is among the smallest countries in Europe, which itself is a small continent. Switzerland is about eight times as large as Harris County; it is about three times as large as Pecos County. It contains perhaps 15,000 square miles, which is something less than 1/100 of 1 per cent of the land surface of the earth.

Yet within the Alps are such mountain uplifts as the Carnic Alps, the Bernese Alps, the Jura Alps and the Rhaetian Alps, each range uplifted tens of millions of years earlier or later than its neighboring range. Thus uniformitarianism requires each uplift to be local in scope, for any given year. However the pattern is global, and it is suspected that 100 per cent of the inside of the earth's crust was involved in upheaval, and not just a tiny portion, such as a fraction of 1/100 of 1 per cent. This gives some perspective of scope of mountain uplifts, global or local. Herein lies a differential of 99.94+ per cent in terms of scope and perspective.

Secondly, the catastrophic view is that mountain uplifts occurred about 5,000 years ago, at least as far as these particular cycles, the Alpine-Himalayan, and the Circum-Pacific are concerned. Uniformitarian thinking places the dating in the region of 160,000,000 years ago, give or take 30,000,000 years. Herein lies a differential of 99.996+ per cent in terms of timing and perspective.

Thirdly, relative to direction of causation, all of the various uniformitarian propositions, regardless of their general vagueness, have supposed that the cause was downward, generally straight downward. In the catastrophic perspective, the direction of causation was straight upward.

When I was in the army, we had target practice on the firing range. If we missed the target by a few seconds (of a degree), it was poor shooting. If we missed by a minute (of a degree), it was wild shooting, But if we missed the target by 180° (degrees), that was unthinkable. But this, in my opinion, is the achievement of uniformitarianism. They have attributed the cause of orogenesis as being straight downward, and they have made an error in the proportions of 180°. This may be called the perfect error. (Some people say there is no such thing as a perfect error, but if there is, Lyell, with his geological uniformitarian hypothesis, has made it.)

Again, in terms of distance of causation, uniformitarianism has suggested that the cause of mountain uplifts were between twenty and two thousand miles deep within the earth's crust. Beyond their error in direction, their error in distance is probably something in the neighborhood of twenty thousand to thirty thousand miles, again an error in the general magnitude of 99 per cent.

In much scientific experimentation, an error tolerance of 1/10 of 1 per cent, or 1/10 of a degree is much too great. However uniformitarianism, masquerading as if it were science, has seemingly made an error of about 180°, and then has pointed to Christianity, and Genesis, and has claimed, in the name of scholardom to be sure, that the Genesis record is unscientific. And with their claims, they have not only represented Genesis as unscientific; they have taken over the curriculums of the classrooms and texts of the entire civilization, and have influenced no doubt millions of students away from the kingdom of God.

Uniformitarianism may be somewhat of a joke in terms of the magnitude of its error, and in terms of its lamentably limp explanations for some very impressive facts in earth history. But its effects, in its forms presented (including the Kantian form, the Lyellian form and the Darwinist form) have been powerful in turning literally millions away from the kingdom of God. Eternal destinies may well be involved, and that of millions. Uniformitarianism, which has made atheism virulent in our century, may be a joke, but it is a very, very bad joke indeed.

Naturally there are many facets of the Flood catastrophe which an article cannot treat. The subject is so vast that a book, much less an article, can hardly scratch the surface. However if this catastrophic approach is correct regarding the tidal nature of the Flood and its mechanism (gravitational interaction), along with its celestial perspective, then a few things need to be rethought. Some of them are listed in the following questions:

Christine L. Benagh, Meditations on the Book of Job, Houston: St. Thomas Press, 1964, pp. 37, 50. "Many of the names of the men and places which figure in Job's story occur conspicuously among the chronicles of the dukes of Edom...." ↩︎
William Whiston, The Genuine Works of Flavius Josephus, Bridgeport: M. Sherman, 1828,pp.94-95 (Ch. VII, Book I). ↩︎
Whiston, loc. cit. ↩︎
Whiston, op. cit., p. 95. ↩︎
Ibid. ↩︎
Op. cit., p. 96. ↩︎
Whiston, op. cit., p. 88-89. ↩︎
Donald W. Patten, The Biblical Flood and the Ice Epoch, Seattle:Pacifhc Meridían Publishíng Co., pp. 27-50, 268-–-308. ↩︎
Patten, op cit., pp. 183-192. There may be a correlation in ancient. literature between Arcturus and its sons, Ares and its steeds, and Mars with its legendary Deimos and Phobos. ↩︎

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The Noachian Flood and Mountain Uplifts: By Donald W. Patten