THE BIBLICAL FLOOD   AND THE ICE EPOCH   http://www.creationism.org/patten/                                by DONALD W. PATTEN A Study in Scientific History

MAIN PAGE  CHAPTER I  CHAPTER II  CHAPTER III  CHAPTER IV  CHAPTER V  CHAPTER VI  CHAPTER VII  CHAPTER VIII  CHAPTER IX  CHAPTER X  CHAPTER XI  CHAPTER XII

THE central proposition of this book is to demonstrate the superiority of the theory of astral catastrophism over and against the uniformitarian view of Earth history. Astral catastrophism involves occasions of sudden and overwhelming cataclysmic changes in the conditions of the Earth in a brief and limited time. Among the cataclysmic forces which engaged our fragile sphere were both gravitational and magnetic forces of planetary magnitude.

The results included tidal waves of subcontinental dimensions. We do not maintain that the period of crisis referred to in Genesis as the Flood was the first conflict nor the last; we only maintain that it was the worst. Along with oceanic tides, other results included the upheaval of tides of magma, resulting in mountain systems on a global scale and in a global pattern. There was simultaneously the dumping of a vast volume of extremely cold astral ice upon the Earth's high latitudes, but essentially in the magnetic polar regions more than in the geographic polar locations. Also there occurred a sudden and permanent change in the Earth's atmosphere, hence the Earth's climatic organization. Thus there was a new and markedly different physical environment for biological life.

Celestial Catastrophism, or as the author uses the term, Astral Catastrophism, involves a sudden engagement and disengagement of these forces, acting simultaneously upon each of the Earth's three fluid equilibriums--the atmosphere (air), the hydrosphere (oceans) and lithosphere (primarily fluid magma or lava).