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Marvin A. Luckerman (Editor Catastophism and Ancient History)
Uniformitarianism has ruled almost supreme for the last 100 years. However with the advent of the space missions investigating the planets, and with our planet being littered with fossils indicating sudden deaths, catastrophism has slowly advanced to challenge uniformitarianism. It has risen with the help of pioneers like Donald Patten. His new book, Catastrophism and the Old Testament, ought to lead astronomers, cosmologists and others to re-examine their old ideas and theories, linked to the 200-year old nebular hypothesis,
Now, established scholars are forced to recognize that conditions on Mars like the atmosphere, the heat, the volcanism, the cratering, the former abundance of water and the Martian flood have changed its surface radically and suddenly. They assume those changes were billions of years ago; Donald Patten in his book affirms that those changes were thousands of years ago.
My area of specialization is ancient history. It is my belief that the ancient records and legends of man detail and describe such planetary disasters. It is my opinion that only with a study of catastrophism can archaeology, astronomy and geology gain a true understanding of our solar system. It is this combination that makes Donald Patten's work very valuable in both ancient history and astronomy.
Samuel R. Windsor (Mechanical Engineer, Naval Architect)
This is a book I wish l had read forty years ago.
(See introduction in the Foreword)
Ronald R. Hatch (Orbital Analyst)
Don is inquisitive. He looks for patterns in geography and in history, and he finds them. Would you have thought of counting the craters on Mars (by 10° grids) looking for a pattern? Or would you have thought of analyzing the Biblical record of ancient catastrophes, looking for a cyclic pattern? In both cases, Don perceived, he looked and he found. Now he offers to the 20th century the explanation constructed in accord with Newtonian mechanics. He found that 91% of the craters of Mars were all in one hemisphere if its center were viewed at 45° south latitude and 160° west longitude. Such indicates that 82% of the thousands of craters of Mars all occurred during one single catastrophic hour. Furthermore, those fragments which missed Mars proceeded on to become the asteroids. This cataclysmic event he estimates at about 12,000 years ago, not 3 or 3½ billion years past.
He has sensed that catastrophes described (and to some extent dated) in the Old Testament were astronomical in nature. Historically a 108-year pattern has been found. The 108-year pattern fits an orbital resonance model which I had the pleasure of working out with Don when I was with the aero-space division of the Boeing Co. I think you will enjoy and be challenged by Catastrophism and the Old Testament.
Donald Wesley Patten is a geographer by training and avocation. He received the B.A. degree (1952) and the M.A. degree (1961) in Geography from the University of Washington. Married, he is the father of 7 children and the proud grandfather of 13.
Most notably, he is the author of The Biblical Flood and the Ice Epoch (1966) and The Long Day of Joshua (1973). In addition, he was the editor of a six-volume series, Symposium on Creation. He is a frequent contributor of articles on catastrophism to the periodical Catastrophism and Ancient History, and other periodicals.
A creationist, Patten concludes that ancient catastrophes were astronomical in nature, were cyclic in timing and were global in impact. He has found that an integrated understanding of their scope, intensity and cyclicism produces a more comprehensive understanding of the geography and history of our planet.
In contrast to many advocates of catastophism, Patten proposes a model. That model accords with Newtonian mechanics, geomagnetic principles, gyroscopic theory and historical accounts.
Does Mars show evidence of once having a global flood? If so, could it have occurred the same day as Noah's Flood?
What did Sennacherib (a survivor of the catastrophe in 701 B.C.) have in common with survivors of Hiroshima in 1945?
Why would the ancient poet Plutarch choose the metaphor of a celestial dice game, held among the planets, in describing an addition of 5 days to the old 360-day calendar?
At the picnic at the edge of Mt. Carmel in October, 864 B.C., why was Elijah's beef so well done?
Since the Sun is shrinking in diameter at a rate of 2 inch per hour, what does that imply about the age of the solar system?
Mass hallucination? Divine Hand intervention of planet spin? What is the real explanation for the Long Day of Joshua, when the Sun and Moon "stood still?"
Was there an astronomical aspect to the original “Passover" event in Egypt? If not, why were later catastrophes on the nights of its anniversary?
What could an Olympic discus-thrower tell an evolutionist about the distribution of mass in our solar system?
Did Jonah preach imminent fire and brimstone in pagan Ninevah? From commoner to king, why did they respond so well to the begrudging foreigner?
When Voyager makes a flyby of Neptune and its inner satellite Triton in February, 1989, what will be discovered there that a Planetary Catastrophist has already predicted!
What prompted King David to take two successive national censuses, which bracketed the "Passover" of 972 B.C.
Why did the pioneers of Early Rome (8th century B.C.) build temples to venerate Mars, Jupiter and Saturn within a scant 50 years of Rome's founding?
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