email #004

Dear Dr. Truth:

     I do have a question in Genesis. Can you explain to me how you think certain animals native to continents (Australia) arrived there? It seems if the continents were connected, it would explain how they got on the ark. But If the continents were disconnected after the flood, how did they get back?

Questioning Steve

Dear Steve:
     Regarding the distribution of animals: You have raised an important part of the phenomena that must be explained by a Biblical Worldview.  As the Scriptures make clear in Genesis 1:9, the waters at the time of the creation were gathered together in one place, which tells us that there was also one continent at that time. And apparently that was unchanged until at least the time of the Flood of Noah.
     A popular view among leading 6 day creationists [particularly Inst. For Creation Research] is that the continents began to move at the time of the Flood, making the Atlantic Ocean, in about one year. I have a hard time with that, primarily because the heat released by such an event would surely be enough to boil the oceans, and also would be enough to steam cook all the land animals and humans. Also, if the continents were separated during the flood there would need to be land bridges to the continents for humans and the animals departing the ark to get to those distant regions, and those land bridges would have to magically go away at the right time after the animals arrived in distant regions, to isolate those distant populations, e.g. Australia's distinct population. Both the land bridges and the vanishing of the land bridges are not understood with the geophysics we now know, nor is there good evidence for the past existence of some needed land bridges [particularly, a bridge to Island India, as it moved through the Indian Ocean northward toward collision with Asia and the making of the Himalayas; and the land bridge to Australia].
     Also the sediments laid down during the Flood need some time to partially harden before major mountain building and the folding of sediments happens, since such motion is generally attributed to the motion of continental plates. If most of the substantial continental movement happened during the Flood, then the mountain building would be happening in the midst of the Flood, causing two problems: 1) the mountains resulting from crustal plate collisions would shed water, cutting off Flood deposition on them, and 2) the major continental motion during the Flood would leave little post Flood movement to fold and uplift sediments [extensive folded sediments requires such movement after deposition].  
     I prefer a model of the Flood and post Flood era in which the movements during the Flood were vertical, not horizontal; and the horizontal movement of the plates began later, at the time of Peleg [Gen. 10:25], whose name means to split or Earthquake. I believe that the name Peleg was given prophetically because the continents would move during that time [much less violently, the Atlantic forming in 200 to perhaps 600 years, which much reduces the heat problem]. I believe that the Tower of Babel event [Gen. 10:9 & 11:1-9], had to send mankind [in about 70 groups, each with a distinct language] across the then single continent, before the continents would split and subsequently keep the people groups separated [which was God's purpose for those events].  
     I believe these things for several reasons: 1) the animals leaving the Ark had to have time to establish themselves in a new equilibrium with the altered climate, they needed time to grow to significant populations at that central location before there would be enough of them to spread [this was the age of mammals, with Giant Sloths, Saber Tooth cats, Wooly Mammoths, etc. these had to grow in population before the ice age] and 2) they need to the then spread across a single -- unsplit continent, before the continental movement separated them, and 3) they had to be in place in remote regions when the ice age suddenly froze many of them. The marsupials can move with babies in pouch, and so could move the fastest, and so they could go the farthest, to Australia, before the continents split. That split then allowed them to be protected from predation by mammals like the Saber Toothed cat. This is the only viable explanation of the population of animals in Australia I have ever found. It is notable that the native peoples of Australia are also very adept at moving great distances with minimal resources, as they were when they first came to Australia.
     The secular evolutionist explanation requires land bridges that rise and fall at just the right times, which can't be found in the geology. The popular creationist view on continental motion during the Flood also doesn't work for similar reasons.      This sequence of events [a vertical motion Flood, with continental movement and an Ice age starting perhaps 500 to 1000 years later] also fits well with a number of other important bits of evidence. It is well established that the Mediterranean Sea had once dried up, leaving salt lakes and salt deposits on its floor [found by drilling sediments on the sea floor, and by drilling for Egypt's Aswan High Dam, which showed that the Nile once went through a steep canyon down into a much lower Mediterranean].
     The sediments at the time the Mediterranean dried up are on the geologic column dated at 10-20 million years old, meaning they are post flood deposits. [A pre-flood drying of the Mediterranean would be obliterated by the major events of the Flood, and so would not leave the evidence found in drill cores, particularly the ones for the Aswan High Dam.]  
     Another thing explained is the archeology of the island Malta, which shows that some thousands of years ago, the population on Malta was much larger than can be sustained there now, and which shows that the population went through a sudden crash. I propose that as the level of the Mediterranean fell as it was drying up, the cultivatable land around Malta increased, and was able to sustain an ever increasing population. But when the straights of Gibraltar broke loose with a waterfall from the Atlantic, a waterfall hundreds of times greater the Niagara Falls, the Mediterranean basin flooded in days, and the quantity of land suddenly and dramatically shrank, and that lesser land area could no longer sustain the population. That is exactly what the Archeology of Malta shows. This happened, I estimate, a little after 3000 BC. At that time the climate changed suddenly and dramatically, cooling the Alps, trapping the Ice Man in a frozen state until he was recently uncovered. The area of North Africa was soon after the Flood covered with lakes, but these drained about the same time as the Mediterranean filled.  
     This is seemingly also the same story told by the Sphinx, which showed heavy water erosion, then only wind erosion.
     This series of events may also give an understanding of the legend of Atlantis. If North and South America were, before the continents moved, separated from Europe and Africa by a channel only about 50 to 100 mile, then the Americas would be visible from elevations near the coast of North Africa, the Atlas Mountains, which might have only been hills at that time.  As the Americas moved west with the opening of the Atlantic, some populations that once had commerce with the Americas would remember that, and some would travel by boat [explaining the Olmec heads which look African].  And other populations [not visiting by boat] might produce a legend of an island beyond the Pillars of Hercules sinking into the sea.
     To put this all together, I suppose that when the continents began to move at the time of Peleg, there were established populations on all parts of the then single continent, parts that were later were called North and South America, Africa, India, Australia, etc. I suppose also that the moving of the continents made the Atlantic Ocean, heated the oceans, greatly increased ocean evaporation, that volcanism at the time darkened the sky and cooled the continents, making the abundant moisture in the air come down in some places [mid-latitudes], like Egypt, as torrents of rain, and in other places [northern and southern latitudes and higher altitudes] as snow and ice, like in the Alps, Greenland, Antarctica, and in north central North America, around the Great Lakes. The continental motions caused the Ice age, when some humans were reduced to living in caves and others were doing well in major river valleys [the Nile, Indus, Euphrates, etc.]  
     This is a reasonable working summary of my recent Earth history model.  I am so glad that you stimulated me to write this down. For these ideas have been churning in me for some time with no outlet. There never seems to be the time to write all my ideas down.  I spend much of my time just making a living and surviving, and much of the reset of my time thinking on the really big issue of the new physics needed for the coming Biblical revolution in thought.

Dr. Truth