CRST 290 Notes Dr. Marcus Ross
Noah’s Flood: Scripture Meets Geology
The Flood’s Totality
• Both OT and NT authors argue that all people, except Noah and his family, were killed during the
flood.
• The Flood is directly compared with Christ’s return, and his judgment of all people.
• The Flood’s destruction was for humanity, and global in scope.
A Choice to Make: Geology and the Flood
• The geologic record (including fossils) is a record of either:
– Recent creation and the Flood
or
– Billions of years of life on Earth
Tectonics and the Flood
• Two questions for any model of the Flood:
– Where did the water come from?
– Where did it go?
• The Flood is essentially a geological / tectonic event.
• It is tectonic movements that will answer the two questions.
Plate Tectonics
• The lithosphere is a group of mobile units (plates) composed of some of the upper mantle, and
capped by oceanic and/or continental crust.
Patterns and Tectonics
• Certain Earth features indicate that the continents have not always been in their present
location:
– Continents seem to “fit” together
– Matching mountain chains across the Atlantic Ocean
– Similar fossils across the Atlantic Ocean
– Matching geologic units across oceans
– Locations of earthquakes and volcanoes.
• Additional discoveries about the ocean floor indicated that the ocean floor has
.
– Extremely long, mountain chains (called ocean ridges)
– Magnetic recorded in ocean crust
It appears that the ocean floor is near the ridges, and further away.
The Created World Was
•
Prior to the flood, the existing continents were in locations
•
Prior to the Flood, the world had little tectonic activity:
– No
– No plate movements
– No massive (e.g., the Himalayas)
– Little or no earthquakes or volcanoes
Catastrophic Plate Tectonics (CPT)
• First proposed by creationist geologists in Austin et al. in 1994
• Envisions rapid continental “sprint” during the Flood
• The Flood began with the onset of
• The pre-Flood ocean crust began to sink into the mantle near its border with the
continents.
• As the ocean crust sank, it cracked near its center, allowing new magma to rise up from
the mantle, creating an ocean ridge
• The sinking of the old ocean crust created a runaway feedback; continents moved at
several .
Water sources for the Flood
• Genesis 7 lists 2 sources of Flood water:
– Fountains of the great deep
– Windows of heaven
• Both of these were caused by the ocean ridges, themselves made during the Flood.
How to Flood the World in 4 Awful Steps
• During CPT, the water from the oceans moved over the continents in four ways:
– at the ocean ridges vaporize water, which condenses to form
massive rains (“geshem”)
– of ocean crust “drags” the continents downward (lets ocean water
cover more of the continents)
– The new ocean crust is warmer and lighter than the old ocean crust, effectively
the ocean floor (more water forced on continents)
– Ocean water is during the flood, and expands (same amount of water
takes up more space)
Stopping the Catastrophe
• After 150 days, “God remembered Noah”
• As the old, pre-Flood crust is replaced, the new, warmer ocean crust
subduction; less subduction means
– less volcanics at ocean ridges, slowing the geysers
– Less friction on continents, allowing them to “bounce back” upward
• of ocean water and new ocean crust pulls Flood waters back into the oceans,
off of the continents
CPT Answers the Questions
• Where did water for the Flood come from?
–
•
Where did it go when the Flood ended?
– Back to
Successful Predictions of CPT
• Two important predictions now confirmed
– Extremely rapid magnetic
– Existence of cold material (pre-Flood ocean crust) in the
The Judged World Is
• Because of the Flood, none of the continents are in the (even “Pangaea”
was a mid-Flood configuration)
• Because of the Flood, new mountain ranges, like the and ,
now exist
• Because of the Flood, geological disasters are
• We are constantly reminded of the judgment of God on humanity, and our own
for even “natural” disasters
But the Judgment is
• I establish my covenant with you: Never again will all life be cut off by the waters of a flood;
never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth…I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it
will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth...Never again will the waters become
a flood to destroy all life.
– Genesis 9:11, 13, 15b
• “…long ago by God's word the heavens existed and the earth was formed out of water and by
water. By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed. By the same word
the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and
destruction of ungodly men.”
– II Pet. 3:5-7
