Adam When?

    In a previous chapter, we saw that the oceans present a great threat to the scientists’ conclusion that the world is billions of years old. This is as it should be; the idea of this kind of age for the earth is completely without Biblical basis. Without regard for the Bible’s clear teaching that this world is in the bondage of decay, scientists are determined to reconstruct, if at all possible, the geological and paleontological sequences of history. This is a difficult task even with Biblical help; and without help from the Bible, it is virtually impossible. The effects of the bondage of corruption (flood, fire, earthquakes, pestilence, etc.), have confused and thoroughly fragmented the natural record so that one wonders if any kind of satisfactory evidence can be forthcoming.

    Man has successfully discovered many of the immutable laws by which God governs the universe. These discoveries have enabled him to achieve many scientific breakthroughs. New material, medicines, surgical techniques, communication methods, and stratospheric explorations are all a result of man’s discovery of God’s law of nature. Because man has been able to send a man to the moon, he has proven his ability to know the various concepts involved in such an undertaking. He must be given full credit for a job well done. He could be expected to succeed in his rocket trip because he is simply utilizing mechanisms that operate in accordance with the very precise laws that God has established.

    These accomplishments have made men bold to believe that a like application of effort and intelligent research should enable man to turn the clock back to the beginning, and thus help him to understand the present and anticipate the future. So, scientists have courageously set forth in their search. Even though they must guess and speculate and assume as they view the available evidence, they are not afraid to draw conclusions, tentative though they may be. The rest of mankind

(too often Christians included), because they worship science, without question eagerly adopt each and every scientific conclusion.

    Man continues to pour millions, even billions, of dollars into earth research and space exploration, anyone can almost predict that he will develop more and more evidence to show that the Bible is correct. This will not cause natural man to believe the Bible. He probably will simply note that the ancients who wrote the Bible had some good ideas. The added testimony which attests to the accuracy and trustworthiness of the Bible will surely stand in judgment against man if he continues to deny the Lord of the Bible.


Back to the Oceans

    Nevertheless, we must look briefly at other phenomena presently being considered by scientists, that is, the phenomena of ocean floor spreading and continental drift. These, too, are without satisfactory explanation apart from the Biblical testimony. Let us look briefly at the available evidence and the scientists’ conclusions concerning this evidence, and then we will look at the evidence in the light of the Bible.

    Increasingly in recent years scientists are discovering that the ocean floor is quite different from that which they had expected. Rather than an ocean floor covered by the accumulations of sediments deposited during eons of continental weathering, they have found it to be relatively bare of sediments. This paucity of ocean floor sediments has puzzled scientist, as we saw in a previous chapter.

    Scientists now believe they have found a possible answer to the strange lack of ocean floor sediments. They believe that it is possible that the ocean floor is renewed every 100 million years or so. They believe that this is accomplished by the ocean floor moving under the continents at a rate of 2 to 10 centimeters per year; the ocean floor moves away from mid-ocean ridges and acing as a huge plate, slides under the continents as the edge of the ocean; and the sediments are swept clear as the ocean floor slides under the continent. Not only is the ocean floor apparently moving but the continents appear to be moving. As they move, they slide over the ocean floor, driving the sediment on the ocean floor deep in the earth. Scientists are presently earnestly studying evidence that gives rise to the conclusions of ocean floor spreading and continental drift. The scarcity of ocean floor sediments is part of the evidence that suggests these conclusions.

    The floor of the ocean contains other evidence. Careful study of the ocean floor has revealed that in each ocean there are great ridges constructed by extreme volcanic activity. Karl K. Turekian writes:

The major oceanic ridge systems form a series of connected topographically high areas present in all oceans. Ridges are between 1000 to 4000 kilometers above the ocean floor at points protruding from the sea surface as islands. The term ‘mid-oceanic ridge’ has sometimes been used for the system, after the most prominent example, the mid-Atlantic ridges. The topography is representative of a composite of volcanic and rupture features, called fault. At the center of the mid-Atlantic ridge, for example, there is a discontinuous ‘rift valley’ characterized by heavy earthquake activity and higher than average heat flow. A series of transverse trenches that offset the axis of the ridge is also prominent . . . the ridges appear to be continuous around the earth, except for offsetting by breaks. They are a major feature of the ocean basins; coupled in some way to the location of the continents.1

    The discovery of parallel magnetic bands on either side of these ridges has helped to foster the thought that the ocean floor is spreading away from these ridges toward the continents. Because, as igneous rocks solidify and cool, they are magnetized to match the earth’s magnetic direction existing at the time of such solidification, it is possible to determine the earth’s magnetic situation in the past. As ocean floor lavas on either side of the oceanic ridges were measured for their magnetic sign, it was discovered that the sign of the remnant magnetic field alternated in bands parallel to the ridge. This has led scientists to believe that there must be some kind of a spreading action that is taking place on the ocean floor. As new lavas pour forth from the ridges they solidify with the magnetic sign of the earth at that time. As they pour out on the ocean floor, the existing ocean floor is pushed away from the ridges and toward the continents. O. W. Scholl writes:

The general spreading model stipulates that pebogic sediments are swept against the continental block, along with down-welling oceanic crust, and are either added to or stuffed beneath the continental crust.2

    The assumption of ocean floor spreading as related to remnant magnetic fields is discussed in an article in “Science Magazine”:

Additional information about reversals is provided by the magnetic anomalies over the mid-ocean ridges. These anomalies are produced by igneous rocks which become magnetized as they solidify and cool in a narrow zone along the ridge axis. As new material forms, the previously magnetized material spreads to either sides. If the rate of spreading is the same on both sides on the ridge, the result is a bilaterally symmetrical pattern of normally and reversely magnetized strips with widths proportional to the lengths of the corresponding polarity intervals. The magnetic anomalies do not in themselves determine an independent reversal time scale for reversals, the profiles provide a nearly continuous record of polarity intervals.3

    The timetable of this spreading action is quite recent by geological standard which speaks of millions and billions of years. John and Maurice Ewing write:

Dividing the half-width of the thin sediment strip by the magnetic anomaly pattern gives a date of approximately 10 million years ago for the discontinuity in all areas, whether the spreading rate has been fast or slow. Thus it appears that the initiation of the spreading cycle occurred in many parts of the world at the same time.4

    A timetable of less than ten million years is further suggested by Enrico Bonatti, who writes:

A basalt pavement outcrops almost continuously in a band along the crestal region of the East Pacific Rise. . . . The lavas are fresh “oceanic tholeuities” which were emplaced less than one million years ago by fissure erruptions.5

    Thus, the assumption of ocean floor spreading is one theory that has been set forth to account for the relatively thin sediments found on the ocean floor. Karl V. Turekian writes:

The ocean floor sediment are transported under the continents as the result of ocean floor spreading. This explanation is particularly attractive in light of the recent interpretation of magnetic anomalies in the deep ocean.6

    John and Maurice Ewing address the question by suggesting that this spreading has produced the thin sediments.

The suggestion was made that the spreading that has produced the thin sediments on the crest is relatively recent and that it has been

proceeded by a long period of quiescence during which the flank sediments had accumulated.7

    The spreading of the sea floor is suggested as the reason for the relatively deep sediments which are found along the continents. J. Tujo Wilson makes reference to this:

Most geologists who have studied the broad problems of the earth have been puzzled by the behavior of continental margins. In all parts of the world near coasts, sedimentary deposits are found which appears to have been derived from places where there is new deep ocean, and these deposits, with others from the continental side, seem to have been pushed on to the continents forming marginal mountains and adding to the area of the continents.8

    The theory of ocean floor spreading is not without many problems. Scientists are surprised that there is so little evidence of ocean floor buckling, a condition that would be expected if the crust of the ocean floor were being pushed away form the ridges and toward the continents. L. Knopoff writes:

Over large parts of the sea floor, generally remote from the median ridges, deep sedimentary basins show little evidence of buckling or warping.9

    The lack of evidence to suggest the ocean floor is spreading against the continents is seen elsewhere also. The Peru-Chile Trench, for example, located in the Pacific Ocean along South America shows no evidence of this kind of spreading anion. O. W. Scholl, et al., writes:

None of the expected stratigraphic and structural effects of a spreading sea floor have been imposed on the sedimentary fill of the Peru-Chile Trench. During the last several million years, and perhaps during much of the Cenozord, the trench has not been affected by an oceanic crust thrusting under the continent.10

    The age correlation of ocean bottom crust being progressively older as related to the mid-ocean ridges is not satisfactory either. Although potassium-argon dating leaves much to be desired as was shown in a preceding chapter, it is the one dating method presently employed to attempt to determine ocean floor ages.

    David Fisher, et al., write:

K-Ar determinations of age form whole rock samples of tholeutic basalts dredged from the crest of the East Pacific Rise and from the flanks of three seamounts of varying distances from the crest,

show that the crest is younger than one million years and that age does not correlate with distance from the crest.11

    One other phenomenon is receiving great attention by scientists and maybe related in some manner to the evidence which suggests to scientists that the ocean floor is spreading. The phenomenon is the possibility of continental drift. For some time, it has been noticed that the configuration of the North and South American continental shoreline rather closely matched that of Europe and Africa. It almost appears as if at some time in the past they were one continent and that it split apart and the separate parts or continents drifted to their present position with the Atlantic ocean between them. Similarly, at one time the continental areas of Australia and Antarctica appear to have been a part of the other continents. Moreover, a very interesting discovery was made by Maurice Ewing in 1949 during a National Geographic Society study of the Atlantic Ocean floor. He writes:

Some of the things we found on this second cruise create new scientific puzzles. One was the discovery of prehistoric beach sand in two core samples of the bottom, brought up in one case from a depth of two and in the other nearly three and one-half miles far from any place where beaches exist today. One of these sand deposits is 1200 miles from land.12

    This discovery further substantiates the idea of continental drift. Further detailed studies of the fit of continents to each other revealed the following:

The eastern hemisphere and the western hemisphere do fit remarkably well around the edge of the Atlantic. The quality of the fit is sufficiently good that the result can hardly be coincidental. The result obtained by Bullard, et al. (1965), requires that Europe and Africa be rotated relative to each other and that North and South America be rotated relative to each other before the fit be made. The eastward protrusion of South America neatly fits the Gulf of Guinea; the overall match of the margins of Africa and South America have a root mean square misfit at the 500 fathom contour of 0.93°. This is less than 2% of the total rotation of the two continents which is about 570°.13

    It has also been noted that the medium ridge of the Atlantic Ocean approximately bisects the margins on either side. The enormous symmetry of the mid-Atlantic ridge relative to the two continental margins and the remarkable fit of the two continental margins to each other is singular indeed.

    L. Knopoff discusses the idea that, in his judgment, the rifting or spreading of the primordial continent began some 150 to 170 million years ago and has proceeded at a rate of about 3 cm. per year. He indicates that paleomagnetic evidence further substantiates continental drift. According to this evidence either the pole of rotation of the earth has wandered over the earth or there has been continental drift which would have changed the direction of the magnetic poles.

    Many problems arise, of course, relative to the theory of continental drift. We will comment on two of the problems. The first is that the paleomagnetic evidence appears to indicate polar migration before the continental break-up.¹⁴ The other is that no evidence is forthcoming at the present time that shows movement of the continents relative to each other. This is partly due to the difficulty of making the precise measurements required to show a drift of a few centimeters per year if such is indeed taking place. Scientists estimate that with present methods it will take thirty to fifty years to dated and measure such drift.¹⁵

    We have set forth very briefly some of the questions facing scientists relative to the ocean floor. From the foregoing we could make a few observation.

1. Except along the continental edges where there is a thickening of sediments, the ocean floor has very thin deposits of sediments. This comes as a great surprise and puzzle to scientists who, in view of their opinion that the earth is very old, logically expect very thick deposits. 2. In the middle of the ocean floor huge rifts are in evidence which indicate great volcanic action in the past or some kind of an up-welling of the ocean floor in these areas. 3. On either side of these mid-oceans rifts are parallel magnetic bands that indicate past reversals of the earth’s magnetic field. 4. An examination of the continental edges of North and South America, compared with those of Europe and Africa, indicates that at one time these continents were joined together as one large continent. 5. The theory presently in vogue to account for the phenomena described above is two-fold. First, the ocean floor is slipping under the continents, thus burying the ocean sediments under the

continental masses. Second, the continents are moving away from each other and accentuating this ocean floor stripping and burying activity. These theories are held although there is little evidence of buckling or warping at the continental edge, which would seem to be required if the theories were correct. Moreover, there is no measurable movement of either the ocean floors or the continents. Thus, it would appear that these theories are at best, exceedingly speculative.

The Bible Answers

    When we go to the Bible we can begin to make sense of all of the questions and observations presented in this chapter. We saw in a previous chapter that an analysis of the ocean water and ocean floor accords exceedingly well with the Biblical date of 11,013 B.C. What about the question of continental division? Does the Bible have anything to say about this?

    Indeed the Bible does have something today. In Genesis 10:25 we find an extremely intriguing statement:

And unto Eber were born two sons: the name of one was Peleg; for in his days was the earth divided; and his brother’s name was Joktan.

    As if to make certain that this important though strange piece of information, which seems so out of place in the Biblical record, would not be lost or overlooked, it is repeated in I Chronicles 1:19.

    What can the Bible mean by the declaration that in Peleg’s day the earth was divided? We saw in an earlier chapter that Peleg lived from 3153 B.C. to 2914 B.C. We decided at that time that the division in Peleg’s day was a reference to the Tower of Babel when God confused the language to force men to fill the earth. Do you recall that one of the clay tablets spoke of the collapse of an ancient ziggurat (ancient temple tower), which occurred simultaneously with a confusion of language? We quoted a paragraph from Stephen Gaiger who wrote Bible and Spade:

George Smith also quotes a remarkable fragment relating to the collapse of such a ziggurat. The building of this temple offended the gods. In a night they threw down what had been built. They scattered them abroad, and made strange their speech. The progress they impeded.16

    The truth suggested by the fragment that an earth-shattering event occurred which scattered peoples, is reinforced by the phenomenon that about 3000 B.C. there was a marked change in the way bricks were formed. The new method of forming brick continued for several hundred years. As we saw in Chapter 6, this remarkable archaeological evidence strongly indicates that some drastic event occurred about 3000 B.C. to occasion such a change in a major building material, particularly when the bricks made before 3000 B.C. were more convenient and sensible to use than those made after this date.

    All of these pieces of evidence can be coordinated with the evidence of continental division if we realize simply that during Peleg’s day the continent was divided and probably at the same time the language were confused. By understanding the fact that this division did take place about 5000 years ago, we are able to see the precise agreement that exist between the secular and sacred records. Additionally, we shall see that it gives us an insight into the difficult question of how animals and man are found on continental masses, separated by thousands of miles of ocean. We will look at this question in the next chapter as we outline the past, beginning at the very beginning.



NOTES:

    ¹Karl L. Turekian, Oceans, Prentice Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, N. Y., 1968, p. 8.

    ²O. W. Scholl, “Spreading of the Ocean Floor; Undeformed Sediments in the Peru-Chile Trench,” Science, Feb. 23, 1968, p. 869.

    ³A. Cox, “Geomagnetic Reversals,” Science, Jan. 17, 1969, p. 241.

    ⁴John & Maurice Ewing, “Sediment Distribution on the Mid-Ocean Ridges with Respect to Spreading of the Sea Floor,” Science, June 23, 1967, p. 1591.

    ⁵Enrico Bonatti, “Fissure Basalts and Ocean Floor Spreading on the East Pacific Rise,” Science, Aug. 30, 1968, p. 886.

    ⁶Karl K. Turekian, Oceans, p. 113.

    ⁷John & Maurice Ewing, Science, p. 1590.

    ⁸J. Tujo Wilson, “Theories of Building Continents,” The Earth’s Mantle, Gaskell (ed.), p. 459.

    ⁹L. Knopoff, “The Upper Mantle of the Earth,” Science, Mar. 21, 1969, p. 1278.

    ¹⁰O. W. Scholl, “Spreading of the Ocean Floor,” p. 865.

    ¹¹David Fisher, et al., “Ages of Pacific Deep-Sea Basalts & Spreading of the Sea Floor,” Science, June 7, 1968, p. 1106.

    ¹²Maurice Ewing, “New Discoveries on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge,” National Geographic, Nov., 1949, pp. 612-613.

    ¹³L. Knopoff, “Thermal Convection of the Earth’s Mantle,” The Earth’s Mantle, T. Gadskell (ed.), London and New York, Academic Press, 1967, p. 171.

    ¹⁴L. Knopoff, Thermal Convection, pp. 173-175.

    ¹⁵Wm. Markowitz & B. Guinot, Continental Drift, Secular Motion of the Pole and Rotation of the Earth, Dr. Reidel Publishing Co. Dodrecht, Holland, 1968, p. 7

    ¹⁶Stephen L. Gaiger, Bible and Spade, Oxford University Press, 1936, p. 29.