Below is the online edition of In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood,
by Dr. Walt Brown. Copyright © Center for Scientific Creation. All rights reserved.
Click here to order the hardbound 8th edition (2008) and other materials.
Ocean floors constitute 70% of earth’s solid surface. They were largely unexplored between 1957 and 1970, when the plate tectonic (PT) theory was developed. It was frequently said that we knew more about Mars than about the ocean floor. As a result, the PT theory, which primarily attempts to explain features on the ocean floor, was developed in the blind, without the data needed to formulate it or test it. Why then was plate tectonics accepted with enthusiasm?
A Brewing Crisis. Before PT, the only theory that tried to explain earth’s major surface features was the 1912 continental drift theory. It claimed, as its name implies, that the amazing and obvious jig-saw fit of the east coast of the Americas with the west coast of Europe and Africa is because the continents drifted apart. No one knew why a supercontinent broke apart or how the pieces could move. Did thousands of miles of solid rock plow through thousands of miles of solid rock? Why couldn’t the earth-science experts explain the fit that the public could plainly see? (You who have read pages 110–441, now understand all that—and much more.)
The year 1957-1958 was designated, with much publicity, as the “International Geophysical Year,” a year in which scientists in 67 cooperating countries would conduct studies addressing festering questions about the earth. Adding to the drama, the Soviet Union placed Sputnik (earth’s first man-made satellite) in orbit in 1957, a monumental achievement that alarmed the entire free world. The United States Congress, fearful that the United States was falling behind in science and technology, threw vast amounts of money into several scientific efforts, one of which was to better understand the ocean floor. (Another was to promote the teaching of evolution.)
Problems also reigned in geology classrooms. One very experienced geology professor of that time, Dr. Douglas A. Block, frequently told me how embarrassed he and other geology professors felt walking into class knowing students would ask obvious questions professors could not answer. [See Dr. Block’s endorsement of the hydroplate theory on page i.] So when the plate tectonic theory was finally proposed, it was greeted with great fanfare, because Earth’s features might be explained by exciting new mechanisms: seafloor spreading, subduction, mountain formation, mantle circulation, hot spots, transform faults, and flipping magnetic poles—none of which has ever been seen or measured—only inferred with vivid imaginations. PT advocates assure us these mechanisms operate too slowly to see—over billions of years. Students seldom questioned these claims; questioning might show disrespect or a poor understanding, jeopardizing their degrees.
Another development in a completely different field was to play an even bigger role. At the end of World War II, civilization faced a huge problem. The cold war had begun, and nuclear warfare was a growing threat. The United States, to deter nuclear war with the Soviet Union, developed a strategy, called the triad. It had three components: (1) land-based, nuclear-tipped missiles in hardened underground silos, (2) intercontinental bombers loaded with nuclear weapons, and (3) the most potent of all, submarines hidden deep in the world’s oceans, carrying intercontinental missiles, many with multiple nuclear warheads. A sneak attack by the Soviets might destroy one or even two components of the triad, but retaliation by surviving components would surely follow.
Soviet submarines were less able to hide, because they were noisy and the U. S., for national defense purposes, was rapidly learning where every wrinkle, crack, and volcano was on the ocean floor—a gigantic and expensive task. Therefore, ocean floor data was highly classified and, until recently, not available to plate-tectonic theoreticians.
The Data Finally Released. One U.S. Navy scientist, N. Christian Smoot, an evolutionist, spent 32 years precisely mapping the ocean floor. His book, Tectonic Globaloney: Closing Arguments (Author House Press, 2012), describes discoveries on the ocean floor that falsify plate tectonics. Smoot, a veteran of 67 cruises, was responsible for declassifying some of this data for use outside the U.S. Navy. He says he “devoutly believed” the plate tectonic theory, but now knows it is “baloney” or “tectonic globaloney.” Based on features he sees on the ocean floor, Smoot concludes that subduction does not occur, and the seafloor is not spreading.
Below, in italics, are his words from the back cover of his book:
Forty-five years after the synthesis of the plate tectonic hypothesis, much newer and better information has been gathered by the seagoers of the world [and by satellites]. Contrary to popular opinion among earth scientists, the purveyors of plate tectonics are the present-day snake oil salesmen.
[Plate tectonics] is fraught with misinformation and misconceptions. It is in need of a massive make-over. Midocean ridge spreading does not occur universally, especially in Iceland and the North Pacific basin. Deep earthquakes do not define a descending slab; in fact, do not even occur in most places along the trenches. Therefore, subduction does not occur. Continental drift is a figment of overly active imaginations.
Fracture zones [distorted in National Geographic maps in a way that supports PT], rather than showing the direction of seafloor spreading, leave nothing more than a pattern of at least four different directions on the ocean floor as they intersect in a random fashion.
Plate tectonics does not work.
For specific details on plate tectonics and to understand its replacement—the hydroplate theory—see pages 110–441.