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.
Starting assumptions, as explained above, are always required to explain ancient, unrepeatable events. The hydroplate theory has three starting assumptions. All else follows from them and the laws of physics. Proposed explanations for past events always have some initial conditions. Usually they are not mentioned.
Figure 53: Granite and Basalt. Granite, the primary continental rock, has a grayish-to-pinkish color. Coarse grains of quartz, which have a glassy luster, occupy about 27% of granite’s volume. Basalt, the most common rock beneath oceans today, is solidified lava—a dark, fine-grained rock. The hydroplate theory assumes that before the flood, granite was above the subterranean water and the mantle was below. As you will see, during and after the flood, molten basalt spilled out onto the chamber floor, so most ocean floors today are paved with basalt.
Assumption 1: Subterranean Water. About half the water now in the oceans was once in interconnected chambers about 10 miles below the entire earth’s surface. At thousands of locations, the chamber’s sagging ceiling pressed against the chamber’s floor. These solid contacts will be called pillars. The average thickness of the subterranean water was at least 3/4 mile. Above the subterranean water was a granite crust; beneath that water was earth’s mantle. [See Figure 54.]
Assumption 2: A Global Continent. The earth’s preflood crust encircled the globe. On the crust were deep and shallow seas, and mountains, generally smaller than those of today, but some perhaps 5,000 feet high.
Assumption 3: An Initial Crack. A small initial crack occurred in the earth’s crust. (Later, several ways this crack could have started will be mentioned.) The basic forces that quickly propagated the crack around the earth will soon be explained.
All 25 major mysteries described earlier, such as major mountain ranges, ice ages, comets, and the Grand Canyon, are consequences of these assumptions. The chain of events that flows naturally from these starting conditions will now be described as an observer might relate those events. The events fall into four phases.
Figure 54: Cross Section of the Preflood Earth. (Not to scale.) Several aspects of the early earth are shown here. The thickness of the subterranean chamber varied. Huge pillarlike formations, joining the chamber’s floor and roof, partially supported the roof. (The confined, high-pressure subterranean water provided most of the support.) Unlike cylindrical pillars we see in buildings, the subterranean pillars were tapered downward. [Pages 434–439 explain how, why, and when pillars formed.]
Supercritical water (SCW) in the subterranean chamber dissolved certain minerals in the chamber’s floor and ceiling—giving that rock a spongelike appearance. [SCW is explained on pages 120–121.] High-pressure water filled those voids and supported the porous rock. The Moho, about 3 miles below the chamber floor, marks the bottom of this porous layer. Today, seismic waves naturally travel more slowly through that porous layer above the Moho.
Quartz was one of the first minerals to dissolve. This opened up tiny grain-size pockets totaling 27% of the volume of granite. Other minerals undoubtedly also dissolved, so the chamber floor and ceiling must have looked like rigid sponges—each a few miles thick. [An interesting ancient writing touches on this. See the quote from The Book of the Cave of Treasures on page 436.] Trapped SCW that filled these tiny pockets remains today. In fact, in 2008, SCW was discovered two miles under the Atlantic floor. Scientists were shocked at finding the first naturally occurring SCW.39 This vast, steady source of superhot water, thick with dissolved minerals (and sometimes hydrocarbons40), is jetting up through the ocean floors as black smokers. [See Figure 55.]
When the flood began, these pockets, a few miles above and below the subterranean chamber, contained much water. To escape to the earth’s surface after the flood, that water had to traverse microscopic, tortuous paths through compressed rock—a very slow process even for a gas or SCW. Black smokers we see today show that small amounts of the subterranean water are still escaping from what was the floor of the subterranean chamber.
Figure 55: Black Smoker. Black smokers, some as hot as 867°F (464°C), were discovered in 1977 jetting up on a portion of the Mid-Oceanic Ridge in the Pacific. Many other black smokers have since been found along the entire, globe-encircling Mid-Oceanic Ridge, even inside the Arctic Circle and near Antarctica. As hot water shoots up into the frigid ocean, dissolved minerals (and on rare occasions, asphalt) precipitate out, giving the smoker its black color. It is now known that the water was initially supercritical water (SCW)39 that held vast volumes of dissolved minerals, such as copper, iron, zinc, sulfur, and sometimes hydrocarbons.40 SCW has been produced by man in strong, closed containers, but never before has SCW been seen in its natural state, even around volcanoes.
According to evolutionary geology, water not in a closed container seeps down several miles below the ocean floor—against a powerful and increasing pressure gradient. Magma (molten rock) then heats the water to these incredible temperatures, forcing it back up through the floor. (SCW could not form by such a process, because of the two conditions highlighted in bold above. Uncontained liquid water, heated while slowly seeping downward, would expand, rise, and cool, long before it became supercritical.) Figure 54 gives a simple explanation. Besides, if the evolutionary explanation were true, the surface of the magma body would quickly cool, form a crust, and soon be unable to transfer much heat to the circulating water. (This is why we can walk over lava days after a crust formed. The crust insulates us from the hot lava below.) However, black smokers must have been active for many years, because large ecosystems (composed of complex life forms, such as clams and giant tubeworms) have had time to become established around the base of smokers.