(28 July 03) What conceivable mechanism could have produced the vast geological transformation of the earth evident all around us in a single year-long Flood event? Answering this question correctly has been a major focus of mine for the past 25 years.

My conclusion is that the Flood was one facet of a larger global-scale tectonic cataclysm. A key aspect of this catastrophe was the rapid sinking, in conveyor belt fashion, of the pre-Flood ocean tectonic plates into the earth's interior. The energy required for the process was derived from the earth's gravity acting on the excess weight of these cold ocean plates relative to the hotter and less dense mantle rock into which they slid. Decades of laboratory experiments attest to the fact that, under stress, mantle rock, at temperatures estimated for the earth's interior, can weaken by factors of billions or more. My work on this problem has primarily involved computer experiments that apply the properties of silicate rock, as measured in these laboratory experiments, to the setting of the earth's mantle. These calculations demonstrate that a catastrophic instability can indeed occur in a planet with the size and structure of the earth. This mechanism for the Flood cataclysm has become known as catastrophic plate tectonics. My latest modeling results are described in a paper presented at the Fifth International Conference on Creationism in August 2003.

The purpose of this website is to collect into one place
(1) a selection of the massive evidence that supports the reality of the Biblical Flood,
(2) a clear description of a tectonic mechanism for this cataclysm as well as current modeling results, and
(3) a collection of related materials that provide some of the context of the broader debate in which the issue of the Flood is only one facet.

It is true that evolutionists generally feel secure today, even in the face of compelling creationist arguments, because of their utter confidence in the geological time scale. Even if they cannot provide a naturalistic mechanism for macroevolution, they appeal to the 'fact of evolution,' by which they mean an interpretation of earth history in which they believe there has been a succession of different types of plants and animals in a drama spanning many hundreds of millions of years. The Bible, by contrast, paints a radically different picture of our planet's history. In particular, it describes a point in time when God catastrophically destroyed the earth with essentially all its life. The only consistent way to interpret the geological record in light of this event described so vividly in the Biblical texts is to understand that the fossil-bearing rocks are the result of a massive global cataclysm that occurred only a few thousand years ago and lasted but a year. This Biblical interpretation of the rock record implies the animals and plants preserved as fossils were all contemporaries, all living on earth at the same time prior to the cataclysm. This means trilobites, dinosaurs, and mammals all dwelled on the planet at once, and they all perished together in this world-destroying cataclysm. Since the time scale is such a key issue in the interpretation of the geological record, this site also gives considerable emphasis to compelling new radioisotope evidence for the planet's young age.

(More about radioisotopes and the age of the earth)