Noah's Flood Came Down. It's Goin Back Up!!

I would if I believed they would be the last two questions. That's why I suggested you do some reading.In the Creation/evolution debate, evolutionists often find they have to tackle Creationist objections in two stages. The first stage involves addressing all the misconceptions and disinformation that many Creationists pick up from reading Creationist websites and literature. Only after a Creationist understands the actual scientific positions can an evolutionist advance to the second stage and actually address the Creationist objections to evolution.--Percy

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I would if I believed they would be the last two questions. That's why I suggested you do some reading.

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Last two questions? I don't see what sense that makes. You need only answer what questions you choose to answer or can answer. Do you have an answer to these two questions? If you can't answer them, How can I find the answer to them by reading what you've read?

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The question is still a bit confused I think. The continents remain high because they are light not the oceans remaining deep. The ocean bottoms are wide plains with occastional deep trenchs. (a geologist might want to correct me). The trenchs are caused when the ocean bottom dives under the continent. So to some degree you're sort of right. The oceans are flat with the bumps filled in by sediment.
Here one picture of the topography.
http://mscserver.cox.miami.edu/MSC111/Lectures/Lec04.htm

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Not the oceans bottoms are more or less flat with the mid ocean ridges pushed up and the ocassional hot spot mountain chain. They stay this way because the cotinents don't plow over them. The ocean bottoms are formed at the mid ocean ridge and destroyed at the subduction trenchs. The continents don't get into this. The continents are pushed around by these moving ocean bottoms which have been described as "conveyor belts".

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Is that clearer?

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Hmmm, I appreciate your answers, but it appears you end up with the same problem you had with my opening statements. Over enough time, the density and weight of the contnents being so much greater than that of water, it seems to me that they should eventually settle to the lower levels if indeed they moved about over millions of years. You believe the continents were pretty much connected together in ages past, don't you?

Ok, it's getting a little clearer now.I'm not a geologist but I'm sure one can step in if I get it wrong.I'll oversimplify ok?In the simplified case the continents are in two parts. Core parts that have been around since they first froze out of the cooling earth. For example the precambrian shield of Canada is billions of years old. It is hard rock and seems to have been covered enough to have not weathered away.Other parts are newer. The continents are getting rebuilt when they are pushed up or volcanoes recoat them. So there is a recycling going on. The moutains wear away, wash to the sea, are laid as sediments are either subducted and blown out of volcanoes or uplifted as new mountains. All this goes on around a core of continental rock.

Ned, with all due respect and gratitude for your answers, your/the explanation/theory you've presented seems to be even less likely to me than my own. It seems to me that the hard heavy rock Canadian plate aided by earths gravity should then be pressing upon earth's softer partially molten mantle and the even softer totally molten outer core, forcing the thin ocean crust upward to displace the lighter density oceans by breaking up their thin crusts.Getting back to the Biblical flood, Genesis does mention the "breaking up of the fountains of the deep" at this event which indicates substantial subsurface lakes or cavities in earth's crust which may factor in somehow on the Biblical flood an exactly what may have happened.There seems to be quite a lot of guess work on both sides of the isle here, as a lot of hypothetical stuff is involved in both explanations. Nobody's seen the so called partially molten mantle, the earth's alleged inner core nor the earth's alleged outer core. The Bible tells of a place in the earth called Hades or Hell, where compartments of both dead sinners and saints were, the compartments being separated, one cool and one hot. Jesus is supposed to have descended into the cool compartment, i.e. "heart of the earth," to minister to and raise out the ones from there before his assention into Heaven after his resurrection. This wording suggests the core of the earth. Of course neither of us can prove or disprove what we believe, but interesting, imo, to talk about and debate.[This message has been edited by buzsaw, 05-26-2003]

Oceanic crust is also basaltic, and denser than continental crust. To a good approximation, except for areas like Scandanavia that were covered by 2 km of ice 12,000 years ago, all of the crust is floating at its equilibrium position - the ocean crust + water pretty much balances the continental crust + mountains.
Sweden, though, is rising at over a centimeter per year in places - the weight of ice is gone, and the crust is bobbing back to its "normal" position. It's taking thousands of years because the mantle that it floats on is very, very viscous - much thicker than molasses in January. Google up "isostatic rebound" if you want more, or I may be able to find a recent paper where they measured Scandanavia's rise by GPS.

I must interupt here - do you know anything at all about the composition of the Earth?The weight of the crust does press down on the interior - which is why the pressure increases to something unreal the deeper you go. This does not mean that the weight of the continents displaces the oceanic crust and causes it to rise - if that were the case we should see some change in the level of the present day sea floor, and we don't.No, we can't see the interior of the Earth. We do know what it is composed of because seismic surveying (especially during earthquakes) is very effective at telling us what we need to know. This is not something anyone needs to believe in, because it is solid, scientific fact that agrees with everything that is currently theorised in geology.Please read a book on plate tectonics before you start making claims about the subject.(Incidently I must warn people that The Core is total science fantasy - I have only heard about it, and I have already laughed my ass off several times over the plot.
I can't wait to see it )The Rock Hound

Well it does press down! You are making up your mind about something you clearly know less about than my grade 8 son from his simple science classes.The continents are, as I pointed out, like icebergs. They are much, much deeper into the mantle than the surrounding oceans. Something like 200 km.The ocean floor is, I guess, "pressed upward" but on a sphere that doesn't make much sense as there isn't any obvious level. To some degree the ocean floor is "broken up" but not as you suggest. The mid ocean ridges are that break but it is not caused by the continents pushing down. The continents have been there for Gigayears they haven't just been dropped into the surface of the earth so everything is in some kind of dynamic equilibrium. Nope, just on your side of the isle. Guessing based on no knowledge at all. The crust has been measured. The movement of plates has been measured. The physics is well understood. What "guesses" do you not like?Don't go running off this topic until you demonstrate the integrity necessary to admit you didn't have a clue and are wrong about the overall geology of the earth.

Of course I have answers to these questions. The reason I won't answer them for you is because I don't believe these will be the last questions you'll ask. The reason I believe this is because you know next to nothing about the views of modern geology, I can't see how answering two little questions is going to fill such a huge knowledge void, and so there are bound to be more questions. It would be a very time consuming exercise to in essence give a course on elementary geology by typing answers to questions into a little message box. I suggest you do some reading.--Percy

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(Incidently I must warn people that The Core is total science fantasy - I have only heard about it, and I have already laughed my ass off several times over the plot.
I can't wait to see it )

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I've been shaking my head over the previews of that movie for months... I think I'm now dumber for just KNOWING such a piece of crap has been made. I wouldn't go see it if you paid me.

Yeah... well, some of us have a weakness for really awful sci-fi. ------------------
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My favorite glaring scientific error was the fictitious hull material they created that keeps the crew compartment at a cool room temperature by - get this, thermodynamics fans - by turning heat into energy! (Then they power the ship by soldering wires to the hull, as though any kind of energy will spontaneously turn into electricity.)Nonetheless, it's fun to think about - travelling to the center of the earth. Not that you'd be able to see anything out the window, but it's a fun flight of fancy.

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(Incidently I must warn people that The Core is total science fantasy - I have only heard about it, and I have already laughed my ass off several times over the plot.
I can't wait to see it )

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If the Bible implication is correct and it's Hades, maybe you don't want to see it.

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Of course I have answers to these questions. The reason I won't answer them for you is because I don't believe these will be the last questions you'll ask. The reason I believe this is because you know next to nothing about the views of modern geology, I can't see how answering two little questions is going to fill such a huge knowledge void, and so there are bound to be more questions. It would be a very time consuming exercise to in essence give a course on elementary geology by typing answers to questions into a little message box. I suggest you do some reading.

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Ok let's make a deal. I promise I won't ask you any more questions on this subject in exchange for your answers to my two questions. Deal?

Ned really gave you the answer already, but let me try.The continents are made on average of less dense material so they sit on top of the oceanic crust. They float on top of it like iceburgs, as NosyNed said. As the oceanic crust moves, the continents move with it, until they crash into each other.I'm not sure what smoothing effect you are envisioning. Perhaps you think the continents grind across the ocean floor, loosing mass as they go, the way chalk gets smaller and smaller as you grind it across the sidewalk?------------------
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