continental drift

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6. Scaling laws are ignored. In other words continental drift is impossible due to the fact that at a global scale a continent is merely a congealed pile of sand or better yet dust. Massive movement on a global scale would result in ALL land crumbling and we would end up with one giant ocean after this event. In effect, we would have liquefaction on a mega scale.

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Actually Sand is more accurate (Silicon Oxide) as the earth's crust is 60.6% Silicon Oxide.This appears to invalidate the flood entirely. Either the earth was as it is now (huge mountains and deep ocean trenches) and the flood would be impossibly deep and there would be nowhere for the water to go. Or the Earth was more flat like and Pangaea like (smaller mountains and no ocean trenches) and the continental spread happened afterward. Of course at the speed it would take to do this would mean the destruction of the continents.Someone else was trying to tell you this earlier about Mount Everest. The amount of energy required to make the mountain in a short amount of time would also be more than enough energy to destroy the material that is made of.Also Archie, are you aware of how fast continental movement is? It's about as fast as fingernails grow (The usual rate of growth for adults, ~0.9 inches a year).

all of you seem to miss one great big possible fact: what if the world looked much like it did today? it was a flood right? so the flood would've filled up all of the infertile lowlands, not just created drift.if by some chance there WAS water in today's oceans back then, by the time of the flood, there would have been already an estimated 1600 cm of drift that comes out to just over 248 feet of drift! the flood would've escalated that to another 654,721.30..... feet of drift going by the 1/2 mile per hour formula. that comes out to thirty feet short of 655,000 feet of drift, or 124 miles! then give another 6,000-10,000 years for everything to calm down, the water degenerating at 1/2 of its normal "rage", if you will, per year, it will take about 5-10 years to come to near zero, resulting in the 1 cm/yr. if we take 10,000 yrs-5=9,995. 9995/2.54/12/5280= 0.062...miles. 124+.62+122.575...=just over 246.6 miles, nearly 1/11 of the current continental drift that science said we have gone through. the scientific 4.54 billion years of evolution say that going at 1 cm/yr =28210.25213 miles. it's WAY over the 3000 miles from Boston, Massachusets to London, England, but, as you can see, not close enough. where does that extra 200 miles come from?there is also the possibility that in the bible, 7 days is not 7 physical night, day, night, day..., but over hundreds or thousands of years, giving plenty of time for contiental drift.i f there WAS tectonic movement, it would be worldwide. tectonic movement of ANY kind is massive with only two plates moving. now imagine all eight major plates, seven minor plates, and dozens of smaller minor plates, all moving at once. it's certainly enough to move all of the continents around, crash into each other, and move away in an instant, thus creating islands, mountains, and the way that continents don't quite fit exactly.

except for one point, if what you state moving into each other and moving away in an instant, goodbye life. Just look at what a small shift does, ie Haiti last week or the major tsunami in 2004.

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There is no better love between 2 people than mutual respect for each other WT Young, 2002Who gave anyone the authority to call me an authority on anything. WT Young, 1969Since Evolution is only ~90% correct it should be thrown out and replaced by Creation which has even a lower % of correctness. W T Young, 2008

Heh, heh...

Bear in mind that the breakup of Pangea is only the latest act in the drama of continental drift, and didn't start until the Jurassic period.

So look at the evidence and tell us what it says happened. Did the continents move thousands of miles in less than a year, or over hundreds and thousands of years? Or maybe even millions and billions of years?--Percy

you're not getting the point. if the continents moved at the current rate(about 1.5 cm a year) at the beginning of the world, america would have crashed into asia, britain would be where America is, Antatctica would be at the north pole, and Africa would be where antatctica is now. the distance between boston and London is over 3000 miles. the billions of years during the evolutionary period, would provide 28000 miles of drift. the world would look MUCH different than it already does.now i know that pangaea broke up in the jurassic period, and i just did the math and it still comes out to less than half of where we are now. there is other evidence too though. the earth's rotation is slowing down. we are moving farther from the sun. the moon is moving farther from us due to lack in gravity. which all concludes that at the beginning of time, the earth rotated much, much faster, and that we were VERY close to the sun. those combined together make the earth uninhabitabe by ANYTHING up until 125 miles in space closer to the sun than our current position. now i'm too lazy to look anything more up so you'll have to do it yourself, and do the math. but i'm estimating that we were approximately where mercury currently is, and the days would be going as fast as you can snap your fingers. one hundred years from now, the day will be 2 milliseconds longer than it is now. i just did the math(on a calculator) and the days at the beginning of earth's history would be 252.2222..... hours faster. that's about ten minutes. so evolution CAN't be true and the flood obviously happened.Edited by hawkes nightmare, : acknowledgement

What you say would only be true if you assume the current rate and direction of movement of the continents since the beginning of the planet. Not only is this assumption unsupported, the actual evidence disproves it.Just a hint, uniformitarianism doesn't mean everything has always been as it is now, particularly when there's evidence to the contrary.But nice try.

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Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity. It is the mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus. -- Thomas JeffersonFor we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and non-believers. -- Barack ObamaWe see monsters where science shows us windmills. -- Phat

Hi Hawkes Nightmare,Your concern would only make sense if the continents were in their current positions millions and billions of years ago and had somehow remained in that position until today despite moving at some number of centimeters per year. But the continents have been continually moving throughout time. For example, the current distance between Boston and London is 3,325 miles, but around 400 million years ago North America and Europe were a single land mass. Around 200 million years ago they began moving apart along the Atlantic's mid-oceanic ridge. They continue to move apart from each other at about 4 cm/year.There are many continental drift animations on the web. Here's one from YouTube that's a bit unusual because it not only shows continental drift from about 400 million years in the past but also projects where the continents might drift for a few hundred million years into the future: And here's a link to a page with an animation of the split of the Americans from Europe and Africa: Caribbean VR--Percy

as you can see, i've edited my first post due to me not looking at the othere ones before it. i accounted for the 200 mil. and it still doesn't come out even. i also aded how evolution and the billions of years of the earth cannot be true because of other universal changes. in the 1500's astronomers also accounted that the earth moved farther from the sun and the moon from the earth, therefore, my assumptions are chronologically and scientifically correct. you cannot argue with the facts. just admit it. you're grasping at straws.Edited by hawkes nightmare, : No reason given.

Oooops! I thought your last post was a spoof.Okay, well, a couple of things. First of all we know that relative motions of lithospheric plates change.For instance we know that parts of North America collided with North Africa sometime in the Ordovician and then broke up as Pangea fragmented. Consequently, we KNOW that the relative motion not only stopped, but the reversed. So, projecting current motions too far into the past simply doesn't work.Second the rate you are working with is a half-rate. In other words it is only half the story of the diverging rate between North American and Africa. You need to refine your calculations.Third, we are pretty certain that rates of relative motion varied with time. This is shown by radiometric dating of the seafloor volcanic rocks which shows that during the Cretaceous Period, the Pacific Ocean opened at a faster rate than since then. In other words, more kilometers per million years of crust formed in the Cretaceous.

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i also aded how evolution and the billions of years of the earth cannot be true because of other universal changes.

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What are these changes?

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in the 1500's astronomers also accounted that the earth moved farther from the sun and the moon from the earth, therefore, my assumptions are chronologically and scientifically correct.

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Could you document this please? And why are your assumptions correct. I think we have refuted this already.

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you cannot argue with the facts. just admit it. you're grasping at straws.

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We are not arguing the facts. We are arguing your assumptions and your calculations.

yes, thats why i said "less than half" if you add the drift eurasia is making, they still don't add up the 3000 some miles there are.they are in my first post. i'm too lazy to repeat them.i cannot do so because the search engines on my computer are acting up for some reason, and have been ever since i got this stupid computer. i am not imposing on you that my calculations are correct. go do it yourself and then if you come up with something different, and back it up, you have a plausible argument.yes, but, they are purely facts. therefore, if you are arguing with what i am saying, you are arguing with what science is saying, therefore, contradicting yourself.

As I mentioned previously, I thought this post was a spoof on YEC reasoning, so I did not respond.But no. You have used only half the divergence rate between North America and Europe/Africa. And that rate has changed anyway, so you need a little refinement in your calculation. Actually, no. I don't know much about the earth receding from the sun, but lunar recession is due to conservation of angular momentum where the rotation fo the earth is slowing down due to tidal friction.

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which all concludes that at the beginning of time, the earth...

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I don't think the earth existed at the beginning of time.I could be wrong...

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... rotated much, much faster, and that we were VERY close to the sun.

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I don't think the earth's rotation has much to do with the distance between the earth and the sun. Could you show us a reference, maybe some calculations?

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... those combined together make the earth uninhabitabe by ANYTHING up until 125 miles in space closer to the sun than our current position.

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Please document. AFAIK, the earth's orbit now varies more than that amount from the sun. I think you are making things up.

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now i'm too lazy to look anything more up so you'll have to do it yourself,

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Oh really? You can make bizarre claims and then tell us that we have to prove them for you? I don't think so.In the meantime, you will find that lots of folks here are not so lazy and spent years in college studying this stuff.But...I suppose...you could know more than them.

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... and do the math. but i'm estimating that we were approximately where mercury currently is, and the days would be going as fast as you can snap your fingers. one hundred years from now, the day will be 2 milliseconds longer than it is now. i just did the math(on a calculator) and the days at the beginning of earth's history would be 252.2222..... hours faster. that's about ten minutes.

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Except that you have to be the ultimate uniformitarianist in order to think that the rate of rotational decay of the earth has been constant for 4 billion years. There are excellent reasons why it wasn't.

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so evolution CAN't be true and the flood obviously happened.

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Ummm.... sure.... That follows....Now, if that was a spoof. It was very funny.

I make the figures just about spot on. Taking the distance between Norway and Greenland as the narrowest point between the plates, 60 million years since the rifting of Laurasia, and the figure of 2cm/year as the current measured rate of drift, I get that they should be about 2400 km apart. The true figure is 2200 km. That's a good fit of prediction to observation. In the 1500s? A century before the discovery of the theory of gravity?I don't suppose you could name any of these imaginary astronomers, eh? So if only you could produce some facts, it would be substantially harder to argue with you.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

I don't know how to break it to you, but you are not science.