101 Questions and Answers Concerning Catastrophic Plate Tectonics

The following is a web-adaptation of Dr. Baumgardner’s original PDF document. See the introduction for fuller information. ~ Nicholas Petersen, 2022

Q. 0: Introduction

Q. 1: Does Flood modeling conflict with commitment to the authority and sufficiency of Scripture?

Q. 2: How can continental plates move laterally with roots that extend to depths of 200-250 km?

Q. 3: Is not the resistance to subduction far too great to allow a plate to subduct?

Q. 4: Are sediments, volcanoes, and plateaus actually scraped off subducting plates at trenches?

Q. 5: Are sediments in trenches deformed and contorted as expected?

Q. 6: How can plates possibly rift apart and move over underlying rock?

Q. 7: How can one plate dive beneath an adjacent plate that is 30-60 miles thick?

Q. 8: Is subduction geometrically possible only along a straight line?

Q. 9: Why are there so many volcanic seamounts on the interior of the Pacific Plate?

Q. 10: Why do trenches not display mass excesses, if deeply subducted slabs lie beneath them?

Q. 11: Why do earthquakes sometimes occur across zones broader than the width of a plate?

Q. 12: Has seismic tomography demonstrated the reality of subducted plates in the mantle?

Q. 13: Why are some Benioff zones nearly horizontal?

Q. 14: Why would thick, buoyant continents not entirely prevent subduction?

Q. 15: Is it true that the total length of trenches does not closely match the total length of ridges?

Q. 16: How can a trench possibly intersect a ridge?

Q. 17: Is it true that ancient trenches have never been found?

Q. 18: How do the distinctive features of the mid-ocean ridge system form?

Q. 19: How can vertically sinking slabs give rise to horizontal motions at the earth’s surface?

Q. 20: How could the plates have accelerated to CPT velocities without ripping apart?

Q. 21: Could an earth created on the verge of catastrophic runaway possibly be ‘very good’?

Q. 22: Why would the rotational instability you posit for the Flood not begin just after creation?

Q. 23: Why is the mantle not stably stratified and hence resistant to any vertical flow of rock?

Q. 24: Did the continents separate only once or more than once during the Flood?

Q. 25: Why did the sinking cold rock not entrain hot material and warm dramatically as it sank?

Q. 26: Is the geologic column real, that is, do global correlations of fossils and strata actually exist?

Q. 27: If CPT actually occurred, how did the oceans avoid being heated to the boiling point?

Q. 28: How does limiting the minimum viscosity affect the time scale in your TERRA calculations?

Q. 29: Why are there thick continental sediment deposits but little sediment in the ocean basins?

Q. 30: Are the tectonic mechanisms affecting the world’s geology primarily vertical or horizontal?

Q. 31: What mechanism caused the main sea level rise during the Flood?

Q. 32: Is God’s supernatural intervention needed to cool the Flood’s newly forming ocean floor?

Q. 33: Do the steam jets in CPT have sufficient energy to reach earth’s escape velocity?

Q. 34: How do you interpret the magnetic ‘stripes’ on either side of the mid-ocean ridges?

Q. 35: How does the usual need for ‘auxiliary hypotheses’ impact your own modeling endeavors?

Q. 36: Was all the land together in one place at the end of creation week?

Q. 37: Was runaway subduction restricted to the first forty days of the Flood?

Q. 38: If Africa was largely stationary, does this mean the Mid-Atlantic Ridge moved westward?

Q. 39: Does CPT rely on any ‘scientifically untestable supernatural causes’?

Q. 40: How can plesiosaur fossils be in the Franciscan Formation if the rock was deeply subducted?

Q. 41: Why do you conclude that the Sierra batholith must have been molten during the Flood?

Q. 42: Why do we not see more sediment in the ocean basins from runoff from the Flood?

Q. 43: Was it mantle cooling between Creation and the Flood that triggered runaway subduction?

Q. 44: How did the RATE team deduce how much nuclear decay occurred during Creation Week?

Q. 45: How does CPT account for the vast amounts of dolomite in the rock record?

Q. 46: How can one episode of CPT produce multiple openings of the Atlantic basin?

Q. 47: How does CPT explain the closing of the Iapetus Ocean and origin of the Appalachians?

Q. 48: With which points can you agree in regard to the other Flood models?

Q. 49: Why is there today so little volcanism associated with seismic tomography’s ‘superplumes’?

Q. 50: What research has been done recently on the deformational properties of mantle minerals?

Q. 51: Is sufficient energy available in CPT to melt enough basalt to resurface the ocean basins?

Q. 52: How is a narrow V-shaped rift maintained in CPT as two ocean plates rapidly move apart?

Q. 53: Could you elaborate more on the effects of the ‘flips’ of the earth during the Flood?

Q. 54: How does CPT mesh with the 40 days, the 150 days, and the final 221 days of Genesis 7-8?

Q. 55: What was the lag time from when the steam jets first began and rain reached the ground?

Q. 56: Where did the seafloor spreading occur that resulted in the closing of the Iapetus Ocean?

Q. 57: How do the tectonics of the Paleozoic and Mesozoic fit within the Genesis 7-8 chronology?

Q. 58: Why should the Deep Sea Drilling Program data be taken seriously by creationists?

Q. 59: Is plate tectonics a data-driven necessity or a result of the need for a grand synthesis?

Q. 60: Are shotgun attacks on anything scientific a valid approach for defending Biblical truth?

Q. 61: How well has CPT served as an impetus for new geological research relating to the Flood?

Q. 62: Is water’s large heat of vaporization also a problem for CPT, as it is for canopy models?

Q. 63: Does accumulating basalt from a subducting plate buoy up the adjacent continent edge?

Q. 64: How could the Atlantic open and close with no effect on the Aleutian-Siberian platform?

Q. 65: How can fossils be employed to correlate strata, if such a procedure assumes evolution?

Q. 66: What initiated catastrophic plate tectonics?

Q. 67: How can horizontal forces move a large tectonic plate without rupturing it?

Q. 68: Why are trenches filled mostly with continent-derived sediments?

Q. 69: How does CPT produce thickened zones of low-density rock to form mountain belts?

Q. 70: Is existence of oceanic lithosphere in the pre-Flood world merely an assumption?

Q. 71: What about the hydroplate model that assumes no pre-Flood ocean lithosphere existed?

Q. 72: How do you respond to those who claim that granite simply cannot form from a melt?

Q. 73: If granites did not cool from a molten state, would CPT still have a heat problem?

Q. 74: How do you respond to Ollier and Pain’s 17 objections to the concepts of plate tectonics?

Q. 75: Are not labels such as ‘Mesozoic’ and ‘Cretaceous’ not circular and tautological?

Q. 76: What was the tie between accelerated nuclear decay and other aspects of the Flood?

Q. 77: How was the pre-Flood atmosphere different from today’s, and if so, why?

Q. 78: How did the earth ‘expand’ by replacement of cold lithosphere with warmer mantle rock?

Q. 79: To what extent are your computer programs known and used by other research scientists?