Wednesday, August 7, 2019

Rewriting the textbooks; but not the AOJ creation model

Sometimes there are exciting and profound scientific discoveries that are said to require a "re-writing of the scientific textbooks".  What does that mean to creation models that align the geologic history with the Biblical account in Genesis 1?  A recent article in Science Daily provides a chance to test what happens.

A press release from the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg includes a nice graphic worth following the link to see.  Discovery of a drop of ancient seawater is found to provide evidence that plate tectonics started 600 million years earlier that geology textbooks currently claim.  The clues analyzed to come to this conclusion were gathered from a drop of molten rock encased in a mineral called olivine that provided a kind of time-capsule that dated to 3.3 billion years ago.   That places the formation of the sample during the Archean Eon which spanned from 4 billion to 2.5 billion years ago.

This shifts the start of plate tectonics from near the end of the Archean to the middle.  The Ages of Joy creation model sees a strong correlation between the events of the Archean and the events of Day 1.  Light-driven photosynthesis purifying the deep is the primary mechanism at work described in Genesis 1 for Day 1.  However, God's revelation to Job provides additional insight in to the early Earth.

Job 38:8-11 English Standard Version (ESV)

“Or who shut in the sea with doors
    when it burst out from the womb,
when I made clouds its garment
    and thick darkness its swaddling band,
10 and prescribed limits for it
    and set bars and doors,
11 and said, ‘Thus far shall you come, and no farther,
    and here shall your proud waves be stayed’?
Even from the birth of the ocean, it's waves pounded ancient coastlines lifted up by plate tectonics and volcanic mountain building.  These early continents were barren, rocky craglands, not yet graced with the plant life God created on Day 3.  While the details in some textbooks may need to be re-written, the Ages of Joy creation model can easily accommodate this shift in dates and appreciates the increasingly detailed and accurate natural history of Earth that is being refined by scientists around the world.

Quoting from the article: "Earth is the only planet in our solar system that is shaped by plate tectonics and without it the planet would be uninhabitable."

This is exactly the kind of scientific discovery that our creation model anticipates.  God most certainly created the Earth to be inhabited, and without His handiwork, no life would exist.

Proverbs 8:31 English Standard Version (ESV)

31 rejoicing in his inhabited world
    and delighting in the children of man.
Glory to God in the highest!

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