The Truth About The Creation
God's Glory, God's Handiwork, God's
Word, The Genesis Account
A Dissertation by Pastor Ed Rice January 2017
10: Glaciers
After The Flood
A
continental glacier is a mile thick ice cap reaching from the north
pole across 48 degrees of latitude. One stretched all the way to 40
Plat Street, Painted Post, New York, Latitude 42.142981, Longitude
77.118089, where this author grew up. Glaciers are worth mentioning
when one considers God's creation and flood of our planet. At least,
it is for this author. Such a glacier, I have been told since my
youth, left an indelible impression on my backyard. It likewise left
that type of impression on my mind, and so it is examined here.
As
this continental ice cap, well over a mile thick, pulled out of my
backyard, it dragged its feet and formed ten claw marks which filled
with water. They are called the Finger Lakes and were labeled with
exotic Indian names. From east to west they are Otisco, Skaneateles,
Owasco, Cayuga, Seneca, Keuka, Canandaigua, Honeoye, Hemlock, Conesus
(Tourism concerns led to the addition of the tiny little lake called
Canadice, making eleven finger lakes, which never made much sense to
us locals). Seneca Lake, a few miles north of Painted Post, holds
about half the water of all the finger lakes and was called
bottomless. The gouged-out 38 mile gorge has an amazing 620 foot
depth. These ten lakes, and all the topography around them, being
created by a continental glacier dragging its feet, is genuinely
imaginable.
My
father regularly took us fishing, camping and swimming on Sanford
Lake. It was a public lake just north of Van Keuren Lake (private and
swamp like), just up from Round Lake (private and shored by
cottages), a bit north of Peterson Lake (we called it a pond). I had
been taught since my youth that my hometown's glacier, dragging its
feet northward, had water falls falling from tremendous height which
drilled out these four lakes. They attribute such lakes to be plunge
pools at the base of a waterfall cascading off of the retreating
glacier. The lakes indeed have a small surface area and a great
depth, as if they were these waterfall plunge pools. I could throw a
stone half way across Sanford lake, and my dad's thirty foot of
anchor rope didn't touch bottom in the middle. My back yard was, no
doubt, at one time, the very edge of a continental glacier. It makes
one wonder, where did it come from, and, how long ago was that?
Glaciers
Change Things
Glaciers
have left their distinctive marks on the surface of the Earth. New
York State was at one time covered in a continental glacier over two
miles thick. Continental glaciers flow out in all directions because
of their own weight. The weight of a two mile thick ice cap actually
stresses and depresses the mantle of the crust of this old Earth. As
the continental glacier receded, the crust of the Earth ever so
slowly “bounced” back into shape, and the
“bounce-back” is
actually measurable today. The mantle in the far north is still
rising, with the mantle's depression in the 40 degree latitude, where
this author grew up, is all recovered. The northern areas of New York
State are still measurably rising, while the southern portions of the
state are almost completely recovered. This recovering mantle is
creating an interesting phenomena where the Saint Lawrence River, on
this still rising table of land, is not draining water from the Great
Lakes quite like it used to. The northern shore of New York State's
Ontario lake is still rising, while the southern shore is not. This
is causing the lake to get shallower in Canada, while the southern
shores are getting deeper. Also the water, which is draining from all
five of America's Great Lakes, begins looking for a less elevated
outlet than it finds in the Saint Lawrence River. It is possible that
in the next couple hundred years, the drain will eventually break
through the middle of the New York State and it might be called the
“Syracuse to Albany River.”
When a glacier melts, it reveals that the glacier did move. The
glacial floor is riddled with scratches, polished rock and grooves.
It is undeniable. One can see Alpine Glacier's flow down a mountain
cutting out great valleys. It does indeed flow, quite like molasses.
We can see a glacier's flow, and carefully measure it. Edges scraping
the sides of valleys flow more slowly than does the center of these
Alpine glaciers. All kinds of shapes are cut out by these flowing
glaciers. Bowl like carvings, called sirks, scraped
and
polished valley floors, have striations and grooves cut into solid
rock. A Lake Erie island above Marblehead Ohio has remarkable glacial
grooves cut into bedrock, many are two feet deep.
Two Alpine Glaciers joining in a main valley are called Piedmont
Glaciers, and these make particular formations as well. The
Matterhorn is a spire of rock which was carved when Alpine Glaciers
carved away in three different directions, leaving the remarkable
formation. Alpine glaciers teach us what was going on under these
gargantuan continental glaciers.
While
glacier's carve wide valleys, water carves 'V' shaped valleys. They
are generally quite distinguishable. Glaciers also deposit massive
mounds of boulders,
stones, or other debris it has carried along. These are called a
“moraine”, and my backyard in the Southerntier of
upstate New
York is riddled with them. It is the most
common glacial land form created. The end moraines are formed at the
edges of a glacier. Alpine glaciers form crescent shaped ridges
while Continental glaciers, it is observed, form broad looped ridges
which might go on for miles.
Another common glacier land form is called the drumlin. These are
long smooth hills 25 to 200 feet in height and ¼ to
½ mile in
length, with a blunt nose and long gentle slope which points in the
direction of the glacier flow. The whole New England area has many
drumlin fields. It is uncertain how, but drumlins seem to form deep
inside the plastic flow of a moving glacier. Also Kettle
lakes
are pitted into an out-wash plain by large blocks of stranded ice
that melts away after the stratified materials settled out. Further,
torrents of water departing from the melting glacier edge produce
many formations. The out-wash into a plain or valley deposits gravel,
then sand, then silt and eventually clay as the out-wash flow
decreases. The area around Savona NY, where my father was born, is
riddled with gravel yards because of our hometown glacier's out-wash.
Waterfalls
off of a glacier edge drill holes in the surface to from round lakes,
often very deep. Some of these were introduced previously as in my
boyhood we explored and fished on Sanford Lake, Van Keuren Lake,
Round Lake, and Peterson Lake. Fayetteville is in the north east
corner of the Finger Lakes area and is home to Green Lake, one of the
most noted of these waterfall lakes. Green Lake is a 64 acre lake
with a 171 foot mean depth, and a 194 foot maximum depth.
Fayetteville's Green Lake was the first lake in North America
identified as meromictic,
and is the best studied meromictic lake in the world with records
dating back to 1839.
Because of its sulfur and its great depth, i.e. speculated, back
then, to reach to the depths of the Bible's Dead Sea, Green Lake was
referred to as Lake Sodom by Lardner Vanuxem, who was the first to
study Green Lake in 1839. The presence of sulfide in the deeper
waters of the lake was known by 1849.
Green Lake formed as a plunge pool during the retreat of the
continental glacier. It was at the base of a waterfall formed by the
retreating glaciers, which is the reason for its extreme depth
relative to a small surface area. Fayettville's Green Lake is located
in Green Lakes State Park, and since 1933 large quantities of sand
have been dumped on the shore of the north end to create a swimming
area.
All this adds up to show ample evidence of continental glaciers. In
upstate New York, I grew up with these evidences all around. The
erosion evidence, the Carbon 14 dating of post-glacier trees, ravines
cut by receding glacier (and flood) waters, the canyon ravine gouged
by the retreating Niagara Falls, and the measurable bounce-back
of the Earth's crust, which sagged under a continental glacier's
tremendous weight,... all tell the same story. The continental
glacier appeared about 4,000 years ago and retreated off of my home
town area over the next few hundred years. Atheistic evolutionists,
who must hold on to their millions of years speculations sing from a
different song book. They speculate about an ice age occurring at the
start of their Pleistocene age, like, 2.6 million years ago. There
is, however, ample evidence about when these
glaciers formed;
the diligent Bible believer should ask the question, how
did
these continental glaciers form?
The
Real Ice Age
The north and south poles of the Earth were once lush growths of
vegetation which was fed on by exotic animals. Many were frozen in
place instantaneously. It is hypothesized that ice blasting into our
atmosphere would be ionized and rush in more dramatically at the
magnetic poles of our planet. Water blasting out of the mantle of
the Earth when God broke up the fountains of the great deep would
have shot into the outer atmosphere and circled to either magnetic
pole of the planet. If, perchance, ice from a passing comet came
crashing into our planet, it too would be ionized and then sucked
to either magnetic pole. Either scenario (or both together) would
have caused both poles of our planet to freeze fast and solid. And so
we have a formation of continental glaciers hypothesized.
What one believes about plate tectonics determine which continent was
where when these continental glaciers settle in. The creationist does
not allow millions of years of natural continental drift, and
understands that these continents are not floating around like toy
boats in a child's bathtub. When God broke up the fountains of the
great deep the crust over the Earth's core obviously fractured like
an eggshell. And God then caused the waters to recede. He used three
things to disperse the waters,
And God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters asswaged;
The fountains also of the deep and the windows of heaven were
stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained; And the waters
returned from off the earth continually: and after the end of the
hundred and fifty days the waters were abated (Gen 8:1b-3).
There was a wind, there was a stopping of the fountains of the great
deep and of the windows of heaven, and there was a return of the
waters. The latter implies that some of the water went back into the
mantle from whence it came. God can do that, it does not need a
“natural” explanation, we have a supernatural God.
It is also
apparent that God sunk the crust lower in some places and buckled the
crust higher in other places. I would sooner believe that God placed
the continents where they are through this method than believe plate
tectonic speculations about drifting continents over billions of
years. A creationist does not have billions of years to play with,
and the atheistic evolutionists only think they do. Continents do
not “drift.”
Thus an ice-age hypothesis in a Bible believing creationist's
understanding consists of continental glaciers left over when God's
flood waters receded by his supernatural intervention. These
continental glaciers then slowly receded over the next couple hundred
years making room and environment for God's supernatural repopulating
of his kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus and species. Such
a hypothesis fits all the evidence and dating variations very nicely,
but does not align with a singly hypothesis of the atheistic
evolutionists.
The atheistic evolutionist allows for no Supernatural interventions;
he must settle on a perfectly natural explanation of an ice age that
began at the start of the Pleistocene epoch, 2.6 million years ago.
It must also corroborate what National Geographic reports as absolute
fact, that “Sixty-five million years ago the last of the
non-avian
dinosaurs went extinct. So too did the giant mosasaurs and
plesiosaurs in the seas and the pterosaurs in the skies.”
The atheistic evolutionist's time clock is unwavering, “The
“Age
of Dinosaurs” is the Mesozoic Era, which is divided into
three
periods: the Triassic (245-208 million years ago), Jurassic (208-145
million years ago), and Cretaceous (145-66 million years
ago).”
Any dates that do not align with their absolutes must be discarded as
faulty. The studies and documentaries which showed the 4,000 BC
dates for the continental glacier disappearing from the Upstate New
York Finger Lakes area have been removed from all public record. A
PBS documentary of the continental glacier over New York State aired
about five years ago. It cited the mantle bounce-back, the gouging of
Niagara Falls and fossilized trees in the Great Lakes all dating the
glacier not more than 6,000 years ago. I recall watching this, but
have not been able to find any reference citing any form of it.
Curious.
The atheistic evolutionist story of an ice age cannot include the
possibility of God's world flood. They must conform to “known
history” which, for them, reports an ice-age as follows:
An ice age is a period of colder global temperatures and recurring
glacial expansion capable of lasting hundreds of millions of years.
Thanks to the efforts of geologist Louis Agassiz and mathematician
Milutin Milankovitch, scientists have determined that variations in
the Earth’s orbit and shifting plate tectonics spur the
waxing and
waning of these periods. There have been at least five significant
ice ages in Earth’s history, with approximately a dozen
epochs of
glacial expansion occurring in the past 1 million years. Humans
developed significantly during the most recent glaciation period,
emerging as the dominant land animal afterward as megafauna such as
the wooly mammoth went extinct.”
That “history” goes on to educate our children with
their “facts”
as follows:
Scientists have recorded five significant ice ages throughout the
Earth’s history: the Huronian (2.4-2.1 billion years ago),
Cryogenian (850-635 million years ago), Andean-Saharan (460-430 mya),
Karoo (360-260 mya) and Quaternary (2.6 mya-present). Approximately a
dozen major glaciations have occurred over the past 1 million years,
the largest of which peaked 650,000 years ago and lasted for 50,000
years. The most recent glaciation period, often known simply as the
“Ice Age,” reached peak conditions some 18,000
years ago before
giving way to the interglacial Holocene epoch 11,700 years ago.
”
The Bible believing Christian is a creationists and a remnant. The
vast majority of our society has been educated and pressured to
conform to the world view of the atheistic evolutionist. If the Bible
is true, and our Lord Jesus Christ is the Only Begotten Son of
Jehovah God, and Saviour to this world, then he said, “I am
the
way, the truth, and the life” (John 14). We have the truth on
our
side, we have the evidence on our side, and we have just cause to
defy the atheistic scientist. Every believer should be an ambassador
for the truth, but every Bible student knows that the majority do not
have ears to hear the truth. Be encouraged in this endeavor, we have
overcome the world.
Proverbs 16:25 There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the
end thereof are the ways of death.... Matthew 7:13 Enter ye in at
the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that
leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat:...
1John 4:2-6 Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that
confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: And
every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the
flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof
ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the
world. Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them:
because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world.
They are of the world: therefore speak they of the world, and the
world heareth them. We are of God: he that knoweth God heareth us; he
that is not of God heareth not us. Hereby know we the spirit of
truth, and the spirit of error.
To Continue in this series click the link below:
11: An Apology for Creation
. . . 210
www.truthaboutthechrist.com/thetruthaboutthecreation/11apology_creation.html
. . . The Ken Ham Debate and
Apologetic
Purpose. . . 210
. . . The Ken Ham vs Bill Nye
Debate and
Apologetic
Strategies. . . 214
. . . What, if anything, would
change your
mind?. . .
215
. . . Well what about Noah's
Ark?. . . 218
. . . The untouched
“Cambrian
Explosion”. . . 223
. . . A good offense is better
than any
kind of
defense.. . . 227
. . . A careful strategy against
evolutionists- the Main
Thing. . . . 230
. . . Considering the Audience.
. . . 233
God's Glory, God's Handiwork, God's Word, The Genesis Account
Series Complete Table of
Contents