Dotting the “I”s and Crossing the “T”s – Part II

Continuing from the previous post regarding one of the problems in dealing readers who believe in the old Earth policies and theories of “mainstream science.” 
    It is also believed by “mainstream science” that the earth is currently in an interglacial period known as the Holocene and has been for around 11,700 years, and it is argued that it might be most analogous to a previous interglacial that lasted 28,000 years ago, and claimed that the predicted changes in orbital forcing (tilting of the Earth) suggest that the next glacial period would begin at least 50,000 years from now.

With the claimed last glacial period ending about 10,000 years ago, all that remains of the continental ice sheets are the Arctic, Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets and smaller glaciers such as on Baffin Island. Outside these five distinct ages, “mainstream science’s” belief is that the Earth seems to have been ice free even in high latitudes.
    Also according to “mainstream science,” geological evidence for ice ages comes in various forms, including rock scouring and scratching, glacial moraines, drumlins, valley cutting, and the deposition of till or tillites and glacial erratics, which of course can be seen today. However, it is claimed that successive glaciations tend to distort and erase the geological evidence, making it difficult to interpret. Furthermore, this evidence was difficult to date exactly; early theories assumed that the glacials were short compared to the long interglacials. The advent of sediment and ice cores led to the “current” beliefs that glacials are long, and interglacials are short.
    It took some time for the current theory to be worked out, all together taking several decades until the ice age theory was fully accepted by scientists. This happened on an international scale in the second half of the 1870s following the work of James Croll, including the publication of Climate and Time, in Their Geological Relations in 1875, which provided a credible explanation to scientists for the causes of ice ages.
    On the other hand, there are several scientists today who do not accept much of this ice age information, including Melvin A. Cook who states “Not only does the observed global adjustment (uplift-depression) cycle verify that there were really two ice sheets, one at the north pole and one at the south pole involved in the division of the earth or continental drift, but the apparent absence of more than one such global adjustment cycle shows that there was really only one ice age!” He also goes on to add, “Scientists have evidently overlooked these requirements in crustal adjustments in assessing the theory of multiple ice ages. Not only is an ice cap model singularly applicable in explaining these isostasy adjustments, but one knows that every large ice sheet of the magnitude of those of the ‘Wisconsin’ must cause such uplift and depressions of the continent in accord with the requirements of isostasy.”
    With this in mind, it is easy to see that such multiple ice ages, there would be multiple seashore cycles for each ice age, but only one cycle is evident in the shoreline record.
    Furthermore, in evaluating five or more of the claimed ice ages, at least in the northern hemisphere were supposed to have occupied essentially the same zone according to the maps of the ice sheet advancement depicted by geologists and this, of course, would have been impossible! After all, as Cook concludes, “There would be enough hysteresis in global crustal adjustment and material flow patterns for any given ice age cycle to prevent any subsequent ice sheet from occupying the same zone as the one before it.”
    Thus, in answer to the question raised about when the “last” Ice Age occurred or ended, without getting too finite, it is that the Ice Age ended, or more accurately, began to recede not long before the Flood, the weight of the two-mile-thick ice sheet (though thinner at its edges), having led to the collapsing of the Earth’s crust, which is suggested in the scripture: “In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened” (Genesis 7:11), obviously, as a result of the weight of these overpowering ice sheets.

It is also of interest to note that while the rain fell “upon the earth forty days and forty nights” (Genesis 7:12), but the waters prevailed upon the earth “a hundred and fifty days” (Genesis 7:24), and then “decreased continually until the tenth month” (Genesis 8:5), when the tops of the mountains were seen. Evidently, the waters of the Flood apparently kept right on increasing another 110 days after the rains stopped, then decreased for the next 150 days. Thus, it must be concluded that the “fountains of the great deep” was the primary cause of the continually increasing Flood waters. This is apparent, since a Flood so great a magnitude as to cover the highest contains to a depth of fifteen cubits, or 22 ½ feet, upward would have required something vastly different than mere torrential rains even for 40 days. Thus, the breaking up of the “fountains of the great deep” may, in fact, have been simply the earth cracking under tremendous, rapidly growing ice caps.
    In any event, the Flood and the division of the earth probably both occurring in the period between 2350 and 2250 B.C. as a result of the overpowering ice sheets as they receded and melted.
    As Parley P. Pratt wrote and Joseph Fielding Smith later quoted, “How far the flood may have contributed to produce the various changes as to the division of the earth into broken fragments, islands, and continents, mountains and valleys, we have not been informed—the change must have been considerable. But after the flood, in the days of Peleg, the earth was divide. A short history, to be sure, of so great an event: but still it will account for the mighty revolution, which rolled the sea from its own place in the north, and brought it to interpose between different portions of the earth, which were just parted asunder, and moved into something near their present form; this together with the earthquakes, revolutions, and commotions which have since taken place, have all contributed to reduce the face of the earth to its present state; while the great curses which have fallen upon different portions, because of the wickedness of men, will account for the stagnant swamps, the sunken lakes the dead seas, and great deserts” (Chapter V, Voice of Warning, W. Sandford, New York, 1837).
    Earlier in the same chapter, Pratt wrote: “When God had created the heavens and the earth, and separated the light from the darkness…God said, Let the waters under the heaven, be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so." From this we learn a marvelous fact, which very few have ever realized or believed in this benighted age; we learn that the waters, which are now divided into oceans, seas, and lakes, were then all gathered together, into one vast ocean; and, consequently, that the land, which is now torn asunder, and divided into continents and islands, almost innumerable, was then one vast continent or body, not separated as it now is.”
    The point is, what man knows, and this includes the “mainstream sciences,” and understands about the formation of the Earth and its makeup, is far from what God formed and where Adam and his descendants lived down to the Flood. What happened during the Flood and directly after, in the division of the Earth in Peleg’s time, and also during the Crucifixion, at least on the American continent, reshaped the world into what we now understand it to be—but not as it was before.
    Ideas, hypothesis, guesses, and theories of man not-with-standing, the Earth has undergone serious changes, and all happening within a very short time in various ages since its formation, about 13,000 years ago. That “mainstream science” has no clue to these events, and God’s works among men, is of little consequence to the actual history of this Earth.
    However, in the defense of this blog and many of its articles on this subject, in dealing with readers who happen to believe in “mainstream science” and its dates and geologic column, evolution, etc., we sometimes refer to their dates in order to counter their errors and misunderstandings of God’s works. It may not be the easiest for those knowing the fallacies of “mainstream science’s” errors, but it tends to being the correct argument into focus for those to whom it is mainly directed. Our apologies for any difficulties it causes to those who regularly follow this blog and agree, at least in part, with what is written here.