Catastrophism

Catastrophism is the view that most of earth's geological features are the result of large-scale catastrophes such as floods, volcanic eruptions, asteroid impacts, etc. Young earth creationist scientists, who often subscribe to Flood Geology, point out that catastophism is increasingly being accepted in the field of geology.

Historical Development

Though Charles Lyell and Charles Darwin rejected Catastrophism for Uniformitarianism, scientists today have been forced to acknowledge that the same mass catastrophes denied by Darwin and Lyell did in fact happen, and that the fossil record shows life did die off rapidly. The only disagreement on this point between Creationists and Evolutionists is when these events occurred, and how many of them there were. The overwhelming evidence of ancient mass extinctions has led to various hypotheses including huge asteroids and volcanic eruptions:

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"At least a handful of times in the last 500 million years, 50 to more than 90 percent of all species on Earth have disappeared in a geological blink of the eye... The causes of these mass extinction events are unsolved mysteries, though volcanic eruptions and the impacts of large asteroids or comets are prime suspects in many of the cases. Both would eject tons of debris into the atmosphere, darkening the skies for at least months on end. Starved of sunlight, plants and plant-eating creatures would quickly die. Space rocks and volcanoes could also unleash toxic and heat-trapping gases that—once the dust settled—enable runaway global warming... Massive floods of lava erupting from the central Atlantic magmatic province about 200 million years ago may explain the Triassic-Jurassic extinction. About 20 percent of all marine families went extinct, as well as most mammal-like creatures, many large amphibians, and all non-dinosaur archosaurs. An asteroid impact is another possible cause of the extinction, though a telltale crater has yet to be found." -National Geographic, "Mass Extinctions: What Causes Animal Die-Offs?"

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"For months I'd been on the trail of the greatest natural disaster in Earth's history. About 250 million years ago, at the end of the Permian period, something killed some 90 percent of the planet's species. Less than 5 percent of the animal species in the seas survived. On land less than a third of the large animal species made it. Nearly all the trees died. Looy had told me that the Black Triangle was the best place today to see what the world would have looked like after the Permian extinction. This didn't look like apocalypse. We saw the first signs of death as we walked into the hills—hundreds of fallen timbers lay hidden in the undergrowth. A forest once grew here. Half a mile (0.8 kilometers) uphill we found the trunks of a stand of spruce, killed by acid rain. No birds called, no insects hummed. The only sound was the wind through the acid-tolerant weeds." -Hillel J. Hoffman, "The Permian Extinction - When Life Nearly Came to an End," National Geographic.

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Whereas scientists believe multiple such events occurred over hundreds of millions of years, giving each names such as Permian-Triassic extinction event, Devonian extinction, Ordovician-Silurian extinction, Cretaceous extinction event, Triassic-Jurassic extinction, and Pre-Cambrian mass extinction event, Creationists believe a worldwide Flood was responsible, and that the Radiometric dating used by Evolutionists is incorrect. Thus, rather than many extinction events over a long period, these were all the same event occurring at one time. New research indicates one such event occurred as recently as 11.4 to 13.8 thousand years ago.

Evidence

The following are evidences of instantaneous catastrophes in earth's distant past, and instant fossilization:

Trilobites Buried in Life Position

In March 2011, it was discovered that a large number of trilobites had been instantaneously fossilized by sediment so rapid it froze them in life position while they were migrating and mating.

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"In a quest that has taken him from Oklahoma to Morocco and Poland, Brett has analyzed multiple examples of mass trilobite burial. A smothering death by tons of hurricane-generated storm sediment was so rapid that the trilobites are preserved in life position. These geologic 'snapshots' record behavior in much the way that ancient Roman life was recorded at Pompeii by volcanic ash... The mass burials preserve large groups of similar-sized – and therefore similarly aged – specimens, segregated by species and, after molting, 'naked.' 'It’s an orgy,' Brett said. Brett and colleagues found evidence of another behavioral connection to modern arthropods – long chains of trilobites apparently fossilized in mid-migration. 'The recent discovery of rows of more than a dozen specimens provides the oldest evidence of migratory queues similar to those seen in modern crustaceans,' Brett said. Taken together, the mass burials record an array of communal behaviors in ancient trilobites, comparable to those seen in some living crustaceans." -Greg Hand, University of Cincinnati, 2011

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Fossilized Raindrops and Footprints

This was in 1981 presented by Josh McDowell and Don Stewart in Reasons Skeptics Should Consider Christianity as explainable only by a rapid catastrophe. How do you preserve footprints, especially footprints with raindrop indentations? As recently as 2012, we continue to find out how different ancient earth's atmosphere was from today's (see Canopy Theory) because of fossilized raindrops:

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"It was raining 2.7 billion years ago. That's according to imprints of raindrops discovered in ancient rock in South Africa. Those same weather marks are giving researchers a clearer picture of what Earth's early atmosphere was like. Back then, the sun was about 30 percent dimmer, giving off less heat, which suggests our planet should have frozen over. As for why it didn't, and why rocks show evidence of abundant water as far back as 4 billion years, scientists have suggested a much thicker atmosphere, high concentrations of greenhouse gases, or a combination of the two kept early Earth toasty. 'Because the sun was so much fainter back then, if the atmosphere was the same as it is today the Earth should have been frozen,' study researcher Sanjoy Som, a postdoctoral researcher at NASA's Ames Research Center, said in a statement. The new results suggest an atmosphere full of strong greenhouse gases, like methane, at the time helped keep the Earth warm instead of becoming an icy Hoth-like planet." -Jennifer Welsh, LiveScience, 2012

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Mass Marine Extinctions

In 2011 it was discovered that a rapid catastrophe led to deoxygenation and rising CO2 levels in ancient oceans, resulting in mass extinction of marine organisms worldwide.

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"A new study of prehistoric ocean sediments from an era of high carbon dioxide concentrations shows that warm oceans with high CO2 levels and low-ocean conditions have experienced mass extinctions of marine organisms. Scientists from the UK and Australia examined ocean sediment samples off the coast of western Africa from the late Cretaceous period, 85 million years ago, an epoch of high atmospheric CO2 levels. The researchers found a significant amount of organic matter from marine organisms buried within the deoxygenated sediment layers, indicating that these organisms suffered mass die-offs as CO2 levels rose, ocean temperatures increased, and the oceans held less oxygen." -Yale Environment 360, 2011

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See also

• Literalist Bible chronology
• Uniformitarianism—the opposite of catastrophism

External links

• Mt. St. Helens and Catastrophism by Steven Austin, Ph.D.
• Catastrophism - Observed Data
• The Channeled Scablands - Scientific Bias Against Catastrophism