CPT Q. 056: Where did the seafloor spreading occur that resulted in the closing of the Iapetus Ocean?

Q. 56. In your response to question 46 you further state: “And for a rapid opening even of the Iapetus Ocean to take place, most of the earth’s mantle must be weakened by many orders of magnitude. This strongly suggests that there was rapid subduction and seafloor spreading in many regions of the earth’s surface simultaneous with the opening and closing of the Iapetus Ocean. Certainly, as the Iapetus basin was closing, to accommodate the subduction of the Iapetus seafloor, there almost certainly had to be seafloor spreading with accompanying steam jets in the vast oceanic area west of Laurentia. Likely, rapid subduction and compensating seafloor spreading were also occurring in several other locations at the same time.” Exactly. The global effects of the Flood in your model would have produced many different regional effects, including rifting, plate motion, subduction, continental collision, island arc formation, mountain building, etc. I have no argument at all with that – it is consistent with your model. However, this still does not explain how plates could move in opposite directions absent rifting and subduction zones switching places (roughly). Otherwise, what would be the driving force? And back to the original question: any new rift zone would imply new steam jets. If we accept the biblical account, that would imply no rifting after day 40.

Response: On the issue of the opening and subsequent closing of the Iapetus Ocean, given the geological evidence recorded in the continental rock record today on either side of the Atlantic, how do you fit the pieces together? Would you not agree that the observations are compelling that such a tectonic history is likely, if not certain? In my assessment, the issue is not so much whether these tectonic events occurred, since the evidence is so compelling, as it is the mechanism responsible them. My comment on that issue is that today, except at plate boundaries, the asthenosphere is at least a thousand times weaker, and in most cases at least ten thousand times weaker, than the lithospheric above it. Hence, plate motion is controlled primarily by the forces acting at the plate boundaries. This was also likely the case during the Flood. So the primary forces responsible for the closing of the Iapetus do not need to be local to the Iapetus itself but may have been, and likely were, on the opposite side of the Laurentian plate, many thousands of kilometers away. Please see my answer to question 95 below for more specifics regarding the geological observations that support so strongly the opening and closing of the Iapetus Ocean.