CPT Q. 057: How do the tectonics of the Paleozoic and Mesozoic fit within the Genesis 7-8 chronology?
Q. 57. In your response to question 46 you state:
This global perspective is what I have been assuming in all of my papers and presentations since 1986. Because the supersonic steam jets in this framework are causally linked with the very rapid seafloor spreading and because these jets seem to be the logical source for heavy global rainfall, it seems plausible that the 40 days and nights of heavy rainfall mentioned in the Genesis text give us the length of time in which this rapid seafloor spreading and rapid subduction of oceanic lithosphere was occurring on the earth as a whole and hence the length of time the mantle was in this state of being orders of magnitude weaker than it is today. The many types of observations we have that correlate the large scale tectonic changes that accompanied the Flood with the fossil-bearing sediment record lead me to infer that most of this record likely was formed during this 40 day period. The correlations logically seem to require it.
So the Paleozoic = somewhere in the first 20 days of the Flood and the Mesozoic and Cenozoic the next 20? Adjust the days however you want, this creates vast problems of explaining why there would be no rock record representing the next 331 days of what would have been intense hydraulic action at a minimum. I do not understand the timing of your model. Can you provide a time line of the 371 days of the Flood showing the timing of runaway subduction, as tied to the eras of the rock record and the major regional events that we know occurred (orogenies, rifting, subduction, plate motion, etc.)? It would help clarify this problem, especially since most modern mountain chains were formed relatively recently.
Response: I’m not sure I can honestly provide much more detail on the timing than I have already provided in my answers above. Yes, if indeed the interval of rapid seafloor spreading coincides with the 40 days and 40 nights of heavy rain, then roughly a 50/50 split of that interval between Paleozoic and Mesozoic would seem reasonable. Then the early Cenozoic would coincide with the remainder of the 150 days and the middle Cenozoic until roughly the end of the Miocene when most of the regression of the flood waters was occurring would correlate with the remaining 221 days. Most of the uplift of the modern mountain belts occurs in the Pliocene and Pleistocene part of the record, which in my assessment is post-Flood.