CPT Q. 066: What initiated catastrophic plate tectonics?

Q. 66. Viewing CPT from a global perspective, what initially caused slabs of the pre-Flood oceanic crust to break loose prior to the runaway subduction at the Flood onset?

Response: As far as how the cataclysm was initiated, to be honest, I must say I do not know. At the 2003 ICC, Mark Horstemeyer and I presented a paper entitled, “What Initiated the Flood Cataclysm?” (available here, pdf). In that paper we reasoned that the pattern of subduction and continental breakup which occurred during the Flood seems to require a special pattern of density anomalies in the earth’s upper mantle prior to the Flood. It is extremely difficult to imagine a physical process by which such anomalies could develop during the interval between creation and the Flood. Therefore, we conjectured that God may well have built such an upper mantle density structure into the original design of the earth, entirely stable at the time of creation, but with the potential for instability and cataclysm should the need arise. At some point after Adam sinned, God could then have gently set things into motion for the cataclysm to unfold at the proper future moment. In our paper we describe several physical processes which could gradually, over many centuries, lead to sudden onset of runaway catastrophe, without any additional special high energy triggering mechanism. That is still my preferred answer to this important question.