Creation Science Rebuttals

Institute for Creation Research News Report

Ancient Sea Levels

First Published 7 Apr 09

If you look at the headline, you would think that the young earth crowd had stumbled upon some startling new evidence for a young earth. The headline reads, "Stunning New Evidence of a Higher Ancient Sea Level."¹ Young earth creationist Brian Thomas of the Institute for Creation Research (ICR) says that according to Genesis, the entire surface of the earth was covered with water. He then describes proof from geologists that ancient sea levels used to be 70 feet higher than they are today. He claims this presents a puzzle to geologists. As a geologist, I'm only puzzled by Thomas' absurd claim.

In the next paragraph, he says "There is little room for doubt now that sea levels have changed over time." Excuse me, but geologists have known for a long time that sea levels have changed over time. As an undergraduate student in Geology in the 1980's, I was taught that sea levels had changed throughout geologic history. The father of modern geology, James Hutton, wrote about possible sea level changes over two hundred years ago.² The only people who doubted it must have been young earth creationists.

Paleoceanography is the study of earth's oceans of the past. For example, this graphic shows the sea level changes over the last 542 million years.³ Phanerozoic Sea Level Graph

It shows up to 400 meters variation in sea levels. Thomas must not have done much research for this article, as sea level data is easy to find. Next Thomas says that evidence of sea level change "does not fit with naturalistic theories of origins." Notice we were talking about paleoceanography, and he shifts to biology. Sea level is mostly a function of climate, and to a lesser extent geology, but strangely he tries to tie it to evolution. (I've noticed that YEC's try to tie everything to evolution). From here he moves on to talk about the global flood of Noah, which would require a whole lot more than a 70 foot sea level rise to cover the whole earth.

He concludes that the "naturalistic evolutionary view must blindly guess at what could have caused the ocean to be 70 feet higher in the past." All he needs to do is look at our melting polar caps, and we then know the reason for sea level rise. A rise in global temperature causes sea levels to rise. Guessing has nothing to do with it!

In case you are wondering about the 70 foot rise he is referring to, it occurred approximately 400,000 years ago during an interglacial period.⁴ Sea levels fluctuate greatly between glacial periods, as can be seen in this graph of the last 20,000 years. Scientists believe we are currently in an interglacial period. In the last 20,000 years, the sea level has risen about 120 meters, or 393 feet.³ This dwarfs the rise that Thomas is writing about. The only thing that is 'stunning' about this is that ICR actually published this claim.

Notes:

¹ http://www.icr.org/article/4542/

² James Hutton, in Theory of the Earth, published 1788. p. 175

³ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_level#Changes_through_geologic_time

4 http://newsdesk.si.edu/releases/nmnh_sea_level_rise.htm

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