Floating Log Mats

This is one of those articles I’m really enjoying writing. The reason I enjoy it so much is because it demonstrates that creationists can do good science.  A recent article from New Scientist discussed what it called “mega-rafts” that carried ancient creatures from place to place across large stretches of open water.  This idea sounds vaguely familiar.  This article will discuss this rafting idea, as well as discuss its implications in the origins debate.

If the idea of the floating rafts sounds familiar, that’s because it is. A creationist proposed this idea decades ago. Dr. Steve Austin proposed floating log mats as the source of many of the coal beds around the world forty years ago, in his Ph.D. thesis in 1979.  As part of people building on his thesis, Dr. Kurt Wise and Matthew Croxton published a paper at the International Conference on Creationism that proposed rafting as a mechanism to account for the biodiversity of the world around them.  While the idea sounds a little off base on the face of it, there is quite a bit of evidence to back it up.

Evidence for this idea had already been observed when Wise and Croxton proposed it.  In fact, the evidence had existed since 1980 when Mount St. Helens erupted. When the volcano exploded, it blew a whole forest into the nearby Spirit Lake. While some of the logs did sink, many of them floated.  The entire surface of the lake was covered in logs, to the point it was theoretically possible to walk across the surface of the lake.  These logs floated for months or longer, before sinking. This demonstrates that it is possible for log mats to float for an extended period, definitely long enough to cross the ocean following currents.

This idea as presented by Wise and Croxton is very intriguing. If it is true, it would explain quite a bit. For example, it would help explain why crocodile species are found on three, unconnected land masses, Australia, the Americas, and the Afro-Eurasian land mass. Also, as part of the Ice Age the sea levels would have been significantly lower due to much of the water now in the oceans being concentrated in the glaciers covering significant portions of the northern and southern areas of the globe. This would have made it much easier to disperse creatures across the ocean on the log mats. The oceans would have been smaller, and it would have been significantly easier to cross them.

This explanation for the biodiversity we see across the various land masses makes a lot of sense and has explained quite a bit.  As usual, evolutionists are slowly catching up with the science.  The New Scientist article demonstrates this. They note that many fossilized logs are found with sea creatures attached, such as crinoids and oysters. Both of these are filter feeders which attach to a hard surface and remain there for life in the oyster’s case.  This implies that these logs had been floating for some time at least before they became waterlogged and were buried.  Based on observations at Spirit Lake, there could have been thousands of logs that were not buried and spent years or perhaps even decades floating in the currents and carrying creatures from one side of the world to another.  While Dr. Austin originally proposed the floating log map back in 1979, it’s only taken mainstream science forty years to catch up.  Not bad, considering the massive handicap Darwinism represents to their thinking.

While floating log mats do not represent an ultimate proof of the Flood, nor are they even completely demonstrated beyond an intriguing hypothesis, they do represent a plausible solution to the issue of dispersed biodiversity. Further, the fact that the secular scientists are slowly coming around to this point of view as well is quite intriguing.  However, it also serves to illustrate just how far behind the times’ mainstream science is and how much of a hinderance Darwinism is to proper scientific inquiry.  It’s almost as if when you reject the Bible as the ultimate authority, you struggle to discern the truth in every area. But no, I’m sure that can’t be it. After all, creationists can’t do science and scientists are the authority right? (Note, last two sentences should be read with heavy sarcasm).