RSR's List of Answers to Hydroplate Theory Objections

* RSR Answers Walt Brown Critics & HPT Problems: On today's Real Science Radio program, the first of eleven episodes in our ongoing HPT Answers series, Bob Enyart responds to Baumgardner, Patton, and Faulkner, three creationist critics of Dr. Walt Brown regarding alleged problems with his Hydroplate Theory. Just as you can ask three rabbis a question and get four answers, so too, other than the fundamentals, biblical creationists differ on particulars. Partly because of the popularity of Walt's website, his life's work, In the Beginning, is one of the best-selling creationist books, making Dr. Brown's theory widely supported including by many creation scientists and among rank-and-file creationists, by pastors and homeschool publishers, and among Bible students.

* If Walt Is Wrong -- If Walt Is Right: If Dr. Brown's model of the global flood is incorrect, then he and his supporters have held back the progress of creation science. Conversely of course, if Walt Brown's Hydroplate Theory is correct, then those who have opposed his efforts have slowed our progress. If Dr. Brown's theory is correct, then creationists have answers for:
- Why is the crust of the Earth cracked by the continuous 40,000-mile long mid-oceanic ridge? (rupture phase)
- Where did the water come from? (under the crust, divided from the surface water on Day 2 by the raqia/firmament)
- Why did the Moon get so beat up and especially its near side? (most impacts were during retrograde motion)
- Why did the ancient world use a 360-day calendar? (because that's how God created the Earth; 360dayyear.com)
- How did the Earth's rotation speed up by 5.25 days per year? (melting rock became the outer core, shrinking Earth)
- How did the Moon's orbit change from 30 to 29.5 days? (1.2% of debris ejected by the fountains of the great deep) 
- How did harmful radioactivity end up on the Earth? (earthquake lights in the crust produced uranium, thorium, etc.)  
- How did meteorites, comets, and asteroids originate? (the fountains of the deep ejected these deadly mavericks)
- To be continued...

Of course also, if the HPT is correct, then various favorite theories of other creation groups, including ICR's catastrophic plate tectonics, and the canopy theory, and AiG's frozen mammoths hypothesis and their ice age model, are incorrect.

* RSR's List of Answers to Hydroplate Theory Objections: This ongoing Answers series is part of our global flood metaseries available at rsr.org/hpt#metaseries. Many of these objections come from our own List of HPT Objections, just below.
1. List of Answers to Hydroplate Objections Pt 1 (this show, below, addresses Baumgardner and voltage from granite; astronomer Faulkner and the 360-day year; geologist Patton and the origin of limestone)
2. List of Answers to Hydroplate Objections Pt 2 (QuakeFinder's Tom Bleier on electromagnetic quake forecasting toward answering geophysicist John Baumgardner)
3. Josh Spencer Answers HPT Objections (email exchange with a CPT proponent on Pangea, CPT miracles, etc.)
4. Spencer Answers Radioactivity Objections (nuclear engineering Ph.D. on Walt's origin of Earth's radioactivity)
5. Kevin Lea Answers the "Geometry Problem" objection from Baumgardner
6. Kevin Lea Answers the "Pacific Crust" Objection from Dr. Baumgarnder
7. Bryan Nickel Answers the "Linear Crack" Objection from Michael Oard
8. Bob Enyart Answers the false accusation from Don DeYoung that Brown sued ICR
9. Jane Albright Addresses Creation Groups' Opposition including a criticism from Jonathan Sarfati
10. Nickel Answers Oard's' Missing Shoreline and Sediments of Grand Lake
11. Nickel Answers the HPT Heat Problem Objections from Kuban, Reed, Faulkner, & Baumgardner
12. Bob Enyart Answers Faulkner's 360-Day Year Problem
13. Fred Williams Answers the Genesis 1:8 Firmament Objection to the HPT about the raqia
14. The HPT has not been peer-reviewed. Lord-willing, RSR will broadcast this program in December 2021. Until then, feel free to see a summary of the answer to this objection at rsr.org/TNOs#hpt-peer-review.

* Shared RSR Google Spreadsheets on Flood Models: Our List of Answers to HPT Objections includes two spreadsheets. Click these links or screenshots to see them at Google Docs and to see them being discussed click the video times below.
- Bible Material Uniquely Supporting Various Flood Models aka Flood Models & Bible Verses
- Physical Features Requiring Explanation and Flood Models aka Flood Models & Features to Explain.

Bob discusses these two charts in RSR's flood video, at 2:06:00 for the Bible Verses chart and 3:06:45 for the Physical Features chart.

Published HPT Criticisms
- Hydroplate theory: the strongest theory? 2020
- Oard: Analysis of Walt Brown’s Flood Model 2013
- Faulkner: Was the Year Once 360 Days Long? 2012 [Enyart CRSQ reply 2013]
  An Analysis of Astronomical Aspects of the Hydroplate Theory 2013 (Check: Is this the 2013 paper Kuban mentioned re: heat problem?)
  Analysis of Walt Brown’s Model of a Pre-Flood 360-Day Year 2014
 Can One Astronomically Date the Flood within the Hydroplate Model? 2015
- Sarfati: Flood Models and Biblical Realism 2010
- Baumgardner: Flood Science Review Author-to-Author Critique 2011 [RSR reply 2014]
- McIntosh & Taylor, & Edmonson: Flood Models: The Need for an Integrated Approach 2000
- Other? Please email Bob@rsr.org.

YouTube, Forum, Etc. Criticisms
- Dr. Gregg Davidson: Evidence of a Young Earth?
- Joyce Arthur: A Few Silly Flaws In Walter Brown's Hydroplate Theory 1995 (Wikipedia external link)
- Southtown: Hydroplate Theory at ScienceForums.com 2007
- Gerard Jellison: Amazon ITB Review & 150p cmts/debate thread 2009, removed 2015; last 50pp copied by HPT supporter David B. Willis
- Glen Kuban: Brown’s Flood Model is All Wet 2015
- Other: Please email Bob@rsr.org.

* On this First Answers to Hydroplate Objections Program: Joining many on both sides, RSR asks everyone to extend grace to everyone else, as we conduct our own investigation into the objections to the HT, which theory we ourselves hold. For our initial program, we will consider three objections from well-known creationists:
- John Baumgardner, of Los Alamos Nat'l Lab and ICR, on voltages generated in granite.
- Danny Faulkner, former Univ. of South Carolina astronomer, now with AiG, on the 360-day year.
- Don Patton, excavated 500-foot long dinosaur track, exposed fraudulent Ark find, on Walt's limestone claims.

* Don Patton Objection on Limestone: While perhaps not in print, Don Patton, creationist geologist and archaeologist and real-life Indiana Jones has long repeated to people that Dr. Brown claims that, as a result of the fountains of the great deep breaking open during the global flood, the Earth's limestone deposits precipitated out of the atmosphere. In preparation for today's program, to address this unlikely claim, one of our RSR researchers obtained printed copies of all previous seven editions of Walt's In the Beginning along with the current 8th edition. Also, we searched the updated version of Dr. Brown's online Origin of Limestone chapter. After confirming that none of these sources ever claimed that limestone deposits formed by raining down out of the atmosphere, RSR spoke directly with Dr. Brown, who confirmed that he has never made such a claim. To Dr. Patton's credit, when we informed him of this, he indicated that it was important for him to hear this information, and he gladly accepted the correction.

* And Here's the HPT's Actual Explanation for Limestone: In a great 2019 video by Bryan Nickle... 

* Baumgardner Objection on Voltages Generated in Granite: In a 2011 author-to-author critique in the 1600-page Flood Science Review, Dr. John Baumgardner argued (p. 525) that Walt Brown must be wrong about the ability of granite to produce giga-voltages because, "there is no observational evidence that the quartz crystals in granite have ever been aligned as Brown postulates." And that, "This ought to represent a fatal problem for Brown’s claim that such extreme voltages will essentially arise automatically." After a lengthy phone conversation during which Bob Enyart presented the following evidence, Dr. Baumgardner continued to maintain his objection.

* Baumgardner's Objection Answered: In addition to Walt Brown citing explicit reports of quartz alignment in the scientific literature (#6 & #7 below), the smoking gun is the electrical current produced by earthquakes.

1. A Million Amps. 2013 report from National Geographic estimates the strength of the electrical currents produced by earthquakes: "These currents are huge... They're on the order of 100,000 amperes for a magnitude 6 earthquake and a million amperes for a magnitude 7. It's almost like lightning, underground." 2016 Update: Again, video of earthquake lights surface, this time after New Zealand's magnitude 7.8 quake. 2014 Update: A paper in the journal Seismological Research Letters is reported on in USA Today's Scientists find records of rare 'earthquake lights'.
2. USGS, Etc. Since 2010, in the Earthquakes and Electricity section of his online Origin of Earth's Radioactivity chapter, Walt has referenced extensive observational evidence of earthquakes generating electrical currents including from the New Madrid Earthquake, the most powerful to hit the eastern U.S. in recorded history, as reported by the USGS.
3. Ionosphere Quake Prediction. A 2013 presentation (with RSR highlights) on ionosphere earthquake prediction at the European Geophysical Union conference in Brussels includes among its evidence the actual prediction of a Dec. 6, 2012 earthquake in Greece. Dr. Brown cites this continuing research as additional evidence for extensive quartz alignment (remaining even millennia after the flood). Back in 2008, the BBC reported apparent pre-quake disturbances in the ionosphere over epicenters that scientists considered for a possible earthquake warning system. Since 2011 the U.K. and Russia are jointly sponsoring the TwinSat Project run out of London College University's Mullard Space Science Center, hoping to build the first effective earthquake warning system based on a phenomenon that they admit that they don't understand (but which the HT explains), that earthquake activity is generating crustal voltages of sufficient magnitude to disrupt the ionosphere.

Poling: Dr. Brown's Hydroplate Theory describes the twice-daily crustal tension and compression from lunar gravity that produced small electrical fields around quartz crystals, which over the pre-flood centuries tended to align the crystals.

Ionosphere Criticism: Early on, some discounted such earthquake prediction because other ionosphere disturbances were concurrently seen thousands of miles from epicenters. However as NBC News reported in 2012, major earthquakes do in fact set off earthquakes thousands of miles away. RSR has not yet seen but awaits an assessment regarding whether or not these distant disturbances lie above these distant quakes.

4. Electromagnetic Quake Prediction: A well-funded private humanitarian earthquake prediction project called QuakeFinder monitors ultra-low frequency electromagnetic emissions in quake-prone areas of California, Peru, Taiwan and Greece and its retrospective analysis so far has revealed apparent earthquake signatures for three significant quakes. QuakeFinder has matured to where they are prepared to alert local authorities if quakes are predicted. (See RSR's interview with QuakeFinder.)
5. Ant Colony Quake Prediction. Nobody wants to be buried alive, not even ants! Three years of unrelated research, videotaping ant colonies in Germany, led to the conclusion that ants can help predict earthquakes. A day before an earthquake, ants evacuate their colony, and they don't reoccupy it until a day after the quake ends. Scientists currently are unsure of how the ants predict earthquakes, but one of their ideas fits like a glove with Dr. Walt Brown's focus on the electrical current generated by continental crust under stress. Researchers suggest that perhaps the ants living near an epicenter sense a pre-quake fluctuation in the earth's electromagnetic field. (Related: Stephen Meyer's bestseller, Darwin's Doubt, on p. 280, describes the ion pumps in cell membranes which generate electromagnetic fields which fields may be of significance in reproduction, which serves as a reminder that organisms can respond to electromagnetic influences.)
6. Tectonophysics reports Alignment: Dr. Brown also quotes a science journal's report: "All quartz-rich rocks (quartzites, granites, gneisses, mylonites) did show [statistically significant] piezoelectric effects when stressed." J. R. Bishop, "Piezoelectric Effects in Quartz-Rich Rocks," Tectonophysics, Vol. 77, 20 August 1981, p. 297. That paper also says, "Piezoelectricity, a polarization of charge produced by an applied stress, occurs in many minerals. It is particularly strong in quartz. Aggregates of piezoelectric grains are themselves piezoelectric if the grains are suitably aligned. ... all quartz-rich rocks (quartzites, granites, gneisses, mylonites) did show piezoelectric effects when stressed" with some of the findings showing "true piezoelectric effects".
7. Geoscience Series reports Alignment: Dr. Brown also quotes from a title in a respected science publisher's Monographs in Geoscience series. "... frequently in quartzite, the quartz occurs as grains with isometric form but shows a preferential orientation in terms of internal crystal structure, that is, in terms of the axes of crystallization." E. I. Parkhomenko, Electrical Properties of Rocks (New York: Plenum Press, 1967), p. 6. [Searchable retitled 1971 edition.]

* 2015 Pop Culture Reference: The plot of the summer disaster film San Andreas highlights electromagnetic field earthquake prediction. (This film, as with most, is recommended for viewing only on VidAngel or ClearPlay, both services silence the vulgarity and remove sexual scenes. See more at rsr.org/filtering.)

* 2014 Update: Check out additional relevant earthquake news at Discovery, in Nature, National Geographic, etc.

* Consequences and Possibilities: Dr. Baumgardner, with his impeccable credentials, extraordinary accomplishments, and love for the Lord, is rightly widely respected. This HT objection however, even though apparently unjustified, creates great difficulty. If he retracts this particular objection, even while continuing to oppose the HT, RSR will report that retraction on this webpage. The above evidence challenges Dr. Baumgardner's claim that, "In granite, however, the quartz crystals are oriented randomly [and this] ought to represent a fatal problem for Brown’s claim that such extreme voltages will essentially arise automatically." But after an initial starting condition that is consistent with Scripture (an erupting global subterranean water chamber), Hydroplate Theory supporters note that Dr. Brown lays out a sequence of events (including crustal electrical discharges) that are based on testable physical forces. Granite averages 27% quartz by volume so that massive electrical currents generated from quartz during the flood could have been The Origin of Earth's Radioactivity. This would explain:
1. Distribution. Why 90% of earth's radioactivity is in the *continental* crust.
2. Affinity. Why radioactivity tends to concentrate around granite.
3. Origin After Eden. How this lethal danger (crustal radioactivity) appeared on a world created as a paradise.

If theoretical physicist (emphasis on the theoretical) Lawrence Krauss were right, the stars, rather than Jesus, died so that we could live. But by chemical evolution, the Earth's radioactive elements like uranium and thorium should be evenly dispersed globally, at least through the crust and mantle, and certainly not concentrated around granite! The Hydroplate Theory refutes chemical evolution as it explains the distribution of Earth's radioactivity in the continental crust, based on the electric currents generated from crystals aligned in granite. So, while Dr. Baumgardner has presented other objections to the HT which deserve response, we here at Real Science Radio consider this particular criticism to be falsified.

* Danny Faulkner on the 360-Day Year: As recently interviewed on RSR, astronomer Danny Faulkner, in his paper, Was the Year Once 360 Days Long?, rejects that the Earth was created with a 360-day year. The Creation Research Society Quarterly then published Bob Enyart's rebuttal of Danny's paper, On the Caution about the 360-Day Year. Dr. Faulkner had written, "There is a belief among many recent creationists that the year once had 360 days and that the month was 30 days long" and that, "it is difficult to criticize the exact mechanism that might be employed (until someone actually suggests such a mechanism)." This is unfortunate because Walt Brown's flood model provides a mechanism for speeding up the Earth's rotation. Thus Walt is the only leading creationist who presents both a mechanism AND the historical and biblical evidence that the Earth's year was originally 360 days.

* Was the Year Once 360 Days Long? Last month, RSR interviewed Don Landis on the Genius of Ancient Man. Contradicting the Darwinian expectation of homo sapiens clawing their way out of eons of being mere brutes, worldwide evidence incontrovertibly demonstrates that ancient men were brilliant, especially regarding their astronomical calculations, which were intrinsically tied to their very societal existence. If ancient civilizations, separated by continents and centuries, used a 360-day calendar, then there was likely a powerful historical reason for them doing so, especially because such a calendar caused much turmoil. In his paper, Danny does not address whatever primary evidence may exist from ancient civilizations on whether they used 360-day calendars. Rather, Dr. Faulkner disputed a few secondary sources regarding when it was that a couple civilizations switched to a 365-day calendar. That matter, which Danny evaluated, goes to the psychology of cultures regarding the difficulty of changing a calendar and the related civil and religious inertia involved, but is only indirectly related to the question at hand. Right here on RSR a few weeks ago, Dr. Faulkner said that he looked forward to seeing the new RSR website, 360DayYear.com, to evaluate the primary evidence, which we are posting there, from history regarding whether or not ancient civilizations used a 360-day calendar. We hope to do a follow-up interview with Dr. Faulkner when we make more progress on this new website regarding the length of the created year website.

* Walt Brown's Mechanism for Changing the Calendar: The Hydroplate Theory claims that when the fountains of the great deep broke open, water and rock was ejected into space, which by gravitational attraction, become comets (dirty snowballs) and asteroids (flying rock piles). Further, as what became the floor of the Atlantic rose, the floor of the Pacific sunk, which process melted much of the inner Earth. That melting, like a figure skater pulling in her arms, reduced the size of the Earth by about 180 miles in radius, and thereby sped up the rotation by approximately five days per year.

* Post-show Update: Click here for the calculations showing how the debris from the Fountains of the Great Deep could impact the Moon changing its initial 30-day orbit to give us today's 29.5-day month. And the following appears at 360dayyear.com: 

It has been inconceivable to secularists, and even to most all creationists until recently, that in historical times the Earth's rotation could have sped up. However, Dr. Walt Brown's Hydroplate Theory presents just such a mechanism. The 46,000-mile globe-encircling crack known as the mid-oceanic ridge winds itself around the Earth like a seem on a baseball. That massive ridge is the scar remaining from the global flood's eruption of the fountains of the great deep. As the crust began to erode away, most severely in the Atlantic region, the mantle below rose precipitously, isostatically rebounding with the crust in the Pacific sinking into the Earth. Thus, much of the oceanic crust in the Atlantic is missing, and much of the crust in the Pacific is buried (see our video). As mass shifted through the Earth from the Pacific to the Atlantic, friction melted what became the molten outer core, seven moons worth of mass, doubling the density of that material. That tectonic activity is what destabilized the Earth. The deep melting is the ultimate cause of the unexpectedly deep earthquakes that confound many old-earth geologists (because after billions of years the deep earth would be far more stable than it actually is). That far more dense, melted material also shrunk the circumference of the Earth by about 180 miles. So by the law of the conservation of angular momentum, like a spinning figure skater pulling in her arms, the Earth's rotation sped up. This changed the year from a perfect 360, to our current difficult-to-calculate-with 365.2425 days. And the violent impacts that hit mostly on the moon's near side reduced its perfect 30-day orbit to today's 29.53-day lunar month. 

* Perhaps Dr. Faulkner Could Withdraw His Caution: Dr. Faulkner closed his paper saying, "Proponents of an original 360-day year ought to produce their models of how the change might have happened so that we can assess the energy input. Until such models are produced and examined, recent creationists are cautioned against advocating an original 360-day year." Because the leading creationist suggesting an original 360-day year has presented a mechanism for speeding up the rotation of the Earth, Dr. Faulkner could withdraw this particular caution. If he does so, we will report that here. Further, Dr. Faulkner's paper did not address extremely relevant scriptures. In Revelation, in that prophetic context the text explicitly uses a 360-day year. And more significantly, in Genesis 1 we read that "God made two great lights," the Sun and the Moon, for as He said, "Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens... and let them be for signs and seasons, and for days and years...." And it is the counting of days and the lunar cycle which should have been a "very good" way to track the seasons. For we read in a psalm of creation that God "appointed the moon for seasons" (Ps. 104:19). Yet as Danny admits in his paper, regarding the operation of a calendar, "It is important to note that there is not a single, uniquely satisfying way to do this..." Thus, with the ancient world's social conflict regarding the shifting of the seasons through the calendar, and with even the current calendar situation as described, this all implies a change from the original perfect created order. So, aside from a general caution that is generally appropriate regarding science and claims of the past, Dr. Faulkner did not establish the particular caution that he intended to, and perhaps therefore could withdraw it.

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The Global Flood and the Hydroplate Theory
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Real Science Radio co-host Bob Enyart presents the scientific evidence for Dr. Walt Brown’s model of the global flood, along with the relevant biblical material. Enyart also discusses Brown's opponents and contrasts both the vapor canopy and catastrophic plate tectonics with the hydroplate theory.

DVD Vol. 1
1. Walt Brown, Creation Leaders, and Scripture
2. Hydroplate Theory & Scientific Evidence

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3. Hydroplates vs. Plate Tectonics
Bonus: Origin of Earth's Radioactivity

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