The Earth's Crust: A Clue to the Divine Creator

The origin of the Earth's continental crust has puzzled atheist scientists for generations. The mystery surrounding the crust is so profound that it has been dubbed the 'Holy Grail of Geology'.

Here's the essence of the enigma: The Earth's outer shell is made up of many cold, brittle tectonic plates, in stark contrast to the hot mantle layer below, which we primarily encounter during volcanic eruptions. No other planet in the universe has been found to have a tectonic plate system like ours.

Adding to the complexity, Earth's tectonic plates consist of two distinctive types of crust: continental and oceanic. Scientists have a fairly good hypothesis about the creation of oceanic crust: Underwater ridges (yes, there are entire mountain ranges buried deep within the ocean) exhibit thin basalt-rich oceanic crust that appears to 'spill out' from the seafloor. This basalt suggests that the oceanic crust originates from the hot mantle, though the magma undergoes slight refinement and change during the oceanic crust formation process.

The continental crust, on the other hand, found under the continents and not the sea, remains shrouded in mystery. It is vastly different from the oceanic crust and contains silicate minerals (a silicate is a salt of silicic acid). As a result, the continental crust is much denser and thicker than oceanic crust.

The prevailing theory among scientists is that continents formed before the oceans and are thus older. This theory attempts to explain why the continental crust is thicker, but it cannot fully elucidate how the continental crust originated.

Two recent studies published on the subject, one in 'New Scientist' and the other in 'Nature Geoscience', proposed explanations for the formation of specific land and rock belts 150 to 250 miles in length - but nothing beyond that. More notably, the study in 'Nature Geoscience' concluded that the locations where an explanation for the continental crust was found contained relatively 'new' crust, different in composition from typical continental crust. This brings us back to the original question: How did the continental crust beneath the Earth's six continents form? And why did these continents emerge so rapidly?

Though scientists lack an answer, the Book of Genesis does not:

"And God said, 'Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear': and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called He Seas: and God saw that it was good."