Welcome to Science, Scripture, and Salvation, a radio ministry of the Institute for Creation Research. In this program, we want to encourage you in your Christian faith by showing how scientific evidence supports the Bible, particularly the Genesis account. The book of Genesis lays the foundation for all matters addressed in the rest of the Bible. The nature of God, His sovereignty in creation, man's purpose, sin, marriage, family, and why we need a Savior are all introduced and explained in Genesis. When we see that the first and most foundational book of the Bible can be trusted in all matters, including science, it builds confidence in the rest of the inspired word all the way to Revelation.
I'm Frank Sherwin, zoologist and research associate with the Institute for Creation Research. Join me for today's show of Science, Scripture, and Salvation. We've been talking about the Mount St. Helens explosion, and certainly there's much creation science when it applies to the recovery of Mount St. Helens.
Now, the Institute for Creation Research studies the Mount St. Helens eruption for three reasons. From it we have learned a great deal about the origin of rocks and geologic features. And Mount St. Helens can give a glimpse into Earth's geologic power as we expand our thinking into the wide scale of the flood.
And number three, the Mount St. Helens catastrophe becomes a scale model for the great flood of Noah's Day. If you remember, there are four stages of the Mount St. Helens eruption. First, there was an earthquake at 5.1 on the Richter scale for 15 seconds.
followed by the largest landslide in recorded history. There was also a massive lateral explosion, a northward facing blast going six miles to Spirit Lake. And finally, pyroclastic flows, several hundred miles per hour, in speed. The eruption flattened two hundred and thirty square miles of forest in just minutes. The force of water flashing to steam blew the top thirteen hundred feet off the north side of the volcano, and within ten minutes the eruption column reached an altitude of twelve miles, according to commercial airline pilots in the area.
But after the eruptions, and there were others after 1980, for example, a major eruption in 1982.
Well, what happened? Did the devastated area simply remain static and sterile? Or were there ecological recoveries? And if there was, How long did it take? In Genesis chapter eight and verse eleven we read, And the dove came in to him in the evening, and, lo, in her mouth was an olive leaf plucked off.
So Noah knew that the waters were abated from off the earth. We know the olive tree is quite hardy and can grow and thrive on almost rocky, barren slopes. The fresh olive leaf plucked by the dove proved that the land was beginning to produce a a floral cover that would soon be ready to support human and animal residence. While here at ICR we maintain every field of science that we turn to supports the creation model. One fascinating field of biology is called restoration ecology.
After the violent eruption of Mount Saint Helens, the features surrounding the mountain looked eerily like a lunar landscape, a thermonuclear blast zone. Nothing had survived. Most evolutionary biologists predicted it would take many, many years for the land to repair itself through the laborious reestablishment of both animals and plants. Amazingly, within just a decade we found a bountiful supply of plants and animals where there was just hot, cracked mud and rock before. There are insects everywhere, trees and wild flowers on the pumice plain, fish in the lake, birds nesting, a huge elk herd, and innumerable gophers that are churning the soil.
Now for the Christian, this question of ecological and environmental recovery is important if we believe the surface of the entire earth was devastated by a world wide flood just forty seven hundred years ago. The question is this Could Earth recover from the flood in just months to years?
Well, scientific observation of recovery from devastating natural phenomena says yes, absolutely. But creation critics have long maintained that the earth couldn't possibly have recovered from a worldwide flood in such a short time. Many thousands of years would be needed to repopulate and foliate such a devastated environment, they say.
However, Mount Saint Helens has proven that claim to be false. This rapid recovery of Mount St. Helens area was quite unexpected. The recovery of this area was, quote, a wonderful living laboratory, end quote, to investigate how ecosystems and species responded to and recover from major disturbances, said a research ecologist with the Pacific Northwest Research Station in Amboy, Washington. This natural experiment gave scientists plenty of surprises and has revealed some important factors that influence how an ecosystem recovers from such widespread devastation, which they have used to study other areas impacted by volcanic eruptions, according to a live science story in the Mount St.
Helens anniversary in the year 2010. Two years later, Carrie Madron of American Forest Publication said, and I quote, At Mount St. Helens, even as ash and tephora, that is, fragments of volcanic rock and lava, blanketed the landscape, the volcano's widespread aftermath didn't quite kill everything. Isolated individuals and oases of plants, small animals, and fungi survived, becoming building blocks for regrowth. Late snow banks and frozen lakes protected some buried roots, bulbs, saplings, and shrubs.
And come spring, the whole communities of plants and animals emerged.
Well, Madrin continues. Two years after the eruption, she said, Congress created the 110,000-acre Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument, managed by the Forest Service. Here, ecological recovery has been allowed to take place at a natural pace. In contrast, land around Mount St.
Helens, owned by a private timber company, was salvaged, logged, and acres were replanted with Douglas and Noble Fir for commercial forestry. Let's take a short break. I'll continue on this topic when we come back. Dinosaurs are fascinating creatures. Seeing their fossils inspires a sense of awe and wonder that sparks the imagination.
We're learning more about them all the time, but many questions still remain: Are dinosaurs really millions of years old? Did they live at the same time as humans? How do they fit with the Bible? And why are they extinct today? The Institute for Creation Research addresses these questions and more in their full color and easy-to-read book, Guide to Dinosaurs.
Guide to Dinosaurs delves into the history of dinosaurs, fossil discoveries, dinosaur kinds, and what the Bible has to say about these mysterious creatures. It serves as a helpful resource for parents and kids alike. Order your copy of Guide to Dinosaurs from the Institute for Creation Research by calling 800-628-7640 or visiting icr.org. That's 800-628-7640 or visiting icr.org. Welcome back to Science, Scripture, and Salvation, a radio ministry of the Institute for Creation Research.
We were talking about the recovery of Mount St. Helens and quoting an author, Carrie Madrin, of American Forests. She quotes from ecologist Charlie Chrysofully at the U.S. Forest Service's Pacific Northwest Research Station, and I quote. Adjacent to the monument, the lands in the blast area were tinkered with and that became a natural experiment created by the eruption and the management decisions, he explains.
In the reforested areas, conifers now dominate the canopy, making the understory dark, with little biodiversity. But within the monument, the eruption was like a reset button for the surrounding landscape. The first signs of life to emerge were native grasses, plants, and shrubs, along with birds, small mammals, and insects. Populations were spared that served as sources for a repopulation in adjacent area, says ecologist Chrysofoli. As the landscape slowly regenerates, where trees once dominated diverse grasses, herbs and shrubs that aren't found in other stages of ecological development are flourishing, and ecological progress is clear.
All that from Kerry Madran in the year twenty twelve. MSNBC on the anniversary of the Mount St. Helens eruption in 2010 said, and I quote: Biologists were absolutely shocked to find that most of the area's amphibian species had survived the blast. The eruption created an array of 150 ponds that actually encouraged the amphibians to widen their territory. End quote.
Well, look at the island of Surtse. It's an island volcanically formed in November of 1963 off the coast of Iceland. Science Illustrated had highlighted this unique island in its May-June 2008 issue, and I quote Surtsey always provides surprises, remarked one of the life scientists who studied it. We discover about twenty new species each year, end quote. Sirtsee's rapid growing ecosystem is a gold mine for researchers who maintain that the Genesis flood occurred about forty seven hundred years ago.
The insect population on Sirtsee, for example, is burgeoning, and there are five gull species plus seven other bird species. mosses, lichens, and an evergreen shrub thrive on the island. Together about sixty plant species have become established there in less than a half century. Science Illustrated stated that certain geological processes are occurring faster than believed possible. For example, loose volcanic ash has become the hard and glassy mineral called tuff.
Geologists have thought this process alone took thousands of years, and yet it's happened on Surtse in just a matter of decades. The website Physorg stated on the eve of the Mount St. Helens eruption in twenty fifteen, and I quote by two thousand and four vascular plants numbered sixty, together with seventy five bryophytes, seventy one lichens, and twenty four fungi. Eighty nine species of birds have been recorded on Surtsey. fifty seven of which breed elsewhere in Iceland.
The one hundred and forty one hectare island is also home to three hundred and thirty five species of invertebrates. The data offered by Sirte over the past four decades provides new insights on to how barren land sprouts life, the article states. Like Mount St. Helens' recovery, research on Surtzi is providing valuable information regarding questions of land reclamation after the Genesis flood. It is research such as this that continues to add to the growing body of evidence for a young earth and a recent global cataclysm.
As creationists we can see restoration of the post flood world would not have to take enormous amounts of time, that skeptics maintain. Plants would have survived on seeds, spores, and sprigs insect larvae would have survived on floating debris, Land animals would have migrated from the Ark to fill the unfilled ecological niches. We can trust the Genesis record from the very first verse. Thank you for joining us on Science, Scripture, and Salvation, a radio ministry of the Institute for Creation Research. That's all the time we have for our program today, but we would love to connect with you through our website at icr.org.
For over 45 years, ICR has equipped believers with evidence of the Bible's accuracy and authority by showing how science supports the Genesis creation account. Our scientists research the evidence for creation and communicate their findings through books, articles, DVD series, and conferences. Please visit our website at icr.org for more information about the latest scientific discoveries, to subscribe to our free magazine and devotional, and to locate our next creation conference at a venue near you. All of this and more at icr.org. If you've enjoyed this podcast, subscribe to Science, Scripture, and Salvation on iTunes.
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