Was there an Ice Age?

Questions that led me to question the statement

“The Ice Age followed the Flood”

By Carla Estell ©2023

As a high school student in 1980, I was introduced to the book Battle for the Mind by Dr. Tim LaHaye. It was though the chapter on creation science that I learned of the Institute for Creation Research, ICR.  Thus began my lifetime study.  Unbeknown to me, my future husband, Brian, was beginning a lifetime study into apologetics which led him to attend David Jeremiah’s school, Christian Heritage College, which happened to be across the street from ICR. So while I was reading the works of the Bible believing, creation studying scientist, Brian was actually meeting them.  A few years later we met while attending Liberty University. We married in 1987 and began our creation ministry “The Stones True Story” in 1997. (see here for more details https://stonestruestory.org/?page_id=4103 )

At first I viewed the Ice Age as a secular way of explaining earth’s topography and mammal fossils without having to acknowledge the global flood. But after living in New England for a year and exploring some glacier carved canyons and boulder fields, then reading Mike Oard’s books and articles, my opinion began to change.  For the next 20 years I not only agreed, but taught “How the Flood caused the Ice Age”.  But then in 2010 we went full time on the road with our creation ministry. While traveling cross country in a van and camper, visiting fossil sites, national parks, Mt St Helens and just staring out the window at the changing topography; I began to have some questions.

 Questions Concerning mammals:

  • Where are the fossils of the mammals that died during the Flood?
  • Why do creationists reject the secular ideas for dinosaur death and fossilization while embracing similar ideas for mammal death and fossilization?
  • Why would dinosaur fossilization require the Flood, but not mega mammal fossilization?
  • Why are there only African and Asian elephants today, when there are a variety of elephant fossils found all over the world? How did the Ice Age cause a bottleneck of the elephant kind?
  • How did all the mammals manage to become so widely dispersed from the ark?
  • How did they cross mountains? What did they eat during the dark, cold winter? Hannibal attempted to bring 37 war elephants across the Alps, but only one survived.
  • How did the Ice Age cause continental, yet not worldwide, extinction? At least a few of the camels, horses and elephants in North America should have survived and repopulated North America after the Ice Age.
  • Could the Flood offer a better explanation for the fossilization and present day distribution of mammals? (see https://stonestruestory.org/?page_id=4014 and  https://stonestruestory.org/?page_id=4018 )

Questions Concerning geology:

  • Why are rounded boulders so prevalent in New England, New York, Michigan, Illinois…? Tumbling in a mud-flow would round a rock, but wouldn’t glaciers bring broken, angler rocks?
  • When did the coral grow and limestone form?
  • How could fossilized coral stay intact when the glacier bulldozed through – why were they not pulverized?
  • How could there be vegetation within layers of glacial till?
  • If debris avalanches can produce the same topography, why assume it was glaciers?
  • If Monterey Canyon was carved under water with its ever changing “sand glacier” features, why couldn’t the very comparable Grand Canyon have been carved underwater during the uplift?
  • Could the Flood offer a better explanation for earth’s topography? (https://stonestruestory.org/?page_id=4224 )

Questions Concerning Scripture:

  • Yes the Book of Job contains several references to snow, ice and hail, but does that support an Ice Age or could it just be winter?  Psalms 147:16-18, 148:8, Proverbs 31:21, 26:1, I Chronicles 11:22, Isaiah 55:10 and Jeremiah 18:14 all mention snow too.
  • God Promised Noah that there would be cyclic seasons.  If winter was to be a new experience, then wouldn’t a wise, loving God let him know spring would follow winter?
  • How does God’s promise of summer and spring fit with a 300-500 year Ice Age?
  • Would a loving God, who sees each sparrow fall, allow the death and destruction on the scale of the Ice Age after there had already been so much death and destruction during the Flood?
  • God said He would not curse the ground again for man’s sake. Although the Flood caused many consequences:
    • Broken foundational plates = earth quakes, volcanoes
    • Different water cycle = storms, floods, mudslides, droughts
    • Temperature extremes =  hurricanes, tornadoes, blizzards
  • Could an Ice Age with such vast animal death and destruction really be classified as a consequence of the Flood? Doesn’t it seem more like a curse?

Exploring Wisconsin and visiting several Ice Age museums, brought to mind the clincher question: Has secular science really proved there was an Ice Age? Or do they just need vast glaciers:

  • To lower the oceans and form land bridges
  • To melt and cause vast erosion with mega flooding
  • To explain the extinction of the mega mammals
  • To support the idea of climate change

Through the researching of those and many other questions, I’ve come full circle back to my original conclusion. The Ice Age seems to be secular science’s attempt to explain mega mammal fossils and geology while denying the power of God, God’s control over nature and the Global Flood. Today it is also used to promote the emotionally, economically, and politically dangerous ideology of climate change.