Don Stenberg lives in a quiet “holler” in the Ozarks and works remotely for a Georgia-based construction company as an information services manager. But in addition to his data and Excel spreadsheet work, he has a real passion for Christian apologetics and research.
As the newest member of the Missouri Baptist Apologetics Network, Stenberg’s main focus is the field of creation science — particular an emphasis on the Genesis flood.
While some Christians believe Noah’s flood was a local deluge, Stenberg believes the clearest way to understand the Genesis account and the scientific evidence is to see it as a global flood.
Basic questions
“If it was a local flood, why wouldn’t God just tell Noah to move somewhere else that wouldn’t flood, like He told Abraham to leave Mesopotamia and move to Canaan?” asks Stenberg. “If it was a local flood, then why are there enormous sedimentary rock layers filled with marine fossils covering all the continents?”
An element of the debate is the age of the earth, with some Bible scholars and scientists holding to a young-earth theory (6,000–10,000 years) and others believing the earth is billions of years old.
What does that have to do with the flood?
Well, one of the key scientific pieces of evidence for an old earth is that, using radioactive dating, some rocks appear to be millions or billions of years old, if the radioactive decay rates have always been constant. For instance, if you had a pound of uranium, it would take about 4.5 billion years at current rates for half to turn into lead. However, some creation scientists argue that radioactive decay occurred extremely quickly during the time of the flood, supporting a young-earth model to which Stenberg subscribes.
But there’s a problem: If that much radioactive decay occurred in that short period of time, it would generate a lot of heat.
So, what happened to the heat?
Hypothesis
Stenberg’s hypothesis is that when God first created the Earth before the flood, the core and mantle of the earth were cool — roughly room temperature. If so, then the heat produced by the accelerated radioactive decay during the flood would have raised the temperature of the earth’s interior to the hot temperatures we infer today. This interior heating would have cracked Earth’s crust and brought about the epic rains that fell during the Flood. Furthermore, the mantle would have churned like boiling pasta in a bowl, pushing the continents back and forth across the surface of the earth quickly – a catastrophic episode of plate tectonics.
In 2012, Stenberg published a research paper in the Journal of Creation, published by Creation Ministries International, arguing for this view and showing that the amount of heat energy produced by this rapid radioactive decay is about the same as the amount of energy needed to heat up the interior of the earth.
“So, when the Lord ordained the flood, the radioactive decay activity increased and thus heated the inside of the earth, opening the fountains of the deep and resulting in the flood,” Stenberg said.
Last summer, Stenberg also presented a paper at the International Conference of Creationism, arguing that the same internal heating that occurred on Earth during the flood also happened at the same time on all the planets and moons in the solar system.
The enormous volcanoes, cracks, and even the craters on the moon and Mars could be scars of this enormous pulse of heat. Stenberg says his theory is the only published solution to this heat problem of accelerated radioactive decay.
Ongoing discussion
Stenberg has spoken about this theory and about creation science in general at Selmore Baptist Church in Ozark. He and his family now are in the process of becoming members at First Baptist Church Nixa.
While working full time and raising eight children with his wife, Stenberg also tries to find time to write. He has penned an apologetics novel called Overseer. In this story, an atheist Silicon Valley computer programmer named Ben writes an artificial intelligence (AI) program to make the world a better place, and then his girlfriend Ruth becomes a believer. Ruth’s salvation prompts Ben to ask the AI program how an intelligent person like her could believe in God. The AI, known as “Overseer,” answers his objections. Overseer is available from Amazon.
Stenberg offers his teaching on his research to Missouri Baptist churches and entities. He would like to present what the Bible and apologetics research say about creation and the flood. He believes Scripture and science agree on answers to key questions related to these two biblical events, and Christians should have full confidence in the Word of God. There are answers to their questions about the Bible and science.
Churches and other organizations may contact Stenberg through the Missouri Baptist Apologetics Network’s website: mobaptist.org/apologetics.
EDITOR’S NOTE — This story was written by Richard Nations and originally published by the Pathway.
