Don Patten – 2046 AD

http://creationism.org/patten/ Donald Patten, now deceased, dating back to the 1960s offered an explanation of the Earth’s catastrophic past and the origin of the solar system in several books based on biblical and non-biblical accounts, Newtonian physics, and detailed analyses of data from the various NASA satellite missions. He was the first person I ever read about the idea of recurring novas in the Sun caused by a returning binary.

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Update for June, 2022: Patten’s works rely almost exclusively on Newtonian-Keplerian physics and almost zero awareness of the plasma physics development of electromagnetic effects. Most of his work is from the 1960s and 1970s, yet it is amazingly accurate and prescient. Go to the bottom of the page for yet another lengthy excerpt.

Update for April, 2022: From Patten’s Footnote to Chapter III of The Biblical Flood & the Ice Epoch on “Halley, Newton & Whiston” and 18th Century Catastrophism (chapter section can be found under the Update for August, 2021 below):

These two works of William Whiston are both available in magnified microfilm reprints [cf. A New Theory of the Earth (1696) and Astronomical Principles of Religion (1717), see below] reprinted xerographically, by the Pacific Meridian Publishing Co. of Seattle. A third work by Isaac Newton, published posthumously by his sister, is also available through microfilm reprints. It is entitled Observations upon The Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John (1733). Newton was very much a Calvinist and a Puritan. Being a scientist, he had entered into an agreement with the Royal Society to do no publishing on subjects religious during his lifetime. The Royal Society thereby hoped that theologians would not concern themselves with publishing on matters scientific. Nevertheless when Newton died, some 80% of his unpublished writings did not concern astronomy, mathematics or physics. They concerned his deep Christian faith. A very few of these have been published; many unpublished items are located at the Babson Institute.

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Update for November, 2021: Scroll to the bottom for another lengthy update.

Update for August, 2021: This lengthy update Halley, Newton and Whiston can be found at the bottom of the page.

Update for May, 2021: From Patten’s “The Recent Organization of The Solar System” – Preface

Astronomy is the study of the present day Solar System. Cosmology is the study of the Solar System past, and the evidence of changes and catastrophes. We are cosmologists. We approach cosmology from the perspective of the physical geography as we have data of the surfaces of the planets and their satellites.

Patten was a geographer and was an expert analyst of topographical features. In his later works, he was co-authored with Samuel Windsor, an engineer from Wichita, Kansas. Together, they presented detailed analysis of the potential causes of certain physical features which the numerous NASA photographs from the various space missions have provided. After Mr. Patten’s death, Windsor republished “Mars-Earth Wars” as “Mars-Earth Wars: the Destruction of Lucifer’s Planet” with Steven Quayle as a co-author, someone who has subscribed to various – and sometimes sensational – conspiracy theories in cosmology involving the fallen angels and giants of Genesis 6, world government, UFO’s, the rise of the antichrist, and other “end-time” prophetic interpretations.

Patten’s original works were confined to science, the history of scientific theories, and discussion of miraculous events found in the Bible with their propositionally offered scientific explanations. To find Patten’s authentic material, I emphasize that the creationism.org website is the only place where you will find it.

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Donald Patten was a traditional Baptist Christian who promoted the idea of Earth catastrophism as an explanation for the geologic record and the story of Noah’s Flood. He was not a six-day creationist but his material was so valuable in debunking uniformitarianism in science that it had to be included in the creationism.org website. In the early years, he presented the planet Mars as the offending celestial visitor – even suggesting that Mars was once one of Earth’s moons – which caused the various geologic catastrophes on Earth, but later he developed a theory of the solar system which included a visiting binary which he called “Little Brother” that has caused the Sun to nova with some indeterminate frequency. These recurring novae, he surmised, could explain the pin-ball chaos, planetary cratering, wayward asteroids and other celestial evidences of solar disasters.

Update September, 2020: Patten’s work on the “Recent Formation of the Solar System” provides some of the most useful information on the effects of a solar nova on the planets of the solar system. Like McCanney, he is Newtonian and uses standard Newtonian physics to calculate causes and effects of the various catastrophes Earth has encountered. He focuses, primarily, on Noah’s Flood and to a lesser extent the planetary effects encountered at the Exodus event. While Vogt’s analysis is limited primarily to the effects which novae have inflicted on the Earth, Patten has carefully analyzed data from the NASA mission to Mercury, Venus and Mars. The effects of nova events on the orbital patterns of the inner solar system have not been sufficiently evaluated. Both Vogt and Davidson have acknowledged them but it was Patten who openly discussed the causes to the Earth’s orbit which changed it from a 360-day Earth year to the current one of 365 days. That change made it impossible for the climate of Earth to support the kind of flora and fauna which existed prior to Noah’s Flood. The very real prospect exists that if a future nova pushes the Earth further out from its current orbit, it might become impossible to support life on this planet. The colonization of the planet Venus might become necessary. See discussion on McCanney above.

Update March, 2021: The reader is directed to Patten’s discussion of inter-planetary close encounters which seem to have contributed to Earth’s catastrophic past. One of the puzzles of the past is how it was that the ancients were able to see with the naked eye the tiny moons of Mars. They were not discovered in modern times until the invention of the telescope. The analysts from the Thunderbolts Project have wondered at the same in reference to the rings of Saturn. How were the ancients able to see such features on the planets without the aid of telescopes? Patten suggests that these features were known because planetary orbits brought the Earth much closer which allowed our ancestors actual, real-time observations.

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Update for August, 2021 : Excerpt from Patten’s first book. Notice it was solely written by him and published in 1966. Go to http://www.creationism.org/patten/ for this important material. Notice his reference to Whiston’s association with Newton and their contribution to 18th Century catastrophism.

THE BIBLICAL FLOOD

AND THE ICE EPOCH

CHAPTER III
Past Celestial Catastrophes

“The Biblical Flood and the Ice Epoch” was written by Donald W. Patten
©1966 – Pacific Meridian Publishing Co, Seattle, WA. USA. All Rights Reserved.

HALLEY, NEWTON AND WHISTON–Following the time of Kepler, Germany was ravaged by the Thirty Years War, and its population diminished markedly, as did its entire culture. England and France began to replace Germany as the intellectual center of the West–especially England, primarily it seems, because England offered more freedom for discussion, inquiry and publication. In the climate of England, where peace and liberty prevailed to a greater degree than on the continent, great strides in modern thought were achieved. Among the leaders of this age were three Englishmen–Edmund Halley, Isaac Newton and William Whiston–scientists and friends.
Even as Kepler went one step further than Tycho in rejecting the Ptolemaic system, so similarly Halley, Newton and Whiston went one step further than Kepler. They followed Kepler in the realization that orbits did not need to be circular, and indeed never were. Kepler showed that all orbits were ellipses. They proceeded to presume that orbits could be highly eccentric as well as mildly eccentric. They further proceeded to illustrate that in contemporary conditions, this was indeed the case, illustrated by the plotted path of comets. Further, they proceeded to form the opinion that in ancient times, larger astronomical bodies had also followed highly elliptical orbits. Thus, they rejected the second and implicit assumption in Ptolemaic astronomy, eternal regularity.
Each of these three men rejected both phases of Ptolemaic thought. Halley (1656-1742) was the first of the three to publish (on comets) and was the first to achieve renown. Newton (1642-1727), the eldest of the three, proceeded to publish his views of planetary motion in three additional laws. This was accomplished at the suggestion of Halley, and also with a most generous offer by Halley to be responsible for the financing. Thus the Principia Mathematica (1687) was published, Newton became internationally famous, and England took the lead in scientific development in the Western World. With this one work, which would have gone unpublished without Halley’s assistance, Newton became famous.
Halley had reviewed the astronomical records of both England and the continent. He was aware that celestial apparitions had periodically crossed the sky on historical occasions, following paths which happened to be remarkably similar to highly eccentric elliptical orbits. He began to realize that these phenomena not only possessed similar orbits, but were historically recorded in repeating cycles or periods. And when the historical cometary events of 1531 and 1607 recurred in 1682, he published his now famous prediction that this same comet would again return in 1758, and when it did, he asked posterity to remember that this prediction had been first made by an Englishman. Posterity named the comet in honor of Edmund Halley.
Halley’s association with Newton was very close. Similarly Newton’s association with William Whiston (1667-1752) was very close; Whiston was Newton’s laboratory assistant. In addition to being versed in astronomy, mathematics and physics, Whiston, a genius like Newton, was also well versed in classical literature, classical languages (Greek, Hebrew and Latin) and in ancient history. For example, Whiston translated The Antiquities of the Jews by Josephus into English in 6 volumes.
Whiston came to the opinion that a large astral body, travelling in an eccentric (highly elliptical) orbit, would be sufficient to cause a great flood through tidal mechanisms. He concluded that this was the mechanism of the Biblical Flood. He further concluded that recurring events of an astral nature, involving highly eccentric orbits, were the basis for explaining later astral phenomena, cosmic traditions, celestial mythology (the sky gods) of ancient times. This included such historical descriptions as the long day of Joshua, equated to the Phaethon myth of Egypt, the Phoenix myth, the Deimos and Phobos tradition among the Greeks, among many other traditions. He analyzed the renditions of Plutarch, Seneca, Suetonius, Virgil, Homer and many other ancient writers from the perspective that their celestial traditions were founded on historical astronomical principles. They possessed a core of truth.
In his first major work, A New Theory of the Earth (1696), Whiston set forth the mechanical and astrophysical theory, correlated to ancient flood dialogues, for understanding of the physical cause of the Deluge. He repeatedly attributed the physical cause to the provision of Divine Providence. This was followed by another work, Astronomical Principles of Religion (1717), which put greater emphasis on the scope of celestial themes in ancient mythology.1 His works were read with much interest, especially since he was so immediately in the shadow of his senior friends, Halley and Newton.
Halley found Whiston’s thesis entirely possible and historically likely. Newton, a man of stout Puritan convictions, having originally entered Cambridge to enter the ministry, also lent his enthusiasm and prestige to Whiston’s remarkable effort. A few years later, in 1701, when Newton resigned his chair at Cambridge, he recommended Whiston as his successor.
The recounting of the relationship between Halley, Newton and Whiston is given in order to portray how they all rejected both the explicit and the implicit assumptions of Ptolemaic thought on geocentricity and eternal regularity. This occurred in semi-Puritan England, one generation after the era of Cromwell, Milton, Bunyan, Fox and other significant spiritual leaders. Since there was a maximum of interest in Biblical history and Biblical doctrine in this era, and with catastrophism so prominent in Biblical themes, it is apparent that here, through particularly Newton and Whiston, the basis for 18th century catastrophism was reinforced.

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Update for November, 2021: Noah’s Ark was shaped and built like a submarine. Donald Patten and Samuel Windsor have offered the best analysis of the Ark’s seaworthiness. I have provided an extensive excerpt from Windsor’s material and encourage you to go to the website provided below the title to read it in full and to view diagrams.
The Ark was made of reeds, not trees. It was glued together by “pitch” which we believe was a geopolymer, not sap or a tar. More discussion will be provided in future issues of Survival Praxis, but you need this kind of information provided below first. It is an analysis of the ship-like structure on Mt. Ararat in Turkey that has produced some controversy in recent decades.
JWS

NOAH’S VESSEL: 24,000 DEADWEIGHT TONS

VESSEL ARRANGEMENTS

The boat shaped formation I examined and Fasold measured appears to have had sea keeping features appropriate to both its mission and to materials in use for vessels at the time in which it was built. These are not the result of a “natural formation”. There is an old “saw” in the field of statistical probability suggesting that if components of a modern battleship were all thrown into a large, erratically sloshing tub of sea water, there is a minute probability that they would assemble themselves into a working weapon of war. That probability, however, is “very low” and is never seriously considered when a battleship is cited! Similarly, consider the probability that nature might provide a “dirt, iron and rock” formation with all of the following properties:

It is a ship shaped form, in three dimensions, with circular sedimented “log ends” at points of high stress. It is particularly difficult for sediment layers to lie in full, 360 degree circles, like liners in a pipe when they do not result from the decay and rot of the circular layers of a wooden tree trunk.. It is generally true that a rock which looks in cross section like a tree trunk WAS a tree trunk before rot and sediment transformed it to rock.
It has a moon pool of just the right size and shape to control hogging and sagging by reducing forward buoyancy without sacrificing stability;
The moon pool provides overboard drainage without compromising deck flooding and provides “forced venting”;
The moon pool is wide enough to provide protected anchor handling;
The moon pool is located far enough back to permit dragging a sea anchor and flailing anchor with the bow held forward. Yet it is far enough forward to allow the vessel to turn without putting the vessel in irons.
The moon pool is positioned to retard forward motion caused by wind, without reversing the orientation of the vessel;
There are incrementally located iron nodules in about 5400 places showing lineal patterns corresponding both in regularity and position to transverse and longitudinal members or scantlings of a “shaped” hull;
There are repeated relationships among dimensions of the ratio phi (one dimension divided by another being 1.62, 1.62 squared or cubed, etc.) This is a number that was also fascinating to the builders of the great pyramid of Giza, an unlikely coincidence;
It has a configuration possible only with the construction materials in vogue at the time the vessel was reputedly built, reeds. Such a configuration wasn’t again possible until steel was used in the late 1800’s C.E.
There are flat foundation stones in regular formation precisely located where they would be needed to support compression columns required in bow stem tension masting;
The anchors found are sized and located appropriate to the vessel size and mission and they were left in the valley floor upstream of the beaching site;
The gentle grade of the beach site is the only such site at its elevation east of the anchor stones’ location which would accommodate a large raft where it could be successfully off loaded. All other such large, “beach like” landing sites are at lake bottom elevations. Finally, this site is the last available beach west of the downhill slope into Iran. Without the flood depth, the raft could not go downhill. (The water movement onto the land was at a very much higher flow rate than the water recession. The terrain on the way in, however, didn’t present the same obstacles to the vessel as it did on the way out. The trapping of the water in high, intermountain basins forced the Ark to beach in the highest, or run “rapids” down into each successive lake. The first such run would probably have destroyed the Ark.)
The drilled holes in the anchor stones conform to the use of wound rope line. The ratio of drilled hole dimensions to stone weight indicates design to known and consistent strength of both rope and stone. The holes are appropriately sized for hand wound hemp rope.
The technique used to drill the holes in the stones is evidenced only in ancient artifacts, and was achieved by a process unknown even to this day.
The site location corresponds to ancient folklore and literary descriptions of the flood event;
The site location is within 1/2 mile of the longitude and latitude given in triangulation coordinates by Berossus relative to the tomb of Darius near Persopolis. Careful reading of Fasold’s discussion on this point is advised. Fasold calculated the location of the Ark site navigationally, using the ancient methods before he ever visited it for observation and research.

SIGNIFICANCE, CONCLUSIONS AND QUESTIONS

I find these data very convincing that this isn’t a natural formation. I further, have seen nothing convincing me this formation was a land side building. Nor do I have any reason to think a later vessel was built on site to sail in some prehistoric lake. The reasonable question isn’t “is this all that remains of a vessel?” The reasonable questions are:

Was this the vessel built by Noah, and if not, who did build it?

Was this vessel built locally, at 6300 feet elevation, at time when this area was a mighty lake? There is absolutely no evidence for such a supposition.

Where did the iron come from if the Hittites were the inventors of the iron smelter? (The Hittites, who lived here at a later date, might well have found the iron from the Ark. Using the coal available in the mountains around, they learned how to smelt the iron. The iron dagger in Ataturk Museum supports iron smelting pre-dating the Hittites.) If the presence of iron in the formation is just coincidentally in the land inhabited by them, wouldn’t a skeptic be justified in questioning such “chance”? Other cultures were more advanced in all of the required resources, except one. The others didn’t have an artifact with old iron fittings in it, that illustrated to them both material and application.

Where were these anchor stones quarried? Does the quarry still exist (or has it been submerged ever since)? What celestial forces were operating, creating tides on the Indian Ocean that were powerful enough to wash the Ark inland and upward?

The mountains had to have been upthrust even while the water brought the Ark inland, and upland so as to trap the vessel. This offers an explanation of why her master was forced to wait until valley outflow exposed some beach. Were the mountains lifted into place by the same extra-terrestrial force (a flyby planet) that washed the vessel inland? Continents may drift, but is their drifting responsible for the formation of mountain ranges? (Suggested reading on this subject are several of the writings by Donald Wesley Patten).F4

Is it a coincidence that Mt. Ararat belongs to the same lineal pattern as the highest mountains on Earth, the Himalayas? Does this not suggest that the enormous flood depositing the Ark in Eastern Anatolia (Turkey) resulted from the same extreme celestial event that formed those mountains? (See Patten and Windsor’s, “A Catastrophic Theory for Mountain Uplifts”.)

Because the Ark was constructed with such a single special purpose in mind, was the flood event predictable? The Epic of Gilgamesh says it happened “when the fixed time arrived”. Our several major religions claim its coming to have been the subject of divine communication with Noah. However, engineering concepts must relate to the existence of the artifact along lines of mechanism because it is a real object and its presence must be explained in engineering terminology.

Assuming predictability, was the flood simply a worst case version of a previous catastrophic occurrence? The records indicate that less severe, yet major catastrophes occurred on anniversary dates. (This periodicity included several “Passovers”.)

Was this repetition periodic because its cause relates to planetary motion and regular orbit? Can that account for the ancients’ preoccupation with the doings of the various planets? We could certainly never convince all peoples on Earth, today, to fear “the stars”.

Does such repeated flooding experiences account for the strata we find on all continents, little of which is found in the ocean floors?

Does such repeated flooding experiences account for the ancients’ preoccupation with building things out of massively large stones and arranging them so that except for Britain’s henges, they won’t topple in high velocity currents?

Can this particular flood explain the formation of crustacean borings on the sides of the great pyramid in Giza.

Can the extreme cold Noah experienced the year after the flood relate to extra-terrestrial sourced ices and gases streaming in at the magnetic poles and freezing giant mammoths from the inside out, in their tracks, as they munched happily on their buttercups near what is now the North Pole?

Does the presence of this one nautical artifact bear witness to the accuracy of ancient literature describing the periodic orbital interference with Earth by the planet Mars? Mars’ orbital interference with Earth is a possibility raised for Earth by Gerald Sussman some 300,000,000 years into the future.F5 Sussman hasn’t addressed ancient descriptions of the orbital interference he postulates for the future. His interference’s have already been experienced and described, if one is to take the ancient literature seriously. An example on nearly everyone’s book shelf is the change of Earth’s axis tilt to the solar plane noted by Isaiah; 38:8.F6 These same scriptures connect electrical effects to the disastrous end of Assyrian military aspirations by fire from heaven. (A similar fate was experienced by the Greeks at Troy, earlier.)

If one doesn’t take the literature seriously, we have no rational explanation for the pre-telescope knowledge of Mars’ two satellites (“Gulliver’s Travels” by Jonathan Swift and Hesiod’s, “The Shield of Herakles”). Neither can we explain why ancient people couldn’t count, judging from the fact that all calendars before 701 B.C.E. employed a 360 day year (Rome’s 10, 36 day months, the Mayan 72, 5 day weeks, the Chinese 24, 15 day periods, Judah’s 12, 30 day months, the 360 degree circle … etc.)F7

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Update for June, 2022:

The Recent Organization of The Solar System
by
Donald W. Patten
and
Samuel R. Windsor

Volume I The Recent Organization of The Solar System
Volume II The Mars-Earth Wars
Volume III The Flood of Noah (2484 B.C.E. – The Closest of All Flybys)

Chance Versus Catastrophic Process (Flybys)

The three pairs of twin spins in our solar system are:

1. Mars and the Earth 1,477 minutes to 1,436

2. Neptune and Uranus 948 minutes to 970

3. Saturn and Jupiter 615 minutes to 590

The Mars-Earth spin rates are 97.2% similar. The Neptune-Uranus spins are 96.5% similar and the Saturn-Jupiter spins are 96.0% similar.
If such similarities are coincidences, then a gradualist, or an ex nihilo creationist needs to face the fact that he must affirm “coincidence” raised to the third power. In graduxalistic [sic] dogma, perhaps it is by a chance of 1 in 100 that the Earth and Mars happen to have twin spins.
The Jupiter and Saturn pair, the second pair, raise coincidence to the second power; l00 x 100, or one chance in 10,000. And Neptune and Uranus pair, the third pair, raise coincidence to the third power, 100 x 100 x 100, or one chance in a million. Now we are getting into a range of numbers with which gradualists have some familiarity. And perhaps that is only the beginning rather than the end of the list of mysterious solar system “coincidences”. For example, Mars and the Earth have twin spin axis tilts too.
Ex nihilo creationists are in the same dilemma as gradualists. However, they would never be comfortable explaining the unknown by “coincidence”. But they do not understand this kind of design. It has been known for three and a half centuries that the rotation rates of Mars and the Earth are similar. It has also been known for over three centuries that the spin rates of Jupiter and Saturn are similar. But the spin rates of Uranus and Neptune have been difficult to determine, since their visible surface is unmarked atmosphere.
But with the recent Voyager mission in the 1980’s, data has been compiled on the rotation rates of this outer pair. Perhaps it was a surprise, but for the third time, twin spin rates was discovered. Thus, as Sherlock Holmes would say, “Watson, the plot thickens.”

A Badly-Needed Gyroscopic Perspective

Up to the present time, there is virtually nothing written about planets as behaving like gyroscopes. This is so because close, catastrophic planetary flybys have never been given credence. So they have yet to be studied in either modern astronomy or cosmology.
A close planetary flyby will create a “torque” on a rotating planet. In fact, each planet puts a torque on the other, resulting in a pair of reciprocal torques at similar angles on each gyro. If there were no close planetary flybys, torques and gyroscopic behavior would be irrelevant. But are they?
A definition of a gyroscope, or “gyro” is as follows:

GYROSCOPE; A massive wheel which is universally mounted and spins on smooth bearings. It has many technical applications, among them the directional gyro, the gyrocompass and the gyrostabilizer.
Gyroscopes also serve as controls in various types of modern guidance systems, such as those in rockets. The usefulness of the gyroscope derives from its tendency to undergo processional motion … under the action of an external torque.F1Accompanying the definition of a gyro should be that of a torque, and its process, torsion.

TORSION; The twisting of structural elements such as shafts in response to a torsional moment. Such moments cause shear stresses which can be calculated …. Deformations caused by torsion are measured in terms of the unit angle of twist, or angle of detrusion, i.e. angle (in radians) through which two transverse planes, a distance apart, will twist with respect to each other.F2

TORQUE: A torque is a measure of the effectiveness of a force in producing rotation about a particular reference axis.

Planets are gyros, although it can be said that Venus and Mercury only marginally qualify, due to their slowness of rotation. The Sun, rotating at 26.8 days at its equator, is also a gyro, a giant gyro by any standard. The Sun and Jupiter are the two biggest gyros in this solar system. Jupiter and Saturn are the fastest gyros. The Sun is among the slowest in spin rate.
The physical characteristics of the planets began to be studied through telescopes at the time of Galileo in the early 1600’s. However, physical traits of gyros began to be studied in Germany by Bohnenberger as late as 18l0 and in England by Lang in l836. In Paris in the 1850’s, Foucalt demonstrated the strange behavior of gyros in public demonstrations, and they were sensational. Foucalt is the one who gave the name “gyroscope” to rotating object.
A gyro usually is made of metal. But gyros may also be made of glass, wood, plastic or some other solid material. But gyros are a matter of perception. For instance, a round, polished stick of mountain ash, 2 to 4 inches in diameter and 36 inches long is a baseball bat to some; it is a stick of wood to others. A basketball shot with back spin is “reverse English” to athletes but it, too, is a gyro. So it is with gyros. Rarely is it perceived that our rotating planet is a gyro. In fact it is the biggest gyro within 92,959,000 miles. It is the fastest gyro within 350,000,000 miles. The Moon is not a gyro since it doesn’t rotate about an internal spin axis.

There is no record of ex nihilo creationists being concerned with such the genesis of planetary spin, much less of planet spins in pairs. In fact there is no record of ex nihilo creationists being interested in planetary catastrophism. Ex nihilo creationists prefer holy magic, whereas the cosmologists of gradualism prefer unholy magic (accretion).