What is a possible explanation for the Atlas Mountains the Great Rift Valley and the Mediterranean Sea and where is the biblical reference to this catastrophic event?

Answer 1

In 1620, Sir Francis Bacon wrote that the outlines of South America and West Africa had similar isthmuses and similar promontories, a fact that could not be due to accident. Rather like two pieces of a badly constructed jigsaw puzzle, the Coastlines sometimes overlapped and sometimes there were gaps, but overall the fit was remarkably good.
In 1912, Alfred Wegener,a German astronomer and meteorologist, said that South America and West Africa had once been joined together as part of one super-continent he called Pangaea. He showed that when he reconstructed the continents in this way, an imaginary equator could be traced right across Pangaea, and fossils typical of a tropical environment had been found along this hypothetical equator.

We now know that the earth's crust floats on a molten core, and that the continents are drifting at a slow but measurable rate. Africa broke away from South America millions of years ago and slowly drifted until its continental shelf hit that of southern Europe. The Mediterranean Sea was formed where the coastline of northern Africa did not match that of southern Europe. The Atlas Mountains were forced upwards by the pressure of the collision. The Great Rift Valley is a stress result of continental drift.

The collision of the two continents, Africa and Europe, occurred millions of years ago and was entirely outside the knowledge of the authors of The Bible. For this reason, there is no biblical reference to this event.

Answer 2

At the time of the Flood (Genesis ch.6-8), there were hundreds of active volcanoes (now extinct), and massive earthquakes on a scale never later equaled. This caused changes in shorelines and other tremendous upheavals.See also the Related Link.

Evidence of the Flood