Dr Walt Brown, the tireless promoter of hydroplate theory—one version of young-Earth creationist geology—died and went to be with his savior on September 27, 2025.
I’ll start by saying that though I think Walt Brown was wrong about many things, he was likely right about what is most important: Christ is the resurrection and the life, and the one who trusts in Christ will live, even though he dies (John 11:25-26). We all get some things wrong (sometimes very wrong), but God’s grace is not only greater than our sins, but greater than our ignorance and promotion of really bad arguments in defense of the truthfulness of the Bible.
Hydroplate theory (HT) is a young-Earth creationist attempt to explain Earth and solar system geology based on the fountains of the deep mentioned in the flood account in Genesis 7:11:
“In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened.” (ESV)
Brown’s entire HT model is highly speculative, even by young-Earth creationist standards. Brown posited that before Noah’s flood, the entirety of Earth’s crust was granitic, and that there was a massive layer of water trapped about 10 miles beneath Earth’s surface. What is now the basaltic seafloor was positioned beneath this water reservoir. At the beginning of the flood, cracks developed in Earth’s crust, and supersonic jets of steam shot up into Earth’s atmosphere and beyond. Much of this then fell back to Earth as heavy rainfall during the flood. These jets also shot mantle rocks into space, forming craters on the moon, and formed many (or all) of the asteroids. The cracks eventually became mid-ocean ridges. Continental drift didn’t involve lithospheric plates carried along atop the asthenosphere, but granitic continents floating on the remaining subterranean water layer, hence the name “hydroplates.” As the mid-ocean ridges elevated, the continents slid away to their present positions. Uranium and other heavy elements did not exist in the original crust but formed by nuclear reactions in the crust during Noah’s flood. Mountain ranges formed as these sliding continents collided with one another. An important fossil sorting mechanism in HT was liquefaction of sediments, by which some layers injected between deeper layers.
I won’t get into a detailed critique and analysis of HT here. My basic assessment is that it is out there on the fringe of young-Earth creationism. It is significant that not a single young-Earth creationist geologist or astronomer who works or writes for Answers in Genesis, the Institute for Creation Research, or Creation Ministries International, accepts or promotes HT. If Walt Brown could not convince young-Earth creationist geologists that HT is worthy of serious consideration, how likely is it that HT will convince any non-Christian geologists? Pretty close to zero. Despite this, HT has a very loyal following among young-Earth creationists on social media and elsewhere. It is not uncommon to see comments in young-Earth Facebook pages where someone says, “Read Brown’s book; it explains everything.” I suspect very few of these people have the background needed to honestly assess HT, and most are unaware of the almost complete lack of support for HT among young-Earth creationist scientists.
My main critique of HT, however is that it (like young-Earth geology in general) is not taught in the Bible. The foundational verse for HT, as I mentioned, is Genesis 7:11. No Christian commentator on Genesis I know of insists that there were literal windows (some translations say floodgates) in the sky during Noah’s flood. The “windows of the heavens” are just about universally taken as a figurative way of saying, “It rained really, really hard.” If the windows in the heavens in 7:11 are figurative, then the fountains of the deep in the same verse are very likely to also be figurative. What were these fountains? No one knows for certain, and this includes HT advocates who insist these were supersonic jets of water shooting from the mantle into Earth’s atmosphere and beyond.
Dr Brown did not have formal training in geology, a situation that has led many young-Earth creationists astray. He was undoubtedly a smart man, having graduated from the U.S. Military Academy and earning a PhD in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Being a smart man, however, has its limits, and Dr Brown clearly did not understand the Earth. I’ve run into the same sort of over-confident ignorance among Facebook young-Earth creationists, with people who have no formal training in geology insisting that they understand geology better than any old-Earth Christian geologist. When such people present young-Earth geological arguments as proof of the truthfulness of the Bible, they often, unwittingly, give reasons not to believe the Bible. I put Walt Brown’s HT in that category.
My final assessment of HT is a phrase I have often repeated: Bad science is bad apologetics, and bad apologetics is harmful both for evangelism and discipleship. This statement applies to most of young-Earth creationist geology, and it applies doubly to HT. God’s word is true and reliable, but most of young-Earth geology, HT or otherwise, is only loosely based on Genesis. Faithful readers of Scripture are not obligated to accept young-Earth extrapolations from Genesis, whether HT or other flood geology models.
The only announcement I’ve seen about Dr Brown’s death is on a Dutch young-Earth creationist website (shared via Facebook by someone whom I think knew Dr Brown) which I read using Google Translate.
https://oorsprong.info/in-memoriam-dr-walter-t-walt-brown-1937-2025-bedenker-hydroplaattheorie-werd-wereldwijd-bekend/
Dr Brown’s book, In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood, may be read or downloaded from his website. There is as of yet no mention of his death on the site.
Here are some young-Earth creationist critiques of hydroplate theory:
- Analysis of Walt Brown’s Flood model by Michael Oard (CMI)
- Hydroplate theory: the strongest theory? by Shaun Doyle (CMI)
- An Analysis of Astronomical Aspects of the Hydroplate Theory by Danny Faulkner (CRSQ)
- Hydroplate Theory: Dead in Its Tracks? by Christian Ryan (New Creation Blog)
And some reviews of HT from old-Earth Christians:
- Critique of Hydroplate Theory by Walt Brown by Lorence Collins
- Walter Brown’s “Hydroplate” Flood Model Doesn’t Hold Water by Glen Kuban
Here’s what ICR thinks of hydroplate theory:
GeoChristian 