Though an atheist, Mark Twain had little use for the evolutionary doctrine of uniformitarianism, that “the present is the key to the past.” The Bible teaches catastrophism, that such cataclysms as the Genesis flood have occurred in the past. His observations from Life On The Mississippi follow.
Since my own day on the Mississippi, cutoffs have been made at Hurricane Island 100, and at Council Bend. These shortened the river by 67 miles. In my time, a cutoff was made at American Bend, which shortened the river by 10 miles. Thus, the Mississippi River between Caro and New Orleans was 1,215 miles long 176 years ago… its length is only 973 miles at present… If I wanted to be one of those ponderous scientific people, and ‘let on’ to prove what had occurred in a given time in the recent past, or what will occur in the far future by what has occurred in late years, what an opportunity is here! Geology never had such exact data to argue from! Glacial epochs are great things, but they are vague—vague. Please observe:
In the space of 176 years, the Mississippi River had shortened itself by 242 miles. That is an average of a trifle over one mile and 1/3 per year. Therefore, any calm person, who is not blind or idiotic, can see that in the Old Oolitic Silurian Period, just a million years ago next November, the Lower Mississippi River was upwards of one million three hundred thousand miles long, and struck out over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing rod!!
And by the same token, any person can see that in 742 years from now, the Lower Mississippi will be only a mile and 3/4 long, and Cairo and New Orleans will have joined their streets together, and be plodding comfortably along under a single mayor and mutual board of aldermen.
There is something fascinating about science; one gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such trifling investments of fact. Evolution has its basis in so-called Historical Geology, the geologic timetable. Twain has shown its absurdity.
Truly, “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God” (Psa. 53:1).
Curtis A. Cates
