p. 189 | Science and Scripture

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 15, 1876

Science and Scripture.

Science is being used of late to the detriment of Scripture—or, rather, that which passes current as science. It is said that science disproves the Bible account of creation. Geology is distorted to conflict with the Bible. In a recent number of the Atlantic Monthly, Mr. Twain, in a jovial manner, thus refers to this method of computing the past from what we see of the present; and his conclusions are as reliable as the arguments used to invalidate the Bible:—

“The Mississippi between Cairo and New Orleans was 1,215 miles long 176 years ago. It was 1,180 after the cut-off of 1722. It was 1,040 after the American Bend cut-off (some sixteen or seventeen years ago). It has lost 67 miles since. Consequently its length is only 973 miles at present. Now, if I wanted to be one of those ponderous scientific people, and ‘let on’ to prove what had occurred in the remote past by 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 there is here!”

“Geology never had such a chance, nor such exact data to argue from. Nor ‘development of species,’ either! Glacial epochs are great things, but they are vague—vague. Please observe: In the space of 176 years the lower Mississippi has shortened itself 242 miles. That is an average of a trifle over one mile and a third 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 upward of 1,300,000 miles long, and stuck out over the gulf of Mexico like a fishing rod.”

“And by the same token any person can see that 742 years from now the lower Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long, and Cairo and New Orleans will have joined their streets together, and be plodding comfortably along under a single mayor and a mutual board of aldermen. There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesome returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact!”—Sel.