7. Adam’s Diary – Niagara Falls

Going over the Falls! Stone pictograph from Adam's Diary.

Continuing with Adam’s Diary (translated from Adam’s original hieroglyphics by Mark Twain) …

FRIDAY — She has taken to beseeching me to stop going over the Falls. What harm does it do? Says it makes her shudder. I wonder why; I have always done it — always liked the plunge, and coolness. I supposed it was what the Falls were for. They have no other use that I can see, and they must have been made for something. She says they were only made for scenery — like the rhinoceros and the mastodon.

I went over the Falls in a barrel — not satisfactory to her. Went over in a tub — still not satisfactory. Swam the Whirlpool and the Rapids in a fig-leaf suit. It got much damaged. Hence, tedious complaints about my extravagance. I am too much hampered here. What I need is a change of scene.

Commentary:
The real Adam never saw Niagara Falls, because it did not exist before the Flood.

The Flood caused geological damage to the earth far beyond man’s capacity to imagine. The Falls were probably formed as a result of the Flood and the post-Flood Ice Age.

The walls of Niagara Gorge are full of marine fossils. These likely came from marine animals buried in the Flood. Thus the Gorge and hence the Falls could not have existed before the Flood. The north-flowing Niagara River, dropping 325 feet, empties Lake Erie into Lake Ontario. The geological layers over which the river runs and falls today were deposited by Noah’s Flood 4500 years ago.

Climate adjustments after the Flood led to the Ice age. The Niagara area was covered with thick layers of ice. As it melted and shifted, the large quantity of melt-water and debris carved out the Great Lakes and the Niagara River around 4,000 years ago.

The Falls started at Queenston, Ontario 7 miles downriver and eroded back upriver. The Falls have been eroding about 5 feet per year since the mid-1800’s when European settlers first started observing them. If the erosion rate were constant, it would take about 7,000 years to erode from Queenston to the present position.

The erosion, however, would have been far faster at the beginning when the waterflow runoff from the Flood and Ice Age was much greater and the sediment layers were softer. So 4,000 years for the Falls to erode back to their present position is entirely reasonable.

Adam never went over the Falls, and he never swam the Rapids and Whirlpool in a fig-leaf suit. These geological features did not exist in his day, and he did not wear clothes before Sin happened.

Read the prequels in this series on Adam’s Diary:
1. Adam’s Diary – A New Creature
2. Adam’s Diary – Naming the Animals
3. Adam’s Diary – Garden of Eden
4. Adam’s Diary – “We”
5. Adam’s Diary – Sunday
6. Adam’s Diary – Eve

Read the sequel:
8. Adam’s Diary – Escape

©William T. Pelletier, Ph.D.
Monday April 12, 2010 A.D.

Read my April 2010 Bible-Science column
Is This a Contradiction?.

For behold, He who forms mountains and creates the wind and declares to man what are His thoughts, He who makes dawn into darkness and treads on the high places of the earth, the LORD God of hosts is His name. (Amos 4:13 )