22. Adam’s Diary – Brontosaurus

Continuing with Adam’s Diary (translated from Adam’s original hieroglyphics by Mark Twain) with a flashback from before the Fall…

MONDAY NOON — If there is anything on the planet that she is not interested in it is not in my list. There are animals that I am indifferent to, but it is not so with her. She has no discrimination, she takes to all of them, she thinks they are all treasures, every new one is welcome.

When the mighty brontosaurus came striding into camp, she regarded it as an acquisition, I considered it a calamity; that is a good sample of the lack of harmony that prevails in our views of things. She wanted to domesticate it, I wanted to make it a present of the homestead and move out. She believed it could be tamed by kind treatment and would be a good pet; I said a pet twenty-one feet high and eight-four feet long would be no proper thing to have about the place, because, even with the best intentions and without meaning any harm, it could sit down on the house and mash it, for any one could see by the look of its eye that it was absent-minded.

Still, her heart was set upon having that monster, and she couldn’t give it up. She thought we could start a dairy with it, and wanted me to help milk it; but I wouldn’t; it was too risky. The sex wasn’t right, and we hadn’t any ladder anyway. Then she wanted to ride it, and look at the scenery. Thirty or forty feet of its tail was lying on the ground, like a fallen tree, and she thought she could climb it, but she was mistaken; when she got to the steep place it was too slick and down she came, and would have hurt herself but for me.

Was she satisfied now? No. Nothing ever satisfies her but demonstration; untested theories are not in her line, and she won’t have them. It is the right spirit, I concede it; it attracts me; I feel the influence of it; if I were with her more I think I should take it up myself. Well, she had one theory remaining about this colossus: she thought that if we could tame it and make him friendly we could stand in the river and use him for a bridge. It turned out that he was already plenty tame enough — at least as far as she was concerned-so she tried her theory, but it failed: every time she got him properly placed in the river and went ashore to cross over him, he came out and followed her around like a pet mountain. Like the other animals. They all do that.

Commentary:
Twain is absolutely correct in placing dinosaurs with Adam and Eve in Eden.

God created the great sea dinosaurs on Day Five and the land dinosaurs on Day Six. (Genesis 1:21,25)

Adam named land dinosaurs (“every beast of the field“) after he was created on Day Six before the formation of Eve from his rib. (Genesis 2:19-20)

Before the Fall, dinosaurs would have been docile and non-violent and under man’s dominion as Twain depicts. Conflict, destruction, and death came only with Adam’s sin.

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
7. Adam’s Diary – Niagara Falls
8. Adam’s Diary – Escape
9. Adam’s Diary – Mark Twain I
10. Adam’s Diary – Mark Twain II
11. Adam’s Diary – Mark Twain III
12. Adam’s Diary – Mark Twain IV
13. Adam’s Diary – Mark Twain V
14. Adam’s Diary – Mark Twain VI
15. Adam’s Diary – Rib
16. Adam’s Diary – The Snake
17. Adam’s Diary – Catastrophe
18. Adam’s Diary – Clothing
19. Adam’s Diary – Cain
20. Adam’s Diary – Kangaroo or Bear?
21. Adam’s Diary – Abel

Read the sequel:
23. Adam’s Diary – Conclusion

©William T. Pelletier, Ph.D.
Wednesday June 30, 2010 A.D.

Read my June 2010 Bible-Science column
Noah’s Ark Found?.

God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarmed after their kind, and every winged bird after its kind; and God saw that it was good. God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” There was evening and there was morning, a fifth day. Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind: cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth after their kind”; and it was so. God made the beasts of the earth after their kind, and the cattle after their kind, and everything that creeps on the ground after its kind; and God saw that it was good. (Genesis 1:21-25)