Fairholme on the Mosaic Deluge

The following is a summary of Fairholmes main arguments for believing that by 1837 there was enough physical evidence available to support the case for a recent worldwide flood. The aim is to show that even in 1837 there were good and some could argue compelling reasons for geologists of the time to reject an ancient earth as proposed by Hutton and Lyell. (The writing in italics and in brackets are my observations and clarifications to Fairholmes arguments)

Preface - Fairholme starts with a generous acceptance that a number of senior advocates of a worldwide flood in geology have publicly recanted their beliefs during the period 1820-36 based on their enlarged understanding of geology. The author does not believe the evidence he will present will be completely conclusive as he is aware of the uncertainty that all such evidence we currently have of geological data is, and that it is subject to future knowledge changing our understanding of geology (whilst this was a reasonable response to geological knowledge in 1837 the situation by 2022 is significantly different and I believe much more irrefutable with regard to the worldwide flood). That said, Fairholme believes that in the four years leading up to 1837 he has accumulated powerful evidence for the flood.

The following are the evidences he summarises in p329-335:

1. Valleys were not formed by the existing rivers since almost all connected valleys regardless of the size of their rivers, including dry valleys, all meet at the same level when they join each other. (There is little or no evidence of the over deepening one would expect if some of these valleys were created by larger rivers - this overdeepening effect is what we do see in glaciated regions). ‘Therefore the agent by which these grooves (valleys) were scooped out is no longer to be seen on the surface of the continents’ p329-330 (because that agent is the receding flood waters).
2. These valleys almost always slope to the sea with no sign of check or pause in their history. Therefore it is reasonable to conclude that these valleys were formed soon after the rocks/land was formed (which is consistent with the agent creating the valleys being the receding flood waters - rather than long ages of river erosion).
3. (Points 1 & 2 indicates evidence of rivers following valleys not forming them) However the rivers still cause erosional features in valleys - particularly waterfalls - when investigated these waterfalls show only thousands of years of erosion not millions of years of erosion (e.g. Niagara Falls where the maximum age is 10,000 years and allowing for other factors could be as low as 4-5,000 years).
4. Based on the third evidence, if Niagara Falls is less than 10,000 years old, then all the river systems that flow into it are probably the same age, and since the river basin for the St Lawrence River, on which the Niagara Falls lies, extends over a large part North America, it may be reasonable to assume the whole land formation of North America is of a similar age (I suspect were we to study waterfalls on other North American rivers they would likewise be only thousands of years old).
5. Almost all coastal cliffs incline towards the level of the ocean such that ‘this sloping line of the land, invariably touches the horizontal line of the sea, at a very small distance from the base of the present cliffs’ p334. This leads to the reasonable conclusion that the commencement of the erosion of these cliffs must be recent and therefore the land formations and seas that surround them must also be recent. By extrapolating the current slope (which Fairholme does in detail with the Isle of Wight and the Isle of Thanet) an attempt can be made to find where the original start point of the hill meeting the coastline would have been. Where it has been studied the distance in most cases would be less than 1km. Therefore over 10,000 years the rate of erosion would be less than 10cms per year. This indicates that these coastlines can only be thousands of years old, not millions of years old. (One way to cross check this observation would be to look at how far out sea wave-cut platforms extend - I suspect they will all be less than 1km - except where we have reason to believe post glacial super flooding caused excessive erosion e.g. the English Channel near Dover.)

Other proofs cited briefly are as follows:

1. Limited size of deltas - consistent with being only thousands of years old p336.
2. Thinness of vegetable soils even in the tropics - consistent with being only thousands of years old p336.
3. Depth of peat formations consistent with being only thousands of years old p336.
4. Stalactites in Limestone caverns are only thousands of years old - especially if we consider how rapid their formation would have been in post flood conditions p337.
5. Tradition and history record this universal flood p339.

Other evidences:

1. Universality of stratification all laid down by water p411.
2. Junctions of all strata suggest they were rapidly deposited one on top of the other p412.
3. Tall plants and trees passing through many strata p412.
4. All strata ‘bear self-evident marks of a degree of rapidity of formation’ inconsistent with the geological theories of Lyell and Hutton p413.
5. Waterfalls and sea cliffs cannot be millions of years and are inconsistent with long periods of geological activity p414.
6. The evidence of waterfalls and sea cliffs is universal and arrives at a date for their aqueous (Flood) origin that coincides with the widespread evidence from the history and traditions of various nations and tribes of a recent worldwide flood p415.
7. Purely physical causes of our landscape may elude us because the catastrophe of the flood was divine in origin p418.
8. What we see in the rocks are proofs of rapid and uninterrupted deposition of sedimentary matter that is totally different from any existing action - which means Hutton and Lyell theories of the present being the key to the past are false and unhelpful p422.