Understanding how Religious and Scientific Explanations of Reality can co Exist

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I have no problem believing the scientific fact that the earth is millions of years old. I also believe the creation story about Adam and Eve. How can I agree that they are both true? I know that science has facts that people lived three million years ago.

A girl in ape form

In 1974 a skeleton of a young female was found in Africa. From this girl, they named “Lucy” they could tell she was about four feet tall. Her bones showed that she walked erect. Although from the bone structure of her hands she could have climbed trees, just as we are able to do, she was not from an ape. She could stand upright and apes could not. Her brain was about the size of an orange.

Hominid

She was called a hominid. Scientists found that two million years ago in Africa, the first humans lived. This was the stone- age. Man needed tools to survive. Homo habilis was taller than their ancestors, the human-like primates. They had larger brains. These people were on the earth until ten thousand years ago, the end of the last ice age.

Homo-erectus

Next came the Homo-erectus man. He was about as tall as people are today. His brain was larger. From the jaw and bone structure scientist could see that these people also looked more like the people of today.

At this time waters were all frozen because of the ice age and these people could walk across the ice to other locations. A scientist can tell this because one of these skeletons was found in China. The Peking man, as they named him, had traveled all the way to way to China.

Neanderthal man

Another early man was the Neanderthal man. The skeleton of an old man was found and from him, scientists believed that man was a beast-like figure that walked with bent knees, had a thick neck and arms that hung down. But later science revealed that this was an old man who had a crippling disease. The Neanderthal man, they found out later was a strong taller and intelligent, more like the men of today.

The Homo sapiens who lived in Europe were called Cro-Magnon. From cave painting and artifacts it is known that he was intelligent.

The Creation of Adam and Eve

Because of all of these species of man, I have no problem believing the creation of Adam and Eve. God calls himself the potter and man the clay. He can make man in any form he wants. For some reason, he was not pleased with his first designs of man and decided on a new one. Now he created Adam, and from him Eve.

God had made man in many images but this time He said, “Let us make man in our image.”
This also answers for me the question of who Cain married.

Science tells us about the millions of years that the earth has been in existence and prehistoric man. The Bible tells us the recorded history of man, from Adam and Eve and on.

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