This is nobody's official line, just my reasoning. When the Bible was written very few people could read and write and society was very simple. My view is that much of what the Bible says is told in a story-like way so that very unsophisticated people could understand it, in a similar way to the Parables of Jesus - these weren't factual stories, merely stories to make a moral point.

Let me build on BryInLanza's answer. In the days of Moses, we humans had only a very fundamental understanding of the world around us. We had not yet grasped even the basic concepts of modern science. So, God could not give a detailed explanation of how the creation was accomplished. So, He gave us the very simplified version that we find in Genesis. This story serves three purposes. It tells us that God created all that is, that He did it in an orderly manner, and that He had a purpose. From the religious standpoint this is all that we need to know. The details that we have learned from science are help us to better understand the world around us and give us a greater appreciation for what God has given us, but they aren't necessary for us to return to live with Him. Now just how much of Genesis is symbolic and how much is literal? I don't know. I do believe that Adam and Eve were real people. I also believe that, if we could trace our genealogies back far enough, we would find that we all are descended from them. How all of this fits into to evolution, I don't know.

If you believe that the Bible is that absolute truth, dictated word for word by God, and that God guided every translator into perfect translations, then there is no help for you. But if you believe that the Bible is a document written, in the best of good faith, by ordinary people reporting on wonderful events, then it is simple. The earliest parts of the Bible represent the best attempts of early peoples to understand the world. As the Bible progresses, it becomes more and more accurate; the later parts of the Old Testament reflect the history of the Jewish nation pretty well. And the New Testament is an honest report by well intentioned people of events which they believe to have been wonderful.

The Bible doesn't address those problems, but looking at the Bible as a whole, a few possible answers could be inferred... 1) The Bible is more allegorical / metaphorical than literal; the Adam & Eve story is just a story from which a lesson can be learned 2) THE DEVIL PUT ALL THE EXTENSIVE ARCHAEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE THERE >: O (It's a 'test' of your faith, lol) ^ No seriously, I've heard that a LOT from people I've asked... Word for word. An understandable conclusion given their beliefs, but it can be a little strange to hear from my (your?) perspective... Alternatively, it could mean that the Bible is wrong, but it's not good to come to that 'just' because the Bible has inaccurate descriptions of our beginnings...

So people lived in caves? They're called "cavemen" because ...they lived in caves. People in Bible times lived in caves. Also, there's the "gap theory" Genesis 1:1 "In the BEGINNING GOD...created the heavens and the earth." period. "Now the earth was formless and empty......." Gen 1:2 The gap is between verse 1 & 2. Geneologies in Bible times were purposely shortened for the sake of memorization. It's very well possible that there were many more children/sons/father between the time of Adam and Christ that were born in the same family line. How many generations were there not mentioned? I do not know. But what I do know is that Adam was the first created physical being, and Christ as the spiritual. Adam birthed sin, Christ birthed life. Without Adam, there's no Christ, no Eve, no us. Adam and Eve could have lived in a cave. Just because there were cave people, doesn't mean that Adam didn't exist. Millions and millions of genuine, born again Christians can testify to this because of the dramatic change God has put in their life through Christ. Without Adam, there is no Jesus Christ. I can testify that this isn't true, but just look to your God-given conscience...God wrote His Law on our hearts. The Bible says He has given light unto every man. http://www.bible.ca/tracks/b-dinosaurs-mentioned-in-bible.htm Job 40:15-19 "Look at the behemoth, which I made along with you and which feeds on grass like an ox. 16 What strength he has in his loins, what power in the muscles of his belly! 17 His tail sways like a cedar; the sinews of his thighs are close-knit. 18 His bones are tubes of bronze, his limbs like rods of iron. 19 He ranks first among the works of God, yet his Maker can approach him with His sword. 20 The hills bring him their produce, and all the wild animals play nearby. 21 Under the lotus plants he lies, hidden among the reeds in the marsh. 22 The lotuses conceal him in their shadow; the poplars by the stream surround him. 23 When the river rages, he is not alarmed; he is secure, though the Jordan should surge against his mouth. 24 Can anyone capture him by the eyes, or trap him and pierce his nose? --- No one knows the date Job was written or who is the author, but here describes the life of a large herbivorous animal. With a tale that swayed like a cedar (big tale, can't be a hippo)...A raging river couldn't harm him, and could a dinosaur so powerful be captured/trapped? Or pierced by the nose? Extremely difficult during that time, I doubt it's impossible to do it in OUR present day but it wouldn't be easy. He's ranked first among the works of God, and "yet his Maker can approach him with His sword.." a reference to extinction? I believe it is.

I am also a Christian, but I believe the Bible is man's interpretation of fact. To me, there is no contradiction in believing in the Bible AND evolution.

How many biblical catastrophes were there? I bet caves were a safe place to live.

The bible is, first and formost, a collection of stories to help understand your faith.The story of Adam and Eve is, as far as I know, not ever mentioned as absolute truth to the creation of man by Jesus.As mentioned by Brian I,people at that time wrote the bible according to stories that had been taught to them over the generations,which had been created to form a answer for our existence.They lacked the ability to reason the way we do and make sound theories.So the story of Adam and Eve is just that, a story.So creation of man could have been by some entirely different way.For example,eveloution could have been the way we decided to create us or maybe he just made us instantanious.Their are so many variables,unless you speak directly to God you'll never know the absolute truth.Now, we can make educated guesses based on artifacts and skeletons left by our ancestors to discover this answer ourselves so it is entirely possible cave man are our ancestors.In fact, it is pretty much proven.

Well seeing as the bible is a work of fiction, that pretty much answers it.

Adam was the first man. there is a book that show evidence that people back then were technilogically advanced. because of this there was a nuclear war and all of the major cities had been destryoed with nukes. we know that there were agricultural people that were dumb and stuff that had lived in caves (Cavemen) when the nuclear war had destroyed all of the technilogical stuff. we should be really advanced in technollogy but we are not because when the nuclear holocaust happened we lost all of our technology when all of the people were in the cities at the time of the explosion. so cavmen did exist after the nuclear war and adam and Eve did exist before the cavemen.

Of course not. The bible has you believe the earth is 6,000 to 10,000 years old, that every human on earth is massively inbred, and that every animal on earth was within walking distance of noah's house. Let's not even talk about how belief in A Jewish Zombie saves you from before you have the capability to honestly believe in him, or even before you existed.

Archaeology also bears out that civilisation developed at the same time in five or six different areas of the world. There's nothing in the book of Genesis that says God made ONLY Adam and ONLY Eve. Remember - Cain had a wife, and after he killed Abel, he had to be protected from ALL the other people in the world. Where did all these people come from? Well... who's to say God didn't make BUNCHES of people all around the same time? Or even, who's to say that God didn't allow evolution to take it's course, and the biblical form of creation is just a pre-science way of explaining all of that? Personally... I believe you could spend your life looking for these answers and never get a step closer than when you started. I'm not concerned with creation vs. Evolution. We're here now, and there are more pressing matters to worry about than what happened 10,000 or 10 million years ago.

The Bible is a collection of stories, some borrowed wholesale from other cultures - such as the myth of Noah's Ark which is a straight copy of part of the Epic of Gilgamesh. The Bible is not a history text or science text and no major worldwide Christian denomination accepts it as being so.

What proof of cavemen do you have? I just visited a website: TrueAuthority.com, to get a handle of carbon-dating. It was interesting. It is all based on assumptions by MAN. There is mention in the Old Testament of named beasts that resemble what we consider dinosaurs to have looked like. Read Job. If you need specific places, maybe search the web. Hope this helps.

Ohhhh! You are so getting your butt into hot water! If you want to go to heaven your going to have to retract your statement and place a full page ad in the New York Times stating how much of an idiot you are! Never, ever put two and two together. The gates of hell will swing wide open and the hoards of evil beings will torment the earth. On the other hand, if you're like me, you will accept that there are things that simply haven't been figured out yet and the bible, if it is true, is also vague. The bible is a relatively short book and if everything was addressed in it we would need a crane to turn the pages. I haven't ruled out creationism OR evolution but many have ruled out one or the other. It's all about having an open mind.

What proof of cavemen do you have? I just visited a website: TrueAuthority.com, to get a handle of carbon-dating. It was interesting. It is all based on assumptions by MAN. There is mention in the Old Testament of named beasts that resemble what we consider dinosaurs to have looked like. Read Job. If you need specific places, maybe search the web. Hope this helps. Oh, and research Nephilim. They're mentioned in the Bible. Could this be what we consider to be neanderthals?

What do you mean by archeological proof? Has archeology also proved that the world is millions of years old? Darwin needed millions of years because he knew that we had records of humanity going back only thousands of years. Adam was the first man that God created and that was a few thousand years ago.

Trust the bible first, archeological proof comes from the mind of humans created by God. The bible is the word of God.thanks.

Lies make baby Jesus cry, The bible is a boring book written by nimrods 2000 yrs ago. I saw Bugs Bunny fight a dinosaur, do u think that's true?

I'm not knocking religion here at all. I am a Christian. But I believe that the Bible was written to describe phenomenons that couldn't be described by the people in those days in any other way than "It must be God". Pillars of fire coming from the sky might have been tornados, but nobody knew what a tornado was or how to describe it. When I was younger and went to Sunday School, I asked my teacher, "If all of those miracles happened in biblical times, why doesn't anything like that happen now?" He tells me to this day he still doesn't know how to answer that. I think it's because we know more now. If you were a person in biblical times, how would you be able to explain the creation of man other than, "It must be God"?

Some texts in the Bible are loosely based on actual events, others are just myths. The Bible does not speak about cavemen or dinosaurs because their existence has been discovered hundred of years after it was written.

The Bible makes no mention of dinosaurs, however this does not conflict with the evidence of their existence. It doesn't mention,...ooooh say, jellyfish either. - I don't personally see any contradiction between the Bible's account about Adam and Eve, and archaelogical evidence of people living in caves. Apparently, down through history some people lived in caves,...what does that have to do with where they came from? (I hope I don't seem sarcastic,...I really don't see how the two ideas oppose one another.)

Most Christians do not take the stories of creation in the Bible literally. Catholics believe the book of Genesis tells religious truth and not necessarily historical fact. One of the religious truths is that God created everything and declared all was good. Catholics can believe in the theories of the big bang or evolution or both or neither. On August 12, 1950 Pope Pius XII said in his encyclical Humani generis: The Teaching Authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions, on the part of men experienced in both fields, take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter - for the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God. Here is the complete encyclical: http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xii/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xii_enc_12081950_humani-generis_en.html And here is the Address of Pope John Paul II to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences on October 22, 1996 speaking of the Theory of Evolution: http://www.newadvent.org/library/docs_jp02tc.htm Here is an interesting article about Pope John Paul II's opinion in the matter: http://www.americamagazine.org/content/article.cfm?article_id=4627 The Church supports science in the discovery of God's creation. At this time, the theories of the big bang and evolution are the most logical scientific explanations. However tomorrow someone may come up with better ideas. As long as we believe that God started the whole thing, both the Bible and responsible modern science can live in harmony. The Clergy Letter Project an open letter endorsing the Theory of Evolution signed by over 10,000 clergy from many different Christian denominations: http://www.butler.edu/clergyproject/rel_evol_sun.htm With love in Christ.

Essentially... nothing.

I never read anywhere in it discussing dinosaurs. This one minister told me that dinosaurs are some kind of man made trickery to decieve the world.LOL I know that is ridiculous but thats what he said and he doesn't believe they existed even though there is evidence, something the bible doesn't have. But some christians have told me that dinosaurs lived on a whole different section of the earth from man at the time even though the continents were all together at one time called Pangea. Some say they lived before Adam and Eve ever came into the existence. Who knows I guess only God right? But most things you ask christians to prove they really can't and I've grown up under their teachings. Most will only reply and say "hey that is not what matters but what does matter is you being saved by Jesus Christ".

zip..nada...nothing as far as I know , just another piece of science that the Bible and its believers choose to ignore

nothing...because the people that wrote the bible didn't know about dinosaur bones at the time.

nothing

Job 40:15-24 Behold now behemoth, which I made with thee; he eatheth gras as an ox. Lo now, his strength is in his loins, and his force is in the navel of his belly. He moveth his tail like a cedar: the sinews of his stones are wrapped together. His bones are as strong pieces of brass; his bones are like bars of iron. He is the chief of the ways of God: he that made him can make his sword to approach unto him. Surely the mountains bring him forth food, where all the beasts of the field play. He lieth under the shady trees, in the covert of the reed, and fens. The shady trees cover him with their shadow: the willows of the brook compass him about. Behold, he drinketh up a river, and hasteth not: he is confident that he can draw up Jordan into his mouth. He taketh it with his eyes: his nose pierceth through snares. Also, All of Job 41 tells of a different dinosaur.

I'm also a Christian, and I believe what the bible says because it is the word of God. The problem is that how do we coincide with the bible stating that Adam was the first man, and scientists sayiing that they have evidence of the existence of cavemen. Supposedly the cavemen existed millions of years hundreds of thousands years ago. There is a problem with the allegedly scientific ideology. The first is that up to date there has not been any carbon dating that shows that the cavemen lived hundreds of thousands years ago. In fact, all carbon dating done on the actual physical human/cavemen remains have shown that the remains are absolutely no older than approx 13-14 BC, which also coincides with the biblical genesis. Now, you may ask yourself, how is this possible? to state it simply, the carbon itself was done on the earth and surrounding structures found immediately surrounding the actual physical human/caveman remains. This is called strata testing. The strata being the earth levels at different stages of the earth development. Basically, the scientists were so into disproving the bible and proving evolution, that they decided to totally disregard the carbon dating on the human remains because it would have proven that the existence of human life on earth began exactly when the bible says that it did. Secondly, they decided to do the carbon dating on the earth itself because the earth was here a lot longer than genesis. when you read genesis it says that the earth was covered in water and god divided the waters. basically, God made it possible for life to live on this planet.