Information Related to "Answers from Genesis - Part 2"
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We continue with general questions about the book of Genesis. Here are the answers as we best understand them in light of the Bible.
A young man recently asked, "The bones or fragments of bones like the skull cap of what is called a caveman have, from what I have found, been [dated as being from] a long time ago—some bones being from 80,000 years ago. The question is, if men were created 6,000 years ago, how could these bones exist?"
We need to understand that paleontological findings are typically overlaid with hypotheses (educated guesses) based on the theory of evolution, which casts considerable doubt on their value. Man's origin as recorded in the Bible does indeed date to about 6,000 years ago. So how do we reconcile this with the fossil evidence?
One of the first things to consider regarding these finds is the way they are dated. Radiometric dating methods can give results that vary widely for the same fossil (see, for example, Marvin Lubenow's book Bones of Contention), and a number of factors—including the worldwide flood that occurred during the life of Noah—may skew the results.
Thus, it is possible that some of these humanlike bones may actually be those of human beings who lived prior to the worldwide flood described in Genesis 6 to 9—making them only 4,500 to 6,000 years old. Scripture reveals that people then lived for hundreds of years, which could account for the fossils' thick skulls and bone structure.
Even if these bones are of manlike creatures that existed prior to 6,000 years ago, we must remember that the Bible records the history of physical life only as far back as the renewal of the earth in preparation for the creation of Adam and Eve. It does not speak of creatures that lived on the earth before that time. Without divine revelation, and with so many past geologic upheavals of the earth, there's no way of knowing for sure what these creatures were, what they actually looked like, when they existed or what purpose they served.
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