Monday night there was nothing on television as usual. The wife and I are not big TV watchers. We have very few shows we actually watch on a regular basis. Because of this we ended up watching Walking with Cavemen on the Discovery channel. It is a pretty good show. But it got me thinking.

As I mentioned in an earlier post about religion, I was raised in a Baptist home and went to church regularly. The show takes you back 3.5 million years to the first of our ancestors, the Australopithecus afarensis. Then it moves forward discussing our other ancestors that lead to the modern man. What got me thinking was the story of Adam and Eve. Christain teachings lead you to believe god created the heavens and the Earth. According to the New American Standard bible Genesis 1:26-27

26 Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 27 God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.

So god created man in his own image. There is debate on what that exactly means but if we take it literally, god must look like our earliest ancestor which would look something like this:

Interesting. But the bible does not depict man as an ape like person. Man can speak, man can build homes, man can hunt and fish and many other things. The depictions of our earliest ancestors are nothing like the bible. For one, they didn't wear clothes. But by Christian teachings we all know since Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Life they became aware of their nakedness. This is depicted in Genesis 3:1-12

1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?" 2 The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, 'You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.'" 4 "You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman. 5 "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." 6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. 8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the LORD God called to the man, "Where are you?" 10 He answered, "I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid." 11 And he said, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?" 12 The man said, "The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it."

Because of this god clothed Adam and Eve as depicted in Genesis 3:21

The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.

Interesting. The TV show didn't show man wearing clothes until the Ice Age. Who am I to question the bible but we have proof of evolution that greatly contradicts what the bible says. Adam and Eve were there at the beginning and the perception is they looked like us, not what fossils have told us. It is all very confusing. A lot of religious people believe the Earth is only 6,000 years old or so, yet we have fossils dating back billions of years.

So what is right? Who really knows for sure. Can we really believe that the heavens and Earth were created in exactly 7 days? That seems a bit silly to me. Something to ponder though. What do you all think?