Dear Gramps,
My brother has many questions about the church and the gospel. I have been working really hard to answer all his questions. One such question stumped me a bit. He has studied a lot about anthropology and early civilization. He asked me why God did not care about the “caveman” and did not have an established religion or interaction with them. Did they not need God, or were they not required to be tested. Personally I don’t believe Adam was a caveman or Ape, nor any of his descendants. I think that the whole ‘caveman concept’ is an error in our judgment of scientific findings. Evolutionary theories are a way to explain the world if we do not accept the existence of God. I know that God dealt directly with Adam and interacted throughout history with many men. So, I guess the question is more about the existence of some Pre-man creation in prehistoric times. Thanks for any light you can shed on this.
Matt, from Southpoint, Ohio

Dear Matt,
I agree with you. I also don’t believe that Adam was some sort of “caveman.” As a matter of fact, I believe that any “cavemen” that actually existed are descendants of Adam. As a matter of fact, we have cavemen, such as the Fremont culture, who rather suddenly disappeared only about 700 years ago.
I think that your brother’s problem is that he exercises faith in science and demands of religion the discipline of science. This is not at all an uncommon opinion. In fact, it is rather generally held. Science is almost universally accepted as a description of absolute truth. The theories of science are believed by the populace in general to be the truths of science. But a theory is not a truth. A theory is a proposition whose testing has not yet proven it to be true. And a law of science is nothing more than a theory of science that has gained general acceptance. The theory of evolution has been transferred to “the law of evolution” in the minds of many scientists, but this is simply far, far from the truth. The theory of evolution is part of the concept of uniformitarianism, that holds that the earth has always experienced the same aging mechanisms as are now observed. These include such processes as the very gradual mountain erosion by wind and rain and freezing and thawing; and by the very gradual mountain uplift from tectonic plate motion. These competing processes are thought to have continued at the same rate that they are occurring today into the indefinite past.
The counter theory to uniformitarianism is catastrophism, that holds that the present configuration of the earth’s surface has resulted from great cataclysmic events which include such events as volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, meteoric impact, and near collisions with other planetary objects. Sir Isaac Newton (1643 - 1727) was a proponent of catastrophism. His ideas were opposed by Charles Lyell, (1797-1875), who was the first to promote the theory of uniformitarianism. Lyell’s concepts gained popular acceptance in scientific circles. Charles Darwin drew on Lyell’s concepts in the formulation of his theory of evolution. Scientific evidences of catastrophism now far outweigh the evidences in favor of uniformitarianism. However, the concept of uniformitarianism, being firmly established in the scientific mind, will take a major revolution in science to displace. But, that revolution is beginning to form, and without any doubt will end up relegating uniformitarianism, along with the  theory of relativity, to the dust bin of history.
Until your brother can develop as much faith in the prophets of God as he now demonstrates in the professors of science, he will continue on his downward path, opting for telestial concepts, with their limitations of mortal thinking, rather than accepting the upward path with its celestial concepts that leads to all the eternal truths of the universe!
Gramps