"For the invisible things of God have been clearly seen from the beginning of the world, being understood through WHAT HAS BEEN MADE, so they are without excuse" (Romans 1:20).
I guess I'm one of those peculiar Christians who believes science and the Bible must be compatible.. otherwise the Bible exists as a work of fiction. That's what I think Romans 1:20 is saying. Instead of using the Bible to interpret reality.. open your eyes instead, look around and let scientific reality interpret the Bible for you.
As far as I know "diluvialism" (interpreting earth geology according to a global flood), was discredited as pseudoscience in the early 1850's. By then, science understood the marine fossils found atop the mountains of the Himalaya's were hundreds of millions, if not billions of years old, and existed as some of the earliest life forms on this planet. They were there, long before the Himalaya mountains were.
There simply is no scientific proof of there ever having been a global flood, especially within the last twenty thousand years, other than some coastal flooding and rise in sea levels caused by the melting of glacial ice. So the Noah flood story has to be "allegorical" in nature. There simply is no other possible explanation.
In 2013 a renowned marine archeologist began surveying and documenting the existence of a late Neolithic population of people who lived around what was then the shoreline of the Black Sea. These habitations are now well underwater. It is possible, melting glacial ice filled the Mediterranean Sea and inundated the lands around the Black Sea destroying these people in a catastrophic flood event as the land bridge between Asia and Europe collapsed, which became origin of the stories of the flood, found in the Sumerian, Epoch of Gilgamesh and later the Bible.
As for evolution versus creationism, I have no problem accepting the concept animals were created so they adapt physically to their specific environment over millions of years. If all the animals on earth exited the Ark and replenished the earth from there, why aren't there any kangaroo fossils found in Asia, or Europe ?! The answer is obvious, there never were any kangaroos there. They were always in Australia.
What about the archeological evidence of early hominid creatures and homo sapiens ??? I know someone is going to put up some scary pictures of early hominid and homo sapien skulls and ask everyone if they think these creatures look more like apes than men (they always do). What they're not going to do is post any pictures of Cro-Magnon, or Neanderthal skulls, because those would be way too human looking to serve their purpose.
It's also clear from the archeological evidence, these early homo sapiens used fire, constructed crude stone tools and weapons, ceremoniously buried their dead in graves, fabricated clothes from animal skins, played music on flutes and painted images on cave walls. In other words, they were in many respects, as human as later homo sapien sapiens (modern man).
If you ask me, that answers the question "Who did Caine marry after he was banished for slaying Able " ?! Who were the people of Nod mentioned in Genesis ?! They couldn't have been descendants of Adam.. because Caine was after all cursed and "marked" as a murderer. But Caine found somebody to marry, didn't he !
It says Able was a tender of the flocks, while Caine was a tiller of the ground. After Caine's murder of Able, he was cursed so the ground would no longer yield unto Caine when he tilled it.
Interestingly, archeological evidence shows the milestones of domesticating animals and agriculture appear in different parts of the world. Central Asia is where the first animals were bred as livestock, and the earliest evidence of agriculture is found in Israel according to the University of Jerusalem.
