Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Whoa! I can't believe I haven't posted in two months!

The reason(s) I haven't posted, is/are because there are so many excellent health/nutrition/paleo/low-carb blogs out there that it's really hard to come up with something new and useful without sounding like I'm just parroting someone else's work.  I suppose I could resort to the "linkfest" approach, but that would be a cop-out.

However.

Something interesting happened over at Jimmy Moore's blog recently.  Jimmy, ever the perspicacious one, picked up on something that I had noticed and had even wondered about occasionally; can one who believes in the God of the Bible also buy into the "paleo" lifestyle. But beyond just posing the question or posting about it, he asked for input from several well-known bloggers with varying viewpoints.

Here's the conundrum, as "Easy Al" Greenspan might say if he were a reader of health blogs: If the Bible mentions eating bread (wheat, barley), lentils (legumes, called "pulses" in archaic English), and dairy, how can they be "bad" for you? Further, and infinitely tougher for the "saints" (don't get mad at me, that's what the apostle Paul calls ordinary believers), is the question of the special creation of a modern homo sapiens (HS) named Adam as opposed to thousands of millenia of evolutionary adaptation from early homonids to HS. Since the thousands of millenia of adaptation to diet (among other factors, e.g. physical activity) preceded the relatively near term adoption of agriculture about 10 to 15 thousand years ago, an optimally healthy way of eating would preclude or severely limit these "neolithic" foods in favor of older "paleolithic" foods, resulting in improved physical health.

And behold: it works, as evolutionary biology would lead one to expect.

This is a problem if one believes in a Young Earth Creation, in which the entire creation is calculated to be around six thousand years old, based on a literal accounting of various chronologies and date-certain events in the Bible, starting from now and working back. So Jimmy asked these paleo-blogger types to comment, no doubt hoping that by stimulating discussion, light would dispel the darkness.

Uh-uh. Lots of discussion has and is, being stimulated, but not much light has resulted.


Chris Masterjohn, who has more education and insight into our innards in his little finger than I'll ever have in my tiny brain has weighed in on the topic, from the point of view of one who identifies with perhaps the oldest "organized" approach to Christian faith.

Richard Nikoley, whose widely read blog is among the pioneers among paleo bloggers, frequently excoriates anyone who has the temerity to express even a hint of <shudder> faith, and has participated in the discussion on Chris's blog, as well as posting about it on his own.

I think these two pretty well characterize the two opposing camps that responded to Jimmy's request for opinion. This post has gone on long enough, but in case anyone reads this, I'll be back soon to provide some commentary about each of the typical viewpoints above.

As my manager back in the software days used to say, "There might be room for another view".

Hey, he must be right; he was a Mensa dude. Carried the card in his billfold at all times.