Four Views on the Historical Adam (Rauser Review)

[jpm (Phil McCurdy)]

Perhaps there is a genetic path, discussed in this thread, showing a genetic trail back to insectivores.

How much did God affect evolution?

What are beneficial exactly? DNA differences? It would be a waste to keep producing genes to digest chitin for humans but it turns out we have one functional copy and three pseudogenes with shared errors between other primates. DNA differences are quite important and paying attention to deactivated genes is really important too:

[Bill_II]

Could this be why some people like to eat fried ants?

[Randy]

I’ve had fried termites. They’re good! They tasted like slightly singed popcorn, I think. Locusts legs taste like French fries. Maybe that tells you something about my genetic makeup with chitin affinity.

[mitchellmckain (Scientist and Christian)]

@Randy

I’ve had fried termites in Africa. They’re good! They tasted like slightly singed popcorn, I think. Locusts legs taste like French fries. Maybe that tells you something about my genetic makeup

This probably tells us more about what kinds of food you eat.

When I went looking to find out what they taste like this is what I found on google:

Raw termites taste like pineapple and cooked termites have a delicate, vegetable flavor . Grubs (which are larvae) of palm weevils taste like beef bone marrow. Fried agave worms (canned in Mexico) taste like sunflower seeds. … A praying mantis, fried over an open fire, tastes like shrimp and raw mushrooms.

Poor substitute for tasting them myself, but such foods are not available locally. The few live praying mantis we encounter are treated with respect as a hunter of garden parasites and so we do not kill them.

[gbrooks9 (George Brooks)]

@PeterWaller

There really isn’t a path to primates from insectivores (just saying)

“Moreover, primates have traditionally been seen as forming a graded series, ranging from primitive lemurs to highly advanced humans. This perceived gradation among primates is allied to the concept of a smooth transition from insectivores — the archetypal primitive mammals — to primates, across an ‘insectivore–primate boundary’.

@PeterWaller

I must confess that I found this first part of the narrative, and to a general degree the entire paragraph as a bit on the wonky side.

First of all: if God is guiding evolution, is there any barrier to any design he is executing?
I think not.

Secondly, this sounds a lot like the wild-eyed refrain of people who say “humans do not come from monkeys”… and then an science presenter has to explain that monkeys are the “end point” of the same millions of years during which all the creatures alive to day had to share on this Earth.

For example… lots of people think THIS creature is a dinosaur. But it isn’t! It emerged, evolved into lots of different types, and then died off, all before dinosaurs ever arrived on the Earth!

The fossil evidence shows that what we call mammals never existed while these creatures were around.

And that these creatures died off… and some new things started to appear… and in a long chain of succession, we eventually come to shrew-LIKE creatures that were small enough for meat-eating dinosaurs to ignore.

Then the asteroid hit… dinosaurs were wiped out … and those darn shrew-like mammals started getting bigger and bigger!

And it isn’t until those shrew-like creatures are all gone… and new bigger smarter mammals start appearing and then disappearing that we eventually see primates appear … where no primates had ever existed anywhere before.

It is my contention that ALL of these changes were led by God. And there are no barriers with God’s guidance!