The subject of religion is relevant to Paleo dieting in that it can be
used as a reason/excuse to not adopt the diet and even to work against it.
Ray Audette himself wrote on 13 July 1999, "Perhaps the most [difficult]
part of eating Paleo for many is that it's not politically correct.  This
political correctness has it's roots in theological correctness as many
modern religions consider meat eating to be of questionable value."

I have encountered some resistance to Paleo/NeanderThin style eating due
to religious--usually biblical--concerns. However, I don't see Paleo diets
and fidelity to the Bible as necessarily being mutually exclusive, even
for biblical literalists. I point out to people with such concerns that
from a biblical perspective the optimal diet is not the one that Mosaic
law prescribed, but the one that God created in the Garden of Eden. Surely
God would not have a problem with humans returning as much as possible to
the type of diet that they ate for eons from their creation and that all
God's wild creatures continue to eat--a wild food diet.

Bible-based whole-grain diets that are being promoted with books and
products make the mistake of not going back far enough in the Bible.
Instead of stopping with Moses, they should continue back to Genesis and
the natural diet of wild foods in the Garden of Eden. It seems intuitively
obvious that a Christian, Jew or Muslim would recognize that the foods
that God created would be healthier than those that humans manufactured.

There is the problem of why God would encourage people to eat grains, such
as through the reference in Deuteronomy 8:7-8 to "a good land .... of
wheat, and barley," and the breaking of bread at the Last Supper. I am not
a biblical scholar, but this might be explained by practical necessity.
Food would have been scarce without the supplement of grains or modern
technology, so God could be seen here as helping avert starvation. There
is also a Christian and Jewish concept of redemption or atonement through
suffering or sacrifice. A bread and water diet has been used as a form of
pennance and sacrifice.

As to why God would allow the supply of wild foods to be outstripped by
human consumption, there is the story of God expelling humans from the
Garden of Eden for disobedience, so one theological possibility would be
to see this as one of the consequences of "original sin." Free will might
also offer partial explanation to those who do not believe in the doctrine
of predestination, and more liberal interpreters could see the parts of
the Bible that praise grains as the words of men rather than the literal
Word of God or words inspired by God. There are a variety of possibilities
that theologians could ponder.

While the theory of evolution provides great support for the Paleo way of
eating, one does not need to subscribe to evolution to adopt and benefit
from a Paleo diet. There are good theoretical reasons for both
evolutionists and biblical creationists, secular and religious thinkers,
to eat the Paleo/ancestral way. It is better to treat the Paleo diet more
as a win-win proposition, helping as many people as possible, than as
another weapon for the arsenal in debates regarding science versus
religion, evolution versus creationism, and the like.

So let us beat swords into, um, spears and find ways that most of us can
support the type of diet that humans have eaten for millions of years.