Since you open it up for “everyone” I will throw in my $0.02.
I think it is important to define what we mean by “helpful” scenarios. To me the scenarios should be evaluated in terms of how well they can reconcile our understanding of evidence from the natural universe with our understanding of evidence from scripture. An integral part of this process is that to some degree our understanding of both should be amenable to change. Neither side wants to, they both want the other side to surrender, but frankly, if its not amenable to change it is not science- and theology should return to being a science as well.
So by this standard, the scenarios which are not ruled out by evidence from either source are the helpful scenarios, and the one which explains and reconciles both the best is the “most helpful”.
This is different from a definition of “most helpful” than one which emphasizes which will best allow the temporary approval of this group or that. What is true is ultimately most helpful, though it may not be in the short run. I can tell you that most Americans are belligerently resentful at the suggestion that they have anything to learn about the Bible, whatever their view on it. There really is no solution that is “helpful” with a group of any size on that criteria.
I interact with a lot of Hugh Ross campers and they are already beginning to wonder about his scenarios which push Adam and Eve 70K to 100K back. And they should. A date like that makes a complete hash of the text. Adam’s immediate descendants were agriculturalists and pastoralists and engaged in metal-working. And you still have the flood to worry about which in his view reduced the human race to a single Y-Chromosome. It has all been discredited by the work of @swamidass et al but this has not filtered out enough to penetrate the psychological defense mechanisms we flawed humans have that prevents us from admitting that our view of the world is incorrect.
No, the only scenarios which are “helpful” as I have defined it here are those which feature 1) Adam as a relatively recent arrival into a planet where other humans lived outside the garden and they are also a part of present humanity’s genetic make-up and 2) have a flood which is regional in scope which does not extinct all of humanity except those in the ark.
Is there a way to view the scriptures which fits these parameters? Yes there is. It is the Christ Centered Model.It is very “literal” and yet at the same time sees the narrative very differently than both YEC and Hugh Ross style OEC. Not because it glosses over apparent contradictions between the text and the natural universe but rather it looks at the text very precisely, with more precision than most “fundamentalist” scholarship.
Regarding the “yuck factor” bear in mind that there is significant evidence that the ancestors of Eurasians bred with Neanderthals. Nature didn’t “like” it, and the truly alien genes are mostly slowly being removed from circulation, but it seemed to have happened way back in time.
There is room for debate as to how God created the initial human population (focus of Genesis 1) even if Adam and Eve (Genesis 2) were formed “de novo”. Dr. Swamidass thinks the evidence points to them evolving from a common ancestor with apes. I think it just looks like that because of the way the creating was done. This realm was a prone-to-error copy of a realm above where things very much did look like evolution, until we get to man. And there is room for stuff inbetween that I have pointed to elsewhere.
The “image of God” stuff is asking the completely wrong question IMHO, but I will not repeat that here. There is still the issue of “likeness”.
So what does it mean to be “according to the likeness” of God? What makes man like God in a way which does not apply to anything else He created or made? I mean what makes us different in kind, not just in degree. For example, you might say that we are more intelligent than animals. OK, but animals can still be intelligent and we are dim bulbs indeed compared to God. If our degree of intelligence makes us different from beasts, it still does not make us “like God.” Our differences in intelligence with the animals are differences in degree, not in kind. The same is true with our use of language, and our use of tools.
No, what separates us from the beasts of the earth in kind is our ability to unite in Spirit with the Divine. The doorway to this unity is embedded in another feature which we possess- an ability to make moral judgements. We have a spiritual aspect or dimension which other living things lack. We can cooperate with one another based not on mere instinct or just mutual advantage for some material need, but because we judge some common cause to be in the right.
Where we are different in kind from the beasts is that humans have the potential to be of one nature with God. Sinful man can only access this potential through membership in the body of Christ, and we sense only the barest glimmer of it in this world, but when we finally become one with Him we will understand how He is one with the Father- one in nature. It is a capacity which beasts completely lack.
I know there has been a debate over to what degree higher animals possess “self-awareness.” Mankind though, goes beyond self-awareness and seeks out true connectedness. We are self-aware, but at our best we are also aware that there is something beyond ourselves, and bigger than ourselves. We can make a choice to connect and serve not out of mere instinct, but by our conscious choice.
We are “religious” by nature. Properly connected, we are capable of accessing a reference point for right and wrong which is beyond ourselves and our interests. This is what truly sets us apart from the higher animals in that here our differences are of kind, not just degree. That man rarely uses this potential does not mean that it is absent.
This is why I am unthreatened by the idea that there may have been hominids, two legged beings, with relatively large brains walking around making some sort of tools back in the dawn of time. I never considered that being “according to the likeness of God” (much less being “in the image of God”) meant having two legs, or a large brain, or even being able to make a flint scraper. That is not what makes us human. If we give up our humanity, I suppose that is what we can degenerate to- apes wearing trousers as C.S. Lewis once put it, but that is not how we were made.
We have a spiritual dimension which permits us to relate to one another and to God in a deeper way than that available to the beasts. If these other creatures did not have that, then they were not made in His image or after His likeness. In Genesis 1:26 God proposed creating something new. That was Man. How He did that, what method He used, we can debate within the framework.