“The Lost World of Genesis One”

Back in 2012, I read an interesting book entitled The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2009).  I was distracted from it shortly thereafter by a number of things — 2012 was a very bad year for me, both personally and professionally — but I  just came across some notes that I had made from it.

In The Lost World of Genesis One, the author, John H. Walton, an Evangelical professor of Old Testament at Wheaton College, which is located just outside of Chicago, argues that Genesis 1 isn’t talking about the material origins of life and the cosmos but about their “functional” origin as the celestial temple.

I’m not even pretending to do justice to his position, but it’s of considerable interest from a Latter-day Saint point of view.  And, although he claims (and I think his claim is believable) that his principal goal has simply been to properly interpret the Hebrew text of Genesis 1, he also points out that his position, if accepted, would essentially eliminate the perception of a conflict between Genesis and contemporary science.  From his vantage point, Genesis and science don’t clash over the age of the earth because Genesis has nothing to say about the age of the earth.

It’s an accessible book — there is, I believe, a more academic volume by Professor Walton on the same topic, which I hope to read shortly — that will resonate with interested Mormon readers.  His references to the association of gardens with temples, to the account in Genesis 1 as a temple text meant for regular ritual repetition, and etc., will be new to many, but, in a way, not at all surprising.

***

And now, another salvo in my continuing war against reason and science:

“Investigation finds Swedish scientists committed scientific misconduct”

To which I add:

“Scientific peer review: an ineffective and unworthy institution”

Science is a stunningly effective and absorbingly interesting enterprise.  But scientists are no more demigods than are drama critics, attorneys, athletes, ballerinas, or politicians, and, in practice, ambition and ego and sometimes even dishonesty occur among their ranks just as such unfortunate but very human attributes appear in every other field.

***

On a more positive note, here is one person’s list of

“The Best Science Books Of 2017”

There are several on the list that I hope to read.