![\"Giverny,](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2018\/05\/Giverny_-_panoramio.jpg\")
<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n
***<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Some time ago, I read an interesting book entitled The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate<\/i> (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2009).<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n In it, the author, John H. Walton, an Evangelical professor of Old Testament at Wheaton College, just outside of Chicago, argues that Genesis 1 isn\u2019t talking about the material origins of life and the cosmos but about their \u201cfunctional\u201d origin as the celestial temple.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I don\u2019t even pretend<\/em> to do justice to his position here, but it\u2019s of considerable interest from a Latter-day Saint point of view.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 From his vantage point, Genesis and science don\u2019t clash over the age of the earth because Genesis has nothing to say<\/i> about the age of the earth.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s an accessible book \u2014 there is a more academic volume by Professor Walton on the same topic, which remains on my list of books that I should read soon \u2014 that will resonate with interested Latter-day Saint readers.\u00a0 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 should, in a way, not be at all surprising to many of us.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n ***<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI am a creationist\u00a0<\/b>and<\/i><\/b><\/span>\u00a0an evolutionist. \u00a0Evolution is God\u2019s, or Nature\u2019s, method of creation. Creation is not an event that happened in 4004 BC; it is a process that began some 10 billion years ago and is still under way.\u201d<\/b> \u00a0(Theodosius Dobzhansky [\u0424\u0435\u043e\u0434\u043e\u0301\u0441\u0438\u0439 \u0413\u0440\u0438\u0433\u043e\u0301\u0440\u044c\u0435\u0432\u0438\u0447 \u0414\u043e\u0431\u0440\u0436\u0430\u0301\u043d\u0441\u043a\u0438\u0439] [d. 1975], famous Ukrainian-American geneticist and evolutionary biologist, principally at the California Institute of Technology and Columbia University)<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n ***<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Allan Sandage (1926-2010) was one of the most influential astronomers of the twentieth century. \u00a0A graduate of the California Institute of Technology and the leading prot\u00e9g\u00e9 of Edwin Hubble, he discovered the first quasar and was the first to determine reasonably accurate values for the \u201cHubble constant\u201d and for the age of the Universe.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Later in his life, he became a fairly outspoken Christian.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n This is what Sandage said. \u00a0This is what Allan Sandage said:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n It was my science that drove me to the conclusion that the world is much more complicated than can be explained by science. It is only through the supernatural that I can understand the mystery of existence.<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n ***<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cBut science has given us new eyes that allow us to see down to the deeper roots of the world\u2019s structure, and there all we see is order and symmetry of pristine mathematical purity. . . . \u00a0The universe looks far more orderly to us now than it did to the ancients who appealed to that order as proof of God\u2019s existence.\u201d\u00a0<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n Stephen M. Barr, Modern Physics and Ancient Faith<\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n ***<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cScience and religion are two windows that people look through, trying to understand the big universe outside, trying to understand why we are here. The two windows give different views, but both look out at the same universe. Both views are one-sided, neither is complete. Both leave out essential features of the real world. And both are worthy of respect.\u201d<\/b> \u00a0Freeman Dyson (b. 1923), English-born theoretical physicist and mathematician, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n ***<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cHumans think they are free, conscious beings, when in truth they are deluded animals. At the same time they never cease trying to escape from what they imagine themselves to be. Their religions are attempts to be rid of a freedom they have never possessed. In the twentieth century, the utopias of Right and Left served the same function. Today, when politics is unconvincing even as entertainment, science has taken on the role of mankind\u2019s deliverer.\u201d<\/strong> \u00a0 (John Nicholas Gray, British political philosopher)<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Gray believes human volition and morality to be illusions.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n However, in that light, one wonders why \u2014 beyond the fact, of course, that he had no choice not<\/i> to do so \u2014 Dr. Gray bothered to write a book seeking to convince us that we have no free will and that moral values are illusory.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n What would it mean, if we\u2019re in the iron grip of necessity, for him to \u201cpersuade\u201d us? \u00a0Does he think it would be \u201cgood\u201d if we were persuaded? Why? \u00a0How?<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n And from what would science \u201cdeliver\u201d us? \u00a0Is he serious? \u00a0How can science, a human creation, \u201cdeliver\u201d us from an amoral world? \u00a0And in what would that \u201cdeliverance\u201d consist? \u00a0Can science make us free? \u00a0Can it create good and evil? \u00a0I doubt that Gray intends this, but I suppose that science can deliver us from nihilism, amorality, and determinism by vaporizing us.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n When Gray writes of humans as \u201cthey,\u201d is he unconsciously seeking to exempt himself? \u00a0Does he believe that his own<\/i> consciousness is an illusion? \u00a0Does it make any sense to believe that one\u2019s own consciousness is illusory? \u00a0How would one entertain such a delusion without being conscious?<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n So many questions!<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n