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{"id":21356,"date":"2018-03-02T20:00:48","date_gmt":"2018-03-02T14:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/?p=21356"},"modified":"2018-03-02T01:52:39","modified_gmt":"2018-03-01T19:52:39","slug":"genesis-teach-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2018\/03\/genesis-teach-science\/","title":{"rendered":"Does Genesis 1 Teach Science?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Then too: \u201cThroughout the entire Bible, there is not a single instance in which God revealed to Israel a science beyond their own culture. No passage offers a scientific perspective that was not common to the Old World science of antiquity.\u201d<\/p>\n

John Lennox (Seven Days That Divide the World<\/em><\/a>, 139-41), who quotes these passages, finds them puzzling. Or worse: He finds them flat mistaken.<\/p>\n

He notes that \u201cthe question whether the universe has a beginning or not has been around for millennia,\u201d and Genesis answers the question in an unparalleled way. Where, he wonders, did Israelites learn their cosmology, if not from Genesis, which didn\u2019t \u201cupdate\u201d earlier cosmologies but \u201cwas uniquely distinct from those cosmologies. . . . In contrast to the view that the universe was made from preexisting gods, Genesis teaches that the universe was created by one God who spoke it into existence from nothing\u201d (140-1).<\/p>\n

The claim that the universe was created by \u201cword\u201d is a \u201cnon-scientific\u201d claim by the standards of modern science, but, Lennox argues, it has scientific import: \u201cThis revelation, that God by his Word imparts energy and information to create and structure the universe, is profoundly new. . . . it converges with some of the deepest insights of a modern science that has come to realize the fundamental nature of information and its irreducibility to matter and energy\u201d (141).<\/p>\n

Walton\u2019s claims assume a particular view of the interests of ancient people, of the nature of science, and of the uniqueness of \u201cmodern\u201d questions and concerns. He concludes that ancients weren\u2019t concerned with the origins of the physical universe, and that therefore Genesis doesn\u2019t address those concerns.<\/p>\n

This looks like an effort to wish away challenging questions with a wave of the hand. It addresses some of the same questions that modern science does, as many readers \u2013 including many ancient ones \u2013 have assumed.<\/p>\n

Scholars have longed claimed that ancients gave mythical answers to scientific questions. Walton won\u2019t even allow his ancients to ask<\/em>\u00a0scientific questions.\u00a0In the end, Walton\u2019s position is, ironically enough, a retread of the old contrast of the contrast of primitives and the enlightened. And there is nothing more modern than that.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"