The Eden Conspiracy

 

The Eden Conspiracy – Paul Wallis

In one of the later episodes of the acclaimed TV series “The West Wing”, we see a conversation between the current president, Jed Bartlett (Martin Sheen) and the front-runner for the office by the opposition, Arnold Vinick (Alan Alda).  They’re talking religion, and Vinick is being honest.  Any candidate for President of the U.S. needs strong convictions of the faith to be successful, yet Vinick confesses his doubts to Bartlett.  Vinick tells Bartlett that when he read the Bible, there was too much famine, injustice, slavery, and conquering of nations for him to come away with any peace.   Bartlett calmly, yet a bit hesitantly, replies “I’ve always been more of a NEW Testament man, myself.”

Nothing more is expounded upon in this episode, but most of us get it.  The New Testament in our Bible is pretty straightforward, yet if we’re honest, the Old Testament is awfully mysterious in places and many apologists have performed masses of hermeneutical gymnastics to try to make sense of a lot of baffling passages throughout the many books. One need to remember that, tragically, we once justified chattel slavery in the United States because it was “permitted in the Old Testament”.

Author Paul Wallis is a Christian, and he served for many years as a church officiate.  Like the fictitious Jed Bartlett, you get the impression he’s a New Testament man as well.  This book is an attempt to make sense of the Old Testament, and his conclusions are rather freaky and a bit far-fetched.  In short, his belief is that the “God” of the Old Testament is not the same God who Jesus refers to as his heavenly father.  I’m no expert, but I believe this sentiment isn’t too far removed from Gnosticism; which holds that there are essentially two Gods.  The followers of Gnosticism suggest the Old Testament God was not good, and the New Testament Good WAS good, and Jesus had secret teachings to help followers overpower the bad one and connect with the good one.

Wallis, though, seems to suggest that the Old Testament God (Gods, actually) were aliens.

Now, this is where my skepticism kicks in.  Wallis seems sincere and well-educated, and there’s no possible way that someone such as myself with limited intelligence around this subject matter can hold my own in an argument.  What I have learned, though, is that the world (through channels like YouTube) has an awful lot of sincere people that have managed to convince the masses of some pretty bizarre things.  All this to say, I came away from this book a lot more entertained than I was informed.  I’ll let the experts devote their knowledge towards said subjects.

This book was a very light read (and free on Kindle Unlimited).  There were many times when Wallis would set up each chapter with a rather long analogy or introduction that seemed a bit unnecessary.  You almost felt he was trying to pad the book.  He’s also had several other “Eden” books (without looking, I’m guessing 4 or 5) and I’d be willing to bet he talks about a lot of the same information in each book.

As bizarre as the author’s thesis goes, I didn’t come away thinking he was some sort of highly-educated quack.  His ideas did allow me to briefly suspend by disbelief, and as I’ve mentioned, the Old Testament has an awful lot of unanswered questions.  So my conclusion is that maybe he really is onto something, and I’m sure there have been others that have speculated some not-so-normal ideas about how the Earth started and where the population originated.  For someone such as myself who is rooted in the faith, it is somewhat comforting to share many of the author’s beliefs about Jesus and God, so that does take a bit of the sting out of the far-out speculations about how the Old Testament originated.

This is a book that, for me anyway, brings up a lot more questions than it does answers, but that isn’t always a bad thing.  In fact, I would argue that the more people know, this translates to the greater the unknown actually is.  I was entertained and I’ve learned not to discount anything that might be different than what the mainstream actually believes.