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Chapter Twelve

DECISIVE CREATION

The Concept of 'gaps' as if they should be filled,
is Mere Imagination:

Evidence attests Stars of Creation,

also of Creativity

Given Life Episodically

 

It is always best to stick to the evidence.

We have zero evidence of information inventing itself and harassing material things into conformity as we watch (cf. Ch. 11, *8). We have the same regarding billions of transitional or refugee folies, failed products, transitional nightmares, things that did not work, but happened to make themselves in bits, as if the co-ordinates of brilliance were slowly available in bits, which in fact makes it far harder than merely making them co-ordinately.

Zero evidence is that available, for the ways it would have happened, EMPIRICALLY.

Thought says this and that; and it does not happen. Foretells this and that; and it is not found. Evidence is.

On the other hand, using what is, to find a theory, you simply look at what is cognate to the consequence in operative power, system or situation, present the idea and then test it in various outcomes to see if they fit.

It is not at all difficult.

What is difficult is IGNORING the evidence, both positive and negative, and INVENTING things neither found nor operable in principle, insensitive to causative adequacy, irrelevant to actuality and making them fit, like an elephant into a low train carriage, or even a pram.

That is why there is trouble.

Romans 1:17 specifies the cause of the TROUBLE. Man's mind is a fine thing in principle, quite remarkable indeed, not a simple creation but a creative creation, which has spirit which no man can begin to make, since control is its antithesis. Through this facility and function, man is able either to rebel or envisage rebellion or invent reasons for rebellion, or to conform to reality, or instead to some high-paying dictator, or to some other psychic desire that appeals. Since however the spirit back of man's mind - and which can USE or ABUSE it, often trying to make it do what it cannot do, such as the irrational as here - CAN so exercise itself, this being one of its greatest capacities, a certain liberty of thought and of aspiration: then it is not at all surprising that it does so.

It is the same in a phase area, with 'teen-agers. They CAN operate their desideratum dynamic, and invent reasons for drugs, such as rebellion against stuffy-fools called adults, or their parents, or schools, because of maltreatment which may be real or imagined or the conception of resentment at not being able to be as young gods, or indeed for any reason or treason to reason at all. It is not surprising, this being so, that this dynamic can be exercised to their ruin. Disappointment can lead to obstinacy and pride to continuity.

Adults are another phase. Because it is the maturity of the race now, people fully grown that we have in mind, then it is the more humiliating if they take a similar phase as their own, since at such an age, one should know! But people CAN become obsessed at any age, their realisations recessed because of hiding from truth, either because of more adult or more savvy exemplifications of rebellion or resentment or pride or aspirational folies, such as populate the land;  and such things can appeal to some for their very wonder, like the foolish old architectural exhibits of the same kind, in Britain, odd structures, leading to smile, grimace or distaste.

Evolutionism is one of those folies, as some have it, or follies more directly, as appears the norm; and of course there is the French exposition of it. Personally, one prefers folies not only because then the word seems almost in itself to imitate the building, but also because not having other connotations, it is at once clear what one means; whereas 'folly' might be taken simply in a general sense and so lose impact.

There is, then,  in these architectural constructions a type of recklessness, or humour, or exhibitionism, or artistic romancing, with little use except perhaps to surprise or to affirm some notion or lack of notion AS the notion.  It is not only in architecture that mankind has such inclinations, and when it is used in  humour, it can be scathingly satirical, pleasantly enthralling, but never to be taken seriously as it is. It pokes, prods and smiles, or has a wry grin or distempered brow in its heat.

Man is like that. He can do that sort of thing; but teaching it to children is something else ...

In fact, what the garden of the Lord has, if you want to conceive of creation as a garden, is a maestro collection of points, variable points at that, which conglomerate about a point, like a dog tied to a stake, called kind^*2. There are exquisite ways of doing things often brilliant in concept, judicious in application, intensively technical in mode, requiring mathematical disposition and engineering creativeness - if you cease to look at folies of the imagination (this makes even the term look slightly awry, perhaps an import ...), and return to empirical reality. Sober thought finds these ingredients, and it seems that a creative surge was so vast, almost playful at times, so intensive in scope, brilliant in mode, flagrant in felicity, disdaining the ordinary and acting with a fluency of thought and motion which excels all description, that it set like stars in the firmament, its creations here and there, not of course merging into each other, for this is not the evidence, nor submerged into a continuum, but special each one.

It is not gaps in empirical upgrading by billions of brilliant bits which have to wait around till other brilliant bits come, and not degrade, in PRECISELY the opposite way in which such things (though much less) are made by thought-using man: it is not this which we find. It is gaps between items of creation, on the scale of the conceivable,  which come with such an exuberant felicity and unfathomable ability of enterprise, that it is as if the dark night of NO CREATION, or opportunity for creation, is here given this star, this object, this fish or fowl or function, this atom or molecule or organic complex, and now that one.

Precisely as in human creation, but on a scale vast beyond comparison, items are made to take this or that space of conceivable reality - and of course, though we might be able now to conceive of it, this is very different from conceiving of it before it came to be! It is as with stars spatially, there is space about them; so it is with kinds of creatures biologically, there is space around them.

Again, it resembles a book. We might seek to envisage all possible books (and of course would need to be far wiser to do so), and then see which books, distinct, like atoms, here and there have actually taken up position on the scale of the possible. There is neither merging nor continuity: there are items, elements, creations that come, and with however many editions, this is their corner or that.

Denton remarked that in terms of 'nature' the only place where continuity is to be found is in the mind of man. It is the same in the creations of man as in the creation which is 'nature', except for this, that some men have to try to improve their work or works, USING intelligent to make modifications, or complete changes to another technology; whereas we find in 'nature' nothing of either half-invented technologies nor miserable flops, but only what is in supreme sophistication of action, of cells. When the inventor is outstanding and his mastery is mature, then towards this mark he also may tend. With the Almighty, predictably, there are no folies.

There are however scintillatingly clever curses (Romans 5:1-12). Discipline is rarely appreciated, and it was a sorely tried Pharaoh in Egypt of old who had to bear with the 10 plagues. But then he was a literal slave-drive for Israel (a dangerous occupation cf. Isaiah 52) and a promise breaker extraordinaire! Mosquitoes are admirable for fuss and bother of a large dimension from a small scale, and it seems man is getting the idea with mini-buzzing things like insects, which may be used to sally forth into various quarters to afflict. When you fail on man's scale (just read the newspapers on wars, riots, revolts, oppressions for one month, if your stomach can take it), then as time passes and repentance is distanced and does not draw near, you can expect systematic results.

WE are highly systematic in our own construction; and rebukes can take the same form. It is mercy that has protected this world for so long; and it is mercy which will at last protect it no longer as generations arise which so afflict that for many, it would have been better if they, like Judas, had never been born.

But what of the creation per se and not in discipline ?

It is like an artist with many paintings. Now he makes one in this mode, and then, in an ecstasy of creativeness, he puts one beside it in another, sometimes in some contrast, sometimes with subtle differentiation, which nevertheless, becomes a grand divergence. Creations do not merge in empirical fact or in creative mode. They tend to leave certain wakes, make high impact and to be distinctive as was the individual who made them.

They are items of thought, conceptual contrivances, inspirational outlets, imaginative or even impassioned expressions. They may resemble each other, as in a set of volumes, and have an overall significance, like oak and birch, or be so diverse in concept as almost to stupefy at the sheer ebullience behind them, as in orchids which, if you put them in their vast numbers, one beside the other are like points of light. LIGHT is what they have in common; points are the mode in which creativity expresses itself.

They may be joined together, like the races of man, diversified and yet the same, more or less debased or proud, fallen or falling to this or that degree, and yet measurably equipped with the same in psyche, in physiology, in the underlying nature of skin, or the assignment of functions, and immeasurably gifted with the capacity to invent language, to engage in flights of imagination or fights of conceptualised discord,  indeed  man as such is expressive of a whole host of same KIND considerations in the very midst of the differentiation of individuals.

In our world, we have the beautiful in function, in  aesthetics, in heart, in spirit, and the gruesome such as wolves, spiders and snakes, the afflictive such as hosts of marauding ants, moving tempestuously like invading soldiers; we find plagues which are intellectually exquisite in their artistry for trouble-making. We have engineered items to abash our greatest, all just there.

With the creativity there has been magnificence of donation for man, and horror of rebuke or resistance and devastation. Lust and sky-breaking licence as if gods make of mankind something of a tempest in his very self, not only here or there, but in vast congregations of leaders past and present, with more and more enticing powers beckoning many again and again.

For all that, man has been enabled to use his creativities to amazing effect, overcoming decline and destruction, often self-imposed. Thus had there been no World War I or II or III or the increasingly apparent IV, consider the wealth and the power and peace IN DEGREE that might have been, compared with what is!

And this defoliation of the tree of man, it moves with a vast withering of morale, of morals, of spirit, until the ugly becomes obsessively delightful to many, as in the Simpsons or other cynical, sardonic, corrosive, corruptive or dead-pan diminutions of man. Comics are de rigueur dealing with the ugly in mind, spirit or body. It is as if man has become, in increasing cultural measure, obsessed with the ugliness his wars, ways and carefully cultivated philosophical witlessnes have exposed.

In this company, to revert to the testimony of the comics, Charlie Brown usually soars, by comparison with most of the rest, in terms of what is admirable; but this is from way back. Reality has not changed, in its wonder; but perception has done so in a massive swathe of mankind; and cultural man infects man till ghastliness becomes something of an S. I. W., and one constantly abrased.

With the brilliance of construction of things both for our weal and our woe, there is a vast imagination expressed, as one could see in examining the work of any student who could produce such things for a teacher's assessment. It is not chance but choice; not stultified nothingness but enlightened intelligence of an order not met on this earth, that is exhibited. These are the empirical contributions for thought, and this is their nature.

If we call the ones which afflict us, evil, and those that help, good, then there is much of both; but there is a vast and systematic enabling so great for man that his own products attest its overwhelming superiority over the hindrances. When we consider the hindrances which man injects into himself (whether with needles of steel or of philosophy), and add these to those which like plagues confront him, then it is apparent that the evil is not only outside him, but in him. Yet the aspirational, the inspirational, the noble, the sacrificial, the loving, the kind, the vastly heroic, these continue and sometimes mount to the heights, if often so jaded as to harden instead, and become galls and collations of gloom.

Some want to dismiss this, man's follies, as disease; and some  of it may be; and others want to wallow in it. The wise course is to note it empirically, like everything else, and seek to account for it.

Man himself is creative,. It works both ways. He is  prodigious exponent both of good and evil: that is, both of what ennobles and enables the race in peace and accord, concord and actions hard to criticise, wise in concept, apt in performance, and of what destroys, disturbs power and disables potential.

What he faces, he makes. What he endures, he contrives also.

There is of course the greater depth in defining these terms. In fact, without God there IS no feasible definition of good and evil. If it is good for me, is it for you ? if I consider it good for me, am I right ? If it is crucifixion which my enemies desire for me, is this good, for will it lead them to repentance ? and repentance to what ? to making life an idol, so that its continuation is all that matters ? Why should this be good ? Or making it a nothing, so that its discontinuance becomes unimportant, as if the most valuable vital things were by principle of some egregious kind to be devalued!

Is it what a society or nation or religion calls good, to be deemed so, though conflicting with other stabs at it ? It can call away, shriek or shout its wares; but this, by itself,  is mere opinion and a perspective applied UNLESS, that is, the religion defining 'good' (just one letter different from 'God') be one which finds the Creator of all these things.

If it does find Him in fact and in very deed, verified and validated, for are not given minds for nothing but to use them:  then good becomes His will and bad what is against it. But what if He be bad, that is, misaligned to man and plotting his demise in agony, for example ?

Let us be systematic. Is this however 'bad' ? In what way ? It is cruel and vile and desecrative. Is that bad ? Certainly, If the creation is good, that is bad.

Why should the creation be good ? Only if the Creator is good. Why should the Creator be good ? It is because His is the gift of life with all that is required for it, which is a prodigious assemblage or astronomical, biological, physiological, psychic, designations and destinations both of thought and spirit, and of actuality, deeds.  Since His is the role of making all systems (otherwise you have a result without a cause), and of causality itself in our delimited schema, as of everything else (for nothing is not good at making things and inadequacy does not prove adequate for it, so you need what it takes), His is the definition of 'good'. There is no control or constraint over Him.

Does that however make Him good ? As eternally adequate for all, since otherwise nothing would have no results and inadequacy would not have the ones we have: this means that there is nothing He lacks (for who would impose it), and no system which lets Him crave for what He does not have (for who would institute it), so that the use of creation to sate unfulfilled appetite in the Creator of all is a contradiction in terms. Even if you want a system of creators, you have to have the One to make the system so that they can communicate. He has only to give, to instruct.

Co-operation with Him is therefore good. How good however is He ? Could one imagine or seek to institute something better ? A person could try this, but would be limited by being typed and contained, limited and constrained already, by being imperfect both morally and physically and intellectually, and hideously incompetent by comparison with what is attested in the works of his Creator, not least Himself.

But what kind of good would one seek ? Competence ? good. Control of evils ? excellent. But what about plagues ? Yes, but which ones, those FROM man or FOR him  ? What about the sins of man, the failures and follies ? Since God is not seeking return for psychic follies, having made none, having no needs either systemic or incidental, and has only to give and express Himself, lacking no facet or feature, consequential or aspirational: then there is one other source for man's follies. It is man.

It is important to be empirical here. Man CANNOT change himself, as the history of philosophy and politics all too well attests; and how could he, since another made him with a mind infinitely beyond his; and as to man, when autonomous,  his apparatus IS man, except that you could scarcely call man's spirit an apparatus, but the principle is similar: his apparatus and capacities then.

God is needed to remove the self-inflicted counter-creation actions of man. This brings us to religion, and to what in this site is deemed meta-religion: that is, that one and only empirical exhibit, for mankind, of a testable claim to have a plan, a schema, indeed a salvation come from deity. It is in the Bible as shown in the testimonies and references of the preceding Chapter, which cites some of the volumes and sets of volumes on this site, dealing with these matters in detail.

Hence we look into this validated and verified exhibit (just as we looked into the creative 'stars'), the Bible,  and we find that in fact God loves us. You could not complain about that, and it looks as if there is room for removal of the evils which are counter-creational. This proves to be the case, and as one finds in Galatians: God became man at a specified time in order to remove the curse which man's chosen sin has produced, by bearing it, so sating justice and satisfying truth. There is nothing sleazy about God. We find that this was done once only by one only, called Jesus Christ and that in love He has provided a relationship with Himself which includes wisdom and grace and truth and a peaceful heart, though there are many incidents to face, and there is much growth to come (Hebrews 1-2, 7, 9-10, John 10).

There then is the good, the God who is good, who not only makes a created thing which has things pro- and contra-life to seek at will, but one which has vitality and potential; for He allows it liberty to love and then loves it enough to overcome in His own self the follies which result from liberty's abuse. If goodness needs exemplar as well as logical ground, both are found here.

This is very good, consistent, coherent, rational, wise and patient. It enables life to flower and to flourish; but since the evil is still world-wide, and only some come to Him to be saved from the evil and its source, there is much to be done while the world successively, in stages, wilts and perishes. It does not like this; and so it constantly aborts good and misnames it, calling evil good and good evil (as in Isaiah 5). It does this, because it is divorced from its God and seems to relish rebellion rather like a bad child in a class; but here it is the class itself which is the problem!

It will go, this created world (Matthew 24:35). The Creator and those who love Him and so find His remedy delightful to possess, these stay. It is with Him, ultimately, they stay, since the world having gone (as in II Peter 3, Revelation 20 also), it is with its Maker that room is to be found. In fact, He is to create a new heavens and a new earth (Rev. 20, Isaiah 65). But what of those who join Him in heaven ? These remain like stars, points in the spaces of what might have been; and in this case, they even are ... Here are 'books' written, that last. Praise God for that.

So He gives to His people food and drink, spiritual food and drink, not mere philosophy, but empirical evidence, not only in word, but in deed, and not only through those who love Him, but by Himself who loved, and in person endured what He prescribed millenia in advance, and performed to the last detail He predicted.

Thus He performed what nothing at the time or since has ever been able to dismiss, delete or abort. God has come onto the tarmac, as it were, landed and lived and died and risen from the grave where the grace of man saw fit to fit Him out; and in so doing, He has attested in personal mode the things, testable things, He has for so long said in written mode.

For this world, the writing is on the wall; for His own, it is on the heart (Hebrews 8:8ff., II Corinthians 3:3).

NOTES

*1

See: The gods of naturalism have no go! including SMR pp. 200 - 236, TMR Ch. 1.

*2

See ASP  5, News  74; The Defining Drama Ch.  10.

More recent findings indicate that there does indeed appear to be a programmatic contrivance to facilitate operations within a kind, enabling a kind of variety: apparently some of this existing in the non-coding DNA. It is set in fixity but by adroit techniques enables interchanges which vary about a point. Material on this point is given in Dr Sarfati's Refuting Evolution Vol. 2. In this way, the brilliance of type and individual, kind and category and varieties of that kind, through brilliant mathematically apt contrivances,  come like an art exhibition, to the illuminated eye of man. Over here are the Raphaels, you can tell them, over there the Constables, they have their own type. Within that, each picture is one; and the surging waters of creativity do not alter this. Each depiction is singular. Nothing merges, just as kinds do not find new information, but merely rotate about their potentials as constructed and delimited by the system in which it inheres.

With this, we may remind ourselves of the concept of ectype: that special spirited feature which some of the higher animals have, not for verbalisable conception, but for individualised performance which can be so inspired by man that you have ... in a word, sheep dogs of distinction! Beyond that, man himself, a type, has a spirit capable of conceiving realities and testing the conceptions verbally and experimentally. Variations are not in type OF man but FROM man, whose mind, indeed whose billions of minds, show constantly and considerably their power to invent and distort, or to respond and report; and to relish or to manipulate truth, itself with no meaning without that self-same Creator whose basis for all gives measurable and ultimate assessment for any. Being always what He would be, having no limits and being author of that time which forces delay - but nothing forces Him - He not only knows the beginning but the end of the story called mankind, and of the individual 'characters' in the drama.

He knew it before the beginning (cf. Ephesians 1:4, Isaiah 46:10). Actually, it is to Him that man must go, and if he is to love as God loves, then all is well. That all is not well is a consequence in large measure of this fact, that love has become replaced by bitterness, twittiness, lustful litigation, selfish squandering of gifts, even the love of God. What does not work, is working; and so there is disaster as with a vast airliner which falsifies the computer print-out by vagaries, in its own name. Man has the power to do this; but not the wisdom to avoid it. Life becomes sad in man, when the bad in man has no remedy. When the remedy Christ achieved, as foretold, IS applied, then life soars into spirituality and godliness and there is the great sight: the children of God in this wicked world! It will not last: either the sight of it in this world, or the world.

But it is very good while it does; for many more may so find the Saviour, and many will themselves, we read, shine like the stars. Light gives: it is not possessive. Grace helps. But when these are despised, avoided or ignored, judgment sits.