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CHAPTER 5
CREATION:
Discriminating Dynamics
in Methodical, Meaningful and Pregnant
Presentations:
The Work of the Creator Attests
Delight in Innovation Amidst Fixity,
Fluidity in Little Things, Grandeur in the Great
There is a light in creation, which above and beyond its multi-purpose probes, challenges, miniaturisation, wit and wisdom, attests a certain nobility of mind, majesty of method multiplication, precision of attainment along with a liberty amidst fixity,
Such things entered into our thoughts in Ch. 2 above:
One of the things that makes brilliant architecture patent is its symmetries and curves, its cohesion of concept or style, its artistic interpretation of its field, its complementarity of treatments, as of one mind, which knows what is in it! In the Bible, you find much of just the same characterisable overall style and design. It is fitting therefore to consider these elements in their mutuality and simplicity, as also in their depth, but in this case, with emphasis on the overall sweep and completeness for the householder, in this instance, mankind.
Now we consider created things in more detail, for symmetries that speak, contrast that shout, ironies that testify, myriads that magnify and mind sets which exhibit the wonder of the glory of God: just in His creation!
You look at the clouds. They come in shimmering, exquisitely lacy, multi-layered imponderables of light and pattern, wonder and artistry, unpredictable concentrates and powers, storms of grandeur and shimmers of delight. At night, the sunsets can come for many days without lapsing, exploitations of light, wonders in aesthetic composition, distractions in nubilous dynamics, fleeting, flitting, staying with embers, erupting with minor marvels, subsiding to rest, astute in wonder, each a picturesque glimmer from glory; and dawns no less, can anoint the earth with such tentative fingers, removing darkness as when one opens a Christmas present, and finds within what is sent: and for what, when as in the morning, it is the day that is sent.
You consider the wild flowers which without either cultivation or watering in any systematic manner, as in a garden, continue over the millenia; yet they may come in things too minute to see, or vast in multiplied flowering bushes, to cover the earth like a robe, embroidered with petit point. They proliferate in profusion, they anoint the earth, they come in bush modes and in tiny methods, in multiple faces with tiny variants of colour in one overmastering design, multiple in min-patterns, amazing in their divergences, one from the other, in their fixities, one relative to the other, like individuals in a crowd, but here, aggregating as flowers.
You look at the humour and irony: man can
become so fat and porcine, like the Empress pig in Wodehouse's wit, a silent testimony;
be so vaporous, like the butterfly;
have such flightiness as the horses can in their play;
such sloth, as in the sloth, almost incredibly indifferent to too much motion;
be noisily empty, like the braying donkey - and SUCH a hee-haw he has that he might be a lord or a union boss, or a dictator or a sergeant-major of the acrid kind, so often found in preparing troops to have that willingness to obey;
be so arrogantly assertive with assumptions of power, like the pawing bull,
so craftily flippant like the mischievous monkey, not above theft,
so incessantly busy in systematic marvels or organisation,
yielding to no individuality at all,
like the ant, or the termite, where even sacrifice of some 'soldiers' to save the nest is by routine and method, as the openings are closed behind them, and they delay the invaders;so industriously astute, like the bee, which dances out his code of direction,
to show the group
where resources of food or drink are to be found, whose assignments are measured, energy and power given for each one, whose hind legs have buckets
for pollen to be dispersed, even while he unwittingly proceeds to find his nectar;so callow as the pup;
so moody as the Burmese cat, or evocative as the strangely communicative Siamese,
so assured as the lion,
foolish as the boobies,
peaceful as the dove,
intrusive as the honey eater,
abusive as the bob cat,
intemperate as the hyena,
masterful as the lion,
slithery as the leopard,
sensational in speed like the cheetah, for a time,
so magnificent in flight, like the seagull, sensational in adaptation as it is to the winds,
so tricky as the Venus plant, trapping those who are attracted,
heartless as the vine, which strangles slowly its host tree,
solid as the oak, tasseled in beauty of conduct, strong in resistance, tender in Spring:
that he is held up to humour, rebuke, rebuff or adulation as the case may be,
the very scope of natural life a kind of commentary on the king,
the human race,
now so debased that almost any treachery,
ambition to rule the world,
dispersal by blood,
dangerous dynamic dream of no base but blather,
can take hold like brambles on the hill,
and ruin life like a mould in bread.
Man's thoughts that breach things profound, covering ground and reaching the destination in seconds, like lightning, and then sound their own greatness, like thunder, and in the process lead to the death of many; and his self-importance can leave the whale a monument to self-effacement by comparison.
Yet his thoughts can excavate the conceptions and law impelled into nature, by the creative capacity for such laws in the law-maker. They are not only there, but able to be 'read' by man, the commands reconstructed; yet still many do not see that this is far greater testimony to intelligence than whole volumes from some celestial dump in outer space. You CANNOT have BOTH conceptually based and articulable action and capacity to read the same, in a dual and mutual system, except not only conceptualisability, but capacity to decode, understand, unravel, desymbolise into detailed communication be both present and susceptible to mutual embrace. No matter what configuration of particles you may find, it is NOT a MERE configuration when it comes to life, but a series of COMMANDS, integrated into a SYSTEM which RELATES, so that the underlying code is systematically correlative with itself always (there is one language in life's code), with its components, exponents and eventual results.
It is one moreover susceptible to intelligent reading as intelligible, effectual, in dizzying complexity not only declaring the details and the oversight modes, as in what was once called 'junk' DNA, the site especially for information about information, its modes and ways, meta-information. Thus the INNER systematics, and all the internal correlations implied, and the OUTER systematics of human beings equipped to read it out and objectify its code into meaningful messages and orders, all become one module, each connected to its own moorings: life and its ways, man and his determinations of what is afoot, embrace like lovers.
Mere combination of dots of some stuff, material element, sub-atomic part and the like, is merely a beginning. For life they have to have conceptualisability correlative to code, integrality, for effectuality of code, uniformity of language, for normalisation of expression, susceptibility of the normalisation for inspection and presentation in verbal readouts by those desiring to do this, among men: and it is altogether such a venture into magnificence of profile, acuity of command, comprehensiveness of moulding, singularity of resultant (as in man, or tiger, or water lily), and to have and be all this, as applicable, in such a style that an entire inter-systematics of various types and degrees of comprehension and reciprocity, initiative and response is available, that is in view in actuality.
We have before us, in our purvey, the mind that made the laws, and caused the language, and made the power to impress code and have it comprehensible in symbolically definable language (such as English), and to construct the bits that are built, whether in electrons for atoms or nerve cells for communication, or mind for inspection or spirit for decision, and to have them assessable for purpose and systematic and vertically ascending integrality, and the mind that reads them, finds them and conceptualising them, reads the concepts in conceptual language.
This creative activity of the Maker of Matter and Mind is found to be characterisable.
It is vast in novelty, incomparable in innovative work within a system, with both intra-systematics by which applications ramify intensively, and ultra-systematics by which they extend vertically, so that organs become specialised for contribution to stature and the totality of human function, just as electrons, protons and neutrons, within the electromagnetic, gravitational and temporal fields have their place in the overall and sustaining powers that limit and lead, involved and deployed in the construction and constriction of systems which result in a unity greater than the parts: the norm of design. The norm is in form, function, system and furtherance of unity for oneness of some kind, overall.
Thus, when you have written 10 volumes on the detail of the human body, and its flourishing norms of type and differentia of individuality, its linguistic basis and engineering strategies, you still have the mind just used to do this, to discover itself to you, for what it is. You use it, your own mind; then you look at it, which you use, and start all over again.
It can read the mind of the maker of the systems, decode the brilliance of orders internal to the proto-type factory, and apply this knowledge to upkeep as the design deteriorates through abuse over time, and usage in time clamouring over the strength of sustainability. It can see how the Creator coded His creation, and find both at the micro and macro levels, the modes of deployment of dynamics in multiply interactive and reactive ways which is the heartland of design, of flair for innovation in its almost indescribable complexities, and magnificently describable resultant, whether in the sea gull with its almost still wings, flying hither and thither, almost into the wind, poised and balanced, deftly utilising the work of ten thousand hours of constant application by those who would want to make a robotic flier to do the same, but who would fail ignominiously even to approach the sheer fluidity of motion and finesse of flight, delicate, not impersonal, effortless, ingenious.
Mind is not suggested; it is ingested; and in those who read it, this is not hoped for, but obtained. These are the works of intelligence, creation, design of course, being perfect fulfilment of the definition (cf. Ch. 2 above, and Deity and Design ... , Repent or Perish Ch. 7); but there is far more to it.
These are the works of a Maker with sheer delight in the extraordinary, subjecting it to intra-systematics, allowing it fastidiously available individual applications, decisions, resolutions of problems, meeting of crises, with developments that can be differentiated, for example those between a mut and a marvel, a dog of sacrificial beauty, loving his master, and a yapping cur.
There is goodness, as in the amazing self-sacrifice of parents in many of the creations, and hatred, as in the vengeful fulminations of the maddened elephant; there is nobility as in those who gladly serve to deliver others; there is fluidity in systematics, as in thought, there is pathology of mind, as in the ever debating neurotic, a sort of flamboyance in the spiritual world, like a departing star. Things have their courses for conduct, and at the appropriate levels, their fashions for fatherhood and motherhood, their modes for interpretation as in man and dog, who see and consider and ponder and act, and they make up their minds, which in the case of man, reach to the level of reading life's codes, where these are found to be relevant, or entertaining the meaning of the resultant unities, donkeys or pigs, bees or ants, birds or dinosaurs, which are wonders of wit and wisdom, of grossness and small-headed gauntness, lithe of limb and small of brain, for man is able to ponder at multi-level assessment, the condition of the whole.
It is a marvel of system, and a tragedy of its misuse. It is a diversification of individuality in a constraint of types or kinds. It is a proliferation of innovation amid a severity of system*1, it is an exhibition of the most elaborate aesthetics, amidst scenes of eloquent disgust. It is admirable and stirs the heart; and it contains the revolting, which unveils the soul. It is grist for the idealist, and grit for the melancholy; for it is neither hiding the evil nor evacuating the good, deterring the sight of ruin or removing the splendour of attainment.
 |
Wonderful are man's powers, functions, features,
codes and liberties, even to insult the maker of the very codes which enable him
to attest his drift of thought; |
|
|
horrid are man's misuses of his powers, to dictate, to dominate, to trick, deceive, be heartless, exploit, ignore feeling and feature, misuse tenderness, indulge every hidden drive, scatter glory like an ill-wind, and tempestuously trap and ruin what he will. |
For all this man is responsible; and his power to dispose his own will, because it is not a trap but an opportunity, its means and principles chosen amid the multiplicity of approaches available to him, together with his unobliteratable sense of guilt, built on the same, become his scourge when he is left in his muddle. Otherwise, when he comes right, and gains sight of his total situation in all its parts, and receives its meaning, and therefore his salvation by this same Maker, who is no muddler, it becomes his joy.
When he comes to the Book of the Lord (Isaiah 34:16*2), and the Lord of the Book in Jesus Christ (SMR Ch. 6*3), and the invitation beyond codes, but communicated for all that, to the individuality of appeal, and the responsibility of response, then man in the image of God comes into the light, even if he chooses darkness (John 3:19). Even that darkness may be seen for what it is, in the light! It does not spare, this light (John 1:9-13, 8:12, 9:3-5, 15:21ff.); but it spares those who receiving its gift, and becoming filled with light, do not stoop to the stupour of self-contradiction, asserting each one what he denies can be found, the truth: for these receptors are conveyed to the kingdom of truth, where love abounds, where redemption replaces revolt, and what is revolting is replaced with what is a wonder, where creativity is sound, and squalor found insupportable, and so, test concluded, no more supported that it might show its talons, its teeth and its woes (cf. Revelation 21:8), and so its very nature, and accordingly be despised (cf. Daniel 12:2).
NOTES
EXCURSION
On Innovation, System, Salvation, Signification,
Creation, Style and Realism
There is not only a fascinatingly brilliant innovative wonder about the sophisticated technology apparent in the creation, but there is a certain almost rampant realisation of multiple means towards tasks, vast originality of procedure, staggering scope of things minute and vast, ineradicable mastery, as in the submarine suckling of whale calves, the variety of poison injection systems and the flourishes of avine aviation procedures, inbuilt guidance systems and aeronautical prowess, where singularity of purpose, or something near to it, is met with intensive exhibits, as if in an architectural exhibition of house styles, of what is both hi-tech and ingenious in conception. Moreover, as in the operation of great minds, great simplicities can be found amid the complexities, as when a type of process, procedure or sub-unit in some vital constructions is used now in this creature, now in that. This has been called in SMR, deliberative design, and an excerpt on this and surrounding topics of relevance here, follows.
DELIBERATIVE DESIGN - EXTENSION Q
Indeed, we could go further. There is in evidence a supreme independence within creation. Just as similar creations, products, may be constructed (as we have just noted Denton has shown) with diverse principles; so too may most diverse objects employ similar modules (cf. Denton, op.cit. pp. 109-110). Such is the genius of creativity: untamed, exuberant, intelligent. Through versatility, neither is art enslaved by method, nor is technique dimmed in brilliance in the presence of art.
Dr Evan Shute in his brilliant work, FLAWS IN THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION, p. 169, mentions Onychophora, a class of creature resembling an annelid in "having more regularly arranged nephridia, something not seen in insects. But it has tracheae, like simple forms of those used by insects and centipedes - something worms never have". He mentions Peripatus, with body-wall musculature like that of worms - but resembling insects in having TWO pairs of appendages serving the mouth. Such composites do not "fit the tidy taxonomies of biologists", but a "living form can share the morphology of other lowly types without being related genetically". This of course is wholly contrary to evolutionary expectation, as Shute observes.
Likewise Shute mentions the "independent origin of eyes in so many phyla, or of breasts in the three subclasses of mammals, for example the Monotremes, Masrsupials and Placentals." To this he adds: "And yet the mammae of the Monotremes differ from the rest fundamentally".
Again Shute (op.cit. p. 81) notes the similarities of eyes in man, octopus and cow; and indeed they are "cast" in for their roles with a delicious freedom attached to unwitherable technical skill. Just as product and intelligence criteria are met, definition fulfilled (*46 supra), so here we have an a fortiori development. What then would be correlative to product presentation, and the exercise of intelligence ? Why this: Freedom of thought and creativity in the process!
In other words, while there is nothing here in favour of any concept of ORGANIC transmutation, what IS discernible is something of a different order or nature altogether. It is DELIBERATIVE DESIGN. Whole networks of order and design (that could in this be compared to exhaust systems or carburettors in motor cars - though those would be enormously simpler - finely milled to a low level of tolerance) may be transferred to other uses AND adjusted or specifically developed, so covering, now in this creature, now in that, certain features for the individual.
That is the fact. Moreover, neither the mechanism for the organic theory nor the transition series to illustrate, appear. If one reviews definitive statements by specialist after specialist, one reads that ABSENCE of such transitions is deplorable or frustrating or mysterious or challenging or a major problem, or the major problem, or systematic...
We have reviewed such declarations not a little. It is all there: there is no mystery about that. The cries seem to come more and more from the heart of unbelieving scientists.
Not only is there a whole series of different suggestions about these gaps. We have attested that they are an avenue to a) increasingly divergent and b) increasingly ridiculous theories, even in the eyes of others of the evolutionary faithful. This is one of the greatest areas of chaos this ludicrous fantasy of evolution supplies.
All the time, what the evidence is actually exhibiting here is creative interchange of elements of design, new uses with variation of complex functional units, interesting recombinations of custom-built variations of original equipment. What the evidence shows indeed is this: that simplicity is NOT required for the more lowly creatures (ONE cell is a living monument to astute complexity and an organisational inter-relationship, reminding one in miniature - but beyond that in marvel - of the British World War II war-effort, in its interstices and co-operation, and direction).
Even Cambrian trilobites - therefore supposedly in the early orders of biological life - not merely have eyes (equipped to perform a task per se specialised in its nature and in its contribution); but, indicates Parker (CREATION - The Facts of Life, p. 92), many were possessed of visual apparatus highly sophisticated in its specifications. Indeed, Gould (Wonderful Life, p. 227) considers them to be "deep in the lower Cambrian", while Shute (Flaws in the Theory of Evolution, pp. 5-6) deems them "highly organised", displayed in "earliest Cambrian rocks", and possessed of "a complex respiratory system".
Further in overwhelming virtual fossil satire, this group of creatures is found in abundance! The facts mock the theory of evolution. (Cf. p. 110 supra.) So far from its being required by them, it is lampooned, parodied, burlesqued. They, the facts, are its deadly enemies. And these, they minutely follow creation, rather like a sophisticated assembly plant, with simple jobs done with complex concepts, and collaborative equipment units.
As with the work of any great designer, even relatively simple models, then, can convey a depth, a meticulousness and - one could say - a majesty of scope and mastery. Indeed in the actual case of life, the majesty is there, even where the things are simple.
In this way, God is quite evidently and actually attested; and the alternative is evidently and actually denied. For the theoretical and logical and linguistic elements, see under 'Design', in various contexts.
Design is the name of the game. Mathematically, systematically, logically, evidentially, inferentially, the case is this: the criteria of design are satisfied, and the criteria of non-design are not.
Nor is this all. The ways - well-rehearsed in human life ... the criteria of creativity make their own intimate impress, wear the subtle forms of authenticity.
Creatively in conformity with all of this technical wonder is another wonder: it is the exuberant surge of enormous variety of life, of form, type, triumphantly splashed onto the early Cambrian canvas. This astounds the greatly impressed Gould (loc.cit.), who stresses the subsequent "decimation", loss, narrowing of life left, time 'creating' a constriction of life, not abundance.
Creative design has the force of consistent realism. Its absence is an assumption which aborts facts (even in the draping of an alien theory!), insults science and accounts for the evidence by invoking an irresistibly ineffective ghost, which superintends just such LOSS as a first creation would predict.
What happens is the opposite of what is imagined; what is imagined is just the opposite of what happens.
Similarly, in the field of language - of which DNA is a subtype of its own (cf. Jesus Christ, Defaced ... Ch. 4), with rules of articulation to make for effective results - and in particular the language of man, there is a series of requirements which demand system and signification, integrated and cohesive conceptual force, and as in the spread of creation's methodology, so here is the other side: the intensity of its commanding concepts that produce investigable intelligence of the works of correlative type. The coded grounds and the visible results, the productive and the produced, stand in two kinds of collated and correlated mastery.
Thus man's systems of thought cohere with those evidenced in creation, and the former can read the latter. The language of thought is mutual, the codes for its production are recognisable, and the consequences relate to these causes, whether in man's being created, or in his being creative. It has to be done well of course, and man's multiplied and often frustrated efforts stand in mute contrast to the lack of throw-always, failed products, which do not work, on the part of the Almighty. By multiple constraints and assignations of meaning are thoughts, ideas, transferred to expressible system, and when there is added power, then are these transferred to correlative reality: the creation from whatever source.
To ignore the field, the cosmos of action, is the opposite of science which always looks for the closest correlation of cause and effect, casting about until it fits, with nothing contrary left over. Logically, it is simply to void causation (cf. Causes), rational grounds for which can only be provided in causative terms; so producing an alogism, a movement into the field of pure irrationality. This is fine to talk of, but not to use for coherent speech, or ground for argument. It becomes then mere vacuous religion, against evidence and reason alike.
On this theme, the following is also taken from SMR, this time from pp. 252Eff..
THE QUALITY OF INTELLIGENCE: CODES, CONCEPTS AND CHAOS.
i) The Quality of Intelligence
Intelligence must not be confused with wisdom, or even rationality when it comes to man's ascertaining and verifying his own source, his own life. Even on the visible side, life in fact - as is the case with many complex, semi-automated, man-made designs - though wonderfully responsive to demands, is active on a rigorous, conceptual, logical and linguistic foundation.
Many thinkers - wilfully without such a base when they direct their normally rational thoughts to this area, in their own voided thought world - idly fantasise life, like little children looking at the work of their parents, yet without understanding. Not in innocence, however, does such ignorance persist to adulthood: casuistry replacing causality, and magic, the work of mind. (Cf. pp. 88, 112-113, 117-169 - esp. pp. 138-141, 202-203, 208-214; 621; Ch. 1 supra; Ch. 3 infra.) It is still logically insufferable to estrange the necessary and sufficient criteria of intelligence from the arena for the play of the word; and vice versa. (Cf. pp. 113-116, 141, 210-211, 251-252G, this work.)
ii) Codes, Concepts and Chaos
As to various sequences, credited with various powers: if in the given case, intelligence confers them, that is well. It is not the case in point in this: that we do not SEE that happen. We act on what is already credited to our life accounts; we simply proceed.
If, then, intelligence seizing upon an ordered system with conceptual implications, with inherent conceptualisable laws, formulable codes, explicable in terms of concepts, wishes to address conceptualised considerations to it, from the case in point, it differs in this. We see it happen, are spectators.
Thus if one is writing, then one could talk of certain sequences of print dots which make up certain letters, and certain sequences of letters which make up certain words, and certain sequences of words which make up certain sentences, and certain sentences which make up certain paragraphs, and certain paragraphs which make up certain monographs, and start all over again on certain sequences of dots... and so on, which in the end make up certain words which make up the bibliography.
Again, as readers, we search it for the underlying defining intelligence; as writers there are underlying items which are managed to the point for our purpose by intelligence, using concepts which are researchable in Ph.D. theses or by Central Intelligence codal specialists, to show what they are; and then these are verified or otherwise and so on. Mind is searching for its prototype, or its parallel, as the case may be; its co-ordinative correlatives in matter. In the process, it often errs, which matter abhors, since it merely does - and error is irrelevant to it.
All this is well, but it is wholly beside the point if it or anything even remotely like it were surveyed in intellectual oblivion, and effort were made to 'explain' or ignore with simplistic reductionism the fact that in the actual case, product required thought and understanding and correlated concepts in ways which are not in the evidenced domain of matter; though matter can modally be manipulated to interpret chatter with the form intelligence chooses to give. In general, the confusion of such things and the facile failure to allow for the purpose-product, analysis-action, method-means distinctions are not really very heartening as an exercise in analysis.
It is the nature of apt means to be manipulable to ends; but they neither create the ends nor imply any, per se; only as instruments... Of what ? of intelligence which moves in the domain of thought where error and imagination alike can work outside the reference point of matter... which, in any case, is known only (or assumed) because of mind. This is what we habitually do; and to fail to note these distinctions in looking at other products is a failure which, though perhaps 'self-forgetful', is scarcely dutifully inclined to the whole field of the known. (Cf. p. 80 supra.)
iii) Products
Products ? For a moment, let us pursue that. Areas, then, of functionality, conceptualisability, integral and synthetic codal or procedural sequences in form or act, with symbolic outcomes of their results: this would seem near the norm for the term. To dispense with the term 'product', while observing the ingredients of what it is... is odd categorisation. If these human lives be not products, the world does not know any; for here is the acme of invention. The world however very well knows plenty of them; it has a certain... reluctance to talk about these in the terms the ingredients provide for definition. It knows precisely what it is to have products slowly slip from their high estate by the second law (hence law) of thermodynamics and to have to re-create them as a consequence. It does not know, find or observe non-products with the insignia of products, or how to provide formal logic by the movements of particles; only through them, from mind employing it, or having deployed it, expressing it in symbols.
To revert to the 'whole field of the known', to which we came before 'products'... if all the things which don't (I speak as a scientist, not a dreamer) happen, did happen, then the world would not be what it is. If the collocation of particles induced thought, it would be of much interest: both in terms of the nature of things and of our observations. However, it is the other way around. Thought can produce collocations of particles, and it is per thought that mind does so, using codes very often to symbolise what is in mind.
Thoughtless references to what contains systematic, articulable, symbolic, integrated, correlated and activated codes and their means of implementation, as if it were simply a matter of sequences, suggest blindness.
What is not seen is that neither do such codes arrive in practice (we speak of observation, that old hall-mark of science), nor does the machinery for its operation; nor as Professor Murray Eden of MIT points out, do we perceive anything linguistic capable even of enduring in time when subjected to chance, which (somehow or other) is currently a code. Code presupposes concept. Concept implies mind, and explains system. ( Cf. pp. 137-138, 140-145, 252B supra; 285-308 infra.)
In Chapter 3, the underlying principles of these delusive confusions are exposed as a case of 'Emperor's clothes', and are 'dismantled' with due rigour. Thus, just as we have found blindness to divine building involves cataracts for matters of definition, so in Ch. 3 we see further requisites to cater to this analgesic blindness: namely the dispersal of the undergirding principles of rationality that concern series, subjects and affirmation. This is shown to be the case, not merely generically, as often expressed in this work, but calamitously in this specialised field in particular.
In SMR pp. 252Jff., we have this excursion on the kindred topic of language, by no means a series of dots, but a sensationally complex exposure of commanding concepts, correlative synthetics to enable their utilisation clearly, correlative input of thought and output of recognisable results. These enable outward conformity in realisation of articulated commands, to the inward systems, perceptions and inceptions of mini-systematics hosting ideas. Expressible systematics in thoughts, modes with ideationally composable results, are a cosmos of reality, unlike others, sui generis, constant in our own creative activity, incapable of evacuation from the constraints of symbol-concept and concept-idea formulation. So we ourselves have it; and our bodies mirror it beyond ourselves, recipients.
The LOGOS*L totality, made and making, original and originating, man as an outcome, and his own thoughts and constructions as an output unit, itself using verbal or symbolic constrictions and constraints, is manifest both at the resultant level and the causative. It is insistent and consistent both in man's works and in the works in man, that he should have any being at all. The cause of man and of his creativity alike, the symbolic constraint and enablement, that he should both be and be creative, with ideas in symbols, words, correlative means available for the execution of the words, within man or made by man, lies where such powers exist.
Nothing, whether in stages or all at once,
question begging whether at one hit or in many smaller ones, cannot produce such
things, systematically being void; and unless they always were within the domain
of eternal expressive and impressive power, they could never come, having no
source
(cf. SMR Ch. 1,
3,
10). Causation itself cannot be dismissed rationally (cf.
Causes, SMR Ch. 5), without making use
of it, so making an impasse. When you contradict yourself, no one else logically
needs to do so; you have performed that service already! God remains, and for
the time being, so does man.
Logos is derived from the Greek word meaning cause, word, expression, so that just as one thinks, purposes and ponders, so there is the verbal vehicle for this, the executive expression, the thrust from mind to kind, from thought to securement; and with this, there is the verbalisation of the thought itself, as well as the executive action enshrined in the expression. Jesus Christ is God's own personal expression, not a mere book, or library, but the expressive basis and background to all thought's thrust into word, ideational competence and essentialising of understanding. When God's personal LOGOS came to earth, it was more than the mere creative command into personal executive action, as in Colossians 1:15.
God is unique, everlasting and infinite in comprehension, power and nature, basis of all, rational substitute for the 'nothing' either express or implied in much modern thought, when it becomes vacuous, degrading into a mere chain of words ignoring logical realities. HIS divine speech can be verbalised as in the Bible; and HIS expression can be incarnated, as in Jesus Christ, since man is in His image, so that as man, in format, God in function can communicate direct. This is what happened, and the Gospel is based on this divine action, for the expression of God moved to the Cross to institute the pardon of God, by HIS plea, namely, It is finished! (John 19:30), the work of redemption, where the Maker of man paid the price of pardon and reprocurement of alliance, provision for friendship with the deity once more.
That was His saving work. At this point,
we have been concentrating on the creation work.
There follows, the excursion from SMR pp. 252Jff..
A n E x c u r s i o n
It may be that some will wish an excursion into more detail in this area, and when pp. 316G ff. and 348 ff. have been studied, then what follows may be considered most readily.
In fact, the affair of language is even more ludicrous than this, when it is considered as the recipient of bombardment. Just as the letters of language are no mere objects, but symbols that operate in a world of syntax, unit meaning and formal constraints of their own, so these in turn relate to other worlds of their own. They operate indeed in a universe of meanings which in turn relate to ideas, ideology, ideational syntheses and refinements of inter-relationships, purposes, sectional program, logical developmental structure, inter-active phases and phrases, figures, features, feeling, finesse, aesthetics, formal and operational functions, integrative hierarchy of control, thrust and focus, with cumulative consistency-constraints and sensitivity at all levels to contamination.
This sensitivity item applies at the level of each system and sub-system, and then retro-actively to the ultimate functionality of the whole, which in this way comes to be faced with sectional change of tone, or feeling, or analytical co-ordination or consistency and so on. The destructive efficiency of a medical virus at the control level, is merely one illustration of processive barbarism in the midst of multiply disciplined thought, semantics, signification and significance at all levels.
We have taken the occasion to consider language more generally, but to do so in order the more to conceive the type of situation which it evokes. We do however have before us the result of constructive action - that is, we are operational human beings. We consider simply the function; and with it, the finesse and sensitive webbing of inter-relations behind this. Of this we are avid, astounded learners. Nor should we be so astounded: for as functioning persons, we ourselves are constantly aware of the high wonder of our performance characteristics in thought, feeling, ideas, perspectives, aesthetics, morals, spirituality, mentality and intelligent understanding.
The synthetic, finally unitary, directable, yet prepared concourse of correlated components is like a dream of marvels, that would leave the U.S. national highway system, complete with earth-works and signals, signs and bridges, a silly little joke by comparison. This is provided for one person: but we ? the race... we communicate and may co-operate, each in various groups, so that multiple communication-highway systems have intermittent, intelligible arrangements with each other, formalisable by contract, but equally susceptible to nuance and nicety.
If of all such a relatively simple national highway system, we expose the structure, the form, the features, the functions, the pathways, the signs, their time-tabling and the bridges: all this, to random bombardment - do we still expect it to function after trillions of such uncouth alterations ? Any bureaucrat would be likely wisely to regard a Director who expected success from such operations either as possessed of a rare form of madness, or as an enemy agent - though possibly on drugs, drunk, or seeking stress leave by deceit.
Operationally, this is the principle of the cytological situation. Logic, symbolism, signification, semantics, rules, channels, consistency, direction, control, co-ordination, performance on this basis, integration of performance components, timing and sequence, myriadfold specialties compounded to progressively eminent and functionally exalted conclusions are in place, just as in our example. It is admittedly a poor one. The case surpasses such simplicity as the highway system and all the cars in their goings, to an extreme degree. That however only serves to increase the impact of the facts. (Cf. pp. 332F ff..) The principles in all such cases have been considered therefore; and they apply causatively as has been and is in detail shown (esp. Chs. 3, 5 infra), pervasively.
Linguistically:
At the language area, then, the question arises: How is there to be preserved this myriad-formed concourse of symbolic, syntactical, analysable, semantic, synthetic signals and operational performance... in something creatively effective... ? We need not be concerned in this, at the merely physical level. It is a problem which has been solved for us in the wonder of DNA, and its associates, its editorial controls and the symbolic magnificence that performs such wonders in a kind-preserving work... and indeed, language in its various formulations, installations and evocations, is part of the preservation, in genes as in Genesis, of Kinds.
If however we do not beg this delicious question: How can any language (possessed of the facilities and functions the possessor shows) be fostered, or even preserved, by bombardment ? - the answer is simple. It cannot. Cascades of changes successively fail to conform to, but rather attack, through lack of both understanding and intelligence, the massive constraints operative and required. Invasion is like that: it may serve this or that, here or there; but its nature is unakin to the system it assaults, on which it makes its incursions, to which it comes with small or no regard for the requirements of order, efficiency and operability.
It is indeed a case comparable to that of bulls joining football teams, neither knowing focal constraints, nor caring for the rules or for that matter, the performance - grossly or in finesse - of the game. The game could not go on. The program would be ruined.
In general, and of necessity, massive non-conformity is no answer to the logical requirement of continual, sensitive characterisable, synthetic, symbolic and operational conformity. You can of course attribute an opposite as the cause of what it denies, and indeed of what it attacks - but not with reason; and that after all, is currently our field...
If a language and all the operational features it entails (whether in the conscious arena or not) cannot continue with random incursions into all or any of its system, again let us emphasise, how much less could it thus be built!
What then of man ? The individual is equipped with spirit (q.v. esp. pp. 348 ff. infra), and this has a conscious, cognitive language of its own - with personal powers of creative thought. That is one wonder. That we should also have our pre-prepared, readily utilisable material equipment with its operating system and language, beneath our vital, personal activity, allowing ready and inter-active movement with our physical and vital environment; that our inbuilt cell-language is preserved from unsystematic dissolution (for a fascinating time of function), both by the unit or cell and by inter-connected billions of units in synthesis, and this through magnificent defence and management procedures, written into our physical coding at the cell level: this is simply one characteristic, but here brilliant phase of what creation is always all about.
Adequate power beyond the system, produces in the system, what is beyond the certifiable power of the system to produce. It happens in hats, short-stories, buildings and surgery: what is needed is able to be received as necessary input; but the recipient system is not able to produce it. (Cf. pp. 316G ff..)
Whatever the level of such input, that is the attestation of creation. However, since that is the issue here, it cannot be used unless invoked by name: creationism. If not, then one notes that the power even to preserve language is not effective without its first being formed. You cannot preserve a fortune before you make it. Making it is the point. You must create it first. Each symbolic, and in the cells, directive level and feature must be granted the privilege of existence. For each, the causation must be adequate. As to the features and foci, the functions and systems, the scope and significances, their more extended review here merely extends the requirements of and for that adequacy. The machinations of magic may have their moments, but in the end, there is the answer of reality.
The fact that you could not preserve language by bombardment thereon, is simply an added woe to the something-from-nothing irrationality, which as we see continually in this work (see Chs. 3, 5, 10 and Index - nothing, causality, irrationality) is a mere contradiction in terms. Such a proposition first destroys the validity of the thought from which it comes; and what is destroyed is by its very nature, inoperative. That can do nothing which is itself dead; nor attack anything which first itself fails; nor logically deny anything, which first denies itself.
The supervening, consciously conceptualised, purpose-error structure intimate to our spirits with all their involvements, is then simply one more marvel - greater in freedom and significance than the first - where we are permitted personal involvement. This, with its language conception and control, including the power to break and make rules, issues one more requisition for its causative source. Language in its cognitive and non-cognitive forms issues its own eloquent call for the multiply causative systems maker, and for the causative ground of its integrated character.
Creation is as always emphatically and obtrusively attested in a cumulative and comprehensive way. Its verification never varies. Other paths are built on air; or perhaps in this case more aptly, on the bombardment of guns on what isn't there. Little children in toyland may try to "create" in this way, but they have to mature. Imagination is a wonderful thing; but in the end, the job has to be done.
Indeed, it had to be done. It is time to realise this: As to our world - the pantomime is past; the phantasmagoria of philosophy does not create it. Such flurries are themselves merely a creation of the mind of man, and that ? modelled by the mind and power of God Almighty, it can misuse its capabilities, abort its procedures and forget its Maker.
It might be added, in terms of relatively recent research, in the work of Professor Sanford of Cornell University, that not only is the extraordinarily ingenious, inbuilt system of editing out errors in the generation by generation transmission of human DNA, gradually being overtaken by decline, such is the inherent downgrade as seen in the Second Law of Thermodynamics in our system, but this genome of ours is deteriorating at a rate that causes no small concern.
On this see, the Appendix to Waiting for Wonder,
which like Repent or Perish Ch. 7, and Christ Incomparable ... Ch. 2,
deals also with the underlying materialistic fallacy.
One element in that Appendix, is this:
The distillation of ideas, their rigorous subjection to scrutiny, the composition of conceived components, in one language, in life's format, the DNA, with preceptive and receptive actions directing the resources of symbolism to their created objects, to do their work at command, the astute correlation of codes and concepts and chronology, the sedulous accomplishment of the myriad of refinements needed to support such beings as we are, these things are to be the relish of unreason, the work of non-intellect, the outpouring of what has no thought and the institution of what merely moves, with form and feature to do what it is composed to do. This, it will never do: for the forces of fiction must make what cannot think, proceed to perform what is the domain of thought, and what has no mind to achieve the marvels of mentality, what has no idea of causation to employ and indeed deploy it with a machination that is a marvel even to behold.
Does an atom think ? Does the excited congregation of superbly outfitted parts in their domains of revolution and their laws of addition and subtraction, at the atomic level, does it work itself out, that it might be; and does every phase of the structure given to man, in matter, organisation, space-time institution, causal complexion for operation, does it invent itself from what is not there in the first place (in the model, on pain of begging the question), and does nothing have something-itis, inflammation because of sorrow at being so much a nullity, exploding into reality, and then into form and law and causal system, composing its own schema and speaking in one language ?
Not actually. Like the other naturalistic gods of yore, as noted in Isaiah 47, matter cannot even carry its own burden;
¨ for though harmless in itself,
¨ when it notoriously becomes a creation of man's thought,
¨ brought from nowhere by no cause,
¨ to become the aesthete behind beauty,
¨ the legislator behind law,
¨ the actualiser to wed thought and produce symbolic rationality in discursive mode,
¨ the creator of concepts, as well as
¨ the ground for the subtle distillation of its own assessment of validity,
¨ in a maestro magician type of grasping for causes
where they bear no relationship, no basis for action and no observable results
(rather like considering dandelion flowers are what makes air-ships,
the proximity to reality being in principle, of the same type):¨ then we have mere fascination with fancy.
It is as if a pauper dreamed a fortune into existence
without even once considering
that dreams may move, but they do not move matter, but mind.
It is Massifs of Pure Splendour Ch. 1, that we find some outcomes such as this:
What on any naturalistic or monistic ground in metaphysics
in aesthetics mere mumble (cf. SMR Ch. 5),
in ethics platitude without meaning (News 19),
in epistemology mere vacuity (cf. TMR Ch. 5),
in politics defeatism (cf. Questions and Answers Ch. 7), or else towers built on invisible clouds,
all reductionist, irrational or both (cf. What is the Chaff to the Wheat Chs. 3 and 4 ),
now on the supernatural origin of the regimented and volitionally active natural realm, becomes
meaningful,
in essence predictable,
and assuredly verifiable on the ground of the creator, whose verified word is without inhibition
exhibiting the fitting conclusion, like a thunder-clap to a murder.
In all things on such a basis, it leaves nothing in the least difficult, whereas on the other model, there is nothing but failure, for there is never explanation for knowledge, existence, division, beauty or morals, but only tired reductionisms, without power, without ground and without the necessary result. It is simple fact that creationism in general, but more specifically biblical creationism with the creator who has acted and declared Himself verifiably in the Bible (cf. SMR Chs. 1-3, 10, 8-9, 5), accounts for everything as nothing else either does or can (cf. Reason, Revelation and the Redeemer).
Thus created man, in one mould but with spirit in an actual universe of knowable kind with a Creator who made him, rather than some glorified incapacity, can believe in culturally sanctified myths (cf. Secular Myths and Sacred Truth, Delusive Drift or Divine Dynamic 7, 3, SMR p. 252I)) without too much trouble. This phenomenon can come from the consequences of will in his mind and in his spirit, so that he can readily believe the deluded and childish concept of organic evolution, by which he affirms whatever it is that he thinks he is in order to become more of it, whatever that is, though he never finds it making the substance of what-is, that great experimental absentee in any naturalistic viewing, nor does he discover the grounds of it, nor the way of it, but rather explores delusion in battling camps*6. He may even talk of principles*7 as if they were powers to do, not mental conceptions to cover with words what actually happens - which, sadly for naturalistic man, such mere descriptions do not manage to do.
The Bible however speaks of diversification within kinds only, from the Creator in His initial impact, formation and formulation; and as to creation, it is over, as the evidence continually attests while man tries to prod, curse, bless or induce it to do some more, to which it responds rather like a dog having its toe-nails cut by someone with aspirations to be a surgeon. (Cf. The Defining Drama Ch. 10, TMR Appendix I, Ch. 1.)
Thus it is mere routine exemplification of the supernatural schema when we find that naturalistic man wills to be what his position voids in operation, both in its very statement and in its performance criteria, as well as performance exhibits; and this, by sheer exuberance of imagination, in one of the choicest pieces of ludicrous cant this world has ever produced; this while he is born and dies and is given his genes and is faced by his God, whom he ignores as if his very life depended on it. That is what will is about in a creation which has it, and is placed in a natural climate with supernatural access.
It is moreover, precisely what Romans 1:17ff., tells us about, a further verification in the specific milieu of the Bible. Further, it is precisely there that the remedy for this consequence of such a creation is presented, with its own verificatory testimonials
(cf. The Meaning of Liberty and the Message of Remedy,
It Bubbles ... Ch. 9, Repent or Perish Chs. 2, 7,
LIGHT DWELLS WITH THE LORD'S CHRIST - 2 vols.).
See SMR Appendix C and D, Repent or Perish Ch. 2 .
See Christ, the Wisdom ... Ch. 8,
Repent or Perish Ch. 2 .
See also Repent or Perish Ch. 7.