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CHAPTER 4
NOT BITS
but PHASES, DRAFTS,
SUCCESSIVE SHAFTS of OPERATIONAL REALITY
NOT BIT BUT BYTE
Making it, Unmaking it, Awakening it
Jeremiah 4:22-30 has this, his visionary challenge, not for the fainthearted or the fat-headed, to deliver them; for here is war and devastation, through the long tensioning of the spring of righteousness, at last to be released with a force long given to it by multitudes of various original or unoriginal sins. The release of the spring of judgment is to be hugely destructive, as in a car smash. The composites and compositions of evil which have left no way for the sinning nation, but a vast devastation. Mercy, the mercy from the heart of God, has been bypassed by man, and done so systematically.
Such was the position in the days of Jeremiah, as the downfall of Jerusalem became imminent, divine protection withheld, and the fall now inevitable, as you see so graphically in Jeremiah 37:10 (bold added):
"Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel:
Thus will you say to the king of Judah, who sent you to Me to enquire of Me;
Behold, Pharaoh’s army, which is come forth to help you, will return to Egypt into their own land, and the Chaldeans will come again, and fight against this city, and take it, and burn it with fire.
Thus says the LORD; Do not yourselves, saying,
The Chaldeans will surely depart from us: for they shall not depart;
for though you had smitten the whole army of the Chaldeans
that fight against you,
and there remained but wounded men among them,
yet should they rise up every man in his tent,
and burn the city with fire."How often had mercy been trampled on (as in Jeremiah 1-17, especially this last case when so easy a way out of trouble had been offered, as indeed it had been offered so tenderly to the King of Judah, foolish Zechariah, and that personally by the prophet (Jeremiah 38:14-28)! How often had the Lord in vision and imagery spoken, as in direct terms (Hosea 12:10)! For centuries, Jerusalem was stubborn, while it sins multiplied like atomic change in a cyclotron. It mounted to the skies of divine judgment, which at last fell.
The city and the king, the nation indeed had long before been miraculously delivered from Assyria when the Northern capital of Samaria fell to it; and one would have hoped that this practical demonstration might have had its effect (perhaps like the Twin Tower situation in the USA, a pointer and a challenge concerning their ways as a nation); but unrepentant yet, now blundering into blight, judgment for Jerusalem could be put off no longer. In Jeremiah 4, with that divine intimacy the prophet had by the Spirit of God, we hear this broadcast from the Lord.
"How long shall I see the standard, and hear the sound of the trumpet? 2
"For My people is foolish, they have not known me;
they are silly children, and they have no understanding:
they are wise to do evil, but to do good they have no knowledge."I beheld the earth, and, behold, it was without form, and void;
and the heavens, they had no light."I beheld the mountains, and, lo, they trembled, and all the hills moved lightly.
I beheld, and, lo, there was no man, and all the birds of the heavens had fled."I beheld, and, lo, the fruitful place was a wilderness, and all its cities were broken down
at the presence of the LORD, and by his fierce anger."For thus has the LORD said,
The whole land shall be desolate; yet will I not make a full end.
For this shall the earth mourn, and the heavens above be black:
because I have spoken it, I have purposed it, and will not repent,
neither will I turn back from it."The whole city will flee for the noise of the horsemen and bowmen;
they will go into thickets, and climb up upon the rocks:
every city will be forsaken, and not a man dwell in it.
"And when you art spoiled, what will you do?"Though you cloth yourself with crimson,
though you deck yourself with ornaments of gold,
though you enlarge your eyes with painting, in vain will you make yourself fair;
your lovers will despise you, they will seek your life."At the outset in this passage, we see the charge in essence against them. In one sense, it is all but incredible. Think back to the situation in Deuteronomy 4:6ff.. How glorious was their inheritance when, a free people who had no long before been slaves for a long period, they had been rescued by God and brought to their promised land! They were warned: God being a Spirit, the spirit of their relationship to Him was vital. Let us hear this passage in Deuteronomy, then, earlier in their days as a nation, for contrast with the later case, as shown in Jeremiah 4.
God there speaks of His law and commands ...
"Keep therefore and do them; for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the nations, which shall hear all these statutes, and say,
'Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.'
"For what nation is there so great, who has God so near to them,
as the LORD our God is in all things that we call upon him for?
and what nation is there so great, that hath statutes and judgments so righteous
as all this law, which I set before you this day?
"Only take heed to yourself, and keep your life diligently,
lest you forget the things which your eyes have seen,
and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life:
but teach them to your children and your grandchildren,
especially the day that you stood before the LORD your God in Horeb,
when the LORD said to me,Gather for me the people together, and I will make them hear my words,
so that they may learn to fear Me all the days that they live upon the earth, and teach their children.And you came near and stood under the mountain; and the mountain burned with fire
to the midst of heaven, with darkness, clouds, and thick darkness.
And the LORD spoke to you out of the midst of the fire:
you heard the voice of the words, but saw no likeness; only you heard a voice.
So He declared to you His covenant, which He commanded you to perform,
even ten commandments; and He wrote them upon two tables of stone."The LORD commanded me at that time to teach you statutes and judgments,
so that you might do them in the land to which you go over to possess it."Take therefore good heed to yourselves; for you saw no form
on the day that the LORD spoke to you in Horeb out of the midst of the fire:lest you
corrupt yourselves, and make a graven image, the likeness of any figure,
the likeness of male or female, the likeness of any beast that is on the earth,
the likeness of any winged fowl that flies in the air,
the likeness of any thing that creeps on the ground,
the likeness of any fish that is in the waters beneath the earth:and lest you lift up your eyes to heaven,
and when you see the sun, and the moon, and the stars, even all the host of heaven,
you might be driven to worship them, and serve them,
which the LORD thy God has given to all nations under the whole heaven."But the LORD has taken you, and brought you out of the iron furnace,
even out of Egypt, to be to him a people of inheritance, as ye are this day."Consider again the closeness to the Lord.
"For what nation is there so great, who has God so near to them,
as the LORD our God is in all things that we call upon him for?"
How far is this from the heavy-eyed follies to which they at last fell victim by their own incontinence. God then warned them not to make idolatrous images of natural things for participation in worship, for He is never to be confused, in logic, lore or love, with what He has created. This applies whether those things be people or principles of philosophy, astronomical or geological objects, living creatures of this or that kind, or carnal desires.
This is so elemental that one would have hoped that after another more than three millenia, man might have at last learned NOT to make such a desultory and disastrous confusion, but to worship God in spirit and in truth, and willingly be released from spiritually infantile preoccupations with things made, as if they made not only themselves but the principles and powers of making as well. One would have hoped that this release would have been with a vast relief, such as you see in Matthew 11:27-29.
But it was not to be so, their imperious heart
became imperious, and their ruin became sure.
In the midst then of judgment, we read this account of the scope of the unravelling, the de-construction, the dismemberment, the replacements of convergence in creation with divergence in judgment, of a sense of desecration, of unified co-ordination being systematically stripped of unity, method, unity, meaning... and then exposure to the judgment.
"I beheld the earth, and, behold, it was without form, and void;
and the heavens, they had no light."I beheld the mountains, and, lo, they trembled, and all the hills moved lightly.
I beheld, and, lo, there was no man, and all the birds of the heavens had fled."I beheld, and, lo, the fruitful place was a wilderness, and all its cities were broken down
at the presence of the LORD, and by his fierce anger."For thus has the LORD said,
The whole land shall be desolate; yet will I not make a full end."
Thus here, Jeremiah is given a vision opposite in kind to that in Genesis 1.
Just as love and gracious giving in vast creation energy provided the systematically constructed earth, so now the vision proceeds backwards, as if the misuse of the earth will at last lead to its de-construction. Misconstruction of its purpose, indefensible, will lead to its destruction, by the indefatigable power of the Creator. What was raised for a purpose will at the last, as in Isaiah 51:6, be razed, that purpose being fulfilled, and these privileges of participation rankly abused.
There then is the earth seen as in the first formulations of its spatial order. such is the vision of Jeremiah. It is there, but without form, it is able to be worked on, but so far void. It is as if we are being brought back, in view of the follies of misuse of life, to the early times of creation.
There is the creation in its birth. It is not nothing; it is not yet functionally engineered. There is no light. Someone needs to turn the light on, to construct the parts and their inter-relationships. When God at first acted, this in mind, came then into force, and He made it, gave it light and proceeded systematically and directly in each phase of its formation from His formulation. In the intensity of the storms of man's making, this becomes a relevant vision, back to basics.
But this time the forming and action to dynamically breed order and kinds of living creatures, to continue in their own type, does not appear. Instead judgment appears; for despite all that was done to make this earth commodious for man, the covenant of grace, the divine promises, the deliverance of the Exodus, the promised land and the divine participation in rebuilding the race by this means as likewise after the flood, yet there is a spiritual promiscuity on the part of Israel, the part of it left, the Kingdom of Judah.
Now as in a yacht race at sea, in the famed and ill-fated Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race of 1998, vast forces are seen in vision to be unleashed, destructive, overwhelming and it is not yachts which are being destroyed, not some seamen, but the earth and the heavens are under review, exposed now as once protected, rejected now as once inspected, finishing their race in confusion from divine judgment.
Yet even that process is here interrupted. The whole land will become desolate, reminiscent of the early stages of creation of this world; but this glimpse into the final judgment on this earth, when its job is done, is arrested. I will not make a full end, the LORD declares.
In Noah's day, the HUMAN RACE had nearly all been lost. In Babylon's day, Jerusalem was lost as was the government of the nation of Israel to the North; now Judah by earlier division from needless sin is summoned to the bar. In Christ's day the Saviour was lost to this world, surely to return in triumph, but now for a season, prolonged as Peter foresaw and showed (II Peter 3:9), because in the slaughter of the Saviour, through Jerusalem and Rome, it was crushed by being left without the Prince of Peace it so desperately needed (as in Isaiah 7, 9, 49-55). Just one generation later, the people who crucified Christ were, in no small number, themselves crucified by Rome, we read; and the city was crushed by imperial power, as it had sought to crush Christ, who indeed had warned, and declared what is of far wider impact yet :
"Whoever falls on this stone will be broken;
but on whomever it falls, it will grind him to powder,"Matthew 21:44.
The stone in view ? It is the One whom "the builders rejected."
"Jesus said to them, Did you never read in the scriptures, The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner: this is the Lord’s doing,
and it is marvellous in our eyes?
Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God shall be taken from you,
and given to a nation bringing forth its fruits."
It is this which immediately precedes this declaration about the crushing stone, a matter found in Daniel 2, where it represents the power of God in the Prince of Peace to come, deleting the destructive and imperial agencies of man, as also found in II Thessalonians 1, Psalm 2 and Revelation 19.
Jeremiah at this point therefore, Ch. 4, is operating in the theme of what Isaiah shows in 51:6, where the earth is seen as dismissible, dispensable, its very world no longer operative for the simple reason that the earth on which it stands will be dismissed. Jeremiah does it in steps, going backwards, like a drunken lout losing his name, money, place and function by stages and degrees. He is taken back to basics through his own baseness.
This deconstruction, return to the earth as without form and void, calls to mind by contrast what happen3ed at its making as in Genesis 1. It leads by reflection to that the initial construction of this amazingly intimately connected and correlated earth structure, of this life dynamic, of this thought enablement and spirit-container unit, man, who himself when built, both flourishes and destroys. It reminds that this was in stages. These were not naturalistic super-miracles, so that the created materials operated as supreme intelligences, but the supreme intelligence which made the basics, made the earth and life forms, and made them specific enough to be recognisable, and general enough to be kinds rather than simpler units. Thus man has varied greatly in shape and size, as have dogs; but they are recognisable.
Endless efforts have been made to merge the kinds, but it is not so: it is no wonder that Professor Oxnard*1 mused that there is scarcely a find of some creature in the field, which someone does not rush to register a new kind between the simian and the human; but only imagination makes the bridge. In the case of the African creatures before Oxnard, he with Lord Zuckerman devastatingly showed by multivariate analysis, that there was no link there, but that in the mind of man.
Of course, Denton after a severe review in Evolution: A Theory in Crisis , concludes that this concept of continuity between kinds exists only in the mind of man (op. cit., pp. 73, 271ff., 353ff. cf. The gods of naturalism have no go! 6 . Wake Up World! Your Creator is Coming Chs. 4-6). In realm after realm of particular investigation, Denton can form but one scientific conclusion:
"The concept of continuity of nature has existed in the mind of man, never in the facts of nature."
The only continuity, from old times till now, has been in the rampaging riot of irrational thought broadcasting myth, inadequate cause for clear result, through reductionism and/or invention of fairies, whether natural or equipped with mystique. Mystique and fancifulness if fine for children, but when we are investigating what happened, why and how, it is necessary in understanding, as Paul declares, to be men, to be adult.
Actuality of intimate conjunction of cause and effect must be able to be established by clear evidence from whatever source realm, judiciously investigable, and able to meet all the demands of the empirical and the logical criteria. God in His mercy has provided precisely this (cf. That Magnificent Rock, Ch. 1, Light Dwells with the Lord's Christ, Who Answers Riddles and Where He is, Darkness Departs).
But building there was, and the units, whether atoms and molecules of matter, or kinds of grass, tree, sea and land creations, were ushered into existence, thrust into it by the word of God, being not bitty, but building components, rising to the combination of electrical, electronic, ideational and operational maestro contrivances, circuitries innumerably coincident systematically, with forms and shapes, power with precision, format with function, directive in DNA with what is directable, plan with product.
They were not bits, like a few spanners and assorted nuts and bolts strewn on the non-grass in the non-space before it was invented. They were atoms and organic agencies, in invented space and time, all equipped with amazing laws governing their most intimate, complex, orderly and contrived abilities, each with power to do and impotence to do other than this. Chemistry now teaches their properties, physics something of their sub-structure, meteorology providing aspects of their spatial aggregations and nano-particular studies investigating what happens when units of atoms, being smashed, continue to exist in various sub-structural forms and formats.
It has nothing to do with bits, except perhaps when smashed, like furniture hammered. The cunningly devised structures, in the exceedingly constrained worlds of space and time and gravity, electro-magnetic force and velocity, subject to principles such as E=MC2 of mathematical elegance and simplicity, based on conceptual understanding of profound and increasing attestation in the minds of living man, appear like headlands in the sea. In the mind of man, there are excavated, inspected, attested, formulated, the principles put into the creation; and as to the ideational role of man, and his mental equipment and dynamic, these things themselves are elegant logical investigation units correlative in power to what they are able to investigate, which is law-governed, intricately co-operative and exceedingly composed cosmoi, each in its state and status, all in their overall designations, the artifice of design*2.
Here is space, here time, here are atoms, there their laws, here come the molecules, there the atomic weights, gram-molecular mass, here are the atomic numbers, the valencies, there the composition of characteristics as in the periodic table, there come the astronomical powers, the movements of light and mass about, the laws of velocity and gravity, there the insurgence of thought, gradually scanned in amazement by man, as principles and procedures, potencies and powers, limits and laws are regaled, as one drunk with many wines; but these to not intoxicate, but rather delight. So it is devised, structurally composed, dynamically driven, formulated and formed, fashioned and put together, made operable in grand chunks in the inventory, with that creative force and light which governs such combinations of characters and vision.
It is not hard to see how the creative power works, in kind, rather than in scope and coverage of mind and spirit creation. It is constantly the very sort of work, which by our spirits and mind with our hands, we create ourselves. As children move building blocks to the form, format and design they wish, seeing the form, as in a unit, the format, as in the type of unit, and the design, and as in the information put into that format to make it into a bridge over a river, or whatever other things informs their mentalities, and drives their spirits, so the power, principles, spirit, capacities of survey and composition are seen continually in our race.
Creativity is what it is, and not another thing. It is useless to see a face and say it is but pores. That is simply poor observation. Reductionism is merely hiding by lie. The total realities are obvious and numerous, composed structurally and functionally.
So in creativity, the thoughts which are being driven, in our case with creative surge, imagination, conception, inspection, can even think back on themselves, as our spirits move into higher gear, and wonder what else their creative imaginations might make out of the imaginative creations, themselves included, in the midst of which they have been put.
We are moving in all this, not in bits, those mere creations for action, which bow to action in the construction of space, time and design exhibits like themselves, on a constantly expanding phase of thought and composition. It is not bits, but bytes, if you will, elements of directed information, order, parts of an informational system, aspects of a co-ordinated conceptually governed, legally attested, imaginatively inspected and connected reality. Here we rise to the correlation in intimate realism of cause and effect, not limited the eminence of this creative feature to our own, but seeing the type of activity involved. In this, there are on its completion, when creation is complete, as we find in cases multitudinous in our own creation's creations, our own products, law, order, form, format, power, dynamic, conceptual co-ordinates, physical ordinates for direction. For us, this is part of the creation into which we are placed as incidents, but those which are themselves persons. In this, we operate in a creation of creativity, a laboratory of equipped supplied not by the government's grant, but by God.
NOT BITS
but PHASES, DRAFTS,
SUCCESSIVE SHAFTS of OPERATIONAL REALITY
Let us now review, in retrospection of thought, this passage of Jeremiah 4, in its reminder and divesting dynamic, by this stirred to consider the opposite, the investing of realities, from which such a barrneness could in due course come, in judgment. Let us pass to the more pleasant beginnings.
Into the climate of construction, before anything was there, from the world of thought, before the ideas were implemented, in the interstices of systematic grandeurs all but past thought for us, ourselves derivatives, in the midst of a creation so intense, immense, diverse, co-ordinated, brilliantly overseen, so staggering tied to mental creations by mental power, and spiritual creations from the sophistications of inventive power and eternal thoughts, will and mind, back of all before anything could be, adequate and eternal, so that anything could ever be: there came utterance.
IN THE BEGINNING, when this universe was given its opportunity, invented, invested, ready for investigation by the mind of man, in the power of the word which gave vent to imagination and the dynamic which gave actuality to thought, in the direction which gave expression to will, all being overseen as well as undertaken: God spoke. When I speak, it all depends how apt my speech is, the thought behind it and the power to which I have access, when it comes to what happens. When the most powerful man on earth speaks, naturally in terms of all that is at his disposal to make his speech happen into factuality and actuality, maybe hundreds of airplanes fly, missile ejectors come out of their silos, bacteria are unleashed on specified areas. He speaks; and it is done.
It is, that is, done to the extent that he has sufficient power and understanding and knowledge of the keys to all the things to which his power is directed meaningfully. Maybe in some cases, this most powerful man will spoil things, become confused, but we would not at all be amazed if being selected, taught and having many things and persons at hand, he did it all well so that as he thought, so he spoke, and as he spoke, so it was done.
It would, in a sense, be the most natural thing in the world. In the beginning (of the war), he spoke, and it was done. Things systematic, long thought out, held in readiness being unleashed, the constructions and inventions mutually act with the desired result. Again, if it is not entirely the desired result, we would realise an error had been made; but if it were as devised, we would not stand staggering. It might well be. This is the sort of thing that happens, limited by the aptitude of the thought, the designations and the designs held in store.
When God invented inventors, some called man, their bodies, minds and their spirits, so that they too might devise, construe, consider, prepare machinations and machinery, make plans, correlate systems first of means (equipment), then of methods (operating systems), memory, application, applicators, able to imagine for good or for evil - for that it is what surpasses genius, He spoke and they were there. In making liberty, the Lord uttered a staggering word. He was then making what is not moulded, directly OR indirectly by man, to act as man, in a will that is neither guaranteed pure, nor forced to fail, but in its original invention, possessed of a MEASURE of self-determination by the simple relationship, plus or minus, to God.
From Him, in this stark act of creation, comes the innovative power to EXPRESS man, describe man's self-soiling, and to REDEEM man from this; and in His wisdom, He knows how to do this, without intruding, so that man is not free, nor on the other hand, being distant, so that man is powerless. He is very near to the cry of repentance and very far from the cry of pride.
When God so acted, in the beginning, it was when this universe and all its phases and facets began, its earth and heavens, its astronomical, geological, logical systematics and its formative fashionings, to be followed later by man with his divesting power. With this, he was to seek out wisdom in companionship with his Creator, and not wildly and madly to pretend he could make himself autonomous, when in fact all he does is make himself ludicrous in pretended lordliness, power in creation not enough, stretching up an imperious arm to heaven, and seeking beyond it like a drowsing drunk amid his spew.
In this action to which man is so prone by the pathology which liberty can breed, he is like a yacht in a stormy sea, busily measuring its depth and the force of the winds, when it is to headquarters he needs to go, to be entirely refitted and given direction so that he might work within his right powers, for original purposes, freely but with wisdom, being given wit and direction from God.
It is a happy outcome when redemption comes in as one of the shafts of operational reality, past mere mind, past mere vociferous or bowed spirit, into the realm past universe and its beginning, in creation, sent from the mind and realm of the Creator, where the re-creation required for smashed vessels is to be found. It is called regeneration, this with redemption being a shaft of operational reality. It strikes from above, it lights up what is below, its source is a splendour beyond the creation, its place is that of power and eternity and its beauty is in holiness.
Just as the creation of this universe required much action and design, both in its phases and its compositive nexus, the intertwining of laws and the formulae, formats and functionality in which they work, and the word to enable, when God spoke and it was done: so the re-creation, the redemption for so diversely crazed, amazed and hazed man required much labour in design and designation. The plan of salvation for man, moreover, was no mere thought, but as active as sending a son in an army, to a foreign and hazardous country.
It meant that God would in fact visit the creation in the format of a man, going to the extreme of opting for adopting a baby's format in the womb, so that from first to the last, He might be subjected to what had been man's subjection (Hebrews 2); and being so, He then acted not only to meet as man, the trials, tribulations and temptations, but so far to overcome them, as to be ready for another unique action. Creation was one. That was long past. Now redemption in the vaster vision, this came next. He had of course, like many an author gifted with creativity, known from the first what he would do to the last (Isaiah 46:10, Acts 15:18, Revelation 1:8, 2:8, Isaiah 44-45).
What was the procedure in the divine plan of salvation, correlative to that of creation at the first, in the beginning ? It was this. He was exposed not only physically, and physiologically, not to say psychologically, but in the field of poverty, that there be no crutch, or certainly no wealth, as likewise to the function of hard labour as a carpenter, to the responses of others who were men alone, and NOT the Son of God, and who did not believe in Him, and made liable in no mean measure, to their actions.
It was not that He was placed in an unchartered sea, but in one so foreknown that His birthplace, powers, date of death, reason for death as Redeemer, price in being betrayed for execution by a traitor, feelings and cry when near death were all pre-recorded, so that no one could disbelieve except by a treacherous act of will, desiring not God but idol of some other kind.
So do Psalms 1, 2, 16, 22, 69, 110 speak to us, so does Isaiah 2, 7, 9, 22, 32, 49-55, 61, so does Micah 5, and Zechariah 11-13, Daniel 9:24-27*3 and much more.
In the confrontation with the delirious misconstructions of true faith in God, sweeping the race away from God, which man managed to provide, He was mocked, as man mocks truth continually, despised as man despises what is godly, rejected as truth is customarily rejected in the enquiries of man, urbane, worldly, blind, when in the depths of truth, creation and responsibility to the Creator; and He was crucified, as man tends to crucify the truth, and the more so as he gets nearer to its vast plains and commanding views (cf. Repent or Perish Ch. 7).
So Zechariah turns into Matthew 26, Psalms into speech and action by Christ on this earth, and Isaiah into explanations of what had then been deposited in speech, centuries before it would happen, to be applied when it did happen, as it did. Culmimating around A.D. 30, in the fulness, the completion that is, of the God-determined time*3, as we designate the date, there lay exposed now to the human eye and experience, His death and resurrection. Not now a Platonic thought world, but a tectonic marvel of divine provision, a roof to shield, a rock on which to be based, evidence by which to be directed, redemption by which to be corrected, it was all there.
It was like a GPS of a spiritual sufficiency by which to find one's spiritual place. There in felicity it lay, as it now continues, the Bible by which to find one's spiritual meaning, yes and there came the Holy Spirit in New Testament fulness, applying these things now performed, within one's own heart and spirit, a teacher and illuminator to convey what is needed, making redemption practical for us to receive, as it was for Him to supply in His salvation.
NOTES
See for example, SMR pp. 234ff.. An excerpt follows.
Put more specifically, in terms of form: the theory of gradualism is a parody of the facts; a rejection of the evidence; is falsified as a scientific theory by continual confirmation of this contradiction of what it would predict; and its formally defunct character is re-asserted with the progress of knowledge, with increasing and now mortifying force and firmness. That is its logical character. It is like the corpse of Lenin: very dead, but surprising kept on view. In this case, however, wanton devotee work is not interested in acknowledging that the corpse is (scientifically) dead.
One example of the reluctance to acknowledge this death, comes in a form to which Gish makes illustrative reference, in Eldredge's assertion that the soft-bodied biota in the early Cambrian would not display much in the way of intermediates because they were soft-bodied. At this Gish explodes:
It is difficult to believe that Eldredge or any other scientist could have made such a statement . . . Surely if palaeontologists are able to find numerous fossils of microscopic single-celled, soft-bodied bacteria and algae, as Eldredge does not doubt they have, then they could easily find fossils of all the stages intermediate between these microscopic organisms and the complex invertebrates of the Cambrian. (P. 59, Evolution: The Challenge of the Fossil Record).
Gish continues, citing examples, and speaks of many hundreds of examples of fossil preservation of the soft- bodied, indicating that the difficulty, for Cambrian, is that they do not find them, these 'fossils of all stages': easily or otherwise!
A similar astonishing statement is self-confessed by Richard Leakey in his claims in the human palaeontological field, when he acknowledged:
I am staggered to believe that as little as a year ago I made the statements that I made (Gish cites, op.cit. p. 156).
Oxnard, having earlier wondered about new forms which might contribute (1975), is most cautious in his 1981 comment. Similarly, depreciatory and systematic downgradings of some "hopefuls", in the Australopithecus afarensis (Lucy) type, arrived from such as Stern and Susman. Their comments are extensively noted by Gish (op.cit., pp. 158 ff.); and in fact, these exhibits were among the earlier cases of the Australopithecine type Oxnard had carefully categorised as way out of human relevance as a line: affirming indeed in 1987 (p. 227, Fossils, Teeth and Sex) that all Australopithecines are further from African apes and man than these latter are from each other. Similarly Leakey was to co-author of a paper with Alan Walker in 1981, which includes Walker's view that the famed 1470 skull was in fact australopithecine; and Leakey, says Gish, "backed down considerably" in his own categorisation.
Small wonder then that Oxnard in the midst of a long history of such happenings could say (Homo, 30; 243, 1981): "There has never yet been announced a new find that was not a human ancestor", a statement made it would seem, not without considerable irony from the one who showed so authoritatively with Zuckerman, equipped with thoroughness and persistence, the alien elements of australopithecines for any station or stop on the human line, which, like the rest, arrives in its own right.
Zuckerman as we note, has referred to this lack of any established ancestry after some 15 years of intensive research with multivariate analysis: this technique being brought in for more objectivity in assessment, involving the use of computers. If man had been created direct, we recall that he indicated, there would be no evidence to dispute it (p. 64, Beyond the Ivory Tower). The Cambrian case differs not in kind, but in drama from some of the others.
With the 'Cambrian' ocean explicitly stated to have more life forms than is now the case, including a mollusc with eyes advanced like our own, it is time a little refrigeration was employed on the corpse of this mutilated theory: even for devotees. It is time eyes of human understanding opened on this sight - not the sightless eyes of the rigid dead.
Deity, Design, Designation and Destiny.
See also The gods of naturalism have no go! Ch. 49, Bachelor of Bits.
See Christ the Citadel ... Ch. 2.