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CHAPTER TEN

AVOID DITHERY MOMENTS WITH SLITHERY SERPENTS

Creation Magazine, Vol. 33, No. 3, 2011

INTRODUCTORY CONSIDERATIONS

The case of  Galileo and the Romanist religion which persecuted him, has been a topic three times noted now, in this creationist body of literature. Alas, there has been, for whatever reason, as far as man is concerned, whether by conscious design or happenstance, a continuation of a presentation in this area, which continually needs correction.

In any case, there are things relevant and non-relevant, at primary level. For example, if I sneeze at a garden party, having a bad cold, and it so happens that the germs seem sure to have alighted with sad results on food being found scrumptious in the palate of someone near me, and I apologise, and in the process, being concerned, trip, and dash fruit-salad into the lap of the same person, there would be a number of things that might be said.

I might be called clumsy (if not usually so, this could be a little tough), an idiot (rather a jump, but one CAN understand feelings at such moments), entirely self-centred (on the ground that I ought not to have come to the party when some such things might prevail to the detriment of others (possibly correct, but depending on the motivation for coming not a little), and so on.

When someone in my favour, observing the assault on my character et al., comes to my defence, this might be very proper, and almost admirable. However, if in various references to this event and the associated remarks, which might be made in some magazine or publications from some one source, there is acute concern with excuses for me, so pursued, that they tend to ignore the fact that I DID sneeze in this way, and DID trip, then this would not be a matter for congratulation. It would seem a little one-sided. If again, I had some history of this sort of thing, and this was a relatively mild case of my misdemeanours of this type, then the excuses could begin to assume the character of a whitewash.

In the pertinent case, in an article in the above noted magazine, on COMMON ERRORS, it would almost appear, in this limited setting, that we have in this very article, another one exhibited, by it and through it..

The fact is, the basic fact, that Galileo had a view of the cosmos which differed from some people's ideas, whether in the Romanist body or elsewhere. He was congratulated at first,  even in the said body, for his work. There appears even to have been a willingness at first on the part of his effectual prosecutor, Cardinal Bellarmine, to change his own doctrine if Galileo were proved to be correct. That of course is hardly a matter for congratulation, since IF that body were interested in what the Bible teaches, THEN it would be a sad day to allow opinion based on material extraneous to the Bible, to influence, let alone radically, the interpretation of its passages. Moreover, as the Encyclopedia Britannica on Bellarmine indicates, although somewhat sympathetic to Galileo's view, which he had told him to present only hypothetically, in due time and in view of the Protestant clashes already in progress, "he thought it best to have the Copernican theory declared "false and erroneous," " the Roman body so declaring in 1616. This he did, "acting on the part of the Holy Office."

To have a major fruit of your labours declared by a body which arrogated to itself physical powers of death and torture, at its will, to be false has a lurking danger; to add that it is also  erroneous, though not adding much to the point, has a certain lowering. Prison was the least of the dangers.

After all, as Schaff puts it, Galileo was "denounced as a heretic, summoned before the Inquisition at Rome and commanded by Bellarmin, the standard theologian of the papacy, to abandon his error, and to teach that the earth is the immovable centre of the universe." Further, we are told that the "Congregation of the Index, moved by Pope Paul V., rendered the decree { re earth centrality and associated points} that such a view was "false, and entirely contrary to Holy Scripture." Moreover, they condemned the works of Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo, which affirm the motion of the earth.  In fact, there is nothing whatsoever in the Bible about the earth being the centre of any astronomical system, and often one finds till this day, views on Genesis 1, for example, which seem more philosophy than fact (cf.  Let God be God Ch.  12).

Whatever the reasons, the fact is in no doubt. The equivocal actions of Bellarmine do NOTHING to omit either his eventual radical assault which directly affected Galileo's standing, or his participation in the Inquisition or condemnation of both Galileo and the Copernican theory. Indeed, This is what must be kept in mind, as an outcome. As in a tennis match, this final result is not irrelevant, whatever heroics may or may not have preceded. In this case, they were scarcely heroics, indeed!

Thus the point is made in the Creation article that it was really a matter of Aristotelian philosophy and its fans, who were numerous in the secular sphere, rather than any hidebound, narrow-mindedness on the part of the Romanist religion, which is to be observed. It is asserted that the idea that this religion was interested in maintaining its authority as interpreter of scripture, and so confronted Galileo, is unacceptable. The concept of a traditionalist or self-asserting body confronting an heroic scientist is dismissed, since the underlying conflict is deemed to have been between Aristotelian philosophy and science, not Christianity and science.

This seems a good example of that species of dichotomy which insists on a dilemma, and if the answer to one horn is rejected, the assumption is then made that the other is the good one.

IF the above concept should be correct, for example (and not only atomistically so, but a good coverage of the case at the Aristotle versus science area), even then, it does not remove in terms of background, what is in the foreground. You do not remove an event by showing that many forces were operative, and many concepts were involved, and that simplistic over-emphasis on one element is unjust. EVEN IF the concepts reviewed were in tolerable mutual evaluation, so that various skirmishes were afoot, this does not remove ultimate happenings, with ultimate reasons when the event came. As in physics, input into the parallelogram of forces is one thing; outcome is another.

The FACT of history is as Schaff in his 8 volume work, HISTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH, relates (cf. Vol. 8, p. 679),

	that the Romanist body condemned Galileo, because certain of his views in the realm of astronomy,
	that his relevant and notable work was according cordial condemnation, and this through the very man who had spoken more favourably to him earlier,
	that the Romanist body (or 'church') backed and required this prosecution, and
	that it was a non-biblical position that it was, as often enough, pursuing.

It had nothing to do with Christianity, in that firstly, cardinal doctrines of that Romanist religion were denied (cf. SMR pp. 911ff., 1032 -1088H), and that secondly it had a continuing record both before and after this time, of inquisitorial persecution, in which the limitation set by Christ on such force, was ignored to the uttermost degree (cf. John 18:36,  Matthew 26 and as noted below).

Thus there was a history of this type of non-biblical assault by force on people who maintained a course contrary to that of Romanistic teaching. In this case, to be sure, there were factors and considerations of this type and that, which could be investigated and evaluated in terms of the evidence of such things, to seek to determine to what extent these did or did not occur, and what implications might NOT be drawn in simplistic statements.

All that done, however, as in a disease, in which after a life-and-death struggle, either life or death wins, you have to take account of the result. It is also to be likened to a tug-of-war, such that many though the back-and-forth movements may have been, in the end, one side or the other may drag the other over the line, thus lending scope for evaluation, rather than denial, or ignoring, or even omission of that quite salient fact.

Papal authority was supposedly of a certain kind. If then it had been involved, or wished to be involved, in a certain position, then it would by its tradition wish to maintain itself in the face of what appeared to threaten it. It could do this sincerely, deluded as to its authority, or insincerely,  being devious or manipulative or both; but if it did it, in the end, that is the datum of no small significance when considering what happened.

It did it.

They summoned a commission, alerted the Inquisition, condemned a viewpoint, called it utterly unscriptural, required withdrawal to the level of the hypothetical, then turned to aggravate the outrage by roundly defaming and discountenancing the now prohibited view, altogether.

In this third case, as seen in the magazine CREATION noted, we have then much the same points made as earlier analysed in historical context, and so these meet the earlier review, as below. However, there will later be need to consider a further element.

VIADUCTS IN WHICH NO WATER FLOWS

Earlier Field Trips

As in some cases, you may find an old Roman viaduct, in which no water now flows, so one may find an old controversy, and act as if there were some water still in it, mitigating the force of its being a basic failure. This preoccupation with non-central aspects, as in the interests of the masonry or the assumed direction for flow, or any such feature, can act as a screen, whatever may have been the original intention.  In all this, the basic fact must not be lost.

When it comes to biblical obedience, it is essential that the original fact be not lost, but faced squarely.

I

TYRANNY AGAINST TRUTH OLD STYLE

At this point, it is well to review what was said on this topic earlier in The Holocaust of Morality and the Coming of Christ the King, Ch. 5.

THE RECLOTHING OF THE PAPACY

 We are told, in the Journal of Creation, 22(2), 2008, that there have been various moves in Romanist teaching about literal meaning in Genesis 1; but there is amazing flexibility in what that is supposed to mean. The most intense and immense contradictions are apparently quite acceptable, such as recent popes show, in that some form of theistic evolution is contemplated, though this would in fact make of God a cruel and unfeeling monster, who to MAKE things made them suffer. There is no avoidance of this fact, though it is not faced as we shall see.

Thus,

when you read of the words of Cardinal Bellarmine (cited in another Creation Ministries International officer's book, the usually excellent Refutation of Evolution, pp. 99-100),

	to the effect that
	if Galileo's view could be proved,
	that prelate would have to re-interpret scripture contrary to its plain meaning;
	and when you add to this the pretended Romanist power to control doctrine without limit, applied to the papacy:
	this is in fact far from a tolerance or flexibility.

 

In reality,  it is an intolerance of the plain meaning of scripture, as Bellarmine himself cites it, that is, of what "appears to teach the contrary" so that he would change the interpretation for the church. This is then what he would conform to if Galileo were proven to be right (which Bellarmine is not satisfied to be the case). Scripture would be stressed, compressed or redressed to make it conform. That however is just a scene in this scenario demonstrating the very implacability which Rome brings. IT is to be persuaded; WHEN it is, then the Bible has to conform. This is precisely the record, and the basis of the Inquisition (cf. Ancient Words, Modern Deeds Ch. 14). As one French journalist is reputed to have stated: When you are in power, we claim liberty by YOUR principles; when WE are in power, we use force by our own.

Science then can instruct the Bible, so that the force of the biblical text is not the ultimate, but rather the ideas of man; and it is so with the Pope as another man. This or that, not the Bible, is the determinant. When man speaks, as such, it stands; when God speaks as Himself, it must be ... reinterpreted. If someone disagrees with the mangled interpretation selected and compelled, then force would be used if available! Tolerance ? of themselves only. Civil and religious power are both claimed as in the papal Bull, Unam Sanctam.

If man says so, or if its Pope feels so, or if its Bull declares so, then so it is, whether it is contrary to the impact of scripture or not. IT has authority beyond the Bible and anything else on this earth, by its claims, even over 'princes' (the papal Bull, Unam Sanctam, 1302), and THAT rather than reason or revelation in the Bible is that!

Not only, in this Bull,  is it there declared that "it is altogether necessary to salvation for every human creature to be subject to the Roman pontiff" but "this authority, although given to a man and exercised by a man, is not human, but rather divine, given at God's mouth" - ultimately by this perversion of truth,  to the Roman pontiff. "Whatsoever you will bind" is then made universal (despite Matthew 16:18, John 20:20-22, Matthew 23:8-10), and reformable only by God HIMSELF! Applied irrationally to a pope as above all human authority,  and that directly so, because of alleged appointment, it has become the beacon of arrogance, the bastion of belligerence, the acme of intolerance and the panzer division for the invasion of the church of Jesus Christ, who has Him alone as Lord and Master, as He said.

Such is the Bull and it has been rampant indeed.

In a similar style,  Canon Law is made obligatory^*1, however much it contradicts itself.

It is beside the point to protest that the Pope is merely interpreting, since in terms of the Vatican Council of 1870, there is nothing against his will that may stand in teaching; and Vatican II affirmed all the official instruments of the faith backwards, at any such level. Reason applied to revelation is not the point; the pope is the point. If he deems it reasonable or clear or anything else, then so it is deemed to be. He acts as God Almighty on earth as in the New York Catechism's words. Reason is evacuated by the regality of the papacy: not in its own name, but in its own domain, being populated by a person whose word is ostensibly above all human response.

Thus it was this same Cardinal Bellarmine who did indeed counsel Galileo not to state his astronomical theory as the TRUTH, but who, later,  was also the very one who COMMANDED Galileo to RECANT, in a mode which does not seem reasonable, or righteous, or fair, or just or really quite pleasant in style, as the account in Refuting Evolution in its tenor of treatment,  might allow one to think. If we are going to take a topic, let us do it full justice. Thus Galileo, having been put under this command BY Bellarmine, was later consigned to prison, whatever may have actually happened, and consigned to retract - even if he murmured, or is reputed to have done, in speaking of the earth, 'and for all that it moves' (as Phillip Schaff renders it  -p. 679, Vol. VIII, History of the Christian Church). It is there also that we find that Bellarmine ORDERED Galileo to teach that the earth was the immovable centre of the universe.

How astutely pleasant and commendably tolerant is the outcome, and the attitude, when such ostensibly absolute power corrupts so extensively! The Bible makes no such statement; the Romanist body had no power to use violence (as it did in this case, both physical and mental) to bind what the Bible does not, nor even if the word of God were contradicted, to use violence to maintain its cause, since this was not permitted even to save the Founder of the Christian Church, from the uttermost point of death. As Christ put it, IF His kingdom were of this world, then His servants would fight. SINCE they did not, there is proof positive that it is not a kingdom of that type. In fact, it does not even permit such action as shown with Peter in Matthew 26:52ff.. Violence to conscience and faith, using force to compel ideas has no part in the kingdom of heaven; so that the concepts of Rome were alien to it.

A 'nice' turn of words might make the earlier quotation from Bellarmine - to the effect that IF he were to be convinced that Galileo's theory was correct, he would re-interpret the Bible to match it - to be the equivalent of "being allowed to state" that the heliocentric view was a superior hypothesis.  In fact,  if Galileo put his idea as better than the assumed but misunderstood biblical concept of  authority, when it was articulated, then prison was the liberty, and authority was the rationale of the coercion.

How COULD it be superior in truth if in Romanism,  the Bible is statedly truth from God Himself, every word, and if the papacy rules interpretation and Galileo is not God! Interpretation ? THAT is for Rome. ITS interpretation ? correctly put by Galileo, wrongly found by Rome, the two were contrary.

What would it matter if at this point or that, when a man is merely toying with an idea, permission to be playful is given, so long as it is not presented as the truth! I In the long run, ROME was to decide what the interpretation was to be, as it still claims VIA Vatican II; and when that was done, if the scientist was not ON with this, then OFF to the prison with him! That was the actual situation with Galileo.

Thus the appearance of tolerance becomes the reality of intolerance, flexibility becomes the flexing of muscle, diplomacy becomes duress, majesty becomes implacability ... and you are not saved from this intrusive force even if you want to state that an ecclesiastical version of truth is inferior, your idea superior; for what relevance has non-truth! PAPACY at its own discretion, lays it down and it uses the name of God like a stamp, when it does so (despite the monumental collision with Matthew 23:8-10, and I John 2:27 in so doing).

What then of an implied inferior concept, judged by a theory, WHEN the pope or his ministers duly define the concept they have in mind, the  theory they favour, as if from the Bible but in fact with due reference to their own canons ? That would contradict their claims to speaking with direct authority from God in determinations, to the point that prison or even death could confirm the concept of authority which they claim!

Burnt ? No, he was not burnt, except in the metaphorical sense, in conscience, in humiliation, in dehumanisation of his voice and mind by force, in prison, that is all... just that. It is not enough to day Rome did not burn for a scientific idea; that may be true, but it is not exhaustive, as Churchill is reputed to have said to President Roosevelt, re his concept of aid.

More needs to be said, even in breadth of scope, even if in a very few words, than appears in Creation magazine concerning this element (October-December 2010, pp. 33ff.). Christians do not have to answer for the works of a body which, though it has the same of a church, does not keep to the criterion that one must not at all ADD to the word of God (Proverbs 30:6), nor act, unless the one in question be CHRIST HIMSELF (sinless, resurrected bodily, eternal...),  as a master and teacher for His body. ALL others than the ETERNAL LORD have subordinate roles, as brethren, and whatever service they may give, it is not as lords, having dominion (I Peter 5), but as aids to the word of God to which nothing may be added, from which nothing subtracted as taught from Deuteronomy 4, 12 to the last Chapter of Revelation.

If therefore Romanism does such a thing as this, it does not impact on biblical Christianity, which both for bids the additives and the attitude. What then of a scientific matter in the special case of this Romanism ? What might be handed out to one in this regard, from its authoritarian midst ? What for doctrine as such ?

Burnt for many doctrinal and dogmatic reasons ? yes, very many were. Imprisoned for a scientific idea ? Yes, Romanism could manage to do that, and did with Galileo. Could one be humiliated, threatened and formally charged because of it, and compelled to gainsay it publicly, when it was a scientific matter ? Yes, in the famous case of Galileo, this was all done. Let us have it as it is.

Superior, then, in what can a theory be, when it is NOT the truth, as defined by Rome ? Superior in what, is it when prison can confine your thoughts in their centre, shame express their toleration and anathema put finale to faith ?

To take thus an hypothetical idea of a Cardinal, at first meeting something  contrary to his inclination, which he later subjected to concrete denial, imposed with claimed divine authority, as a ground for allowance or concession:  this is as far from liberty as is prison. Moreover, even his earlier concession in its own terms, requires what is declared to be truth, yet to be inferior in some way to theory.

In this Romanist case of Galileo: TRUTH defined is imposed; theory contrary is disposed. The 'truth' is the opinion of a body which can add to the Bible and declare dominatingly what it means, using force to help it maintain its cause. That is the reality. Let us not turn from it, for truth's own sake!

 

INTERPRETATION, INVESTMENT,
ASSERTION, COERCION AND DESERTION

What is the point of saying, as does the priest behind the book reviewed in the Journal of Creation, that the topic of evolutionism and its acceptability or otherwise is beyond the powers of the pope, when all the ordained of Rome, as in Vatican II,  HAVE to admit that ALL the instruments of authority are in their due place and stand,  being affirmed by that Council.  That of course includes the Council of Trent very specifically, and the Vatican Council of 1870, in which the unqualified power of the papacy is asseverated in assertorial terms. "Whatever resists this power thus ordained of God, resists the ordinance of God..." - says the Bull, Unam Sanctam.  Then it proceeds to note, in terms of due authority according to its claim, that to do so means lacking salvation! Secularity and the sacred alike are to rest under the imposing authority of the pope, on ultimate duress of spiritual exclusion from what is deemed to be heaven!

INTERPRETATION is wholly given, and the topics of what is MEANT in the Bible are the papal domain; and whether the result be in accord or in discord with this or that may therefore be determined: but the interpretation of the test-pad, the Bible being by authority. Irrational or otherwise as an interpretation, this is what is bound.

Three popes in Encyclical or other formal speech, over a period of some 57 years up to last year,  have deemed evolutionism not contrary to the Bible. The first declared Darwin's view "a serious hypothesis, worthy of investigation", the middle one added that evolutionism is now "more than an hypothesis" and thus advanced past the permissive attitude of Pius XII, on through the enveloping approval which was that of John Paul II. This had moved on to the intensification of this by Benedict in 2007 ^*2. Rome lies with the fallen, exchanging compliments, and many are in the same bed.

Alas and alas, as in Revelation 18ff., it is and will be; and so too for the false prophet more broadly; for he is to be very broad (Revelation 16), quick-moving with his pests, the spiritual pesticide the word of God.

Again, there was further occasion to deal with this issue in the interests of objectivity and fairness to actual events, in The Lord of Longsuffering... Ch. 2.

An excerpt follows

In the latest copy of Creation magazine (Vol.33, No. 3, 2011), it is pointed out that Galileo's trial in the Roman Catholic was not in fact a confrontation between narrow-minded biblical understanding and a solemn, correct science. It was rather between the geocentric view from Aristotle and such, and Galileo. The Church had in fact taken this aboard, though some Jesuits soon after Galileo are said to have repeated his observations and agreed with him. There was apparently some confusion both amid scientists and Romanists, each speaking with apparent authority.

Although the magazine points out that many knew and had long known the earth was not flat, but of the nature of a sphere, and some did not follow Aristotle, yet the fact remains that the Church in this confrontation with Galileo^*1,  CHOSE to follow Aristotle, a ludicrous and biblically forbidden performance (Colossians 2:8), and to impose his view. This imposition  likewise was based on their concepts of their own sovereignty as the Roman church, which Matthew 23:8-10 denies absolutely. If ALL are brethren and ONE is Master, and HIS name is Jesus Christ, born of a virgin (Matthew 1), bodily risen (Acts 2), sinless (Hebrews 1-7, I Peter 2), how on earth or beyond it, can this one so characterised, BE someone else, such as a papal authority! Is nothing sacred then  ? even in His own name!

The point is then that this has nothing to do with the Christian Church, biblically defined, whatsoever. There was a large and militarily armed heretical body, arrogating authority to itself, and there was the biblically defined Christian Church, leaving with Him and seeking to operate according to His biblical word. What the former did concerned itself alone; for if you can try to pre-empt the authority of Christ, at least you cannot bind the Bible in your power. It is written, and it stays. Trying to justify or bidding fair to soften the errors of such a body is no gain to the Christ of the Bible, the Lord's Christ. Confusion of loyalties does nothing but harm.

Just as formerly one had to note that despite the apparent willingness of Cardinal Bellarmine, in talks with Galileo, to change and bind the understanding of the Bible, if Galileo were proved right, so this was not tolerance in the end. It was in fact this same Cardinal who pressed the charge against Galileo, when the time came. What do we learn ? It is rather this: we find the folly of having an authoritarian church,not limiting its doctrine to the Bible,  which would hold views without the slightest biblical consent, and even seek to apply them, and that, even with force!

It is true, as the magazine indicates, that Bellarmine congratulated Galileo earlier, but this does not mean that he did not, in the end, in this follow the authority of the Church which decided not to follow this line, but to attack him instead.  He did what he was told.

As noted in Ch.  5 of Holocaust of Morality, you find this:

In reality,  we rather find in him,  an intolerance of the plain meaning of scripture, as Bellarmine himself cites it, in favour of what "appears to teach the contrary",  so that the Cardinal would seek  to change the interpretation for the church if the scientist found otherwise! In principle how flexible with the word of God is this authoritarian. In practice, how redoubtable at the trial, he was, in seeking to force the word of the Romanists on Galileo!

This is then what he would conform to, if Galileo were proven to be right (which Bellarmine was  not then satisfied to be the case). Scripture would be stressed, compressed or redressed to make it conform. Its own declaration would be annulled or countermanded or altered, if necessary.

It was not necessary. It did not say any such thing as the Romanists in this declared in the trial. That however is just a scene in this scenario demonstrating the very implacability which Rome brings. IT is to be persuaded; WHEN it is, then the Bible has to conform. If it is not, even if the Bible says nothing to the point at issue, as in this case, and philosophy alone is the basis for belief in the matter, it will still bind and force the issue, in favour of philosophy, that of unbelieving man! It will  do so in the commandeered name of Jesus Christ, into whose mouth, or whose doctrine, such specifically unchristian material was put.

This is precisely the record, and the basis of the Inquisition (cf. Ancient Words, Modern Deeds Ch. 14). As one French journalist is reputed to have stated: When you are in power, we claim liberty by YOUR principles; when WE are in power, we use force by our own.

Later in Holocaust of Morality, Ch. 5, we find this (cf. Alpha and Omega ... Ch. 1):

Thus it was this same Cardinal Bellarmine who did indeed counsel Galileo not to state his astronomical theory as the TRUTH, but who, later,  was also the very one who COMMANDED Galileo to RECANT, in a mode which does not seem reasonable, or righteous, or fair, or just or really quite pleasant in style, as the account in Refuting Evolution in its tenor of treatment,  might allow one to think. If we are going to take a topic, let us do it full justice. Thus Galileo, having been put under this command BY Bellarmine, was later consigned to prison, whatever may have actually happened, and consigned to retract - even if he murmured, or is reputed to have done, in speaking of the earth, 'and for all that it moves' (as Phillip Schaff renders it  - p. 679, Vol. VIII, History of the Christian Church). It is there also that we find that Bellarmine ORDERED Galileo to teach that the earth was the immovable centre of the universe.

Let us not then be misled as to the part Romanism played concerning Galileo, because of an early congratulation before the rot set in; and the rot ? it was from Bellarmine that the attack against the Galilean view was pressed. Certainly it was philosophic in basis, assuredly it had nothing to do with the Bible; indeed, as noted, Bellarmine had congratulated the scientist before authority set in like a Winter rain: but he accepted this authority and then used it to condemn Galileo.

Thus, just as it was indeed not the Bible which met science here, but philosophy and an alleged Church which,  despite knowledge available,  chose to add to the Bible the follies of philosophy: so the warning is not to believe and follow what mixes either philosophy and the Bible, or philosophy and science. In ONLY one enduring book, authority has come clear, with perfect record,  and that is the Bible. Christ whose Spirit inspired the Bible (II Timothy 3:16, I Cor. 2:8-13, I Peter 1, II Peter 2), is likewise invulnerable to refutation, for a man tries too high, in seeking such results, and fails miserably. Such is the testimony of history, with its gallant sails set to bombard the Christ of the Bible, always shown to be mere romancing built on philosophy, not on history or the Bible.

This is because God has given His own word, and our puny and grotesquely little knowledge of His creation, and our small power next to His, makes the elevation of philosophy, using science as a kind of god, or the Bible as a sort of reservoir to be infected, a mirage to be dreamt of by comedians, an asinine folly, for those who will not learn. This is not because of any individual's special role or folly, but endemic and general to those who reject what God has to say. While not all of these are subject to this outrageous deviation from factual reality called organic evolution, for example, many are, and some pursue it as if Communists in Russia, or Spaniards in Peru, with a missionary zeal almost immeasurable, religious in nature, assailing in many cases, the minds of children. This many do by just such rank authority as Rome in the day of Galileo misused,  and on bases just as unwarranted as its philosophic hoard; and indeed, it is for centuries that such things have been done.

Of many overlaid with their tradition and self-assurance, Christ says that they shut their eyes lest they should see( Matthew 15:13-15). That is the biblical depiction of this kind of error;  and when this is too much for people now to take, being fact, just as it was in Christ's own day, that is merely a measure of godless hatred. Its culmination is traced predictively in II Thessalonians 2,  where BECAUSE they did not receive the love of the truth, they will accept a delusion. Currently, it seems truth is not entirely and always molested. Yet the cords and chains are becoming progressively more evident, tens of thousands of children being propagandised by State authority, argument excluded in science, help excluded except in the chosen direction, discrimination rife,  alleged truth safeguarded by chains of intolerant suppression even of children's voices!

The message, then, is not that Rome was not so bad in this, after all. It was a wrong-headed persecuting, self-opinionated body, playing the highwayman to the authority of God, and repressing knowledge with no scriptural grounds, in the name of Jesus Christ, thus debasing HIS name for its own. "Why do you seek to kill Me,"  said Christ, "a man who told you the truth!" (John 8). Indeed, in John 8:45 He declares that it is BECAUSE He tells them the truth that they do not believe Him. 

There is an inherent, pathological, anti-logical zest against anything that puts man back where he came from, in the image of God in a wonderful world of challenge and knowledge, glory and beauty, prospect and wisdom. IF He tells them not only of what they should be, but what they COULD be, in His rescue mission from that same heaven from which they were all created with that glorious freedom with which they allowed themselves in the beginning to be intoxicated, then that is WHY they will not hear. The truth hurts too much, their wilted and wandering ways, whether for rich oppressors or anguished oppressed, in most cases.

They at His own  time, indeed, frequently rejected Him, openly. When they tried to  operate on Him, to  change His thought or way or word, He rebuked them openly. When they did in the ultimate manner physically, the sheer vociferous clamour and stark pitiless irrelevance of their blind mockery spoke volumes in a few words, to the listening ear.

Now, there are other ways of change; and traditionalism and authority in a body not only not heeding the Head utterly, but singing the tunes of other things, other ways, other ideas, and these are one searing mode of lapse (cf. Mark 7:7ff.), that can at length burn the conscience and strangle the spirit. Only the supreme supernatural power of God can act, and some burn themselves right out before that (I Timothy 4:2, I John 5, Isaiah 57:16ff.)). This is always a contemporary affair, never dated, for the spirit of it circles in many sites, to this hour. There are warnings that must not lapse (cf. I Timothy 4:1-5), for those who would  safeguard the sheep (cf. Acts 20:29).

What, then, of ostensible Christianity, where the Bible does not solely rule doctrine ? There in this Galileo affair, the ONLY teacher, the Christ of the Bible,  did not even have a say in the imposture pressed on Galileo.  It was HE who directly forbad the use of such power to arrest,  to force (Matthew 26, John 18:36). Certainly what happened was to force what was philosophic and not biblical: but in one regard, it was all the worse for that. WHY force opinions based on philosophy or romantic thinking, as if God were subject  to you! Jeremiah in Ch. 23 puts it like this, or rather God by His Spirit causes Him  to reveal this: I did not send these prophet, yet they ran!

In the case of the present contention that many knew of the earth's movement, this is relevant, in that it is not a simple Church-science confrontation. Some in the Romanist body agreed with Galileo; but its AUTHORITY, wholly misconceived and anti-scriptural, as a supposed Church was misused in the interests of a preferred philosophy which in the end, in the trial,  it endorsed over Galileo.

The lessons ? Do not allow philosophically based scientistic or ecclesiastical pretension to overcloud clear truth from the Bible;  and  do not fear what scientific method will disclose. Followed with care, it is reliable, even if limited (cf. Scientific Method). Of  course, numbers of scientists have deliberately altered data, because of philosophic opinion, or cut out the obvious, but this just means due care is needed. Prominent scientist, Lord Zuckerman, in his book, Beyond the Ivory Tower, pointed out this the amazing slowness of many to accept established facts, contrary to their theory. After all, he declares, scientists are human and subject  to human failure as well as anyone else. It is scientific METHOD which counts.

It is only the word of God which is never in need of correction, however hard men try to re-write it or to ignore the vast abundance of testimony.

In these  two  points, then, the inclusion of philosophy into science^*1, and the misuse of authority to press  the  result without admission or correction for considerable periods,  where God and His creation is concerned, current science is in no small degree, in chains. In these two points, organic evolutionists are down on both counts. Scientific method condemns them, as noted (cf. TMR Ch. 1, Ch. 7, SMR pp. 140ff.), and philosophy animates them^*2. They dither in disagreement (cf. Wake Up World! ... Chs. 4-6, SMR Chs. 1   -2). They do so because their underlying ignoring of essential competitive evidence between their assumptions and the testimony of both logic and the Bible, PREVENTS their finding the truth which in the normal patient, and persistent style of science properly so-called, meets  all conditions without need of fracture and ferment!

It is FOUND to be the Bible,  which meets each point with unique facility and with no contradiction at any one. See for example: The gods of naturalism have no go! and Deity and Design...

This then is the nature of the misuse of authority, whether in science or religion, where philosophy is smuggled in, either without noting, or as if it were something else, as with Lewontin^*2!

In the matter of Galileo, then, in the perspective of the principles involved,  Romanism is not to be made to look as if irrelevant in this matter, for it did opt for folly. Why then not make it clear that it DID err greatly and grossly both in its attitude, its pride and its anti-scriptural fulminations, based on zero rational reference to the Bible! It erred the more in this, that some realised the truth, but bowed to authority which CHOSE to follow Aristotle, and to attack Galileo because of this.

 

FURTHER CONSIDERATION

By now we have considered a fair amount of historical background about what certainly happened, about what is thought to be possible interpretations of some features and evidence adduced, so covering in substantial degree,  the factual, the actual and the problematic, tendential,  variable.

In the third article in the revision of Romanism's actions re Galileo, found in this Creation literature, then, we have a further statement.  It is this: "Thus, Galileo's greatest enemies were not in the church but rather among his colleagues and fellow scientists, most of whom denied the Copernican system."

Now as one who knows what it is to be condemned wrongly (even if later the matter were by the self-same church overturned), and to have ecclesiastical authority misused by paid teachers attacking the Bible which the Church endorses, who even go  so far as to attack someone who challenges them in answer to their own challenge, one finds that this statement presents a clear case for concern. Was it not the papacy which in 1632 referred Galileo's case to the Inquisition ?

Who condemned Galileo to life imprisonment (however much circumvented) in 1633, or consigned a significant part of his teaching to the wrath of condemnation ? Who ordered him to recant ? (just as I was ordered to apologise - one knows from experience the hidebound evil that can infect people in a religious organisation when it errs profoundly)!

It was the Inquisition, calling him to its powers, after a Commission had been called by the pope, and found that Galileo had not really put forth his Copernican views (then condemned by the Romanist body) hypothetically (as he had been required to put in a later preface). Thus was he pushed and prodded, his professional integrity in the gravest compromise.

At the notorious and infamous Inquisition, while his case progressed, or regressed, we find that he was held as prisoner in the Inquisition building. We find that he had offered to refute what he had put in one book, in another.

Are these gross and outrageous, erratic and unsustainable declarations, requirements and impositions in his integrity and liberty, in the heart of his interests, then trivial ? Were there then really others who did worse than this sustained, decades-long, interfering dynamic of authorities who can (and did) imprison and condemn him, dealing him an indefinite detention verdict, while also requiring cessation in certain areas, and deeming certain work heretical ? Were their words worse, their arrests more severe, their imprisonment more humbling, their authority more, their searing assault more pugnacious and their influence more impactive in the career and life of Galileo! Moreover, these very same extraordinarily intrusive and self-assured authorities dared to attribute to the Bible their idle philosophies, sanctified by some feeling of celestial light, and set their ideas within the bounds of the Bible, by leaping imagination!

It is not only what was done; for how long, with what confinements, condemnations, vertiginous assaults on the scientist's integrity: it was the bombastic addition of their own views to the Bible in the process which cumulatively makes of this case not less than might be imagined, but rather more. Ethically, ecclesiastically, professionally, personally, socially, it was a vast chasm of erroneous condemnation, unilluminated estimation and defilement of the word of God. It is not unusual altogether as you see in the words of Christ in Mark 7:7ff.. That a body supposedly of God could render the word of God of null effect by its traditions was not only not new; it was a topic from the lips of Christ to the establishment of the Temple in His own day. Hypocrites, He called them, "laying aside the commandment of God that you may keep the tradition of men!"

They killed Him  and sought to silence Galileo by a combination of illicit and abused authority, ignoring of movements in their own midst, gross and abusive talk, bombastic belligerence and extraordinary assumptions about their powers!

Let us pursue it a little further. Who even recognised an illicitly exalted eminent member of its own body to pursue attack the  views of Galileo in a formal hearing and to condemn them at the relevant point ? Who interfered with his career in this cardinal fashion ? and it was literally a cardinal thing, since it is claimed that 7 of 10 cardinals reportedly signed the condemnation.

Who used this authority because it supposedly settled in one of its members, and it was thus duly exercised ? Was not the papacy involved, forwarding the issue to its condemnatory vehicle!

What is the direction of flow of a body which using force, and giving oversight in a hierarchy at the top claiming power over princes and priests alike, as in Unam Sanctam, insists that a scientist recant his views and does so not on the alleged basis of the actual resource of the Bible, but with not even the slightest basis in the text of that volume ? Philosophy or tradition PLUS the Bible can produce anything. The Bible makes its own assertions with a chaste command and a knowledgeable assertion, which many have tried to capture for their own, acting almost as if it were a chained dog. Yet the word of God is not bound, as Paul with real authority asserts (I Corinthians 14:37). Nevertheless, Galileo had to "abjure formally" his doctrine, as the Encyclopedia Britannica puts it. Assuredly he should not have conformed; but does a failure in a victim confirm his being abused!

The fear and love of God has brought many to ignore these detestable and imperious clamours, rather losing their jobs, rather than conform, or their heads. Whether from one source or another, I have had to do this multiply, though mercifully the former only! They would not dare to conform to culture, when its ways do not measure up to supreme standards of what is believed by informed faith and irrefragable logic! It is enough if God speaks; and it is with God as with no one else. For Thomases who test, it is well: Test all things says I Thessalonians 5. It is untested arbitrariness which is an effrontery to God and a failure to man. Who can join this! Who can buy what is not for sale! Galileo fought well in much; but his very failure in crucial issues under pressure, is but one more testimony of an authoritarianism to be pitied as well as resisted.

In what way, however,  were his fellow scientists worse than this to Galileo ? And what has this to do with Biblical Christianity, which from this self-same book insists that variation to add to or subtract from these things in this book is a violation of covenant and ground for separation! (cf. Separation 1997).

If some in the Romanist body believed better concerning astronomy, does this mitigate their submission to a biblically unchosen master and his chosen methods (contrary to Matthew 23:8-10), allowing him to dictate;  or condone this in concurrence with any number of this character who use such a concept as the basis of their power, in appointing victims of its misuse ? Not only is Jesus Christ, to refer to this text in Matthew 23, ONE, He is the ONLY ONE, born of a virgin, sinless,  Creator of life, above all, so that ALL of the rest are brethren, by contrast with Him: bound to His teaching as He to that of His Father, so giving an example (cf. John 12:48-50, 20:21). There is no slightest possibility of confusing the Christ with the papacy, for ALL those, not He, have ONLY one master. He was in the form of God and took for His service, the form of a man.

Such is not the master here perceptible in His singularity without human elevated to His side. Thus the carnal weapon was used, and nothing can remove it or its outcome from cardinal oppression, both as to misplaced authority and misused force: both principles left lying in the street (Isaiah 59). It is for such outrage in the end, that the Messiah will come (Isaiah 59), in His day of power.

Yet does the variability of some left to their own devices in the Romanist body of that day at the first, before the appointed outcome, does this lessen the lesson of the hierarchical summit, misplaced: or rather but the more attest it in its movement at length!

Does it remove the actuality that in the end,  to revert, there WAS that sneeze, and the fruit salad did spill ? That is, if the authorities acted in this way a length, does division in its misdirected authority structure beforehand, make that authority any less evident in its action ? or does suppression of such views in this place, lessen the injury to Bible and man alike! 

II

TYRANNY AGAINST TRUTH

IN TEMPORARY MODERN DRESS TO REPRESS

If conscience is soiled by a specious doctrine about what is called the Church, does this make the authoritarian condemnation by that Church, any the better, amidst the arrogation of Christ's authority! Rather is it an expression of the power of false religion to combat science. Similarly another false religion in our present day, as seen for example in the Lewontin case^*1 is misusing scientists, and causing another false authority to seek that all bow to it with a persistence and eventual outcome quite as notorious as that of Rome in that time.

The secular and the sacred then can point to their own programs in their own ways and days, tyranny rather than truth becoming the criterion, call it what you will. If it were truth alone, attested for testing in the Bible as anywhere else, and in the empirical facts, with due scientific method, where is the problem ? It is, however not so now as it was not so then. There is a certain parity in performance by much in contemporary     government, chosen by people, and such works as that on Galileo, by the thrust of a pope chosen by some, in his day.

In that day and those near it, prison and torture, stealing of goods from those condemned, by enabling their seizure, such things were common though sanctified by beatitudinous language. In this our day, for concern with creation in the origins arena, loss of employment, advancement, of tenure is not uncommon^*1A, or prohibition on speaking according to the evidence, as personally experienced by myself in a tertiary institution in this very city.

Force is used where

	either the relevant actual statements of the Bible, which should in science be heuristically pursued, on the one hand, to test them, because as here attested, these are ineffaceable by fact, or its systematic depositions in the field of creation, are to any extent excluded,  prevented from being investigated;
	or the empirical testimony of creation and what it does, or the natural realm, on the other hand is not objectively searched and noted without prejudice, or callow imagination, in comparison.

Indeed, this done,  their collation should be researched, the comparisons clearly made, with performance criteria outlined. 

In what is force used ?

It is deployed by systematic and exclusivistic inculcation of theories which notably and notoriously do not meet agreement with empirical facts (see The gods of naturalism have no go! and SMR pp. 140ff.), as students learn. Their learning thus becomes a social/political/academic preserve, abused, invaded, a breach of trust to an entire generation.

It is used, force, by other means as noted, such as

	removal or denial of tenure.
	refusal of permission to lecture on such grounds.
	omission of research funds for such projects, as protested by Professor Løvtrup in his Darwinism: The Refutation of a Myth, 1987. That is a book with no small parallel to Denton's Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, and something, in some points, with Gould's iconic, and revealing, Wonderful Life.  All have at points, an unusually tender relationship to facts in this field.
	Inculcation of a culture, view, atmosphere and teaching mode indirectly or directly mocking  what empirically meets an undeniable record of empirical confirmation, namely creation, and making it clear that exams and tests will be oriented accordingly.

These things are gross, outrageous, a forlorn mockery of what a university once stood for, a point made to the authority challenging me not to continue lecturing with such a creation-attesting module incorporated in my theme (on scientific method), and a fearful presumption against truth, and arrogance in the face of it, as if one were, or one's university, State or nation, proof against counter-attack by truth itself, and the source of it, without which it would not even be possible for a right perspective to exist, let alone be found, and therefore taught! 

This is an unsublime and indeed debasing piece of didactic method, as far from scientific method and its means of obtaining favour, as it is even possible to go.

Why ? because like anything else, creation and its consequence and bases,  is to be tested in every possible way in science, for its part, because it is there and one should keep informed of cause and effect at every level and in every way (cf. Causes, Scientific Method ...). Where something is beyond such test, this is not surprising or discountenancing; for when it comes the minute particles, the same can come  to apply. We test what we can, where we can, how we can, and abide  by the results until they are unseated, as evolutionism has been in ways so numerous that it is a comic parody of science in its customary presentation, duly and justly called a work in the area of the scientistic, indeed a scientistic sickness has afflicted academia to an astounding extent, just as the Aristotelian views in astronomy and the earth did, in earlier times.

What then SHOULD be done when various modes of accounting for the evidence are competitively considered, and comparison is them made, in an ordinary and orderly fashion, without the vomit of mental vice covering the facts with abandon, brio or sneering, snarling or threat ? When then

Then you rule out what in principle fails to meet assured and certain, duly tested empirical data, on the first count. If there is a second one (which should not even be necessary), you might apologise for your slowness, and rule it out then. When as is the case in evolutionism, you find these multiple, you really need to repent, and then teach empirically with accuracy, and methodically with justice. You would probably lose your lectureship, as I did; for I could not even consider omitting what truth demanded, and integrity required, what logic indicated and scientific method shouted.

That very omission however being the condition for continuance, I left the unhappily blighted establishment to those who desired something else. In nothing did they even attempt to show any error in my approach or material or in any data: it was all about convenience, as for that matter, was the death of Christ (John 11:50). In things great or small, where God especially is concerned, convenience is much more agreeable to this world, than is the truth (cf. SMR Chs.   3, 10).

That very omission however being the condition for continuance, I left the establishment, thus unhappily blighted establishment to those who desired something else.

But why worry ? Truth for the heart and the mind is infinitely more important than money for means. What indeed is the very use of means if you have the wrong objectives ? What, to take an illustration, is the use of a large 8 cylinder car if you are going at greater speed on the wrong road. It is ludicrous then to carry on.

When however you find a concurrence of hypothesis (if you want to call it that in scientific method, as a procedure) and empirical fact, and an explicatory power in these terms, and there is no competition in this point, and the resolution stands alone: you proceed on that basis: for then where is the competition to unravel it and of what is such competition composed.

Indeed, on this very point, then where does a word such as that of Professor Lewontin fit ? When Lewontin and such disciples of those convictions speak, and we find what is created in terms of such contemporary speakers; and when God speaks in the Bible, and we find what is created on that basis, what is the difference rationally ? Not only Professor Lewontin, but Professor Gould of no small fame, found things not only inexplicable, but in Lewontin's own words

	the "patent absurdity of some of its constructs,  its
	"failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises"  and
	"the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories..."

In the case of Professor Stephen Gould (cf. Wake Up World! for Your Creator is Coming, Ch. 6 in the context of Chs. 4-6), in the course of his adverse discoveries concerning gradual evolutionism and the relationship of fact to the entire gradualistic method (a slow magic as against his faster one, all based on nothing however), he lifted his voice to heaven. HOW IN HEAVEN'S NAME can such things be! So to face the sudden and often unannounced, arrival of new things on their own account of such things, they demand action. If it cannot come slowly, let it be unleashed from nowhere for no reason with no method and no apparatus for change and contrary to the laws of information, which have their own reasons (cf. *1A, *1C  and *1B, with  *3 below and  The Desire of the Nations Ch. 2 Epilogue).

What is it like ? It is rather like seeking to put atomic reactors in nothing, so that with more power you can have more wit; but that fails too for two reasons. Firstly, nothing has nothing, is nothing for emplacement, has no place for it, no room for it, no anything for anything. Hence calling on it at all for what is never found outside it, is ballyhoo of the first order. Secondly, speed is really not an issue, except to aggravate the folly in desiring action at all from such a source. It is command^*1B, information, law that is wanted, and dying, whether of the fit or otherwise, simply does not produce it. If something else did, and it is supposed for no reason to be in the natural realm itself, you would need firstly the interface, the way it does it, and secondly, the evidence of its efforts, if imperfect, including failures. You do not get it. Facts are at war with evolutionism. It is not merely tardy with truth, but  targetted at it.

The source then ? If it is not in the natural, delimited zone of nature, then it is time you got beyond it to find what is adequate for putting it there. The realm of nothing and the notable, the beginning and the end (so far), is not a good liaison; they do not make a good pair.

Evolution has no match either in reason

 (which in any case we use, and without it there is no argument on any lines, and no declaration of any import, for irrational gabble does not signify or constitute a basis for anything of understanding),

or in the empirical realm,

and is constantly denied in, and in confrontation with both.

The case is not unclear but overwhelmingly certain. What is not only unclear but queer and wrong outrageously is the failure to act. It is precisely as in the years leading up to the Second World War: as Hitler did aggressive things, then for peace' or fear's sake, these were passed over, and the situation became all but untenable. There was no effort to take back land from the Ruhr which Hitler in show of force, unilaterally grabbed, in violation of  agreement, or deliver summarily invaded Austria; and still Churchill was conceived more as war-monger than far-sighted statesman. When illusion could no longer be fostered, following Chamberlain famous speech waving a useless and futile document before the people, supposedly indicative of peace, then Churchill had another reception.

At last, the land rocketed to action and doubtless Churchill's long prelude of warnings helped reality to dawn the more speedily.

That is an illustration regarding SLOWNESS to respond to the sanctions of reality; and in this case, to those of truth, evidence and scientific method in the way it has gained respect, in its classic format.

What then of the evolutionism for which Hitler's aggression is a parable in terms of slowness to respond ?

Competitively and actually, we find here as shown, what neither accounts for the result, resting on the most unproductive of things, nothing itself in the end, or on begging the question, nor the elements within it, as you proceed from nothing as source to nothing as mother of invention.

In the area of creation however, eminently so in the biblical specific in its relationship to the Creator, which provides any otherwise untouched ingredient to complete the scope of the account,  we find the coherent, constantly empirically co-ordinate attestation of a logical causation which implies both a will and a comprehension, with an available compendium of command both in and  for man as to creation and information, enabling research. Thus we are enabled to find only confirmation in each testable particular, and more generally, a rational basis for the rational mind in the rationally construable and analysable realm that co-exists with it.

Thus logic WORKS in the creation, being then both based in unmagical grounds,  testable environment, and able to ferret out with mind, the laws which are the product of mind, and the basic nature of the Being whose mind made them, and us (Romans 1:17ff.).As to truth,  it IS the result of His being there, and having an overall and total knowledge of all things, each subject to Himself, even of liberty in that it exists as and to the extent given, and with the results both stated and continually found.

Thus in creation, the entirety then has rationality, reason is never baulked at first or last, and the mind given to man instead of being abused in self-contradiction, made a meaningless participant in what is not only meaningless but came from nothing, in excelsis meaningless, has rational conception just as in DNA it has coded command, a stricture of structure providing a model of knowledge as of meaning, present not the less when meaninglessness is asserted as the correct evaluation and so (negative but actual) meaning of things. If you KNOW that meaning is ZERO, then you have to be an expert, grounded in reality with rational basis for such action, an assessor of note with access to truth. That is the same entirely as having truth without possible basis, in an unabsolute world of mutual reaction, based on nothing.

That is antilogy, in that you invoke what you deny, and antinomy, in that you act at the very level of law, using what you deny not only in detail and data, but in method and conception, producing logical impasse. This is the inheritance of slackness, where reason is aborted, not by itself, but by its ludicrous misuse as a servant of ideological irrelevancies. NOTHING fails when reason as given is applied to the data of reality, both concerning itself and its topic; but all fails when unreasonably, it is made a product of nothing, an example of the motions of irrationality and begotten by emptiness (cf. Predestination and Freewill Section IV).

Not so in creation. Nor are the endless, rationally discoverable, inestimably marvellous technical facilities, works of mind and collation of concepts and laws and their operative forms, modes and conditions, relevant requirements and the like, without ground; but what the eye sees, the mind may master, moving in its own domain, created but not inconsequential, reliant on God but realising His realms. Nor then is there contradiction of naturalistic concepts in the lack of ANY evidence of failed efforts (though meaningless nature can make no effort) in creation, of misbegotten creations, of muddled miscreations, or of foozled attempts, such as a worse than mongoloid nature would have to make in its mindless procedures. Just as any such basis is ludicrous and irrelevant, so the results are contrary continually to the imagined basis, which in itself, as noted is irrational in kind.

What is provided for such naturalistic concepts ? For the base in this case ? Nothing. For the means in this woven congregation of programmatic symbol-action concepts ? Nothing.  For the lack of failure efforts ? Nothing. For the level of attainment way past the works of man's own intelligence ? Nothing. The multitude of contradictions of projections from evolutionism to the empirical fact is continual and almost daily confirmation that something sufficient, instead of the nothing of denial of all logic, is the basis, and it is NOT currently innovatively giving new information. Indeed there is a law to the effect that information compilation does not come from non-intelligence (that is from  matter or natural low or process^*IC).

 

III

 

NEITHER THE WORD OF GOD,

NOR THE POWER OF CREATION

IN AND OFTEN THROUGH HIS WORKS,

SUCH AS MAN, IS BOUND:

AS MODERN MAN IS BOUND TO FIND

Lewontin, notable figure in the aggressive evolutionary program wrote this: ("Billions and Billions of Demons," The New York Review, p. 31, January 9, 1997, emphasis for clarity):

Our willingness to accept scientific claims against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to naturalism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, onl the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated.

Note that his cut-down version of 'science', which is actually a scientistic abortion, has 'patent absurdity' in parts, exhibits 'failure to fulfil many of its extravagant promises,' has liaison with 'unsubstantiated just-so stories', and if this is science, then doggerel is poetry. On scientific method where it has grounds for respect and is historically normative, see Scientific Method. The clash between what the theory indicates and what is found is vast, multi-faceted and in escapable. ONE failure is sufficient to defect untruth. If no better principles can be found to meet the case, you do not understand it. If you can be, as here, and there is no available discount, then you are bound to move till you reach the level in cognate territory as far as you may, not grossly diverse and divergent in kind, which DOES cover the case. This is not being done. 

The interesting thing is this: this exemplar of modern scientific distortion, so popular as have been other variants from science in the past, as in the famed phlogiston case, to which most bowed at the time, admits building on a philosophy with outcome not only irrational and self-contradictory, but ludicrous, and his reference to Kant is itself one to an irrationality basic to his own. It is refuted many times on this site, as in SMR Ch. 5, Predestination and Freewill Section 4, and SMR pp. 396ff. (including *2 reference at the outset of this reference).

It has the undistinguished folly of trying somewhat dismissively to 'account' for the presence of causality in logic, and in so doing makes the sophomoric, almost moronic invalidity of USING causality to PROVE that it is not objectively valid, alleging it a mere enforced insistence, blinkers for the mind. If it were any such thing, a distancing device from reality: then so would be the results of its use, even by Kant! as in making Kantianism, surreal and not real at all. In his theory, one would approach the apotheosis of antilogy, find the sleep-walk of self-contradiction and the abyss of absurdity, all conjoined like the wings, the upward thrust in hope, and the crash in fact of Icarus.

Sic temper tyrannus! thus always perish those who tyrannise over man, as if able to dispose like gods, of the divine, and drape the human with their ideas.

 

See Ch. 1 of The Lie has a Limited Shelf-Life and  Ch. 1 of The Lord of Longsuffering...

See *1A,  with  *3 below and  The Desire of the Nations Ch. 2 Epilogue.

Information compilation, like car manufacture, is decidedly NOT a matter of happenstance plus time. It is not a matter of HAVING a car and seeing what you can do with judicious actions. Doubtless there will be some innovation, but nothing to the point of car manufacture. The one is if you will,  car diffraction, the other car manufacture. One directs, the other misdirects; one contrives, the other arrives, and they are entirely different in  style, scope and nature. Confusion is inexcusable.

If you want innovative cars, trashing old ones through wear or accidents is not the way. You merely leave the whole nature of automotive construction and reproduction, moving into marring and jarring, degeneration, depreciation, whatever oddities may arrive as the thing dissipates.

It is the compilation of information which is the point when you are looking at its arrival, and the means for this. It is sophisticated rescripting which is in point when you are considering variations in information. This is what cannot be found without intelligence, though with intelligence we ourselves are doing it all the time, whether in writing books, making new editions or any other entries into otherwise intractable systems of vast scope and multi-dimensional systems and considerations, interactive, mutually semantically effective, which require to end, what they took to begin, awareness of considerations,  taking them into account and construction with that intimacy of causative relevance which is of the type at the first, whether in a book, an aeroplane or a human.

Such redrafts, or indeed first drafts are NOT found in natural process, but natural law or causatively exempt status. It does not occur. It is asking for figs from thistles; and it is simply not the case. Information is not of this type. It is not found in this way. Logic stands and magic falls. There is no problem except for nothing constructionists, or evolutionists, who remove the criteria which they do not find in practice, and breach both logic and the empirical.

Some will wish to  talk  of definition, but the concept of compilation is crucial. That is what it is all about, not deterioration,  depletion, vexation, chatter in place of talk. Information does not  self-create; its varied stages of deterioration are not its creation, but its denudation, whatever the range of degenerative effects, and whatever their passing utilities for this or that, as when a car is dented, and so fits better into the garage. That is outside the realm of car manufacture and its explanation, just as this is a differential in the realm of information rather than new information, in its essential character as such.

It is certainly not the compilation of information. Like  static in music, it is different sound rather than new music. Information is never found to be compiled without intelligence, or with that omission, being integrally engendered in its type. Hype may make irrelevant  claims, but type is not so  found. It is not that sort of thing, nor has it that sort of cause. It is an advent, not adventitious, a symbolically expressed conceptual construction borne by molecules, not born from them. They are not found to produce it, engender it of themselves. They neither have what it takes, nor show it so that one may know it. As always in disciplined science, resemblances must be distinguished from reality, and  clamour distinguished from claims.

Let us then consider as an EXCURSION

INFORMATION GENESIS.

What is information in generic terms ? It is an ordered expression, true to type, governed by a language or code of a particular and intelligible variety, expressing  categorisation,  characterisation, interpretation, orientation, procedure or command which in type may be acted on for the fulfilment or achievement of purpose, whether directly or by correlation, personally or by program.

It  is distinct from 

	disinformation, which misleads,
	misinformation which mismatches and
	unexpressed constraint (such as found in natural law which may express constitutive form, format or features, either specific to or generic about various constructions by a variety of endued dynamics -  e.g. E=MC2).

The production of information must follow for its code or  language, normal laws of grammar, syntax and interpretability, the relation of such things to semantic and hence meaning, for it to achieve the domain of function.

Dispersal, disturbance, disruption, breach do not bring new information, any more than ink blots or tears or thumb-prints on playing cards bring new cards. These are defilements, displacements and disorders which may or may not render the butts dysfunctional and might just conceivably cause confusion; but they are all in the end, break-down products, in a given system justly called information - corruptor, varying from the trivial to the dispersive.

Conservation of information, like the conservation of natural things in general in this world, involves ways of avoiding dispersion, disruption and decline in WHAT IT ESSENTIALLY IS. Modes of decline may be new, but not at all new versions of the thing. Degeneration may sport some differences indeed, but it is not access to generation in terms of the matter to hand, in view, and operative. Confusion here is of plus and minus, not at all to the point.

As  to its dispersion, information may cease to represent some of its coherence while producing different results. This is not true-to-type, but false to type in degree, so representing degeneration of information in a partial  wipe-out phase. It resembles a heart attack which, while altering behaviour in the body, is only negative relative to characterisable bodily function.

 Clearly,  differences of degree may appear, by misinformation, but just as disease, breach, degeneration may lead to differences, so these changes do no supply new information, as if to augment the systematic structure and type of the original, to act in accordance with it as to type, but degenerative misadventure to attenuate the highly specialised, multi-layered constrictions both to things internal and external, which constitute information. The death rattle may be new, a diversification of auditory data from a given body; but then it would not be considered a new feature, focus or development within the body as such, rather a parting remark, as it were, a form of good-bye.

We could not class it with what constitutes the bodily information make-up without confusing dynamic with dispersal, constitution with denudation, the fricative and the fractious with the functional and the relevant to the field in view.

Thus, a broken leg, given intelligence, may lead to  research on alternate adaptations for motion, but not an integral, cohesive uniformity of equipment and its various characterisable provisions; and to the extent stem cells may be used, while this lessens the difference, it is merely an intelligent usage of parts of the information equipment, irrelevant to non-intelligence on the one hand, and compilation of information as a phenomenon on the other.

Much of the talk on creation and  evolutionism concerns ways of seeking to divert attention from what is before us to something else, without logical basis, relevance or interface, empirical evidence or pointed provisions. It is, in short, evasion of the issue. There is never need for it, only for its refutation, as if a man decidedly against a certain marriage could think only of objections against it, and found it traumatic to hear that they were inapplicable. The more he cannot prevail, the more he becomes desperate, so that in the end he may be calling an angelic prospect,  a devil, and seek to escape in the perspiration and invocations, emotions and upsets which result. 

It is logically, however, always irrelevant. What we have is what we do not now find, in natural process, law or occurrence. Nor is it found latent in the engines to  do it; we find information and creation, as unmoved by desire to  replicate what has been done, as the homeward bound horse to cease his rush for rest.

What then ? Produce something new ? certainly, but we are  talking of new information in such a style as to dissociate what is its special and specific contribution from the opposite: namely, downgrading, degenerative, debasing,  diluting alterations, without fresh application of intelligence. Corruption  and  contrivance are not identical; composition and decomposition are not confusable.

Naturally,  information as a basis for command, for  example, may include provisions for multiple responses to situations, that are not degenerative and hence denatured; but such merely show indications of the domain of applied information.  Wherever controls and constraints cover situations directly or indirectly, this is versatile information, not altering underlying code or command in type, but exercising jurisdictive enablements to cover contingencies, indirect outcome coverage, such as intelligence delights to institute, because of foresight.

Similarly, repairs, a specialty in the special case of DNA, for DNA using separable information levels, known as information about information, may enable function within informational latitude, without deleting more than maximal efficiency. This will depend on such errors in the repair as may occur over time, in terms of the actual natural law concerning increases of entropy, such as the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

These things work. The opposites are not found. The creation-information  complex, the word of God to cause what is not to be, it is not evidenced in current empirics, any more than it is tolerated in biblical specifics. God finished all that long ago, and longsuffering 'nature' cannot be twisted, contorted or aborted  to 'say' otherwise. It quite simply does not now act that way. Making anything has its modes; making hay has its costs; making repairs normally has its limits; making facts speak has its points. Even the human genome is going down,  at a rate involving cause for acute concern,  we learn from Cornell University research. It is time to be oriented to empirical facts,  as well as proven orientation and information provisions as in the Bible. They cohere like right and left hands.

In Possess Your Possessions  Volume 10, Ch. 3, accordingly, we have this information:

In creation,  God unleashed His word, and it was done. SINCE God finished it, man has been without excuse, his disjunction from God and His works varying from fiddling follies in inchoate philosophy (cf.  Spiritual Refreshings Ch. 13), to pseudo-subtle ramifications and infractions of logic (cf.  SMR Ch.  3) in the very face of obvious, competent,  all-inclusive answers to  every major category

(cf.  TMR, SMR Ch. 5, Predestination and Freewill  Section  4,

LIGHT DWELLS WITH THE LORD'S CHRIST,
WHO ANSWERS RIDDLES,
AND WHERE HE IS, DARKNESS DEPARTS,
Bible or Blight, Christ or Confusion:
The Comprehensive Resolution of Man's Intractable Problems
is Found Only in the Bible, the Word of God,

Deity and Design ..., esp.   8).

Not only so, examine as you will, it IS finished in all major designs (designs decreasing rapidly in number,  according to Professor Stephen Gould of Harvard, in his Wonderful Life (cf. Wake Up World! ... Ch. 6), while the human genome rapidly is deteriorating according to Professor Sanford of Cornell University (cf. Waiting for Wonder ... Appendix). That is the way with designs in this world; they tend to come apart; and these have lasted several thousands years, auto-serviced and reproduced, a miniaturised marvel of intricate complexity, susceptible to concept,  governing by language, commanded to be what it is. Nature is recipient. Life is by command, in its physical aspect. Evolution is a mere myth; creation happened and leaves a trail in all categories (cf. SMR pp.  140ff.). Reason and empirical evidence insist! If you deny both, both deny you.

Let us now return to the prescribed variabilities about and within a kind, enabling diversification of individuality within fixity of kind (cf. A Spiritual Potpourri Ch.   5, News 74, The Defining Drama Ch.  10).

These are provisional arrangements, diversification enablements are required, their results not new because pre-covered, within the total, systematic structure. In DNA, such governors of information sustenance are integral to it, conditions for it and examples of multiple, supervisory and supervised systems (their mutuality in some regards compacted in inter-penetration of various elements), needing separable but collated construction. Thus, Dr Robert W. Carter in the latest Journal of Creation (25(2), 2011) refers to the processors or process, and meta-information, information about information in the genome, like this.

"If the four-dimensional genome is hard enough to grasp, there is also a huge amount of 'meta-information,' "

in the genome. This is information about the information! This is

"the information that tells the cell how to maintain the information, how to fix it if it breaks, how to copy it, how to interpret what is there, how to use it, when to use it, and how to pass it on to the next generation."

Life, in view of this, he states,

"was designed from a top-down perspective, apparently with the meta-information coming first."

It is not much good having food if you do not know where your mouth is, how to chew it or how to swallow, and there is NO WAY to find out: WE have intelligence. Spare a thought for what in itself, as distinct from emplacement works set in it, has none! Hence, he itemises some of the construction criteria in the genome:

"1) Perfectly pure, single-molecule-specific biochemistry; 

2) specially structured molecules;

3) functionally  integrated molecular machines

4) comprehensively regulated, information-driven metabolic functions,
 and

5) inversely causal meta-information."

These processes, he indicates, cannot be obtained by natural processes, none predicted from the level below, and "each is dependent on the level above." It is evidently a hierarchy in construction, just as Denton points out to be the case in categorisation modes and models (Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, p. 137), where cladistics is said to be moving towards hierarchical constructions, in order avoid "the inherent contradiction between a hierarchic pattern and a random evolutionary process," and thus to accommodate the facts. 

Professor Stephen Jay Gould for his part added to what increasingly resembles the Mad Hatter's Tea Party (snooze and lose the point),  that instead of little branchlets of diversification becoming branches over time at the innovative level, you have major changes at the outset (Wonderful Life p. 233), with diversification oddities in the onset.

"Instead of a narrow beginning and a constantly expanding upward range, multicellular life reaches its maximal scope at the start, while later decimation leaves only a few surviving designs."

From Gould comes the roar at raw fact! including his appeal to heaven's name in his due frustration! (p. 227). He should have taken his direction of thought more seriously and avoided the compression of thought occasioned by illicit theory and data not regarded as duly Darwinian and indeed intractable to its ideas! without turning to merely fanciful thoughts about what does not work, in the presence of nothing given any ground to achieve that function!

Empirically discovered or attested reverse process to the illogical character of evolutionism is thus merely an added taunt to its anti-empirical fixation, so well illustrated in the statement by Professor Lewontin and his just-so story confession.

Meanwhile, the rules for operational meaning in the DNA make the processive work, and are first required for its operation; and this being a connotational extra, insertible by foresight and without life value as a separate operation, it is likewise in a prerequisite donational domain. Hence, just as it is insertible by foresight, and without life-value as a separate production, so it is a logically and chronologically prior product for the working of information. Action without rules is rattle; practice without principles is noise; motion without direction is irrelevant.

Not so is life in its physical and connotational substructure. Here in directions, rules and interventions (as in repair forces which zero in on the areas of need, and act accordingly), we have a programmatic equivalent to personal oversight, in its own limits. What then ? Since required is the  ínformational 'handbook', there is no room for constructive process here any more than in any phase being investigated.

In terms of creation-evolution comparison and contrast: this is like Dunkirk without the fishing boats. All is simply left on the evolutionary shore, with no escape for its deluded soldiering force. It got there but it cannot get out. The 'miracle' of Dunkirk came from another shore. Omit that, and deliverance becomes fiasco, and folly is left to speak its mind.

Illustrations, once the principle is sure, can help imagination to intuit the point.  Thus this in some ways resembles a set of Shakespeare (the DNA) with separate handbooks on the nature and  style of Old English, common errors often made and the way for their correction to ensure the intent of the writer of the language is the discovery of the reader. More on idiomatic read-out may be added. In another way, it becomes like a mini-university with faculties showing students how to handle things. The inputs, if they work, are mutually felicitous but separately close to meaningless and dysfunctional.

We must then consider the infelicities of mode with the  non-performance of the fatuous,  or non-intelligent arrival of this language.  DOES then code-generation  communicate code in any observable manner ? Is what was non-information  to be seen, heard, scrutinised encoding itself, and then  making the ensemble with instructions joined,  a joint company ? does it operate under the same stringent laboratory conditions, to secure results ?  Does such instruction, thus from materially exclusive sites, write it  all and provide its interpretation and its outcome ? Does it give code-comprehension files and then code-content files for harmonious operation, the gift a miracle, the harmony a miracle, the order counter-productive, providing a mere burden to life in the meantime, in itself incomprehensible since its target is not yet!

Like steam visibly condensing to  water droplets, can it be seen, brought  to sight, induced to disclose itself ? even seen!

It is not. It would, if appearing  from such a basis, be entirely parallel to perceiving a technical book, involving copies of constraining  data, dynamic codes, meaning, together with oncoming channels of impelled  formation and workability in the real world,  all mystically or magically coming on the scene: the code clattering or chattering out, or immiscible, appearing as its own generative  environment operated, without evidence of the same, amid its non-information environment. It would be like waterfalls in the wood, an advent.

It is just that it is never found, nor ever seen, nor does it make its landing site available, nor is the means for it ever found on this earth.

How surpassing a dream, and what folly as pseudo-science, acclaimed from its deluded Darwinian source, and precluded by its critics,  from whatever side.

What is required for verification is not found; what is required for logical failure is not found, for it is the theory and not logic which fails.  Not from magic but from the Creator of information it has come, who has His own logical, empirical, revelatory attestation, so testable for so long with such due harmony of statement and event, the rational and the revelatory, like a hand-shake (cf. *2 below as marked ).

The flow of foundational creation has long since stopped: the production of the physical realities needed, the life control mazes required, the cosmos laws entailed, the extant matter rolled out, the components for the composition of creation. Not in single line like a platoon, but in order it came. Capacity controlled it; thought devised its means. It was formed, formulated and activated as was expedient,  in that jointness of total action normal in creation and required for it, that what is not, might be, and things brilliant, absent, might be present; and indeed, any product made practical.

Not from nothing so wholly incompetent, but from the sufficient source for such intelligible, practical, transformational realities has it come. The source of code as of creation is sometimes called the Speaker, or Thinker, or Communicator. You need one, for communication. It is not a facility with which matter is endued; but it requires as we all know who write, a vast array of subsidiary activities, rules and forms, and a deep relationship with the receptors, receivers, auditors, or whatever else is the destination designated. We act in the miniature, He in the macro-magnificence, and yet, in the intensive with equal facility.

Information is not strewn like Autumn leaves over time, where this and that is to be selected, pushed out and set up brainlessly, to make a collage of consequence, a coherence of meaning and a command centre of commerce... If it WERE done, this would simply bypass the issue, since intelligence is required in meaningful inspection, selection, companion  information reservoirs and the like; and that is what is conspicuous in this model, by its devastatingly indifferent exclusion.

To be itself, the information module has to have its own internally, multiply categorised, characterisable constraints, making it  both internally coherent and externally applicable and effective. The type of constraints linguistically required being those observable  freely, as adequate systematic reason in intelligent communication is daily exercised in our race, this involving the originative treatment of categorisation and control, both for input and output, the absence of this type of ability in matter per se, is not practically or empirically contradicted by any such observation of its exercise. You don't see it. It is not found. The maxi-moron or the intellectually void or absent is not found to engender this. Look and see. It is necessary to exercise the faculties: check it out.

What then ? Such a causative anomaly is not encountered. It is not an empirical event.

Natural events, in the absence of intelligence, are not found to perform such basic causative functions for the separation and activation of informational overview,  just as matter as a category, has no fingers, and mental analysis as such, makes no decisions, and extant laws do no create the imagination to think of other ones. Equipment for all of this is case specific and has names:  matter, mind and spirit (cf.  SMR Ch. 1, Ch.  3, Ch. 5).

Every type of generation has its causal basis and requirement, and information is no exception.

Since nothing generates nothing, with nothing to show for it, the Something once for all eternal, required a the only other source, has competence fro one as for all results, whether by programmatic or by personal means.  This Eternal Competence, for time, space and conditions, for form, format and command,  creates at every level, so that whatever was not, now is. When He ceases, only intelligence can proceed, or the programmatic, continuing the case by direction from of yore. The Creator operates at will, from which flow the discipline and the direction, the choices and the decisions.

Current in this sphere,  at this institutive level, is non-creation with address  to our minds of the deterioration of our own genome at no small rate (Waiting for Wonder ... Appendix). This represents another focal point of natural law for creations in this world at the natural level, a matter of deterioration, as noted above, and the increase of entropy. As the Bible so clearly states, the creation of this world is long over. We are in the operational phase. It is no use wanting the whole universe to be born again from itself. It was not there to do it the first time, and while here now, its laws are not supportive of self-creation any more than the empirical domain shows it; whereas it does show the deterioration, in terms of law (cf. That Magnificent Rock Ch. 1).

Cosmos creation has stopped. Seeking to live in the scenes of 'childhood' is as impractical here as in the psychological realm. God is on record in the Bible that He will create a new heavens and a new earth; but it is when judgment is past. As stations go, that is next on the line (cf. Acts 17:31, 5:19ff.). What then is now, and for this present time ? Instead there is spiritual regeneration, a reconstitutive divine communication being behind it, and its effect being children of God, instead of midgets amid mayhem, as is increasingly the case (John 3, 4,16, II Corinthians 5:17-21).

The things seen are attested, the principles presented are exhibited, the results are perceived. Here we revert to science proper, as distinct from '' knowledge falsely so-called" and in particular for our generation, science falsely so-called, a sub-section as noted earlier (cf. The gods of naturalism have no go!).

Talk of evolutionism in this context is like discussing obstetric requirements in a funeral parlour, or courses on human development to the optimum, in a morgue.  It is not fitting simply because it does not fit.

*3

On language itself and its implications, and symbol and their relationship, see Jesus Christ, Defaced, Unfazed ... Ch. 4.