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BULLETIN ONE HUNDRED

THE DE-CONSTITUTION OF MAN

NEITHER BUILDS NOR REDEEMS

If the universe were indeed meaningless, then any endeavour to quantify meaning for the universe would be invalid. Measurement of what is not there  is self-contradiction. Yet people constantly pursue it. Indeed, quantifying what is absent, as in meaning =0, is a barren exercise, and itself a meaningless machination. Take the flat statement: the universe has no meaning. Beyond the assertion is the question, How do you know ? and beyond that, How could you know enough to exclude every possible avenue of meaning! Then: How do you prove that this is the case ? If not, then the whole idea is mere flirtation with fancy.

Moreover, the judicious provocateur would have to be a meaning metre, however ludicrous, guaranteed to be able to detect ANY  meaning present. But how could this be done with unlimited coverage even through his utmost imagination ? and that done, with the added imagination of everyone else, and that done, with the omniscience that knows what is beyond the human reactor- assessor; for such a universal negative requires absolute knowledge of everything. That means there would have to be an objective being capable of knowing this, in order to render the negative statement worthy even of respect. But this means an infinite Being with infinite knowledge, which gives instant meaning; and more still, if He can be known.

This model therefore cannot even be stated without invalidity. The universe is not susceptible to that sort of question- begging assertion. If you want to determine the nature of meaning in and for the universe, you have to investigate the point substantially and on  all sides. It is open till closed. If you find it, well done! To deny it categorically, in terms of reason, however as shown, leads to nonsense.

In fact,

1) That laws govern this universe, such as the chief three, first and second laws of thermodynamics and that concerning life transmission (biogenesis);

2) that the methods in our genes, making possible the construction of each of us,
their nature and modes being high points in logical diligence and depth,
mirror the nature of our own type of use of logic,
making validity dependent on citable rational rules;

3) that our minds work by the same logic that inheres in the universe, making the latter available for rational investigation:

these things are far from meaningless.

There is a substratum and method in our universe which mocks chance, and makes a commencement with nothing, to be nothing to the point, a mere mirage of verbal confusion, worse than simple self-contradiction (nothing is powerless in potential as well as being) and a wobble for ignoring necessities, such as the ground for what is found.

Again, without the existence of truth, you could not even state a principle that there is no truth, for that would assume this negative statement itself to be true. Not only would it lead to nonsense, it cannot be born. Thus the idea dies at its very statement. When words fail you, so great is the error, that this is highly meaningful. The model in view is dead on arrival, and indeed cannot even arrive intact.

In this case, the statement denying truth for the universe would be presented AS itself actual truth, which is obvious and immediate self-contradiction. It would also imply that truth concerning the universe CANNOT exist,  unless there is what is not only beyond mere reaction, but exists with objective viewpoint. That is as before tremendously meaningful with vast implications.

In this field, all negativities expressed in generalities land into confusion. Deny logic and you cannot consistently use it; deny truth and you cannot consistently claim it for ANY assertion concerning the universe as a whole; deny purpose and you face myriads of highly honed purpose equivalents in billions of bits in living things, subordinated to the end result, and final function, and maintained for such continuation  by editorial review contrivances in the DNA.

Methods used when reason is in view not only depend on the methods of logical validity, which are stringent for our minds as for their research in the universe, that is, subjectively and objectively alike, but use meaningfulness and truth as inherent. It is like hanging on by an arm which is cut off. The branch may be there, but the arm is not.

Imagination however, by itself, does not and cannot hold. If in any human body, to take a case, billions of meanings codified in brilliant DNA, transmissible into action, subordinated to outcomes in thousands of internal sites with co-ordinated functional consequences, in turn subordinated to overall unitary cohesion and capacities, indicate no meaning, then would millions of dollars, in a bank account, used for citable purposes when there, be meaningless. You would have a hard time convincing the taxation department of that. It would contradict the point that such allocations and continued usages in technical terms do not just happen. Thisis not the case.

To return to our specific case, meaninglessness does not come by measure and meticulous construction geared to vast internal reciprocities, with external capacities, require accounting as to presence, co-ordination, consequence, facilities and power. But these things are precisely what is empirically found, and this needs diligent accounting, not supine dismissal of evidence. If this universal negativity is the way things really are, then SHOW it, that we might know it. A ' principle' merely summarises what is found; and when there is nothing found, then no principle has any ground, more than magic.

The system found has the meaning that it had first to be invented, then actualised, its methods rendered operative, invested with logic and given multiplied, co-ordinated consequences geared for specialised modes of operation. It has the meaning that you boil, roil it, or toil with it, and there is a you to do it, aware of responsibility and irresponsibility with your dowered equipment. It has the meaning that a person can laugh at the folly that dares to  pronounce that the universe made itself when it was not there to do it. Yet that is the ultimate state of the negative case. Nothing made it, or it made itself before it was there to do it.

Quite simply you start with nothing or beg the question, revealing bit by bit, step by step, what logically you HAVE to have there at the first, because nothing is very uninventive, and what it takes to make a triad, mind, matter and spirit, such as each one of us is, as shown in detail in The Shadow of a Mighty Rock, exceedingly significant, mightily meaningful and utterly crucial to our existence.  There is a vast spreading reality of power and understanding outside the limits of matter, and with mini-presence in ourselves. It is not empirically found in matter, but in us, to a subordinate but crucial degree, to that required for our fascinating triads or beings to be made. Nor is the legislated  base of matter in all its components, composition and empirical limits, a wand apparition from a wandering mind for imagining phantasms, but a highly distinctive, time-space, cause-result element in what uses it, once it is given.

The poor Russian reporting he had not found God in the universe, anywhere in space, was speaking in a logical shambles. Would you EXPECT to find an author as a word in one of his books! but rather look for his presence in its very construction ? A straw man is not really what is in view, and man is not made of straw.

Living by denying the very elements and indications of our beings, whether of gender or anything else in the systems subordinated to personal action, is merely a form of civil war, of dying, contradicting not your own words, merely, but your very being...

It is not surprising therefore that the DNA directions for constructing people's bodies, through zygote to embryo to baby, and in particular the functional unique efficacy of the reproductive method implanted (you cannot avoid both genders if you want to engender, though you may try to bypass one), both point in one direction. The natural endowment is both specific and in the norm, limited, like most things that work in a creation! Even less surprising is the fact  that the Bible commands us to stay by this natural format, in agreement with both these points (cf. Bulletins Eighty Seven and Eighty Eight), deeming it abuse to do otherwise. The Creator is neither fickle nor changeable. He has made, He has exhibited its nature, He has stated, correlated as we can see, and commanded. His word, the Bible, even stipulated that man would rise via an antichrist in rebellion against Him (II Thessalonians 2:4ff., Revelation 19:19).