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BULLETIN SEVENTY ONE
BRANCHING OUT FROM NOWHERE
There are often different ways in which to trace or compare errors in a given field.
Thus, in religion, many cases demonstrably outside truth have one simple feature both astray and in common. Another way is demarcated by the type of false christ they invent. That was given attention in the preceding Chapter, Seventy One..
This one however ?
It is a matter of being branches without a tree, features without a basis.
Thus Buddhism has many concepts, many aspects, but no basis. It just is. ALL moreover, being one, it is simple naturalism, elaborate atheism (cf. SMR pp. 996ff.), any gods being extras (such as Buddha cf. Buddhism, SMR pp. 1011-1026 ). What of this model, conception, presentation ?
There is no ground for the existence of any of it, no cause for its being. As to its origin, zilch. But many things have categorical features of origin, such as language (DNA) involving commands involving orders, involving mentality, for it is that world of being, function and operation. Further, its crucial assignments of meaning to be matched by symbol needs a base, and a background both rational and by appointment. Constant, compiled equivalence in code and referent is a conceptual matter, a causal continuum. Thoughts without mind like matter without making is mere imagination. Available energy runs down. It has first to be run up, in a building process. Nothing comes from nowhere.
The answer to origin is not imagination; that is for novels and literary devices within language. You have to get it first.
For something to be, which is not found to be self-originating, you need something else, sufficient for that and for all that is derivation, and with qualities adequate for the production of each aspect, their sensitive and consistent correlation and workability without a grump of fatal glitches as well.
If now the things of this earth (including of course what is actually here and not some reductionist fantasy, such a model without mind and spirit) are deemed to exist by themselves, we have only to ask our valiant philosophers (often done up in a laboratory coat as if this inspired ground for anything needed), to show what gave this felicity; for we never find no cause for anything, that is, a cause-free freeway into existence. Nor is found what excludes itself from the Second Law of Thermodynamics, by which they do not submit to eventual entropy which, if eternal, would be leave its field stripped to the end, till nothing remained; which in turn is not a good beginning, this part of our topic.
Things need something; they do not make themselves before they are there to do it. That needed must be eternal or NOTHING would be fatal at that point. It must far surpass man as its products show, and personality both understands and decides on action, and its stoppage, which has now for thousands of years been the case. You need brakes as well as accelerator, and of course an engine and eingineer to construct construction, the function.
Since, then, nothing cannot produce worlds, cosmoi, stars, minds (or anything else, for that matter, now or at any other time), and they are not by nature eternal, we have a branch without a tree. Energy runs down, and ceases to be available. Running it up is another matter, a law not found, though it may be transferred or released by relevantly related energy, moved about, or extracted from what is already there. Our topic however is how it got there, being what it is, not face-lifts.
Let us look at crucial aspects then.
Running up energy comes from an eternal Energy Source, since to lack it at any time - when we are dealing in the realm of totality, of source, arrival, introduction into being extant, of all that is - would be deadly. The source is never lacking, nor could it be if you anything to happen, which is the point. Nor for that matter ever lacks its power for distribution where it MAY be used. Nor does it lack capacity to make special formulae, devoted to its operative features in a given expression, for like fuel, it enables in a setting to settle, organises, correlates, secures the association of parts, particulars and code-occurrence as well as mind and field of application, logic and logician alike.
The setting is needed, the scope, the situation in general and in particular. Capacity to do work IS, but it has to DO the work.
The Eternal Energic Entity has worked in a given way, in mind, matter and spirit, and then, despite the prevalence of the provision of pertinent natural law, it acts within what it has made, as any engineer may, depending on his power and skill, to adapt, adjust, temporarily or permanently overcome certain features, or interrupt them according to his capacity and purpose from time to time. This is not only in the three components, mind, matter and spirit, but within as the case seems good, to inhibit, exhibit, draw or act in any way that relates to thought or spirit or the disposition of matter.
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But to imagine a world which makes
itself |
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(since we are looking for causes,
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before it is there to do it, |
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is Hilaire Belloc fun, but not a serious topic. |
A to-be-formed-and-formulated-and-made-functional world all from the source which is not there, is merely a travesty of truth, and harmony with a hollow. You need what is there and adequate permanently to have any results. BRANCHING off (but from what ?) or even not bothering about ultimate origins and causes and logical consistency appears the Buddhist way; but a lack of interest does not solve a problem. It merely makes its solution further off, methodically.
Hinduism is unlike Buddhism, in that it is not so keen on the idea of this-is-it-and-that-is-that, as on the concept that all-these-contrary-bits-are-part-of-one-whole. In other words, here the multiplicity's unity is in view, whereas in Buddhism it is this-is-all-and-that-is-that. But whether you LIMIT cause-free, what is there, imagination taking the place of the Eternal Personal Energic Entity, or you CONJOIN cause-free what is there, in logical abortion: it has to be there. That is the great omission, as when the rent-collector calls and there is nothing there to pay. That does not work.
Logic DEMANDS collection, and if you dismiss it then it bites back: SO logic is irrelevant, is it ? Then if that is your MODEL or part of it, you cannot equivocate and deny yourself, for then there is no model at all, but only the silent ruins of one. Obliterate logic and you are left without it to argue for such a concept, idea, religion or anything else.
In other words, then argument cannot consistently be made FOR THAT model, and you are literally dumbfounded. Assuming what is not true is one thing; assuming what CANNOT be true is far worse. Neither establishes anything.
Then you have Islam, which in essence takes a little from the Jews and a bit from Christianity, varies them and adds more. It branches out with no tree, for in the Koran, the tree of the Old Testament prophets is referred to as sound; yet it totally contradicted in Koan teaching. Indeed, in the basically works and not sacrifice, non-redemption set-up of Muhammad, cutting down the prophets, the tree for support, leaves no room for branches*1.
Similarly, Communism starts without a start; it just comes into being void of all and void for cause, and proceeds in a complicated and experimentally contradicted way to describe. In this, it is a bit like Wittgenstein: what they play with is as if the whole matrix of reality had somehow come, while we were thinking about something else, scampering surreptitiously into existence (whether in play or blood, depending on the case). Laws however do not come by oversight (that is forgetting) but by another kind of oversight (conceiving and creating); nor does degenerating energy sustain itself, because it cannot stay useful, and use is the code word! In short, what is going away is not a way of coming... a trifling omission of thought!
Nazism had a race, Aryan, but had first to obtain the human race. Omitting a beginning deprives one also of an end, and for that matter, any end in view for talking about such a buffoonery.
In all cases, the grounds for belief are like a burr in a sock: you can talk about it but it is simply an irritant, contrary to need, contributing no useful function.
These are examples. When you look elsewhere than to God, you have to end without your tree, since what is looked for is not there. Finding it is a vast human undertaking, because of lapse and blindness. They are all ultimately cases of branches without trees, or with trees merely sketched in, in turn without ground for their planting or basis either for the laws of logic or that to which they refer. They invent what is not there (man is not good at making his Maker, nor contradiction a case), or ignore it, or try to twist it like arm-wrestling to submission to its cause. While man often imperially wants to make ALL submit, including a substitute god in some cases, it is he who must submit to One better than he, with invariant testimony to truth, without whom mankind is like a maths text book minus answers, and that does not have any. GROUNDS have to be there, and what is planted must be able to grow soundly.
This is an interesting aspect of religious variability. Without the Saviour Jesus Christ, it is without basis or foundation and so has to ignore or invent; and provide without proof. Hence poor philosopher tends to be an impasse, politics an uproar and quietness and confidence turn to bedlam and burning. Lordly claims to rule the world, or to deserve to, come; but logical bases lack.
Yet of course the God, who is Eternal Energy Supplier and Disposer, and matter maker and deployer relative to energy, mind maker and spirit source, as well as Composer of the whole in all its inter-relationships, has a mind inescapable. If man can have forethought, how much more his Mentor. As to His Majesty, He takes the trouble to deploy intelligence, and so to TELL us from the first what He desires, so that His work will not be mangled and tangled through a ludicrous combination of utterly amazing levels of creation on the one hand, and any imagined failure to arrange for its functionality, for it to work by giving necessary instructions, on the other. From the first comes the provision for the pardoning way back, and to the last it is consistent, self-verifying and has a complete cover for our race.
He has made and He has said, from the first. He is not a marred dependency or He would not be God, but a mere way-station. He is not caught in such muddles. HIS word is testable in hundreds of cases, out-wittable in no cases, necessary in all cases. SO it is and was when He came to die as predicted around 30 A.D. Without this provision of empirically confirmed word for His work, the god in view is a mere contradiction in terms, not surrounding His creation with overflow as it were, or lavishness, but squashing them with ignorance, leaving them to folly, incomplete and wandering, like a lost star.
Yet God is not incomplete, needing satisfaction in such things; for if He were, he would be a mere derivative and deficient creation and so irrelevant to our due consideration. If He did not consider what He is doing, He would be defective and inadequate, and so sponsored by some system regrettable. Yet what is sponsored by a system is not God, but a product, which explains nothing and is contrary to necessity.
God may be foolishly assaulted; and has been - but He is not changed. The revelation however is that it is man who is a contradiction in terms - of His terms, who made him! Man is not a mystery but a rebel, and until this is repented of (Luke 13:1-4), the mystery is resolved into marvel (at the first) and marring (till the last, though some escape - cf. Hebrews 2:1-3, 6:19). Clouting Christ out of the universe (things made), not only did not work, nor could it, but it was used to help expose eternal life (I John 1:1-4, 5:11ff.), the vast gift from the beginning, which however cannot be grabbed. Like love, it is not for sale or seduction. You take it where it may be found (Isaiah 55:1-6). He paid for it; He did not ram it. Love is not like that.
GOD is ousted on no occasion, merely afflicted - as it is written, in all their affliction, He was afflicted (Isaiah 63:9). ALL His words successively come true whether this requires miracle, mere sequence or the grinding necessities of sin. His actions are not like the Aristotelian divinity, aloof, or apart, as if to stoop were too much for some kind of unarticulated spiritual arthritis. He who lives, basic to creation, basic to an actuality from non-nothing, has made the personal within His creation, and it is in His sights. He even used it to display HIS OWN nature THROUGH human nature, through the power of His Spirit, His everlasting Word exhibiting His nature, will and power as man for man, in HIS own way. He even suffered and died, the just for the unjust (II Peter 3:18), rather than substitute force for love, as is the way in numbers of religions. You CANNOT do that, for if you try, you only lose the love, volate its nature and abuse human nature in an anti-Creator insurgency! Force has no place where faith is concerned as Christ emphasised (Johnn 18:36). If it had place, were the way, then an almighty god would be able simply to smash the evil and cultivate his robots.
But God was even original enough to give you your originality. Everything is grounded; yet this amounts to a marvel of art, allied with man being given freedom enough to kick his heels even in God's face, part of the plan of the sacrifice of Calvary, where man in power did even more, and nailed His limbs, divinely made available for sacrifice, to wood like ghoulish carpenters; for His enemies duly implemented this sacrificial plan as predicted. In this way, they served His plan of salvation, which provided for His death, as so frequently announced in the Old Testament over many centuries.
Trees and branches ? God even provides the tree and the earth in which to plant it. Nor is this true only of the human race and the heavens and earth; it relates also to individuals. Every tree that My Father has not planted (Matthew 15:13), cried Christ Jesus, will be uprooted. Even if you manage to exist anyway, by using the design for mind and logic supplied, for example, and to surround yourself with this and that success, yet you will be pulled up with more power than your so clever attachment to your earth, founded on confusion, fondled in folly. Avoiding the truth is enough for everlasting destruction (II Thessalonians 1); for in truth God has no other mercy than what He offers.
People who are hungry do tend to eat food rather than throw it away.
He is God alone, and other makers are not to be found. What leaves Him therefore, as displayed where the test warrants faith, in Christ His Word and only begotten Son, is so stupendous an act that as in John 15:22ff., try it and you find the final axe of guilt that does not go away.
NOTE
See for example, in trhe area of ' Moslem, Islam', the following and Index.
USEFUL SUMMARY ON THIS RELIGION in this sphere:
More Marvels ... Ch. 4, esp. *4,
SMR pp. 50ff., 62ff., 829ff. , 1080
Dancers, Prancers, Lancers and Answers Ch. 3, *1A misconceptions about the Cross, variable and mutually conflicting, on the part of the Koran
Lord of Life Ch. 3 (and force), 1081ff. (and faith), Outrageous Outages ... Ch. 5;
Pilgrims and Strangers ... 8 (Islam, attestation as false prophecy, news and prohibitions proposed, Sept. 2012);
His Wounds Opened Eternity Ch. 4; 3
Stepping Out for Christ Ch. 9,
Tender Times for Timely Truth Ch. 8 (in perspective), see also *1,See Divine Agenda Chs. 6
with 3 (an overview of religious truancies, including Marx, Darwin and Koran)
and Highway to Hell - (Koran citations in both, with ideational parallels in perspective, in the latter two; and in the former, futile depravities in endless ideologies such as Sudan has shown so significantly, Islam ablaze without glory),
cf. Overflight in Christ Ch. 1 (and the Koran's musings);
1493 (esp. Britain and sharia);
News 138, Beauty for Ashes Chs. 4, 7Jesus Christ Defaced, Unfazed Ch. 5, Acme ... Ch. 9 , Great Execrations ... Ch. 3, SMR p. 1O88D - three major religions in some ways in concert, astray.