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CHAPTER  EIGHT

STILL LOOKING WITH A CHILD

AND LOOKING AFTER ONE SPIRITUALLY

Part V

This is part V in the series on the child. It follows on the basis of Chapters 3, 4, 5 and 6, which should be read first.  John continues to grow a little older,  time by time.

THE SCARECROW

There was a scarecrow in a nearby field, as we drove past on our way to Port Lincoln. It is a long journey. It was a weird scarecrow, dressed in dandified top hat and tattering ugg boots, draped with acid washed jeans, long since their due date, which might well have been when first made, while the shirt was in strips, and a clownish face adorned the shrivelled neck, with a wry grin shortening the longish countenance, to make a visual ecstasy of horror.

It seemed too foolish for laughter, too absurd for attention, but perhaps it scared off the birds from the fruit-trees.

I noticed John was speaking to me.

That is just like the disjointed drivel we are getting at school about the earth and its contents. They dress it up till it is too ludicrous for laughter, frightening away the birds, the kids who are credulous, and too absurd to consider past the first few bars, to put it in musical terms, as if crows were contesting for a musical song-writing prize.

Tell me.

Well they speak of successive surfaces as in the Grand Canyon, often almost entirely uneroded, supposedly sitting around doing nothing in all weathers and events,  laid down almost geometrically, and try to make it appear that  this is not a reasonably sudden and recent overlay, in which case,  THEREFORE there would be no great time for such erosion. No, this they would not have: it must be millions of years old, in barefaced absurdity, lying about. They have to face it  in other ways, so that at times the supposedly most ancient stuff appears at the top of strata, and earlier at the bottom. This is what appears from the labour of Dr Steven A. Austin (Ed.) in his Grand Canyon,  and this over large surfaces:  then ask us to believe a topsy-turvy contradictory theory about how it could not have happened, explaining what is not there.

You have references ?

I jotted down a few. On p.74 of his book,  you have what he calls a paraconformity, where no erosion action is seen, a flat bed supposedly managing to look like that after a uniformitarian date for its openness of over ten million years; and other planed surfaces continue to be noted as the Chapter progresses. Further great expectations are falsified between long-term theoretical expectations and empirical facts, which refuse to conform, such as he notes on pp. 46ff.. Expected fossil evidence being lacking in such cases, it is assumed that these were exposed for millions of years, despite evidence of erosion being insignificant. Neither is the order 'right' for the theory, in the layering, nor is the surface of each layer right, being  too sudden in appearance, conformable to a sudden and vast deposition as you see in pp. 42ff.. In fact, as to  the  cases where what appears the older deposit of rock sits below the earlier, in terms of uniformitarian glosses, that comes at  pp. 129, and on pp. 51-52 he summarises some of the actual evidence in contrast with unconfirmed, oddball hypotheses which satisfy a theory's dictates, but not empirical evidence.

You sure make a knowledgeable travelling companion, these days.

Well it is interesting and I jot down some of the data.

What about fossils ?

Austin on pp. 146ff. points out examples in the Canyon and elsewhere , showing that instead of what is called a diversification of bits and efforts towards something being shown, over a vast imaginary time, with things on the way from one sort of thing  to another, in nice slow march time, showing themseles at various stages of development, there is the OPPOSITE. Nothing is part-formed or on the way in terms of partial conformity to some forthcoming pattern,  but all is fully formed; and what is more, things often show a type in full scale completeness, before diversification, before changes. That is, kind is seen before variations in it at modest levels. Such things are  precisely as we would expect in creation: the thing is put down and then the DNA provisions for variation about the norm, set in. He puts it in the formula, disparity precedes diversity on p. 148; yet they will not even let you logically discuss their empirical-theoretical impasses, at school, and thank goodness I am out of it now. 

What did you think of the rather recent Mt St Helen's case ?

On p. 37 of the Austin volume, you see a comparison between kinds of structures in the Grand Canyon and those in the Mt St Helen's drastic and sudden action, a modern-day drama, and both having the parallel of catastrophic explanation, one before our eyes, in Washington State, the other before we could see it happen in the Canyon case.

What about order of fossils ?

Again, you get highly developed things like trilobites, with amazingly advanced eyes, which may be found even below the Cambrian. So many fossils, intact, are found that to argue for slow sustaining is like asking no blots on a paper where the ceilings drips ink, for thousands of years. Austin makes the point about time in p. 134, just as on p. 147 he shows the erratic fossil order in the rocks. Sudden deposition and short time exposure for strata and fossils both are primary indications, far from an  orderly arrival over a theoretical time, of either, on a theoretical dream, with nice and helpful preservation coming like traffic that isn't there. Random ordering of fossils has nothing to dispute it, is Austin's  conclusion on p. 147, but the bit I love is the model of mix-up,  where the most ancient strata appear to be on the top of the pile in places, and the younger ranks low!. The vast uplifts of great areas, some with marine deposits, fits all too well with the flood, and the tectonic forces involved, provide force grounds for such things, just as do in results you would have  surfaces left by large retreating waters, and the orders of fossils, sometimes deeply reversed, this fits with hydraulic powers as the flood died down, and differential deposition came. What is more, we now have the parallel to some of the formations marked as millions of years old, in some of the Mt St Helen's formations, known to be sudden, short and developed in a few days.

Did you do any earlier reading on this topic, John ?

It all fits well with what Morris and Whitcomb had to say in the Genesis Flood, about vast tracts over hundreds of miles of 'overlays' of rocks, one on the other, in an order not at all the theoretical expectation, right across parts of the United States, with precisely no evidence of overlay, so that it appears original. In fact, on pp. 182ff., they talk of the Heart Mountain Thrust in which one supposedly much earlier stratum, some quarter of a billion years 'earlier' is massively resting on something later; but where is the indication of overthrust ? Morris stresses at length the data concerning such a rogue theory, emptily presented to account for the empirical facts. He was unimpressed. Who could not be, who looks for facts and acts on what he finds!

Have you looked at planation at all ?

Yes, I got an excellent book by Michael Oard, called "The Missoula Flood Controversy," and in this he looks at vast flat surfaces on the earth, seemingly scoured out and left surfaced almost as if for a road, by a road-work team, and notes that this is not the result of vast ages in highly variable circumstances, to leave such a nice surface over vast areas.

Yes indeed. Further, there is an excellent article in Journal of Creation, Volume 25(1), 2011.Noting the great difficulty uniformitarianism has in explaining these neat and vast areas, he adds that they are common and worldwide, Africa being a major exhibit. There Michael J. Oard notes that a new synthesis of African planation surfaces "concludes that there is one  large, warped planation surface on Africa... Planation and erosion  surfaces  could readily have formed as floodwater retreated off the continents during uplift."  Again, this is almost a mirror image of the vast gatherings of enormous burials throughout the world, where aggregations, almost congregations of debris, tree parts, fossils loom in broad masses, in the depth, with immense variety and highly varied origins. Things in a sort of stratum of ruin stretch themselves, uprooted, massive, of immense variety,being found buried, at various altitudes. That is what Professor Nilsson remonstrated about, and the failure to acknowledge them adequately, in his vast. detailed challenge, Synthetische Artbilding.  It's in SMR, let me see ... at pp. 108-111, it's in the index.

Ah now, that is something for me to look at!

Congregation or  aggregation or planation, it is one mutual evidential reinforcing. The last It is just one more attestation of the crushing climax geologically which continually appears between antiquated theories based on anti-God hope, or infection from it, on the one side, and facts on the other, the one hostile to the facts, the other immovable for the reductionist theory. The world-wide flood in its various onsets and withdrawals on the other hand, is just the sort of force to produce such drainage results.

Go on, Dad.

I was just checking a page reference ... Oard  in his Missoula Flood volume notes on p. 79 the point regarding a relatively recent labour providing evidence of these planation surfaces, and some of these are even found at what are now the tops of mountains (p. 82).On the next page we find that this type of planation formation is a world-wide feature. Further, you may find such smooth surfaces even in the case of relatively soft rocks, which not only suggests short rather than long times of exposure, but recent ones, in geological terms. Oard indicates in conclusion here, on p. 84, that planation surfaces are indicative of sheet erosion in the abative or recessional phase of the flood. Enormous forces, whether with Morris in uplifts, and 'wrong order' or in fossils with the same problem in the Grand Canyon, and more problems yet in being fully formed, all  have one theme: they match complete creation and later catastropmic water action, world-wide, and do not fit either the special or the general theory of gradualism. Indeed, planation surfaces may now be found to be slowly weathering, a short assault, not one  on a long basis, an age that does not fit. You don't sustain a smooth face by scratching pimples, and if you do scratch, then a smooth face is the prior feature. It was a given.

Why is Oard's book using the term Missoula Flood ?

It appears because this was a scene of unabated controversy, with a researcher by the name of Bretz insisting in the midst of doctrinaire, uniformitarian bigotry, that the gorge and excavations were the result of a catastrophic and not a gradualistic continuance. Eventually, his view prevailed because of remorseless evidence unearthed over time, and this led to review of other places where catastrophe fits better. It seems that since this Bretz case was set in the Ice Age, the matter extended backwards with many rumblings, for review of unwarranted assumptions on inadequate evidence. Were many other cases, falsely tagged gradual ? and the evidence began to speak as it would have done, had they listened,  before the inept theories began to quieten it down, like a baby with its dummy, so that they could imagine things without the control of facts.  This Missoula case evidently became one of the foci leading to new thought about vague and unfulfilled theories and expectation more broadly.

Son, you are beginning to sound like a text-book.

Well, I am 18.

Ah glorious 18, but you work like a beaver.

Without having  its coat!

But did you notice the work on dating ? I mean the simple facts about too little helium by far, if long ages had been at work with its release through radioactive decay, too many radioactive carbon deposits left intact in areas or objects supposedly millions of years old, whereas it should all be gone.

Yes, I did see something about that.

It is the same in diamonds, carbon itself being a short-term dating method, exhausting itself relatively early, long before millions of years, whereas in such supposedly ancient gems, it is found to be still there. That's on display at http://creation.com/diamonds-a-creationists-best-friend.

I'll plan to see that.

It is like the case of  blood still viable for testing action found in things supposed to be many millions of years old, in defiance of the expectations of organic chemistry, concerning its durability. How does it endure when it should be long gone ? How do gradualistic theories endure when by scientific method they should be long gone! This point is made strongly in SMR pp. 140ff.

I suppose you noted the radio-halo features brought about by Gentry and Snelling, the latter indicating that millions of years worth of radioactive decay is evidenced to have occurred in a small compass of time, constrained by time for the infiltration of radioactive uranium solutions in rock which had to set fast, to allow rings from decay particles to form: so that prior to this the mother material was not set, and the substances in which the rings were to appear, were not then rocks at all. On this approach, with particles of parent stages in the decay process sometimes found near, the whole on a large scale indicates a fast-tracked decay phase, enabling the rapid transfer on a vast scale, of materials for inclusion in the rock, and their implantation in the rock.  They have to arrive in time to infiltrate, carried by some liquid medium apparently, and the rock has to set fast to record the fast track decay rings in rock, not noticeable in molten materials.

Yes, Dad, that was a good case, fitting with all the rest. The evidence points where the gradualistic theories disappoint on such a scale, that it leaves sudden creation and short ages almost like the scales on a crocodile, making the thing to be what it is.

Also in accord with these things, deposits have been found in rocks supposedly millions of years old, in which little radiogenic lead is found, though there is much uranium-238, suggesting thousands and not millions of years for the process to act. But these things are documented in That Magnificent Rock, in Ch. 7. There is more in News 1 and the Index to Webwitness, under 'flood'.

It sounds poisonous, this refusal to face simple realities, constantly evidenced, and insistence on bringing out of darkness, what is felt to be lurking there, simple unrealities, never attested, topsy-turvy task-masters for disturbed thought.

Indeed! Remember that poison can create delusion, and mental poison can create illusion, and the poison ? you don't have to be a detective to find it, and when people for religious reasons tie themselves to evidential fraud, ignoring the fact that any one anti-verification spells the end of an hypothesis, since truth is the objective and this is not it, the whole inverted and stressed concepts of anti-God rambling bring themselves into disrepute.

	WHY have more design types earlier, on their basis, than those found later as Gould attests ? That suggests run down, initial  splash,  creation;   and the degradation attests attrition, wearing out  as in Isaiah 51:6.
	Why have basic types first, and variabilities later, when the variabilities are supposed to be the way to more fixity as types arise ? But if you intend to face it, why cling to an anti-verified theory, and ignore creation which is here verified as usual.
	Why make theories about time which bring totally discordant results, not explaining facts ? Why not keep to an approach which meets all the data, and is confirmed on all sides ?
	Why ignore the many young earth testimonies which cohere, and insist on what does not explain what is there, even on its own premises ?
	Why start with a bang in the first place, as if banging were the source of brilliance, and rough-housing the manner in which fine tuning is made, and reason by absence, invents itself into presence, and what is exploded into being becomes accessible to reason, when the opposite is the case: namely,  reason producing what is reasonably investigated, and mind producing what is able to investigate, that or better, and organisation arising from organising power, information from an informer and not from a source never seen active without intelligence today*1 ?

Why have all that, when the truth is staring you in the face at every level of evidence, and requiring you to hold it by reason as well!

Why indeed my son, why indeed ? It is the whine of the disjointed, the enchantment of the disillusioned, the insistence of the godless, or the deluded, who follow them as if they were priests in training for a god of their own making, who is not there!

It is then their religion, it appears.

Since their god is sleeping, never arousing himself to DO anything, to attest himself in information production, or creation, they cry louder, and then taking the young captive, cry in their ears, and shut the mouths that could reply, even though so very much younger: and so do they arrest development of scientific method and thought by a didactic horror story, authoritarian and deprived of reason, for students presenting misdirected dogmas as if sung by school choirs, untunefully set in books aflame with desire, dead to the point.

It is a dangerous thing to collide with your Creator. Whatever your thoughts might be, it does not alter Him, or annul the results, does it!

Then they say, 'It isn't fair!' as if God were remiss, though they in the main do not believe in Him.

Not fair! I hardly see a flair for fairness in what man does on the earth. Judgment would be fair  enough, but mercy prolongs things. Is that not in II Peter 3:9 ?

Yes it is. Not fair! they say. Not fair ... in not allowing their corruption of youth to proceed unmet, or the harm they give to go noticed, or their abandon to be met with a quiet time of peaceableness, or their ignoring of what matters most, to be left to its own abandonment. This, while they are even suppressing documented data, excluding it on philosophic grounds often enough, empty in themselves,  or diverting any religion they allow amid the students, in the main, to fit their desires, as if to make of God a captive. If  He is to be allowed at all, it is as if someone in manacles of curriculum control, before entry is suffered. Fair! It is astounding that God has still allowed our race to continue at all. Even when you are going to sleep physically when driving, you are likely to hit the sandy side of the road in many places, and to notice the change, or hear the metal objects sounding at the side,   and so awaken. You do not cry, Unfair! You wake up and change direction in time, if at all wise.

What is happening in schools, is more and more, what I see happening outside them, adults warring on morals, just as the teachers seem to war on data, theorists as if drunk, warring on each other, just as academic evolutionists war on each other. It is no truth anywhere, because of  their pre-occupation with dreams,  more and more, that is the underlying reason.

Once error becomes established, John, ANY path to resolve problems is as far off as it would be if you tried to solve a mathematical problem on the basis that numbers did not exist, or logic was not applicable.

The Middle East is becoming like hearts burning, minds obliterating minds and smashing bodies, and in some cases, it is like bodies in civil war, smashing themselves: freedom they chant, but what will they get next ? It may be worse.

Yes, John, all this Middle East is beginning to blow up, nation after nation wrestling against what is often Islamic, in part or whole, in orientation, and seeking removal of dictators, who too easily can claim what amounts to 'divine right',  though with a false prophet it is divine wrong. Add to this, all the foxiness of nations not helping here, not co-operating there, with hidden agendas for their gain, or for their survival, and dominant parties or persons attending to continuation in power, and what do you get ? Such pathologies are so prominent that even if natural disasters were not mounting as God foretold in Matthew 24 and Luke 18, 21, then man would be perfectly sufficient to destroy himself anyway. At such times, it is well to bring a sudden sting to alert before a vast calamity does much more!

It seems to me rather like having a cake in the oven. You smell a suggestion of burning, and do not bother to get up. You get an impression of an ugly smell, and think you are dreaming. At last, having ignored kindly evidence, you get up to find a charred residue messing the oven, nothing to eat, and wasted energy.

Back of it all, you have to follow reason to revelation, and this to God and that to the Saviour and this to salvation of your own life, and that to living in the presence of God. There is no option, and what we have been discussing simply verifies it, now here, now there.

That is what SMR shows isn't it ...

It is. But now, for our holiday, the good Lord giving us continual ground to be thankful.

And not to drive on the way recklessly, as if the road were an invention to suppress us.

When Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth and the life," He was saying nothing other than the truth. It is a gem.

When there is no other way, would you say that going there anyway was wayward! It is like dressing as a  scare-crow, and loving it.

If you did, you would not be wrong.

Thank God for God.

Without Him, you would not have to resolve anything anyway. We are here because He is there, and the connection has been provided without fee. That's Romans 3.

And with the Lord, it is a lively connection, like electric wiring; it is not as if to a stone, which has no vitality or power, but as to an energy producer; and 'better than that, to the Creator who having made us, is ready to save, and when once He has saved, gives that thrust and power which electricity symbolises, but His is personal.

Person to person!

Another diamond of the Bible in I Corinthians 1, declares this, a glorious principle:

"Where is the wise? where is the scribe?

where is the disputer of this world?

has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?

"For  in the wisdom of God, after the world by wisdom did not know God,
it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save those who believe.
For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom: 
but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumblingblock, and to the Greeks foolishness;


"But to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men."

 

 

NOTE

*1 See Jesus Christ, Defaced, Unfazed: Barrister of Bliss Ch. 4.