I was speaking to a managerial looking man

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CHAPTER SIX

FISH FARMS AND UNIVERSE FARMS

There's Never

Nothing to it

Whoever Occupies it

NUTTING IN ON NOTHING

I was speaking to a managerial looking man, clad with leggings and authority. Oysters were being brought in by boat-load with great energy, and he was inspecting. He described the market, when accosted, and when one began to indicate that he had a fine fish farm that the maritime author had in effect constructed, his words seemed incapable of resting, and over-rode the expression of this thought. He had, he indicated, worked hard to make the maritime farm work, had to adjust the nutrition ingredients and of course, as I watched, he had been taking some oysters for checking later.

Nature, he indicated had provided the farm and he did the work. It was nevertheless, a wonderful natural provision, requiring no staked out little patch, but a type of containment not total, but productive, for him.

Now suppose one had had opportunity to discuss it further, since he was rushed in his proceedings. What if one were to say this: but YOU are part of nature, are you not, in your approach to the marvels that surround and are in us, and so is not nature the author altogether of your fish farm ?

To this, he might have responded that he did a lot of work, that it was no gift, that without him there would be no farm, no oysters gathered, and the world would lose much. He was an originating ingredient in the situation quite distinct from what was just naturally there.

Very well, then if this is so, and it is, then how ridiculous is the thought that your entrepreneurial action is a mere extra, thrown in like an extra fish, into the catch! And if that is so, how absurd likewise is the thought that it did not take much work to make that collection of systems and artifices, constructions and entrepreneurial activity, that labour and thrust which produced the 'nature' which is provided, and which may be adapted, as in the fish farm, to service according to purpose!

After all, if he made the farm, and it did not 'arise' from NO relevant abilities, as if this sort of thing regularly constructed itself, from engines to accounting, then by precisely the same reasoning, what had all the relevant abilities that made what is euphoniously called 'nature', and the input is to be assessed in terms of the output. Everything is accountable down to the lowest law, and up to the utmost extravanzas in space. Neither formation nor law nor information nor time nor space nor intellect nor spirit 'arise', a mere secondary school unacceptable 'cop out', as our chemistry teacher would regard it. You have to know what you are talking about and give a rational ground for procedures in chemistry, not just blah about 'arising'.

Whether with the fisherman or with the nature product, we may not know ALL about the output (for example, I did not inspect the commercial books), yet there is no slightest difficulty in knowing its scope, imagination and the wealth of available capital available to assess the construction capabilities involved, for the fish farm.

This is not argument by analogy, for it simply includes an application to illustrate. The principle is perfectly clear. For a result in this world, you require a cause^*1, and this world itself is not exempted, for there are penalties for those clever persons who try to eliminate causality, the whole domain of cause and effect, from operation. Should you take this course, at once, you dispense with cause as the ground of effect, so removing character as the basis of assessment, as in describing any living or for that matter, non-living thing.

The NATURE of anything is a cause of the nature of its actions. If it is made free, for example, this freedom and the equipment provided with it, is the cause of its usability. If there were no cause of what various creatures do, then to characterise them would be impossible; for characterisation involves causation, the grounds for the effect, whether it be miniature protein motors doing wonders hard to imitate even with vast applied intelligence, set freely in the very depth of life, or buildings resulting from architects and their chosen human and material aids, or chemicals in their various interchanges, or physical laws in their operations.

The principle of causation has of course the additional feature that as soon, like Kant, as you try to depict how it came to be, how we of mankind come to have it and use it, in short, to ACCOUNT FOR IT, you are USING this very procedure of cause and effect, in your 'explanation'. You thus beg the question: thus, the cause of causation in our minds, it indicates, is this and that, and so someone seeks to explain it in some way, well away from the hypothesis. This is the jejune blink of 'avoiding' it by USING it! How ludicrous! Cause and effect being used to explain that they are not inherent, but merely additives! They cannot even get away for one moment to explain it, without its help! It is like saying: to account for knives, take a knife and start sharpening...

If then you are to construct any combination of characteristics in any integrated product, which does not show itself EITHER in practice being so made 'naturally', or in the evidence of operational power to do so, as with a castle for example, you need a sufficient cause.

It is quite ludicrous to imagine that

if the explanation of the castle is to be replaced by that for a cosmos
with earth one component,
and a little space with the starry universe,
a clicking wonder with time itself, and
architectural features with various inherent features
of exquisite mathematical depiction,
as with the Einstein contribution to understanding,
he being himself one not taking kindly to the alien concept of 'chance'^*1:

that then causation does not apply. It is like saying: In a school sport there are many causes of performance facility or foozles, but in the real world you never know, it just happens! (cf. Ancient Words: Modern Deeds Chs. 13 and 9).

This is to render void the very logic with which you think; and if there were no causation in the imaginary universe or pre-universe conceived as the basis, then thought could not contend with its nature at all, or even its characterisation. Thought of logical kind fits because it is a logical kind that underlies what it fits into. Underlying nature, is reason: there is reason not only for it, but even IN IT.

Returning to the operational medium of thought, so strikingly successful in investigating the universe, and such a notable confirmation of the fact that we, as mankind, are made in the image - the capacity for mutual understanding - of our Maker,

(this capacity as part of 'nature', if you wish, once you understand how it got its very variable and most magnificent nature, itself),

this Creator being able to code in comprehensible form, that part of the nature of what He created, which moves by program, and we to interpret the means involved in this greatest physical and visible marvel visible on our earth:

THEN the matter is astonishingly manifest.

Indeed, it is almost enough to make one weep, to consider the wilful braggadocio which tries to make the arrival of the downgrading universe a question, paused like a dew-drop, after rain, on some branch, to be something with neither rain nor vapour nor space nor tree involved ... as if the BEING of nature is quite irrelevant to the question of how 'nature' came to be! Rain rains; boughs grow; they exist because they are so made; and all of it goes, it goes according to arrangements, investigable by logic, correlated in logic, because it was made so to go. What goes shows; and what it shows is what it requires for this, to have been made. This leads to a few simple questions.

Does nothing routinely make something of itself ? That is merely to insert potential into SOMETHING, and have it work, and so a contradiction in terms. If you MEAN nothing, then mean it away till you are weary of looking at it, though it is not there! It has no future, past or present; for it is not there. Something is; nothing is not. It is a word signifying total absence of anything whatsoever, when applied to the scale of things which it is conceived that it IS all. NOTHING is the uniform product of nothing; and indeed, the very use of such terms is this, that there is nothing in it.

Assert it of origins, and it is a contradiction, and you are exposed as merely playing with words, and dedicating your schema to routine clash at the outset. Make it applicable to ALL at ANY time, and then it is to ALL for all time will be what it began to be, nothing. There will BE NO ALL. That however is not according to the fact ...

How often you find people playing with this insult to intelligence. Paul Davies once had a nothing idea, but has in this ultimate scale, has passed beyond it^*2, just as many were the critics of the concept.

NOTHINGS ARE NOT ALWAYS SWEET, THOUGH THEY LINGER

Recent Relevant Visit

In the Vol 27(1) edition of Journal of Creation, 2013, we have more attestation of this strange pre-occupation which tends to insert itself into our race. A Universe from Nothing, a work of Lawrence Krauss, once again as in the title, moves into this self-contradiction area. In effect, it moves that way PROVIDED you have ONLY free (non-zero) energy and empty space, and various sundries from time to time as required, such as the capacity for FORM, and the operation of CAUSATION (though in this surrealism, it is violated) in ORDER to state the argument of rational plausibility. You just need, too, a realm of rational investigability, and away you go, the world at your heels.

Why then, since this is cheating in the sense that you claim by one word what your other words deny, such as the terms nothing and something, bother with the major premise ? If it is NOT nothing even in claim, why use the word as a basis for everything ? NOTHING will alter the fact that if everything comes out of nothing you are engaged in a logical bauble, all shine and no substance!

	You can talk of quantum mechanics,
	or even wave mechanics if you wanted to,
	or other related concepts such as the applicability of the Schrôdinger equation
	(all - or any, scarcely nothing, but a mode of characterisable organisation),
	in terms of which this or that is said to happen,
	with things happily envisaged as moving in and out of nothing,
	so that there is the 'out of nothing' phase in the scenario,
	fixed into existence,
	the movement phase,
	and the constant removal of rationality as the nothing phase takes over,
	only to be succeeded by the non-nothing phase, rationally argued for,
	all in a routine so far from nothing
	that the universe is involved with the sheer complexity of the non-nothings,
	arrivals, departures and the like,
	as if it were merely a matter of blank lines in a page
	which has to be there, to be available for entries, just as the potential for actualisation has always to be there, followed by its most rigorous exercise with unfailing security, for at this level, once it failed, there would be nothing left:

and that would be that!

Such everything-out-of-many-somethings, with rational background, operative organisational feats, plus imagination, and there you are, you have nothing; nothing, that is, but what was creatively voiding or avoiding voiding on the way, and the capacities for such feats which, even in imagination, are of a clandestine and supernal kind. All functionings of anything, capacity for functions, fluctuations or any other schemas^*2A, situations and complications are of necessity not only something, but something prodigious in scope, capacity, organisability and expression of order.

It is the same in principle. Nothing rational can have a system which is nothing, a series of pre-conditions which are a prelude in conceptual apparatus for the operations of the mere nothings, which are also readied to be something, just given something else, and be guilty of less than a hijacking of the term 'nothing' in a stupendous peddling of and meddling with universes (in and out) as if this were a convenient pastime.

Whatever concepts may 'arise', in fact by intellectual causation, in the mind of man, as soon as there is a schema in terms of which whatever it is of 'nature' that appeals as a provender, a supply unit for the rest of it, is mere pretension. The schema is back of all, and in its terms, and its reasons, and it includes argumentation in terms of a rationality, which HAS to be present to make the results interpretable, in an outlay of thought. The omission of acknowledgement of this is not a matter of more or less. Thus: EITHER you admit that there is the INFINITE distinction between nothing and something (since the former at this level is in constant, total and all-comprehending contradiction of anything and everything either said or sayable), and opt for the one or the other; or you are merely using yet one more fudge factor (more that is, than as Hartnett points out, is involved in the cases of dark matter, matter, and anti-matter ratios and negative energy^*2B).

This time it is quite spectacular. BEING and NOT-BEING are interchangeable, as components in the in again and out again allegations for this little mite, the universe. If it is not ALL, then this is merely sampling and inapplicable. The question is this: FROM WHAT did it all come. To declare in 'answer' that it all came from what is neither there, nor potentially there (the pregnancy is not nothing), nor relatable to what is there (relationships, actual or potential are not nothing), nor endowed with anything imaginable or unimaginable that can 'give rise' to anything, is to circumvent the question, beg it and thrash it simultaneously.

To nothing, one can concede nothing, no system beyond, no thought relevance, no entry of causative considerations and hence no ARGUMENT on this basis. Thought is not there, nor causation, nor information, nor combination, nor the hidden, nor mathematics, nor its relevance, nor strands nor strings nor their potential nor their verbalisability, nor any logical or illogical sequences involving these things or anything else. Nothing is what it says, and hence it is sheer wastage both of time and of verbiage to have this grandiose theme occupying thought. It is all just begging the question, and assuming violation of causation, provision of information, or disposition, or rationality, or bits taking hold, not only having come from nothing, but doing all sorts of maid-of-all-work labours, in ways ostensibly stringently reasoned, for no reason.

After all, it was not there and cannot come from nothing, for if it did, it would violate itself in the very genesis, as well as being a flat contradiction of nothing as to its designation and even designability. Universes are not funny things; just large ones of manifestly complex character, with a totality of type bearing a singular name. Dismissing them takes trouble; founding them more so. Emptiness as basis is just a matter of providing endless smuggling operations to bring in the components not mentioned; and if you ONLY want this or that, then this is an acknowledged smuggle, but does not hide the rest, not by any means, successively imagined into existence.

As to nothinging a universe to be, this is all illusion. To make something out of nothing by MEANS of nothing is really working it! The universe is available for rational thought ONLY because it is so made, and to imagine rationality where it is systematically absent (nothing), or constructions conforming to it when it is not systematically inherent, or that it is the latter without a rationality basis which is inserted, is just making much out of nothing. It is all much ado about nothing.

It is a glorious example of man acting to avoid the glory with which he is endowed, and as he argues against the realities, showing the independence of thought from reality, this fantastic ability to fantasise which is his, this spirit of independence, which he possesses, this detachment from mere necessity which he deploys IN THOUGHT, as an EXPRESSION of liberty, which is as far from nothing as infinity from zero. In this, his very labours belie his thought (cf. It Bubbles, It Howls, He Calls Ch. 9, Repent or Perish Ch. 7).

The more man tries to make a bit of this or that WITHIN 'nature' its source, be it space or non-zero energy, or susceptibility to rationality, the more he heaps fantasy into fact. Bit or bits^*3 or nothing or whatever other oddity may be in mind, it all comes to one relevant result in the matter in hand (a thought matter, actually, this!). They CANNOT act before they are there; and even if they were there, productive bits need just as much as anything else in potential to do their bit to make the whole, subjecting all to overall law or regulation, organisation and information: all of which lacking, does not in the least even enter into the domain of where the bits came from, why they are so biddable to conglomeration, why rationality applies, how causality applies when it is not there, or why all this circumvention of simplicity is indulged in.

Making nature make nature before it is there to do it is mere mirage; making bits make nature when, as natural, they are there and nothing else is, leaves out susceptibility to rationality, their place in causality, and the susceptibility of all and each to merger missions, aggregative arrangements, equation-satisfying ventures, functional facilities and the like; and of course their own origin and causation. You simply add as required, like a tailor making a suit for a fat man, one always growing fatter as you make, thus requiring continual additives as various ascending needs, forgotten at the first, are met. The elegance of the model is lost when you have to come to terms with the burgeoning reality. How could a flat contradiction in terms be the genesis of the universe ? how could bits which require time and space and relationships and transformabilities and conformabilities and traceability by reason, be even spoken of, without all the correlative features and foci which render them significant for building anything, especially since it is defined not to be there!

While a flat contradiction of your boss might enable you to leave in high dudgeon, and proceed in a highly developed system, to founding your own firm, that is because in such flat contradiction, you merely clash with one on one, and the rest of the universe is not at stake.

When however it is, to start with flat contradiction is of necessity, not to start at all. The entire universe is the verification that this is not the way; for not starting at all is certainly not finishing at all, even if you want to have all sorts of things from nowhere constantly arriving as necessary, and something to provide the analysis of the resultant in coherent and embracive terms. A universe against your suggestion for its making ? That is quite an amazing non-verificatory finish for the flourish! ALL is against you.

Then there is mind and spirit with all their facilities, to deal with non-bit totalities of body and 'nature' and ideas, and purposes, and imaginations and concatenations, with ideas and creativities and the like, as noted in Repent or Perish Ch. 7. Talk about nothing to it, there is everything for it, dimensions of matter and thought and spirit and imagination and creativity and envisionment. It reminds one of Kipling's Butterfly Business, in his Just So Stories, when the butterfly male has only to stamp his foot and all goes; but then, back of it, it was really Solomon in the background who did it, for a purpose. You need a SUFFICIENT cause to create or to impregnate, or to cancel, or originate or to form being, or to deform it, as in the cae of sin, or to lose it, as in judgment. (Solomon of course in Kipling was only a symbol of what would be needed, in comparison with the butterfly's rather limited wit!). In the name, then, of a certain variety of science, not prone to scientific method, we then find ourselves in a new sort of fairyland, where inadequacy rules, causation faints, reality is overlooked, and imagination does not provide illustration to the point for us to see!

This is so, this astonishing waywardness, that is, unless you look at such biblical sites as Romans 1 and realise that the entirety of mankind is in the grip of a disease to detach creation from the Creator, leading to such items as the severance of the consequence from the adequate cause, the natural from the (necessarily) super-natural which is its source (in lieu of 'nothing', since that is a shameless entry, lacking ALL credentials in its curriculum vitae in application for a job as explanation). That is the cause of this obsession or pre-occupation with a causeless basis for causality, an irrational basis for reason, a severed source for mind and a squandered basis for spirit: all this, with an origin for nature to be found in its working before it is there to do it. The profundity of the confusion, the elaborateness of some attempts to circumvent, is an appalling demonstration of the reality of sin as biblically defined, that is, wilful detachment from what we are and that with which we are surrounded (as also in Ephesians 4:17-19), as if it were its own source, and not the Creator who is indeed eternally sufficient.

Put differently, fish farms out of thin air, are not 'on'. We agree. 'Nature' out of thin air is no different. Out of nothing is worse than having a fish farm out of an indifferent nature, not attuned to making the nutriment additions the engines on the boats, the collocation of what the entrepreneur arranges, the capital or its equivalent.

Free energy IS capital in this case of the origin of the universe. Energy is the capacity to do work. You are never going to get it out of nowhere. How then postulate it amid nothing as if this were not a fermented joke! The capacity to do WHAT work with the energy admitted in this case ? It is either an incapacitated energy which is fine in thought, but cannot really DO anything, merely sitting there like money in the bank, a status symbol, or else it is capacity to do certain sorts of work. In this case, the certain sort includes the skilful capacity to secure a number of things.

These include:

	the invention of reason
	and that of the power to make it retrospectively applicable at the same time to imaginary beginnings,
	(as in some legislatures! a power far from nothing, but involving authority and penetration of a starkly managerial kind),
	together with that for the making of all laws and conditions, be they obvious or subtle,
	the composition of all these into one whole (to be called 'nature'),
	the invention of equipment to which these are to be made applicable,
	all before we begin to add, otherwise without reason or cause, since these are not nothing,
	whatever would cause the consequences desired ...
	mental, material, managerial, entrepreneurial, philosophic, ideational, conversational, linguistic or other.

Cutting the cackle, we come to something less like goose-work. The energy must indeed be there; and it must be

not only a CAPACITY to do work, but

the kind of work which has results as shown;

and it must be set in a rational system to be investigable by reason, and

susceptible to its embrace, whether in the failed attempts of false logic
or the successful applications of true,

as justly relevant at all!

It requires

a creativity which makes bits,

the biddability of bits,

the composability of the bits,

the relevance of bits to the totality, and to each subordinate bit of the totality
(as organs in a body),

the thrust of thought to make an overall model in multitudinous multiplicity of functions,

material, vital, ideational, verbalisable, intertwining, individual, separable,

gifted with some independence as in spirit,

with fantasising power as in theories that stand on a ground that is not even there.

You need imagination, intelligence, conceptual power to make the things to match it, and creative desire to DO it. There is no plan to make it happen as a compulsion. If there were, it would be constructed and imposed by an energy relevant to the performance of this kind of work, not only intelligent, but managerial. Programming it only makes the requirements for the Creator the more extensive; and liberty cannot be programmed, though its itemisable or concluding results may be known (Licence for Liberty).

Fish farms do not just happen. 'Nature' is not like that. Things of this kind emphatically do not appear. There is a reason for this, and this is in turn a part of the operation of cause and effect. You cannot expect to have a nice body of water with a narrow-neck to the ocean, and huge areas for quiet (sometimes) accumulation of situations agreeable to oysters, and added feeding to meet their need so that the farm can really operate, and boats and crates for the creatures to be hauled about, and employes and employer and capital (financial energy, lodged for accessibility in a rational fashion) and accounting procedures relevant to wages for the workers, interest for borrowing, those who have the money to be borrowed, and the inter-connection institutions to siphon all this, just as a 'happening'.

The first reason for this is that observably, neither this nor its parallel is ever found. The second is this: that the reason for its 'arising' is never found. The third is this: that the nature of 'nature' includes what is given, and not what is not. The scope is there; the rationality is there; the provision of RELEVANT free energy is there in the entrepreneur; and it is mere ignorance in the end, to assume any without the other. They are ALL needed. That gets the action for the reasons stateable.

That is the general nature of causation. When you come to the infinitely more complex matter of having a universe come (in some presentations, this is ludicrously made almost like having a new car, and saying how it just 'came' into BEING, even when universes are in view), the principles are merely made vastly more ruinously demanding. You come to the super-natural being with the power and intellect and imagination and conceptions and capacities to originate and combine, whose distance from nothing is simply infinitely vaster than is the case of the non-nothing things sourced ON this earth, to create this or that on the part of man or indeed anything else. Imagine imagining that this Creator is nothing.

ENOUGH ABOUT NOTHING; LET'S GET DOWN TO WHAT IS THERE

Truly, there is nothing to it. Nothing has nothing to do with it. When it all starts with nothing, it all comes to nothing. Try to play with it and have some 'nothings' and some 'not nothings' and you are guilty of false advertising. HAVE on the contrary, ALL that is required, and you come to God, eternal, since out of nothing, nothing can come.

The Creator simply always was. The simplicity of the necessary logic and the explanatory power of the result is overwhelming, in type total, in scope immeasurable, in coherence singular^*4. Confined to no law, having no beginning, the self-existent and eternal being, basis and ground for all, starter for creation and significance provider, it is his Eternal Being who is the source and the explanation of my nature, yours, that of things astronomical, chemical, physical, psychological, AND of their connectivity and actual connection in one designed super-unit called the universe, and in one regarder and assessor of the same, called man. That is how they escape NOT having any being, NOT being there.

He makes being and beings, and that is their basis, making them vulnerable to His own power, and often to surrounding powers, being made, with strength or smallness. These, His creations, are screened about with laws, and forms, functions and features, derivative, often schematised or verbalised in DNA, and set in their place in the totality of places, which is far more than that, as is a car than its parts: the universe of coherence, making it such.

He is NOT guilty however of what you or I have done with our not-nothing rational, physical, mental, moral and spiritual powers. He DID provide the mental and the spiritual liberty to contradict Him, His works, and to make much such ado about nothing, if so desired. Its use (like the use of the boats on the fish-farm) is a matter for the employe, or in our case, the man or woman or child concerned. THAT is answerable, and we will all answer (Romans 2 is eloquent on this), for what we have done (II Corinthians 5:10-21).

There are NO exceptions. This is natural, the supervention of the super-natural (and hence able both to create and to assess the natural) Creator. That is why the provision of mercy as seen in the latter part of the above biblical reference, is so crucial, wonderful and peaceable, for those who receive it. It does not happen. It was made, when God did another work of creation, that of peace through freely provided mercy based on the satisfaction of justice in the vicarious and victorious work of His Messiah, Jesus Christ, who died, the just for the unjust, to enable merciful access to our God (I Peter 2:22ff., 3:18).

What is then found ? It is this. He made it; He endows it; it acts; He reviews it, and man being in His image, He gives to him an assessment notice. This is not unexpected! The result is this: that "all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, " (Romans 3:23).There are mitigations (Romans 2:14-15), but these are not eliminations. They are not nothings. The law was put there, to itemise, to signify (Romans 7), so that those ignorant of all law might be liable to any law, and those under the law to it, so that "every mouth might be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God." Guilt, like existence, is not really dispensable. There is a cause for it, and there are consequences too.

As a matter of fact, says Paul, "Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin." Be lawless, and the realities of law still apply, just as a school child does not know certain laws of physics, but this does not render them inapplicable (Romans 2:11-16). It is well mercy has been provided, like the rest, on an established basis.

In other words, go it alone, and you are liable for pure irresponsibility, which fits no bracket of proper action, let alone for such expensively magnificent constructions as each one of us constitutes! Going it alone is far worse than walking into an extensive, intensive factory, with multitudes of interactive functions housed in various buildings, and just imagining what you want to do, and doing it.

You need to KNOW what you are doing, and to make ENQUIRY about information which as shown in SMR is demonstrably in the Bible. Here alone is the scientifically testable religion about the Author of the universe, the one testable with positive results for verification and validation^*4, the one which has the Author Himself come into it, to be tested, and to test (Philippians 2), to make Himself available and to categorise performances, and then to cover the results of the magnificence of liberty, when it is misused, with His own liberty to love. Sacrificially offering Himself, He has covered the gap for employes, for mankind, in a vast reservoir of pardon (I John 2:1-2). It is made available where it belongs (Matthew 20:28), which is in one site only, the repentant and believing heart. He maid the payment to enable this pardon to be full and free in ONE place likewise, Calvary. From this there are MANY results.

When faith awakens, then action is undertaken.

Even in taking a cheque to cash, you have to believe it has meaning, what meaning, and to act with the relevant purpose.

Go it NOT alone, but under law, and the law declares your sinfulness and shows the categories of assessment, the most liable one, being fatal (like a 'fatal error' in computing). What is this ? It is that you do not believe in your Creator, or seek out His verifiable word, singular in this respect, or His sacrificial, sent Son, or His salvation, but go on as you will, in the factories of life (as they did in the case found in Jeremiah 44:16-17). That is, in the most literal sense, pure impertinence, if impertinence can every be pure!

Nothing is no originator, but much will come to nothing, many dreams, many political systems, those which spread in salvos of force, like Romanism, Islam and Communism, or with a liberty only to be abused after its relish was lost, as in many democracies, disdaining the responsibilities that go with gifts, just as children might.

What does not come to nothing, in the negative side, however, is the im-pertinence of deliberate and informed unbelief (John 15:22ff. is eloquent on this). Now it needs to be realised that heaven under duress is neither free nor favourable, but an unfitting fit for misfits, and for such would constitute a site for anguish. As to blessedness, this is not it, but a mere contradiction in terms. The terms of peace are truth and mercy, and with these not taken, then as in John 3:19, light, even that of Christ, has come into the world, and the condemnation is precisely this, PREFERRING darkness to light. It is not God who meanly or miserably places the soul in the hell which it despises, but it is He who places generously the way home to heaven for the souls who made in God's kind, come to His kindness.

For heaven to be heavenly, you need to love it. It is the spiritual site of your source in that it is the domain of God. It is the centre of your ultimate significance, in that your creation is from Him whose it is. It is your proper destination in that the salvation provided enables this fulfilment of potential - which potential ? Why this one, the nature first given, in the image of God, and so that to be with the Maker. He expanded the potential by handling the lapse in liberty in man's fall (Romans 5, Genesis 3), conspicuous in results to this day, like mould; and so now there is with the fundamental potential, the new scope made real. No longer is it merely symbolised; for like the creation, this work also, it is done, finished (Hebrews 9:12-28, 4:3).

As that provision is finished, so life in this kind of liberty within love and in terms of truth, begins for each individual when the reception of the offer of grace, in the salvation of Christ (cf. Romans 3:23ff., 10:9), is received. Thus for the origin in creation and the development both of sin and of its remedy, there comes this avenue to godly destiny in Christ, once received (John 4:14): here is the finale of fellowship with the Provider. Having this way of restoration, of reconciliation through His cover in Christ, sourced in Him, is the special provision (you can call it a spiritual law if you like, but it is what fits the NEED); and it is given for your stricken nature. If like many of us, you take it, then to Him you go, from whom you came, and as He is eternal, so this life is eternal (John 3:16-17, Hebrews 7:16, John 5:24, 10:28, II Timothy 1:8-12). It is in this way, that the nature of any one of mankind is fulfilled in its restoration to this Resource, the resourceful Creator-Redeemer who made you.

You cannot be set ultimately altogether AT nothing, since you are not nothing; but the dual destinies stand starkly: SHAME or SALVATION. Each is everlasting (Daniel 12, Ephesians 1:11, I John 5:11-12).

NOTES

On Causality, see for example

CAUSES 1,

Secular Myths and Sacred Truth Ch. 7, SMR 5,

Predestination and Freewill Section 4.

On Design, see for example

A convenient assemblage of works with emphasis on design basis and definition:

Deity and Design ... esp. as marked,
Dig Deeper, Higher Soar,
Divine Glory Delights the More Ch. 2
The Wit and Wisdom of the Word of God,
Ch. 2 for some listings,
Ch. 4 .

On Nothing and naturalism, see for example

The gods of naturalism have no go!,

History, Review and Overview ... Chs. 4, 5,

The Pride of Life ... Chs. 1, 5 and

Jesus Christ for the People ... Ch. 1.

Nothing Doing from Nothing (Barbs ... Ch. 29),

The Holocaust of Morality ... Ch. 3,

On 'Chance', see Ancient Words: Modern Deeds Chs. 9 and 13.

Chance has to have something to work in, and what is it that so works ? It is some kind of a system in which some works occur which would not have been readily predictable. If it happens to you by chance, then this means that it was not in the realm of your purpose, or computation. Things of various kinds did what they are good at, and you did what you wanted, and as you pursued the purposeful plan, the others did what was in them to do, and the merging of the two, as your locus met theirs, had a result not obscure, but observable, whereas the movements that led to it, were known only to God.

If chance ruled all, then there would be no characterisability, since the moment that comes in, so does order and classifiability and entrainment of results from causes, so that it is just a system, or series of systems, with its overall nature and the individual natures within it, including in the case of man, thought and understanding, purpose and will, discernment and probing, proceeding according to what ? It is in a threefold way, first according to the nature of the inanimate, then to the nature of man's purposes or positions, and then, beyond the superficial (as in a novel where various characters are almost predictable, but not quite), according to the wisdom and will of the One who gave to man the liberty to break laws (but not their operation!).

Foreknowing all, He may elect to let events take their course (the wicked, for example, in Psalm 1, are stated to resemble chaff when it is blown away), or in some cases, to interpose, stay a movement, just as a child may interpose in a system for his train-tracks, by the use of outside force which so far from denying the system of tracks, amends the results by acting in that domain as is apt for the desired result.

When the desire is for the creation of the natural sphere, with its multitudes of elements as in It Calls ... Ch. 9, this may involve, as ours does, many phases, areas, arenas, types of diversified things and persons and powers and knowledge and interposition by this or that partially controlling agency or even organ: then the acts of divine intervention may be so elected, so that both His nature and the natural test site are found in due wisdom exposed, for anyone willing to learn. As dramatically stressed in Jeremiah 37:10 and Ezekiel 29:18, 21:15-27, the Creator-Redeemer may act to ensure judgment occurs in a particular case, in the midst of a liberty to shatter spiritual rules, so great as to demand special and purposeful, individual divine action. Subsequent mercy may also be noted. Ezekiel 20:15-35 shows something of the extent to which God both patiently awaits acting in the negative, and conceives plans not to be altered, knowing all, to bring blessing after tribulation.

Just as makers of computers are very different from the computers in which they purposeful imagination is vested, so the products of God, the laws, systems, provisions, modalities, are mere equipment and persons multiply in the midst: how He wishes to treat them is His business, but as part of that business we have learnt both personally, nationally and internationally that there are features which depend directly upon His determination, decision and restraint. Some of these He predicts, establishing the genre (as in Zechariah 12, Matthew 24, Luke 21).

The enormity of such conduct as found in mankind in the midst of such magnificent equipment not only makes man vulnerable, each one to the other, but to other natural products, and this in turn helps awaken many to the necessity of knowing the Maker, and not just elements of 'nature'. In fact, some even invent gods of their own, and this is simply a natural product of man! These are another manifestation of the movement away from the Creator, who not created by man, created him. Reversal of this kind can only be ruinous.

On Paul Davies, see:

TMR Ch.7, A Spiritual Potpourri Ch. 1,

The Kingdom of Heaven Ch. l ,

Repent or Perish Ch. 6;

Calibrating Myths ... Ch. 1, SS 8.

*2A

Hilarious Nothings Abound

but the only One for Worship Remains

Outcomes of Romans 1

In Journal of Creation, 27(1), 2013, Dan W. Reynolds, in review of Krauss's A Universe from Nothing, exhibits some of the fantasy elements in the claim. Thus we see the exchange that given an extended quantum mechanics, which Krauss appears to want around for his generative nothing magician's work, decidedly NOTHING LIKE NOTHING, but a mathematical aspect assigned to what is already created, in postulated hypothesis, and given empty space, and the law of gravity, then he can imagine things leading to creation. But from nothing ? This is a bag-ful!

IF, he says, quantum mechanics - as not yet done - could be applied to a specific quantum law of gravity, then as Reynolds reviews the presentation ... "Then we could say that space-times pop in and out of nothing if the total energy is zero." That is, net zero, for contrary energics are assumed, which are to balance, providing a NET zero.

The contention is summed up thus: "Krauss also says that this proves you can get something from nothing given the energetics of empty space and the law of gravity." Just give him empty space, non-zero-energy and the laws of gravity and quantum mechanics, and he is off to render his claims. Something from nothing!

Since when, however, have extensive mathematical laws exerting supposed control of the universe, so that there is a logical-physical complex, been nothing!

Since when, again, have balancing energies in assignable fields of diverse operation been nothing!

Is a see-saw nothing because there is nothing to its operation, but balance that is possible ? Is there no system in what is here totally systematic ?

	If you start with systems of conception and logical interplay,
	plus non-zero energy in a conceptualisable, law-girt, physically subdued universe,
	and try to make energy appear, since it is not difficult when you have it
	in the initial scenario, already in large balancing wads,
	and give it power to be directed in creative power to make endless laws
	of physiology, astronomy, chemistry and logic,
	and so assign in the model, the conceptual power of mind
	and the controlling disposition of this specific energy,
	together with the power for the results to adhere to these laws
	(so that universes may pop in and out),
	which is effectually to assign the works of mind as the initial control,
	all these things in effect, being assigned as approximately NOTHING by initial model,
	and hence not yet present,
	but to be deduced in some highly creative way
	from the imagination of the nothing operator,
	who despite its nothingness, provides all these things,
	including the creativity and the cohesion of concepts
	and operations enabling a smooth explanation later:

what then ?

Then you are merely using counterpoising energic operations, assumed, to make a song about zero net, as if this is the same as nothing net, with no counterpoising of anything, since things to counterpoise and exist in a totality are so far from nothing as are enemy forces avoiding war by counter-active avoidance systems, neatly cancelling or rendering useless, intended attack.

Thus you start with space ( and even this concept is indicated to have energy), mathematics, legal control of universe, and imagination (not recognised), and from these, given quietly what is lacking (creativity and directedness and cohesion of conceptualisation and power with unlimited skill and enterprise), then the model would have you get something from such features (smuggled in), when they operate from what is not nothing: since operational headquarters for the feat, and what operates, however imaginary in this model, are not nothing.

The GIVEN is merely given the name 'nothing' instead of being explicit without smuggling, and being called the Creator. It is as simple as that. The eternally existent maestro of power, conception, imagination, entrepreneurial ability, agility, ability, powers past human genius as demonstrated by the quality of mathematics and the whole spectrum of spirit and mind and construction, beyond altogether man's power to create: it is this One who knows how to make persons (since they are made), and liberty to assent or rebel concerning the truth; and this Being has a name. It is NOT 'NOTHING', which is merely verbal abuse, but SOMEONE. That is a start.

Let us then revert to the atheist model here.

In short, on this basis you get a mathematician's paradise, where varying conceptual forces can balance, where energy can arise, background noise (of the thinker) being deafening as it 'arises', and is planted in 'nothing'. Thus its possessor, by the presentation of personal performances manifest and visible, with the energy, becomes the creator (in mind only, for the model is obscurantist), and this from something as far from nothing as a Boeing jet liner, except that it is far more complex, involving creativity for all law in all fields, and thrust for all creation in all quarters, and capacity to synthesise, in all fields: in fact, what it takes to be the Creator. Actually, this Creator had to be there from the first for ANYTHING other than nothing, EVER to exist.

As to Krauss's effort to say that if nothing is the lack of potential for existence, then even God could not create the universe, it comes from a confusion of models. This shows some of the energy of thought misdirected that follows from the creation of free minds for man. In this retort, he imagines his own model, and deduces from it, that if this be right, then those who reject it must be wrong. That is so. If 2 plus 2 are taken to equal 3, then what says it is 4, MUST be wrong. That shows nothing but the confusion of imagination.

Certainly if NOTHING WERE ALL, as in his model, then there would be no potential for existence, and nothing would exist. Putting God into his model is a simple contradiction in terms, frequently found in such affairs, when model mixing breeds confusion, just as nothing breeds nothing, and not universes.

When you take the logical position, as is required for rationality, and hence for any status or standing in any argumentation whatsoever, and acknowledge that for ANYTHING EVER, you need SOMETHING ALWAYS, something on which to build, and since you and I were not there, SOMETHING TO DO THE BUILDING, being there to do it, which is so helpful, whatever may be the wages for absent employes in some cases: then we have engaged the valid model.

What is created is so, because there IS a creator to do it. What follows does so, because being there enables labour on the part of the Being, adequate for ALL that is to be built. The labour's products follow the Lordship, the uninhibited power and skill to produce and apply all the dependent limiting laws, constraints, correlations, syntheses, potentials, premises whether for one discipline or for logic or for anything else that is confined and conferred, and not in itself, evident as sufficient to PRODUCE such temporalities, in the control of their appointed directions. It is all brought into being and backed by Eternal Logos. That is why we can investigate rationally; why it can operate brilliantly; why thought applies, for it was applied and is applicable to the realm which made it for man. Logos can mean cause or speech; and we have here both.

That which is not - nothing, is not; that which is, something, is; and what is has power to be what it is, or it would not be there. If ever overall absent, NOTHING only would always be the result, which is not our current universe or speech.

What is to be has come from what is, and this confers understanding logically concerning what what is, is. Works are co-ordinate with capacities.

In other words, once you realise that as always, there has to be something to do something, and then add this, that the something that is, has to be logically adequate to do what it does, then it is simply a matter of finding what IS required as shown for example, in SMR, TMR and shown in It Bubbles ...Ch. 9 in review, and finding that this therefore is the minimum for the one who made it all. This One naturally is called the Creator, or God if you prefer, provided you realise that this MEANS NO LESS THAN the Creator. Several gods would require their systematisation for co-operation, the milieu and the method, as creator, and that would in turn require its creator. This is a mere false-alley.

The Creator eternal and distinct, who speaks life in ONE language, and makes man in ONE image, in a universe with ONE logic by which reason is applied, and sets for man ONE standard as for one kind of thing, and acts to redeem in ONE way, in His own personal law for man, and did so in ONE place, Calvary, and insists on sin having ONE result, namely death, without this redemption, and brings all to ONE judgment (Acts 17:30ff.), with the provision that redemption is the ONE outlet and escape from judgment, in mercy: it is this Being who, on investigation, is what is found to be the truth, with unique verification and validation^*4. In the universe are laws from cause; in God is personal being, with ways of His own. Sin breeds curse, seen in the creation not least in imaginative rebellions against God. Curse allied with abuse of powers, breeds disorders within order, like disease amid men, and unspeakable cruelty, when false models breed impersonal follies with misplaced zeal, polluted cravings or unlicensed lusts. The horror of perverted religions, made by man, is that gthey evoke the zest apt for God, and misapply it to what is not God, so using flames to put out the fire.

What we have is fully explained logically; and the beauty of it, in method, is that logic as in SMR, requires God; but GOD HIMSELF, once found in the demonstrable work of His own speech, the Bible, and in the Saviour so sent, TELLS us what is the reality. His mind comes by His word to our minds which come to conclusions to accept the reality of it, and repent and be redeemed by the sent Saviour, Jesus Christ (Isaiah 48:15ff., I John 4), covering breach of law and spoliation of life as given; or not. It is such a God as THE ONLY GOD, Sender, Sent and Spirit (Isaiah 48:15ff., Matthew 28:19), that trinity exhibited definitively in and as Jesus Christ (Hebrews 1), who is worthy of worship as singular deity, with a singularity of reverence and joy.

According to the mind of God, who inserting all limits from His own original and eternal being, those who freely receive Him are known in advance (Ephesians 1:4), since persons are aware of persons, and the limitless God has no difficulty in foreknowing those who are His (II Timothy 2:19). Law governs much; love gains much; mercy assigns life eternal; faith receives; rebellion rejects. It is scarcely difficult to comprehend, if you want to probe, it is immensely and intensely probable (that is, probe-able!). It is not probable (that is, likely), but certain, born of God, as man is, and for man, as God is.

For Him, however, He is not swayed by man, knowing better than sin, but available to call, as in Isaiah 55, WHERE HE MAY BE FOUND (He is not manipulable, thank goodness! - cf. Galatians 1:9-10).

*2B

On this, see:

The Defining Drama Ch. 3,

Christ, the Cumulative and the Culmination Ch. 9,

Cascade of Truth, Torrent of Mercy, Ch. 6,

Lively Lessons in Spiritual Service, Ch. 5,

Dig Deeper, Higher Soar ... Ch. 1.

On bits, and 'bittism', a reductionist ploy that does not match the entire reality of integrality and final quality, see the following.

Message ... 5, 4,

Christ Incomparable ... Ch. 2,

The gods of naturalism have no go! 14

Evidence and Reality Chs. 2, 5, 6, 7

Impossible for Men, Open to God, Ch. 3,

Dig Deeper, Higher Soar ... Ch. 1,

The Kingdoms of this World and the Kingdom of Christ Ch. 8,

The Holocaust of Morals and the Coming of Christ the King Ch. 3,

Glory, Vainglory and Goodness Ch. 1,

God's Gift of Grace in Jesus Christ Ch. 7,

Holiness, History, Review and Overview Ch. 5,

It Bubbles ... Ch. 9,

Spiritual Food and Drink Ch. 4,

Repent or Perish Ch. 7,

Possess Your Possessions Chs. 3, 3, esp. *2, *3.

See on verification and validity, such samples as:

LIGHT DWELLS WITH THE LORD'S CHRIST

WHO ANSWERS RIDDLES

AND WHERE HE IS, DARKNESS DEPARTS

(a large, multi-phase work).

TMR    5, 7 , It Bubbles ... Ch.    9, esp. *1A (method),

The Bright Light ... 7,

Repent or Perish, Ch. 7, pp. 152ff.; Ch.   2;

Christ, the Wisdom ... Ch. 6; Barbs ... 29, 19;

A Spiritual Potpourri Chs. 1-3; SMR   3,

Little Things Ch. 5, Wake Up World! ... Ch. 5, End-Note 1A,

Tender Times ... Ch. 11;

Barbs ... 29, 19;

TMR 9, Grand Biblical Perspectives Ch. 7,

What is the Chaff to the Wheat! Chs. 3, 4 (method); 10, 11,

Deity and Design, Designation and Destiny Chs. 3, *3, 8.