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Chapter 9


 STORIES ABOUT STORIES AND FACTS ABOUT TRUTH

THE UNIVERSAL POISON GAS ATTACK,
AND THE ONLY FRESH AIR, JESUS CHRIST

 

A TALE OF TWO PITIES

News 426, The Australian, Monday November 9, 2009

 

TIME TO CONSIDER THE TIMES

 

Stories, we learn, are quintessential for mankind. Such is the view espoused in The Australian of the above date,  in an article, "And that's the End of our Tale".

The Times comes out with this hurly-burly of wisdom in fair clothes, but alas, the content below these, is hard to find, at least in that genre. What hurly-burly ? why the discursive article which it is reported to have published, and which appears in The Australian. What then does it say ? Listen.

Stories were so important for relating to life, for learning of its little (and some other) ways, and so on. How sad that this is being displaced by idling little messages, all kinds of mini-displays and instant non-literature! Such appears no small part of the theme. Literature enshrining stories, prima face on the wane. Then, near the end of the article, we are advised that all is not lost, that something of a story can be found in some of the newer ways, albeit not in the fabulous formats of the more literary past.

Considering the high vaulting post accorded to stories, and the end of the article in John 1:1 (only part  thereof, of course), one finds that the underlying theme would appear to be this: that there is no truth, but there is a lot of wisdom to be learned in stories which give differential and often inspirational stimulus, helping mankind to live in not the best of all possible worlds, perhaps, but at least to live with some species of useful perspective.  For this,  story-telling and pondering makes a telling if not the most telling contribution: in fact, it seems from the article, to be more likely to have advisory status, existential emblematics or stirring dawning potential in the apt and receptive mind of man!

What makes this more than a mini-apologetic for the deterioration of literature and knowledge of the language, for its being valued and delighted in for its full potential, is the end of the article.

Here we find that a story (and here the writer of the article is willing to indicate that ... God knows this) "is still the most powerful way to understand." To understand what ? This is not so clear, except in such tidings as the above, which skirt but never meet the question.

The literary piece in The Times then goes on to mention in this perspective, the point that there is a well known piece in what he deems the genre, "In the beginning was the word, and the word, in that great narrative that is the Bible, was not written as Twitter."

So great narraative is "still the most powerful way to understand", we are advised, and the Bible is "that great narrative", and the genre has this limited but pseudo-inspirational role, amidst which teeming populace of stories, it has ... its place.

There is, in this approach from The Times, some concession that when God opened His mind to man in the Bible (though this is far from being the perspective in which the point is written), He at least used good literature as His medium. It reminds one of Cambridge Professsor, C.S. Lewis' remark that the Bible is increasingly regarded as might the butterfly collection of some fancier of the same, who would like ever so much to show it to you. That is, it is minimised (in its word of God claim and acclaim) by being maximised (in its less than crucial placement).

Thus, in the way shown, it is made to appear that this is a story, which like other stories, has a certain mystique, place, function, correlation of perspective with action which is or can be exceedingly helpful to man;  and with story telling in general, it is deemed to enter into the major works of man: but it omits one little point, and indeed in effect comes to deny it. What then is that point ? It is this:  that principles of truth, commands and perspectives for life expressly given by the Almighty, the Creator of man, made testable in their predictive and retrodictive capacities, are NOT stories. As in laboratory work, accounts may figure; and as in novels, lives may be exposed: but they are also expounded in a sovereign perspective which surrounds itself with verifiable claims to truth.

Thus, if you want to be instructive and reflective, you would not refer to the brass fittings on a yacht, and talk of the maritime matters, then indicate that amidst brass fittings this is a true souvenir for high regard. What is important about yachts is the way they sail; and what is important about the Bible is its claim to be the very direct, precise, immutable, Gospel containing, only authorised word of God Almighty to man. Nor is it merely that that would be nice to know, and He to meet; but that He in VIEW of this His direct, verbal revelation (I Corinthians 2:9ff., Matthew 5:17ff., I Peter 1:10ff.), that He commands all men  everywhere to repent (Acts 17), in default of which, and of the results to be received from His Gospel, there is judgment  that is as severe as was the offer of Christ on the cross as a sin sacrifice, severe on Him.

What then ?

To dismiss the Bible as story, or even to try to make it mainly thus, is to miss the point. When parents of old told stories, it was often in order, to be sure, to facilitate awareness of the truth, of truths and of dangers, as well of blessedness and the way to find and work together with the Lord who made us. It was not always thus, but for example, in that nominally Protestant British Empire, such was frequently the case. Stories can be used, as in mini-accounts in Proverbs, broader ones in Kings and Chronicles, to illustrate oft-repeated principles, including trust in the Lord, which is not a story matter, but a basis for history, which of course, biblically, is His story.

It is however AS His story, a multistoried building at the outset. It has its summit in His personality, principles, morals, ethics, wisdom, glory, majesty, beauty of holiness, eternity, infinity of power and wisdom, and His will for man, in accord with God's reason for constructing this greatest codally organised, and living creation visible, one  far beyond any such non-living made by man. In what way is it so far beyond this ? It is so in complexity and art, in scientific magnificence of management and dexterity of conceptual activation into reality; in the minds co-opted to work with the said body, minds that freely organise, enquire, formulate, imagine, envisage, seek truth, ponder the word and ways of God, and indeed in the spirit of man, which decides whether to investigate such things, or bring them under the auction hammer of being beneath his greatness, irrelevant to his needs or just a nuisance.

Such is the product. What of the producer ?

That is the source of the  His for history, the basis for life in articulation, reticulation and reality, which man is not really much chop at making, or manufacturing, for his own part. Indeed, as to that, he is not even good at all at that, at such a construction as himself, even with the example is set before him. Moreover, even when the exemplification of such skill is to be found IN him, facilitating his opportunities for observation,  for pondering method, he is no better. He is out of his depth, skilled at direct or indirect measures and means, mathematical or mechanical, at control, but wholly incapable at making what is not directed, at what can deny the programmer and spit in his face. Of course, that is not the only think that man can do; but it is one the chief; and again, just because it is so common, is no ground for thinking it is a good purpose. In anything that has a means quality, there is always the question of the purpose of the one, virtuous or malicious, who uses it!

But what of man with this equipment, served up like a magnificent gift set on his life's doorstep at  birth, and constantly tending to increase till it reaches powers almost sublime in potential ?

It is ALWAYS MUCH easier to do a thing when it has been done and is exposed to the eyes of one's face and mind and heart and spirit, as it works, and again, even more so, when its interior workings are suffered to be dismembered and inspected for centuries with everything man can do to unwind it. So far he has some knowledge of its fastidious marvels of multi-control in multi-layered wonders of succinct speech, within the nuclei, and is learning fast the monumental character of these expressions*1, not in monuments that wither, but brilliances of construction that RUN, without the dust of the ages settling on their vivacious brows*1A. Yet man is but a buffoon when he tries to circumvent such order and such creation as that which he himself is! Let us then look further.

Down the floors you go, as you look at the ingredients in this activated genre called man, including some actual stories in some parts of the stories of the building which houses these subsidiaries of the Almighty, Himself stationed by impact on the top story, but above even this, this point being merely that at which He meets with the prophets of old, and has met with man when He sent His only begotten Son through a virgin*2.

It may be helpful here to see just one area for contemplation in the massive organisation which, even in principle, is exposed to sight. This is taken from Dig Deeper, Higher Soar, Divine Glory Delights the More  Ch. 2 (and some in this from SMR).

 

TIME TO CONSIDER OUR OWN TIMES

 

CHAPTER TWO

 

THE DESIGNATIONS OF CREATION DESIGN                   

DO NOT ADMIT THEIR DENIAL
IN REASON OR SCIENTIFIC METHOD,

BUT DECLARE THEIR COMPETITIVE CONFIRMATION;

THEIR SOURCE PREDICTIVELY PROVIDING FOR HISTORY,
ITSELF DESIGNED, AS IT NOW HAPPENS

 

Past, Present and Future are One Integral before the Living God

 

News 379,

New York Times August 3, 2005

and News Radio, July 2006
fulsome and  proclamatory words from a particular group of certain scientists

 

PROCLAMATIONS CONCERNING SCIENCE AND EVOLUTIONISM -
IT IS BECOMING LIKE POLITICS,
MANOEUVRE, DECLAMATION, MANIPULATION AND FAR FROM SCIENCE;
BUT THE FACTS DO NOT ALTER,
NOR DOES SCIENTIFIC METHOD ACTUALLY APPLIED,
PERMIT ANY VARIATION.

Design is the fact verified and validated; creation is the only presentation verified and biblical creation is the one best verified, most extensively. Things do not, in kind, grow into each other, but maintain a distance. In this chapter, some of the facts showing this are brought together, with references to reach far more.

It is time to be practical, factual and actual.

 

 

DESIGN, PLAN AND PATTERN

 

Amongst the most bizarre events on earth, the most atrocious, outrageous and outré is this: that some people*1A, nursing their numbers like an army of locusts given minds, are actually claiming that DESIGN in life is not a SCIENTIFIC view.

Nothing could be further from the truth, which is that design in life is the ONLY scientifically permissible view, in terms of scientific method. It is scandalous that the matter should be so circumvented, but how else would the scripture be fulfilled, or how better, than in this, that they will give loyalty to myths (II Timothy 4:3-4)!

The translation 'myths' is of great interest. Thayer's dictionary makes the Greek term, nearly identical with the English, to refer in the most general pejorative sense, to 'an invention, a falsehood', and it is seen as often associated with stories. The Amplified New Testament has the pejorative sense 'myths and man-made stories'. This can move swiftly into the philosophies of motions in the field of deity and demi-urges or into that of naturalism, depending on the taste and degree of impudence of those who speak with airy carelessness of things they do not understand (II Peter 2:10).

What however are some of these stories ? Let us be precise from Peter, for there in II Peter 3 we find two cases. One is the denial of the scriptural place of the FLOOD, and the other is the denial of the reality of the God of Creation, in such a way that although He may be acknowledged, yet the 'very idea' of His coming back to this earth is removed like lice from the hair of the so-very-holy arbiters of custom and fashion in the cultural clutches of man. The theological thing is to become a name, while the paths of 'nature' are to pre-occupy the wholly unholy and self-assertive ramblings of that ruin still called man, in the end of the Age (II Peter 2:1-3,17, 3:1-5). This is well illustrated for Victoria in Lead Us not into Educational Temptation, and for South Australia in TMR Ch. 8.

ONE of these stories which makes any god they are willing to tolerate to have to wear Nature like an iron mask, is that of organic evolution, a story if ever there was one, a tale with endless revisions since it runs into endless facts before which it refuses to yield, until its besotted cultural engineering makes it a very chameleon of philosophy.

Now it is Darwin and making wonders by killing off the least (a very ingenious way - imagine doing that with thoughts, you could become a veritable Einstein merely by removing errors, with no slightest need to actually ENVISAGE anything at all). This is the essence of the error, for the strife to remove weakness, which of course injures hearts and souls as well as bodies, and brings out ruthless evils in mankind, has NOTHING to do with the brilliance and artifice required in invention as in life forms. In any normal definitional usage,  this is termed 'design'*1 :
 

bullet

that assimilation of numerous complexities into integrality,
 
bullet

that solution to numerous procedural problems
with ingenuity of mode not to be found per se in the constituent materials,
 
bullet

that subsumption of multiplied processes to ordered,
salient and sequentially sustained results,
whether for comprehension as in art, or action as in engineering,
with overall meaning for a stateable whole.

 

Let us however return to our non-design chameleon of play on the part of those who wish to alter  the definition of terms, or do so without realising it.

Placing this predicted phase in conjunction with Romans 1:17ff., which details the syndrome of worshipping the creation rather than the Creator, and so inheriting foolish thoughts, while imagining oneself to be wise, one finds what we have. The syndrome in biblical analysis is the situation in this advanced stage of historical fact, right down to the haughty demeanour and the sexual perversion on the grand scale! This too is testable evidence, for any non-occlusive use of scientific method. What explains most with least difficulty and most verification is on track! This is it.

Creation-concentration in the field of ultimate reality, starting, and having finished stopping, this is the testimony of design. It is also the testimony of the Bible.

With this creation, however, to be realistic in assessment on all sides, as is fitting for any model, there is design-desecration, making it a byproduct and a potentially removable mess. As to the desecration of design, achieved with sonorous mouths by ignoring the reality of design, this is not even ingenious; for what mess being removed from a courtyard, makes it. It has as little to offer progress as does any other regress.

Going back to the creation aspect, in parallel with this mismanagement  facet: what error, being removed from a paper, makes it brilliant, and what fault being removed from an invention, gives it status as profound and wonderful! It is what it IS other than that, which matters. Removing a few wrong notes from some musical score hardly makes Smith into Beethoven!

This simple circumstance being lost on the organic evolutionist, he bravely continues his surge from nothing to the profundity of the precise and mathematically induced arena of matter, and from this to the immensity of the logical analytical powers of mind, and from this to the grandeur of the will, in itself wonderful, despite the hideous misuses of it, available to it when misused, data which are so conspicuous that we even now learn of someone blowing up a mansion rather than sell it for a divorce settlement. Now to be sure, the removal of any errors in any such structure as that mansion, might thus be achieved; but the structure, so far from being invented by this powerful collocation of matter, and matters, is in this way destroyed.

Force without creativity is the enemy of order.

Order without wisdom is the pathway of fools. You need for design what is always found in it, what makes it attractive: discrimination, discernment, knowledge and knowledgeability concerning potential for manipulation of lesser things for the grander purpose in mind, imagination to erect what was not, but now is, for a plan which may be foolish or gracious, but which is intelligently conceived and carefully crafted. WHERE such things are attested, whether in Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, or in a Boeing 747, be they practical in intention or aesthetic, whether architectural in form, or mysterious and evocative of thought, so that one probes for the purpose and finding it, smiles ... then there is design, and the designations of the designer are to be found, and used for instruction *1.

From the excursion found in *1 above, the criteria of design are to be seen, both in general and in the particular case of life, which is one application of an intense and programmatic kind, linked with the most unprogrammatic of all known events at the visible level, the will of man. This however is immersed in the techniques of logic, the methods which science merely forms and formulates at the disquisitive side of reason, in the propositions of purpose and the adventures of imagination, both personal and physical, spiritual and moral (cf. News 19).

In all these cases, despite the 'witless' ways of the insane, and the insane seeming moments are many in those who are sane, there is the character, as in any other design, of the thing.  This is to be seen amidst its failures, where design does not fully cover the case, or in the case of man, where will discovers what is unsuitable for the design. There you have this fascinating dipole: the organised and designated structure and the volitional capacity to evacuate from this sort of intensive and correlated order, into realms of fancy, often deliberately chosen because they become a phase for fascination and a ground for discovery, or even an outlet for boredom, frustration or zest.

Even that, however, requires as in all functionalities of multiple parts with integral function subordinated to a totality with its own features and ways, as in man, a certain reality. It is the construction of the facilities to enable it!

You most emphatically do not just 'get' because it 'arises' - that airy-fairy nonsense which some love to import into science, like rats from a foreign land in a ship's cargo - the liberty which is here involved. It is not mere chance, for it is filled with purpose; it is not mere break-down, for it is an exercise of understanding. It is WILL, and this involves the whole domain of perspective, self-evaluation and ambition, which in turn involves orientation and construction of mind. So far from being evidence of the non-purposive, it is an eminent example of it. That one might not approve of its use, is no more relevant than an endeavour to construe the wisdom of the wild driver who seeks to escape the police. The SYSTEMS he employs to do it, and the WILL he uses to try it, these are not found by omissions or errors. Without them, he could not make the effort.

Into this profundity of complexity, man, then comes this simplicity which is a part of many of the grandest designs, and a criterion of excellence for any design. You have the over-arching capacities based on almost unbelievable complexities of physical, organic, molecular systems, each subordinated to the other, and set in a milieu of mind with its own system of reason and spirit with its own capacities of formulation and purpose, so that if this were not a design, the term would have to go on permanent vacation. It has complexity in unity, many phases in successive deployment, elevating themselves to higher and higher modes of co-ordination, all phased into correspondence and co-operation, with a unitary language of command in that automated, and a learnable language of desire, in the being who as person, uses from a summit, the whole schema for achievements of purpose.

It is as noted in SMR pp.332Gff., schematically observable as follows.

 

A PATTERN OF MAN - For Survey and Simple Mnemonics - A Summary Structure (PSC). This is envisaged as a skyscraper, and may be conceived upwards or construed downwards. (See pp. 140-145 supra, and cf. Repent or Perish Ch.7,
Endnote 1, where there is further development on this theme.)
 

THE ELSEWHERE-EARNED EDIFICE,


 WITH OPTIONS PROVIDED FOR MAN

(View as one skyscraper: floors are in general
in order of their management significance, though this may vary.)

1.  Principal (top floor)
2.  spirit
3. perspective
4-6.  personality-imagination-expression (PIE)
7.  principles
8-10.  priorities, penchants, affections (PPA)
11.  purpose and purposes
12-15.  comprehension-analysis-intelligence-mind (CAIM)
16.  proposals
17. corporicity
18.  procedure
19.  principial error
20.  plan
21.  performance error
22.  program
23.  unsuccess
24.  significance
25.  semantics
26.  syntax
27.  signification
28.  symbols
29.  cells (equipped as per 24-28, i.e. the 5 S-Words)
30.  system
31.  sequence
32.  series
33.  singularity
34.  subsistence (ground floor)

Added to these, further functionalities could be noted, such as:

CREATIVITY, INTER-PERSONAL CONSTRUING; LOGIC, MEMORY, SYNTHESIS, SYSTEMS, DISCIPLINED-IMAGINATIVE-CONSTRUCTION; SURVEY -
WITHIN AND WITHOUT.


While these extend our sight of the donated territories accorded to man, they can be understood in such terms as: mind, spirit and their intimate inter-relation. Here we see not only worlds within worlds in the construction called man - a multiplicity of cosmoi, but a disparity of components, duly combined and correlated to work as one unit: that is the art and essence of creation  (cf. Repent or Perish Ch. 7).

The splendour of the architecture that creates, together with the wonder of the elements in man, themselves creations - the legally inert substructure, the vitally informed, the alert, the discerning, the comprehending, the volitionally directive, the spiritually profound, soaring inexorably: these in their display and their unison attest and verify at work... the sublimity of divinity.

SURVEYING THE SCINTILLATING SCENE OF THE UNITARY SKYSCRAPER

Now let us look from the top storey down.

At the top, the spirit (q.v.) of man, as active but non-autonomous, and derivative (2), is subsumed beneath its principal (properly God, but it may be opted for or yielded to as the devil, self, self-sufficiency, self-satisfaction, self-fulfilment, ideological activism, existential angst...), whatever it may be (1); just as perspective (3), in turn, is set below spirit.

Then is seen the personality as functional upon this, with its principles, priorities and purpose, all functions of it, proceeding in turn to utilise the whole realm of the mental and engaging the physical, with all the errors which in practice may divorce purpose from results.

The structure in its course then moves through the purely programmed to the anatomy of matter and the singularities of what subsists (ground floor). As to the principal, on top, this may be subjective, merely existential; or the upward gateway to reality.

The control room is in the top floor; and the merely existential per se lacks what life requires. The reality incomparably and immovably attested, is the Lord Jesus Christ who, the only begotten Son of God, the Word of God, achieved the building and offers to restore the mismanaged to the designed holiness: at cost to Him, by sacrifice once made, and power, epochally shown in His bodily resurrection. This restoration comes through personal faith and repentance, including His actual top-level reception, where He belongs; and His free acceptance of the purpose-deflections and other errors, sins at any level, unburdened to Him and His waste management.

 

No design ever made by man comes near to this facility and felicity, complexity and multi-phase diversity from program to person, from structure to function, from multi-phase subordinations to multi-purpose authority: either in the abundance of living parts, susceptible to procreation, or in the sheer splendour of mind, matter and spirit. Man cannot even begin to make spirit, procreation being not a product of his intelligence or power, but of organic structures inbuilt to enable it, as part of the system, thus displaying a power so far transcendent from the mere HAVING of man, that to man is granted the power to make more without even a significant move of understanding! It is all done for him.

Nothing incorporating the features of design (cf. *1 ) to this extent has ever been seen by the unresurrected eye of man.

In short, we have definitionally*2A an inescapable necessity to admit design in life. We have on the negative side an equally inescapable necessity, if we deign to use scientific method, to recognise that verification of important and available tests of a kind which it authorises, favour one only participant in thought: creation, and not at all, organic evolution. It is not merely that what DESIGN is, requires the admission, but what in the designated universe, HAPPENS that does it.

 

SURVEYING THE SCENE OF MAN IN HIS CREATED STATE

 

This is summarised, and should preferably be read in context, in SMR pp. 149ff., as follows.

What we are observing merely makes the unscientific also uproarious.

Making it simple

We see therefore, putting it slightly differently:

Organic evolution fails:

i) to be based on relevant observation (cf. pp. 161, 234, 251-252G infra).

ii) in having no citable law available for normal scientific testing.

iii) in not being verified in terms of prediction from a scientific law.

iv) to provide sound agreement, even in retrodiction.

v) to agree with current observation of what does happen, even in broadest terms.

vi) as contrary in tenor to known scientific law, such as entropy, equally to common sense.

vii) to have the discipline of science, either in past imaginings or present happenings.

viii) more monumentally the more microbiology reveals the human body as the design paragon*1, *2A.

ix) in confronting the intricate patterns of a profound language as a contribution from chaos (the language of life, which is one, in cells) ... Professor Murray Eden relates here.

x) in having two systems (genetic and behavioural-surviving and so on), not systematically related, yet expected to construct what is here (Schützenberger).
 

Creation Prevails.

CREATION, LIKE EVOLUTION, IS NOT A SCIENTIFIC STATEMENT. AS WITH EVOLUTION, IT IS NOT BASED ON OBSERVATION OF EVENTS HAPPENING. BROADER TREATMENT OF BOTH IS THUS NEEDED. HOWEVER, UNLIKE THE CASE WITH EVOLUTION, WHEN THIS IS DONE, CREATION DOES MEET ALL THE LOGICAL CRITERIA (cf. p. 161 infra).

i) It does not claim that the process is continuing. In this, it is confirmed by all available means. That is verification.

ii) It is susceptible to disproof ( in its Biblical formulation) by simply showing that the process from which creatures have come in fact is continuing. In this, it is verified, for this is not seen.


iii) It does provide logical ground for the language of life.

iv) It avoids the non-systematic relationship of two systems as a ground.

v) Its clear cut retrodiction is not met with contradiction, and it could have been. This too is verification.

vi) It is in precise accord with known scientific law, such as the second law of thermodynamics; and entropy is another formulation of what the Bible SAYS, ( e.g. Isaiah 51:6), and implies ( Romans 8:20-22 ) in that area of formulation!

vii) The nature of mutation verifies it - variation but not transmutation (kinds).

viii) The numerous evolutionary theories (provided to meet even distant facts) by their disagreement, the one with the other, and by their incredible character - creation arriving incognito as in 'quantum' evolution, or the so-called 'hopeful monster' concept - are in a predictable situation. These unsatisfactory theories show what one would expect: multiplication without solution. This is verification of the creation concept, Biblically invariant. That is, it is unchanging because it is Biblically defined; and because what is Biblically defined, does not need to be confined or refined. It stays in the form, function and rightness given. This case simply verifies that. That is what it had to be; that is what it is.

ix) In the Biblical formulation, this situation is also explained psychologically, and indeed spiritually. There it is declared that man is alienated from the life of God and is systematically dimensionally ignorant (Ephesians 4:18-19). Romans 1 even traces the process. This ability to account for the activity of the evolutionary thrust, personally, is also verification.

x) What contains in its ambit most areas, covers them most categorically and elegantly is deemed the desideratum: this is verification at its acme. In general, the more broadly a presentation covers all known facts, explains all relevant data and the more readily it does so, the more it is deemed to confirm itself.

This excursion into scientific theory and its nature, scientific method and its formulation, and current controversy and its analysis is presented to stimulate you into thought. Culture is not a sufficient condition for thought and acute analysis is always in order. It is what can make certain responses more incisive, sharp, clear and arresting. It helps remove confusion. Further, discoveries can the more readily be made when the cult of the forbidden is not followed. Evidence must be pondered and conclusions subjected to the discipline of reality in such a sphere.

The wrong-headed trend to reject culturally, as at one tertiary institution in this State, at which I taught, because it is not convenient, and not because it is wrong, without indeed giving it due rational interaction with those who present it, is in essence a form of cult. Is not what is culturally dictated in the dereliction of duty towards reason and evidence, a cult ? And in how many universities does one find evidence from Staff or students, of this deplorable cultic phenomenon: creation, or the grand issues of reality are forbidden.

What however is the 'cult of the forbidden' *2 ? It is that cultural negativity, fear or subtlety (depending on motive) whereby certain matters are (ostensibly) ruled in advance of all evidence, 'out of court' - the court of culture. Whether it be deemed to be politics, religion or other field, the result is a mental crimping that too readily becomes downright dishonesty if not, indeed, hypocrisy. Certain things are out of cultural bounds, being inconsistent with desire, ethos, illusion or delusion; irrespective of their truth.

With religion, it may involve the detestable folly of pretending that evidential procedures are irrelevant, and, worse still, that it is illegal to be logical and alert with evidence and reason, lest emotions be roused. This subordinates truth to convenience and not for long may one justifiably expect the continuance of such folly, or of any society where it distinctively rules.

Reality is a dangerous enemy with whom to trifle by such policy and contempt. By this means, irrelevant irrationalities and absurdities - such as is organic evolution in terms of scientific method - may be 'allowed', in that by a mythical oversight, their merely mythical powers are ignored; whereas the more scientifically oriented view of creation is 'excluded' as 'religious'. (Cf. pp. 211-222, 226-234, 330-334 infra.) Christianity with open heart and incisive mind is quite freely availab1e for 'inspection' - and meets any intelligently administered critical test with overwhelming results, that are as unified as they are unique; and it alone systematically meets logical requirements of consistency and rationality (Refer Chapters 1, 3 and 10).

 

Organic evolution is always, if one may personify, trying to HOPE that things will happen, which verifiably do not, and then saying that it is all so slow that you do not see it go. This is not science but sci-fi. Science is DISCIPLINED by evidence, not DYNAMISED by figments. That which organic evolution provides is the realm of philosophy at its worst, the novel in its prime. It is not the novel, by imagination, however, which we are concerned to depict, but the actual by observation, implication and consideration of the established laws of science as a field for homogeneity.

As noted earlier, of such change:
 
bullet it has never been seen,
 
bullet the means for it have never been positively tested and
 
bullet the equipment to produce it has never been found.

ALL tests fail, for the relevant criterion of advance in integral functionality into more of the same, in novel arenas of kind.

These are

bullet mutually compelling considerations of scientific intra-harmonisation of concept,
as normal in that field; and they
 
bullet in dynamic unison point to what is not now being done, as having been done,

and this which has been done, as not

bullet in ways currently observable,
 
bullet or by methods currently available,
 
bullet or by powers currently deployed. 
bullet Moreover as noted in TMR, and shown by Professor Tom Barnes of El Paso University Texas, the three main laws of science reflect biblical, not evolutionary reality. With slight adaptation for our present purpose, in one formulation, this is as follows.

 
bullet
bullet

The simple fact is this: The LAW of CONSERVATION OF MASS AND ENERGY
is exactly in accord with the scientific hypothesis of creation.
SO TOO is the LAW OF BIOGENESIS;
and so thirdly is the LAW (2nd) of THERMODYNAMICS.

 

bullet

Of these: ONE states how life is uniquely and exclusively observed at this time,
to come FROM life; another states the situation concerning matter plus energy,
and its stasis - there is a deposit of competency; and the third notes the trend to downgrading of what is already built.

bullet

Thus it is THERE, without disclosing from WITHIN ITSELF,
or any components, collection of components or criteria,
HOW it got here. It decreases its specialised specificities,
as is normal with our own designs exposed to general conditions which impact on them;
and life in particular is derivative from LIFE.

This of course is precisely what the Bible said:
The things that are seen are not derived from what is visible (Hebrews 1:1-3);
their trend is to wear out (Isaiah 51:6), and life was achieved in a specific,
distinct creative act, also NOT from within the interstices,
powers and properties of other material things.

bullet

It is quite impressive when the three chief laws of physics are derivable
from a Book which has been around in major elements to the point,
for nearly three and one half millenia, without revision, without need for it.

It contrasts with illimitable felicity with modern human science,
which being chained to man, is not to be expected to achieve such eternally valid results, however bright the worker. Such in additional verification is what is found;
for in this field, a theory of yesterday is aged tomorrow,
one of a decade ago can become almost comic, and of 50 years past,
a thing of awe in the arena of the museum pieces of knowledge!

It is indeed quite impressive when the three chief laws of physics are derivable from a Book which has been around in major elements to the point, for nearly three and one half millenia, without revision, without need for it. On the other hand, this is precisely what one would expect from a source which is in fact the Creator of the things that :

1.   are there.

2.   are duly wearing out according to program announced verbally long before, and

3.   incorporate a specific called life which, in our format for it and with the human spirit added, comes only from life as stated at the outset
by what you could almost call, for the sake of impact, the Manufacturer.
His handbook is an astoundingly good one; and at the level
which is appropriate to such a Being.
 

·  It was Professor Tom Barnes (*4) , as Physics Professor of the University of El Paso Texas who conveniently noted these three laws and emphasised their spiritual relevance, and in particular indicated the confirmation of creationism.

·  Not merely indeed are they harmonisable with it: they are close to RESTATEMENTS OF IT! That then, it is not bad for a start.

Instead of collisions such as the Naturalistic Fallacy has in its evolutionism, which are constantly and indeed increasingly the subject of excruciating self-examination by what are perhaps the more sensitive, as also frequently the most eminent of the secularists: instead of such anguish as 'nature from nature' theoreticians experience in their reflections, now often published, there is in the logical performances of creationism, just the opposite. Here, it all fits into place where logic, experimental fact and the due use of scientific method coincide in a methodological trilogy.

 

This is the nature of these three major scientific laws, in the realm of design into which we have currently entered for review. They not only are in accord with it, but in accord with the biblical statement in its implications concerning it. In Isaiah 51:6, we have the express statement that the universe is to wear out, to become old and to lose the initial powers as it ages, and is finally discarded, as also the simple fact of its coming removal, as in Matthew 24:35. As to the method of that removal, in II Peter 3, it almost looks like some derivation from the powers released in atomic bombs, to see the nature of the heat and dissolution there described.

The fact that the symbol of destruction in our own Age was foretold by Joel and cited by Peter at Pentecost as a coming event, is scientifically, and empirically, in the same positive and confirmatory field, at the simple level of scientific method, as the rest. There would be, said Joel, a column of vapour amongst the other dire dissolutive dynamics, which would be a major item of this approaching end (Joel 2:30). Peter refers to this in his summary as "blood and fire and vapour of smoke", as a sign of the coming near of the end of the Age and the return of Christ, while Joel has "Blood and fire and pillars of smoke", amongst the wonders to be shown on earth in attestation of the approach of judgment and the terminus of our Age.

No more remarkable, visible symbol of our Age and its self-aggrandising thrusts, no more simply notable item or aspect, for observation purposes is to be found, than the column of vapour, which in a summary reference, is singled out by the prophet for notation!

Further, as to blood, we have a flood of it, and every ideological Tom, Dick and Harry seems fascinated to absurd passionate extremes with its flow:  whether in Cambodia, the Sudan, Kashmir, Israel, Iraq, Iran (recall the little wars and the millions who died, including kids with plastic keys for celestial purposes, it is said), in Russia, China, Tibet, or in Ceylon now with a new name but an old plague, Sri Lanka, yes and Georgia, and not to forget, in that grind stone for blood, Chechnya, while to these the colder flows of blood in Siberia of the last century may be added to the hotter ones in World War II, and the little excursions of Arabs from time to time, to seek to gain the rest of the Palestine, robbed from Israel, much to Jordan, despite the provisions of the League of Nations following World War I.

The blood and the column of vapour, yes, testable, distinctive, epochal the latter in kind, the former in lava-flow type profundity of spill.

As to fire, some may have noticed that this is associated with the atomic bomb, in rather regal ways, along with the vapour of smoke, the column of it predicted.

Thus there is not only the FACT of the CORRELATION of the three major scientific laws with the biblical formulation, which in turn means, of the observable FACTS with that writing, in the field of creation, in addition to its logical requirement (cf. SMR Ch. 1, Ch. 3, Ch. 10, TMR Ch. 1, Repent or Perish Ch. 7); but in the biblical presentation there is further elaborate, testable detail supplied.

Accordingly, SMR Chs.  8 and 9 cover various periods in which this biblical felicity concerning the OTHER works of the Creator may be seen in their stunning multiplicity, while the indexes on prophecy extend it considerably further. All of this is testable, scientifically relevant material in the total investigation of what is biblical creationism, which is not merely a type of it, nor merely a religious phenomenon, but a factually demanding avenue for the explanation of  all things, with verification supplied in complete contrast to the organic evolutionary hypothesis, as void of confirmation on all sides as a frog dynasty that forgot about eggs. 

Thus these additional features in the vast scope of testability in biblical creations are in one sense mere ornament to the foundation re creation, in terms of scientific method; but as with all that is testable, in terms of what in scientific method terminology, is hypothesis, this is relevant. EVERY feature and facet,  every implication and application that is testable between utterly diverse presentations on origins is relevant. The luxury of using illicit and illogical  exclusion means,  as in that death camp for logic,  the cult of the forbidden, cannot be too sharply condemned for its unempirical star-gazing dreaming.

What then ? Starkly, major scientific laws, a basic pattern for thought in its field, CONFIRM ONLY creation, and in the biblical presentation, gain further confirmation, and negate organic evolution which wants life from non-life, stuff to come from somewhere or other in some way or other, never found in principle or practice, and advance rather than deterioration to be the king-pin of the process which brings something out of nothing in the first place, and out of categorically and ordinally less than itself, in the second, in its rocketing advance.

It is not that castles come from thimbles, in this second case, as in a good fairy story, but from atoms, herded into things unspeakable in intensity, immensity, felicity, aesthetic integrity, symphonic harmony, dynamic systematics and organised mathematical brilliance devastating to all human pride. Fairy stories have the same basis, but are more interesting, since they stir the imagination without insulting the intelligence or defiling reason itself.

In scientific law correlation, in determinate verifications in testable arenas, in coherent and consistent definition, in logical necessity (cf. Ch. 1 above), we find one case confirmed, and in each, the other negated. Creation is that case, and organic evolutionary myth, it is the other. As to the legitimacy of that term in logical application, see  *2 at the site marked, below .

In terms of science, quite apart from all else, there is not only NO CASE for non-design, but EVERY CASE for it.
 
bullet Yet the pundits who seem to love to have their sheer number noted

(and consider how many would be notable as contrary to impending flood,
in the day of Noah as he painstakingly built the thing seas away),

bullet do not number among their presentations
 
bullet any reason for them
 
bullet that can stand for one moment
 
bullet before the bar of scientific method*3.

Not merely is this so, but the antics of creation (you see it in music, in architecture, in golf course design - a certain exuberance*4A which laughs at the ordinary and INVENTS things) mock the pundits of wearisome and dispirited evolutionism, by the sheer profundity of the artifices employed, the dynamics deployed and the brilliance of ploys opted! Imagine 'trying' to get a submersible suckling for whales for a while, or to have a transition for oxygen assignment from placental blood supply to infant lung aeration in the moment of birth, or the few seconds left after it occurred, or trying to make philosopher insects who, which ... could discern the difference between the extreme art in many floral contributions, to the point that the latter would 'need' (the usual personification ignoring causality) to 'create' themselves in order to be functionally superior!

Consider the definitional realities, and now let us apply them.

In Chapter 2 of "Dig Deeper ..." as excerpted above, we proceed to the issue of 'design' definition and the application. This may be pursued if desired, but stimulating as it is, and expressive of confusion of thought in the anti-Designer brigade as it must be, it is not here necessary for our purpose.

 

TIME for ETERNITY

Thus in the entire perspective of actualities and facts concerning the knowledge of our universe, there is a vast erection of building, conceptual, correlative, mirroring the actual; there are dispositions so myriadform, intellections so brilliant in their various cosmoi of operation, there is a uniformity so legislatively immiscible with story and so co-ordinate with legality, that talk of stories (of the narrative type, whatever their truth or otherwise, depth or shallowness, or however disparate from divine truth they may or may not be) is to be replaced if the slightest effort is made to reach factuality, rather by talk of another sort of stories.

These are those of the dispositional and functional architecture which lies behind what is happening in, with and through man: the conceptual, creative, legislative, conformist architecture, unique in kind, dictatorial (as building tends to be, apart from the originating mind, where it is creation). This is the structure, functionality and resource for what is occurring in co-ordination at the physical level, comprehension at the mental and imagination concerning things imaginable at the spirit level* 3.

When an engineer discourses on his productions, when a mathematician expounds his theorems, proofs and provisions, when a thinker expounds his thoughts, it is not quite a matter of a story. When God exposits His power, purpose, commands, oversight and foresight, we are not actually dealing with stories, not as a criterion at all events*4! When we come to truth and wisdom, at least, we do not have to be beholden to stories as a genre, though they may provide some illustration, and accounts of occurrences may have a quality of wonder as one finds one's origins and the initial tests to which man was put.

In the case of "In the beginning..." and what was done, we are dealing not with  the beginner, as some would seem to wish to render 'God', having not yet begun to understand the meaning of the beginning of ALL which includes rationality and understanding and power and beauty and truth FOR MAN, as a derivative not from nothing, or from some question-begging irrationality, but from the ONE who BEGAN IT, being without beginning precisely so that anything ever COULD be.

Better yet, He is dealing with us. There are facts and principles, predictions and retrodictions, morals and beauties, livelinesses for life and means of perdition, there are roads and highways, things of passionate concern and level-headed regard for them, there are matters of men's minds and spirits, their beginning and their destiny, of love and hatred. To illustrate: there are indeed stories about what happens on the road which a patrol officer might choose to recount; but there are  two other dimensions if you wish to understand, and not just pass the time of day instructively. These are: HOW and WHY were the roads made, and what are the RULES for their use.

Talk of such things at a broader level, concerning events involving man, indeed, while they COULD be called "the human story" could be so only in desolatory inadequacy. The human story, though the term is basically inadequate,  is a history from the results of the creation by the Maker of man, and is set down, not as an autobiography, since of necessity God always is and does not change (cf. SMR Ch. 1, Sparkling Life ... Ch. 4), nor yet as a series of events in vacuo, so that you draw your own conclusion. In fact man nearly concluded in the universal flood, and is now nearer and nearer to another conclusion, not so much with water as with fire, firstly of his own genius for disaster, as a wanderer from God, and secondly in judgment both within and upon the universe.

Responsibility would assuredly be yours if you stole your boss's Rolls Royce, and you would not marvel if a certain stringency in relations came into being, if you did this. When you steal from God what He has given you, misuse it and arrogate in some kind of quasi-autonomy (quasi because it is crazy to think you can, as a derivative dependent, live without your Maker), then there are certain principles which relate, summed up as death, and this comes in various kinds and degrees, to this and that focus and feature for man. It actually happens to everyone and will continue to do so, in the body that is, until Christ returns and the general resurrection is at hand.

It would be better to refer, at the major level, to the divine creation of man, to the lab tests of man, to his fall and failure, arrogance and power, abuse of the universe's massifs of power, to his folly and murderousness, hatred and malice, amidst nobility and other residues of his first construction, and to see the thematic realities. Then you can take illustrations, as in a science text, after the lab work is reviewed; or in a book on moral law, when the conclusions of the same, set in the perspective given, enable the whole to be see clearly and together.

Even, however, is so vastly changing the mode of gathering wisdom as in this account, you still need to have the state of mind which is operative. A car on your front lawn is treated in a vastly different way if it does not work, go. Man and his mind and spirit shows an amazing series of powers and disparate liabilities, the latter growing like a back-log or an uncut lawn, till they are coming nearer and nearer to making a mockery of his knowledge, like a sudden debt failure, as it balloons as recently in the USA.

Things misused for so long become abused into infirmity, and the results can be both catastrophic and vaguely ludicrous; and so it is far beyond finance, as murder and mayhem become objects of virtual adoration for many, and a soldier can kill his mates because of ungainly confusion of loyalty or indifference to trust, and do so in the name of some god which seems to be inducing such action, to the PSYCHIATRIST concerned! Almost every sort of growl and cowl is abroad, as nation rises up against nation in a sort of pit-stop haste as if the end of the race were number one on the agenda. It had to be so, was predicted to be so, is the necessary logical result of being so, and is so.

The human mind needs restoration to its operative base in God, in order even to be able to gain the knowledge and wisdom which HE alone has, in summit and summary, in extent and in that perspicacity of uncreated mind which is infinite. It is not a story but an operation that is necessary; and then history can be realised, appreciated; and that, it is not only a wholly different story, but a wholly different reality, once it is seen as it is, courtesy of God.

Moving about the spiritual world, with this fragile (but amazingly tough for all that) body of ours, and yet STILL not understanding and instead thinking in terms of stories in terms of the byproducts of wisdom, as if this were the crucial matter for man, or anything remotely approaching this, what is it like ?

It is like moving about the world in a fast car, neither knowing nor wanting to know the roads, their rules or their destinations, but going ... just going, and as you go, listening on the radio to endless stories, stories about what is happening to other travellers, and trying to learn from this.

However far you go, the result is then a dead end.

But you say, I feel disowned. Here you were going to tell me a tale of two pities and this is about the end, and we have not even mentioned them. The pities ?

They are these: substituting stories for basic facts from God, making mannequin parades of myths and admiring them with the lust for cultural fashion, and finding in them material for stories about stories, instead of going to God and finding the facts about truth, what actually happens, then testing it, next acting on it. It involves finally coming to Him to become a new person with a new understanding, who knows where he/she is going by faith, supported by reason, avoiding anti-divine and desolatory treason.

Pity number one: being so fascinated with quasi-religious stories; pity number two, accordingly not finding the facts about truth, hence not discovering the meaning of life, its source of vitality and mode of operation before God who made it.

 

NOTES

*1

See Jesus Christ, Defaced, Unfazed ... Ch. 4, with

Grand Biblical Perspectives Ch. 3, Appendix together with *1A below.

 

  *1A

See:

MINI-MESSAGES WITH MAXI-POINT FOR THE CALL OF CHRIST Ch. 6.

 

HISTORY, REVIEW AND OVERVIEW

HELPS, HINDRANCES AND HOLINESS Ch. 5,

 

*2

See for example: SMR pp. 770ff., at *2, All This Rot About Not Believing (A Spiritual Potpourri).

 

*3

See amongst other works:

 Grand Biblical Perspectives Ch. 7,

Christ Incomparable ... Ch. 2,

Repent or Perish ... Ch. 7 with Ch. 2,

It Bubbles ... Ch. 9,

Little Things Ch. 5.

 

*4

See Lead Us Not Into  Educational Temptation, Ch. 4.