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CHAPTER TWELVE
 

PASSING STRANGE

A Dialogue

with an Excursion in the Notes

on Creation and Desecration

 

 

Believe what ? the tested word of God and His Christ,
or the various thoughts of man, as they come ... and go!

As to  the latter, there is nothing to it!

Could you wait a minute ?

Sure, there's nothing to it.

What do you mean, nothing? It has to be something.

I meant nothing to the point. It doesn't trouble me.

So there is  something to it then ?

But nothing that matters to me.

Because you are tolerant; and in fact, something though it is,
you graciously forget about it.

Disregard would be  better.

Precisely.

 

This imaginary conversation bears  strongly on the point about creation.

Start with nothing.

But there is nothing in it.

Yes, but there may be states, phases, dimensions, things out of contact and so on, 
though for all intents and purposes, there is nothing to the point.

What point ?

The point of how the universe came to be.

So there is not nothing.

I did not say that.

In the account you are attempting to provide  concerning the coming into being of the universe ...

I didn't say it came to be.

Oh  so you start with a universe in training, in potential, in abstract.

You could say in abstract.

In whose mind then is it abstract ?

Touché.

So you start with nothing or something. Could you make up your mind please, so that we can find the status of your imagination.

Say 'nothing' then.

All right. So there never can be anything, since if there were, the start would

have potential, as  demonstrated by its outcome. For that potential you need  income. That is something.

Why ? Why not start with potential ?

If you do, is that nothing  ?

Not  really.

It involves capacity, which is not nothing, for if there were no capacity nothing COULD come. We are talking of the WHOLE and ORIGINAL, you recall. That would be a simple contradiction in terms.

We start not with nothing, but with potential.

What has the potential ?

Something or other.

So there is something unknown, with potential.

Yes.

Who put it there ?

It just was.

What reason is there for such an assumption ?

Well, results came as you point out, so there must have been  something.

True, now. So did this potential have what was adequate for the results which came,
or  what was inadequate, in its original situation.

What was adequate, or else by definition results such as these could not come.

Do you believe then the Big  Bang imagination?

I try to do so.

Then the particular potential which you have in mind had at least the following:

Force (to create pressure), space (for an expansion),
time (in which events such as expansion occur),
order (for such orderly things as pressure and space - potential or otherwise - to  exist in a given situation),
susceptibility in explosion to  reveal a logically investigable development
(for otherwise  attempt to use reason to explain would have to be alien to it), and hence 
a pre-logic potential, power to make  law (by whatever means, the results demands the cause)  ...

Wait just one moment please.

Certainly, what is time for!

You insist on a cause at every  stage*C.

How otherwise can you explain the development - by having fairies  do it, or nothing,  which is already dismissed  categorically as a logical ingredient from which anything is to flow, when it is being postulated as the ULTIMATE!

Why not have  a cause-free beginning ?

Then it need not have potential either ?

Why ?

For if cause is irrelevant at the  start, what is the cause of its being so later  ?

Nothing.

Already we have investigated that canard. It quacks but it does nothing, and is irrelevant in any logical presentation. An illogical one, on the other hand, is not an  argument, but simple imagination, suitable for fun, but not for science,  logic or rationality, and hence for argument or explanation.

What then ?

Hence cause has  to be  relevant  at  the  first, and what is the cause of that.

I suppose it  was in some system.

Good. So we cannot start  with nothing in this ultimate case, and we have to  start, in any explanation or argument, with a cause-operative continuity, with  a  lot of things already caused.

Why could not cause arise  along with potential ?

From nothing or from  something ?

Why ... from something.

What  would the something have to have for this ?

Well for the situation, it would have to have logical  capacity, space making power, same with time, also with force-making power.

Could it have these  things as part of what it is ?

But then what would be the cause of that ?

It all  just has to be.

But what is the cause of the combination of force-and-time-and-cause-and-space actuality or potential in 'it' ?

It  does not need a cause.

Is it a being or a thing then ?

For the logic, it would have to be a being, since things don't think.

Would it have to think ?

If everything were there already, no. However we are accounting for it,  and we know it was not always there already, since it has come in notable stages.

What then would be the source of the rationality in it ?

It  would be eternal.

Correct. What would be the source of the ability to concatenate things over time  ?

Ability to systematise, for one.

So in the beginning there was logic (so that power to employ it  would be effective), power to employ it, capacity for all things that are not self-sufficient ...

What do you mean ?

If matter,  for example,  were  there in the beginning, and notably does not make itself from itself upon investigation, and is not of its own  spawning as the Law of Conservation of Matter  and Energy indicates, for in science, which seeks to  describe what is operative now,  it is a given. Then, since IT as observationally defined,  cannot do this, that is not its observable nature, what did ? Something somewhere with the noted powers,  had to have this now unobservable power. What is it to be called ?

The 'Entity' noted.

Then E is cited for entity-made matter, whether directly or indirectly.

There is no other cause, and causelessness as you point out, is not a ground of explanation of anything, or a ground for any argument.

If character is a cause, being what it is, in a given situation, say of matter, then if this did not lead to results, the character  would not BE there. Character, nature and cause are interlocked like a cat and dog in a fight. To have anything specifiable there must be character, nature and a situation of cause and consequence; otherwise the imagined situation does not have the power to exist. Look at it ...

Chaos even as something describable,
CANNOT be chaos in the absolute sense,
since then it could not be described.
NO entity could be orderly enough to be describable,
and then there would be nothing to  describe,
for if all specifics are lost, what is left ?
only the fact  that the further you go down, the worse the case is.
Make it something in disarray, and something and disarray are NOT chaos,
but themselves.
Make it have  ANYTHING of a given character,
and this is not possible in chaos.
Make it JUST  chaos with nothing, then there is nothing to which it apply,
and the concept being mere connotation, not denotation, holds nothing.

So if you want explanation and  testable hypothesis, and reason, you have then the E  for entity which causes matter, which cannot cause itself.

If you need agreement, you have it there.

What is self-sufficient and rational in power  and creative in capacity must therefore be eternal, nothing being an inadequate basis for ANYTHING, and what is not self-sufficient requiring a cause logically.

Yes.

E is therefore immaterial. And it is not immaterial that it is not matter. We need a name for it, and the term spirit is normal, for we ourselves have inbuilt logical capacity and power  at least  to  relate to time and space, and  to use force and develop it  from this and that already given, and  this  creative originative and various  spiritual power is not measurable in itself. Thus truth, one of our criteria of explanation, is not measurable*1 in length, colour or any other visible manner; nor is peace; nor love; nor desire to explain anything; nor obstinacy nor graciousness. We live outside matter in the mind, and in the mind we explain matter, and devise the connotation, which is dependent on  mind, the more ultimate; but also on spirit.

How ?

Your spirit decides whether or not it will LISTEN to  logic, for example, or attempt illicitly to avoid an issue, or  to make  something out of nothing*1A, in mind, despite the impossibility of this, and so on. It,  this spirit of yours, or of anyone, is aware of logic but is not bound to follow it; and may even knowingly and speciously attempt to circumvent logic  for  certain purposes, ambitions and so on.

The term 'spirit' could then be used of function of the Eternal Entity ?

It covers the case, since thought and purpose and imagination and creativity must be present, but with this difference from our own, that it is not limited.

How do you know that?

It is for this REASON. If EE were limited, then either it developed this limit later on, or it had it already. If it had  it already, in the notional start, then we have not accounted  for things causally, there being this outside  power  to limit.

But that is  almost  too simple. You then causally need  what made both the one and the other and put them together operatively.

True, but this is merely a needless logical  step. In the beginning, in any explanation, you need what needs no logical step; for otherwise it is not the beginning and you simply go back to the necessity as first noted, and omit this invasive irrelevancy.

What about E developing a limit then ?

Anyone can in principle, choose a  limit for a purpose, for a  time, and control the event in and out, in oversight and control. As  to its actually coming beyond the power of the eternal E, later, that would mean that there was outside  itself (prefer, in view of minimal qualities, Himself, gender-not  applicable), outside Himself*2 a power to control. However power without limit having been the original case, in this instance before us, since limits would be outside and hence involve the step back, the irrelevancy, what results ? It is this: then E must include  power to know the future and hence any limiting invasion that could  occur, and hence being without limit in power, power to avoid invasive limitations, whether of power, wit or any other matter of its minimal nature.

What if He,  EE, wanted to be absolutely limited some time, and just did it ?

His power to  limit His power ? Explain.

He might have got  sick of being so Almighty, or worried about it, or wanted relief. Anything.

Sick of it ? This means that HE has not used His power wisely, in making a situation where He is outdone by what He has done. That would limit His wisdom, which merely brings in a limit at the first; for if it were illimitable, no such limit could arrive. You have to have this limit from the first if it is  ever  going to happen, in the ultimacy, in EE. As before noted, if this were so, it  means that it is not at all ultimate at the first,  making this a contradiction in terms. Thus that explanation has to find the reason for the limit, the power behind it, the articulation of the connection, and of the logic which overreaches  both, to make it a usable system. That again means going back to the start, and ruling out such a quality, such a self-contradictory element.

Then you are back with what requires no reason BECAUSE it is eternally self-sufficient, basis of all types of causation, source of all applications of logic, all explanatory power, all creative power. It is EEOA, eternal entity, itself origin of all.

Yes, it is really nothing or God.

And it cannot be nothing.

True.

So it is God.

But of course; reason requires it.

It is  SOMETHING adequate for all results: SOMEONE as noted.

Otherwise you don't get them; but you do. It is  all here.

 That is why the  Big Bang is a vast case of question-begging. It starts with all the powers, compressed by pressure  into something infinitely small, and hence without any space, from which something reasonable, filled with laws, forms, features,  characterisabilities, sequences and developmental dynamics that are specifiable, is to come. Scarcely a scientific hypothesis to find the least germane, the  most operatively inefficient, the least explicatory idea, and then have it all given further problems in having it for no known reason as cause, magnificently compressed. It is as if dad's fairy tale bent for the children has followed him to work, and he is becoming quite ingenious in irrelevance!

Small, infinitely compressed in unknown nature, unaccounted for, ready by explosion to create wonders of order and ingenuity. No reason for it; no ground for its capacities...

The smallness cannot however hide the intrinsic features; and the pressure without cause, the force with it, without cause, the space for it, without cause, the time for its start, without cause, for its  finishing the outcome phase in  ways not now observable, without cause: it lacks. It is simply an irrational  fairy-tale, hiding its implicit premises the way you may with a children's fairy tale.

You know, isn't that what the Bible predicts  as the judgment comes near, that people will turn to fables ? and didn't Daniel say that knowledge  would increase, and i...

And isn't that just what is happening. They make technically knowledgeable  and  totally irrelevant because question-begging hypotheses; and these, without causal accountability, are just fables as predicted. Hi-tech features do not hide low-logic disasters.

They even teach them in  schools and can make potential Ph.D.s cease to be  logical, let alone scientific, by making them conform to their ideas - as in one  case  where a student in that  category had to place somewhere the idea that matter tends  to be self-regulatory,  having such a power in terms of which it operates.

That is contrary to verification, to scientific law, to observable  reality, and were it so, it would be very interesting as a new concept of ingredients in the creation. What a strange sort of matter to keep the name from what lacks these power by inspection and exhibition, and to set it in some far off thing keeping its tag. It is simply smuggling some of the necessary features which we have noted and bringing into an unknown thing given a well-known name of something quite different. It is a sort of holding company, set to one side from reality, instead of facing the grounds logically for what ultimately there MUST be. Creating creators may be fun; for functionality, you need logic.

How horrible such evasions are! You know this explains why there are  found so many galaxies so near the alleged beginning  stages  of the universe, not at  all conforming to the concept of development over time, and why as Hartnett  points out*3, the theory depends on such non-observed items as vast dark matter resources and negative energy, and  endless features on earth do not accord with vast ages, as in the realm of magnetism, dating contradictions in rock, maritime ingredients, blood and delicate structures still unruined in supposedly multi-million year aged creatures  and so on!*4

Yes, actually it is impossible to find any reason either to depart from reason in the first place (and it would be a contradiction if it were so, for reasons would then be placed in argumentation, for the operation of unreason), or  from the nature of the EE, of God.  WHEN  you do not do so, ALL clashes in logic disappear, and while we continually find out more about the creation, yet it fits  like hand in glove, and indeed, the finding HOW it fits is one of the things which activated many of the classically great scientists and innovators, such as Newton, or  Faraday, Kepler and scores more outstanding thinkers.

You know, I suppose the idea that there is nothing to it, is anything but true of anything!

The truth is nothing at all  like that.

Inventing a source for  all  law (for it needs a cause as it arrives in what arrives), is not an  option for nothing as source. It can do what it is, nothing.

Law, form, intention, invention,  dream, fact, personality, perversity, conformity, all require a cause, and the EEOA has it all. What  WE have is  an  ALMOST but not quite inordinate ability to think, imagine, revolt, rework, deceive, obstruct, facilitate, a  spirit and a mind and a logical system in which it inheres and in terms of which it explains, and as a race...

An  ingratitude, if you ask me.

Good, I will. What  does it show ?

It almost seems  a vicious ingratitude, for even now, the wonderful and the desecratory are both all too apparent: the one, in that it is so thanklessly received, and the other in that it so viciously destroys what is so wonderful, like the potential in the souls, spirits if you will, of men. What is the solution ?

It comes where  the power to create, deploy  reason and give cause for things is  to be found. Here also, without limit, is the  power to remedy. Without that, the destructive wizardry of man  is left  to continue, and so merely  goes on attacking the Orderer's works and attempting to seize what is left of them. His action to turn this around,  to remedy it, is found in one place only, in terms of  reason, evidence, verification, validation*4A, and that is the Bible*5.

So  God began things and  as there stated, in HIS time, ends the time  for  liberty to be misused, abused and  options to be pursued, even to the death; or even to life. In NOT  ending this time sooner, He is acting to allow  the remedy to work (cf. II Peter 3:9), for the cost was enormous (Hebrews 5:7). This costly work  is called redemption and involves His personal arrival on this earth, using a body and taking format first  as a babe, thus proceeding to manifest the EEOA face  to  face, and showing His power and concern  for His products called mankind, for example. Systematic as also in creation, no extravagantly shown in DNA, and using law as there, He has  provided  an escape route in dying FOR, or on behalf of man, as an reality turned into an offer, and making this selectively applicable to man.

On what basis is that selection then ?

It is this: if you turn FROM your ignoring, or rejecting, or efforts  to  abort or thwart  Him, and His words, and ways, and work, and repent, and  put your trust in Him who first made  and then brings remedy, who died one for all, that any might  come (II Corinthians 5:14-15), then THAT  part of the creation has its straying  solved, its life redeemed, eternal life given (John 10:9,27-28, Romans3:23ff., Ephesians 1, Titus 2-3, Romans 5:1-12, 8:32, Isaiah 53:1-6). If it were  you yourself, then you would be that particular part. The  creation is there  consummated in principle. Later  when this world, created, is moved out, finished, all these evils are but a past, method finished, tests over, demonstrations  exhibited.

Cheques are free, if given, but if lost they do not  apply ?  right ?

True. The payment then is never made, though the willingness is there.

Of  course.

Some then unredeemed are  doubly lost. They strayed  and then they strayed  away from the remedy, and so are wilfully straying all over again.

Yes. That is why it is such a great thing that NO  WORKS OF MAN even  enter into the salvation of God (as in Romans 3, Galatians 1-5, Romans 10, Ephesians 2), any more than they could  or did in the creation or will in the judgment. HENCE the relevant work of salvation being all of God, as so  categorical in Ephesians 2 for example, it is sure, and cannot be disestablished.

This is great. HE  alone created;  will remove;  offers remedy; brings it in practice to those who receive it; and  carries those  who thus came in  faith, by  Himself.

This is the way of it, so that  as Paul declared, they can say,
"I know whom I have believed and am  persuaded
that He is able to keep what I have committed  to Him
against that day."

That's the ultimate in contract.

It is free. It is called a  Covenant; and  this, the New  Covenant, formulated long before (as in Jeremiah 31:31ff., Isaiah 2-55), it was actually formed when God came as Lord to earth, to end animal sacrifices for sin, in His own! both gratuitous and  glorious work of kindness (Hebrews 7-10). People may fiddle with it, as many have done, and die on the doorstep; but those who enter  as in John 10:9, through this sent One (as in Isaiah 48:15ff., John 1, 3), have the gift of eternal  life as I John 5:11-12  reminds us.

For THAT, I will have a good  memory. It is great to have peace.

The world lacks  it; it is the non-receptor as a whole, of  the remedy. That is why NO SOLUTION is coming as the generic tag on major moves amid the nations, in politics, in safety, in wisdom, in reasonableness, and ruin is taken as predicted, always casually (as in Revelation 6).

So for it, for this present world,  there is no remedy ? 

Only for those who are or have been in it, who in this come out of it,  is there remedy. Then they live not by human culture, or their pick of it, but by the truth of the Creator, who is the Redeemer who having wisdom and love and grace and power, is worthy as counsellor, saviour and Lord. There is simply no substitute for Jesus the Christ. It comes in salvation as in creation (Colossians 1:15ff., Acts 4:11-12), the work of God.

It is great  to be alive!

Eternally!

 

 

NOTES

 

*C

See on  causality, Causes, SMR Ch. 5 and Predestination and Freewill Section 4, which handles Kantianism in particular.

*1

See It Bubbles  ... Ch.9.

 

*1A

See for example, Agitation, Cogitation ... Ch. 1.

 

*2

For those of some susceptibility here, the pronoun 'He' although here defined as gender irrelevant in physical reality, could be replaced with a circumlocution. Biblical phrasing however is followed here, where indeed, any such connotation is vigorously shown to be irrelevant, in literal terms, by Jesus Christ Himself (Matthew 22:29).

 

*3

See for example, his work in Lively Lessons in Spiritual Service Ch. 5 and others as noted in the index.

 

 

*4

EXCURSION ON CREATION AND DESECRATION

See for example TMR, Ch. 7, Models and Marvels and Ch. 1 also. Further see The gods of naturalism have no go! The delectable and fascinating fact is that evolution has never been observed in the sense of spontaneous development of information (necessary for it to have its coming-into-being program). Theories abound;  facts do not appear.

That is well illustrated in  the record of the interview between Bill Moyes and Professor Richard Dawkins as shown in 'Now' for December 3, 2004 at this site for one.

In this, one of the best word plays and self-contradictions you could  wish,  as an example of evasion, is to be found. Thus Moyers asks Dawkins about evolution as a fact or a theory. Dawkins notes that 'ít has been observed.'

Now in  scientific method, this is crucial. This the evidential approach. You make up your philosophic (or other) mind about a thing and then postulate it, in terms of your world view and desire, whether for truth or other; or else empirically it has been observed. As to the latter, this may be by this or that means, but it purports to be a direct occurrence captured in the performance, so that it is now outside the theoretical postures, positions or penchants, and  in another realm altogether.

This observation claimed by Dawkins however is a unique kind. It is, he  explains, the kind of observation which does not include being 'observed while it is happening.' You never actually FIND it happening, but it is observed to happen. Astonishing verbal athletics.

But not, the coincidence of the thing happening and someone being there to find it, this has NOT happened. This is what he is wishing to intimate. He just used the contrary in the statement!

THAT, then this evolutionary occurrence,  has not been  found happening; and it is only some other kind of  'observation' to which he refers. What kind of a kind is this then!

What  kind of observation of a kind of bird, sought for ten years perhaps, but now at last seen, is this which is not there while the bird is happening to be there. This is nothing short of double-talk and dissembling. If you observe diffraction lines, by some  species of mode which exhibits the occurrence, then well done! If however you never, no never were to be there  when they were happening, occurring, the means of observation were not present when the lines were manifesting themselves, doing what they do, then to indicate that you observed them is simple nonsense. You postulate them. Between these two is a great gulf; the empirical and the imaginable, whatever may be the FELT grounds to link them. The theoretical is your world here. From the observatinal you are categorically excluded. Take an illustration.

You SEE, for example a dark suspicious look in someone opposite you in the train, during a war season, you watch his (seemingly) furtive movements, and here the tiny word of a muffled voice  coming from his great  coat, see a foreign label on his coat when he takes it off, note an  atrocious English accent, percieve a  flush on his face when a policeman passes the compartment window, and a suppressed  reaction to  rise quickly, and so on. Let us suppose 100 elements thus interpretable DID happen and were observable. Have you observed him spying ? Of course not. In fact, your theoretical imagination has been  activated by your presuppositions and positions about spying, and your desire to catch such persons, but you have not observed ANY spying AT ALL!

The distinction between  having  the means  to observe a happening, and  observing it, thinking it ought to be happening and finding it does so, is total and impassable. The organic evolutionary theory has never passed that line.

If you think a theory, on your own postulates, deserves serious attention,  then say so. But if a type of procedure has  NEVER been observed,  then that fact is of first importance. Observation relates to an assured method of  WATCHING IT HAPPEN. It may happen in the philosophic shrubberies of your own mind, because that may have been programmed by your religious or cultural views; but  this is not even close to finding it happening whether you would  like to abort it, or love it, these being nothing at all to the point. THAT is observation; this is formulation.

If what is missing is observation, what is present is implication; and that sort of implication is to be considered on the evidence, in terms of competing theories and so on; and when  THAT is done, it still will be a non-observational theory.

Unlike Dr Michael Denton, Dawkins reveals his micro-biological prejudice, his view for example on "the distribution of the genes." THIS level  just SHOWS the evolutionary, he contends. This is a sort of virual-quasi-pseudo-observation.  Indeed, he is cited as declaring: "we know from ... evidence." MORE important, he indicates in this line, is "molecular evidence."

What is this microbiological reality then ? Is it really assertorial, does the molecular level actually show a non-directional form of coming to be ? That is the postulate. Does it conform to that ? Does it hold up the undirected forces making notoriously directional products ? Can logic be quashed ? Scarcely.

Denton, whose specialty in this molecular level,  has observed, in Evolution: A  Theory in Crisis, a different kind of reality. Thus, he  categorically states this (p. 290):

It is now well  established that the pattern of diversity at a molecular level conforms to a highly ordered hierarchic system. Each  class at a molecular level is unique, isolated and unlinked by intermediates. Thus molecules, like fossils have failed to provide the elusive intermediates so long sought by evolutionary biology... At a molecular level, no organism is "ancestral" or "primitive" or "advanced" compared with its relatives. Nature seems to conform  to the same non-evolutionary and intensely circumferential pattern that was long ago  perceived by the great  comparative anatomists of the nineteenth century."

It is perfectly irrelevant what ANYONE involved in scientific method has to say about interpreting a thing this way or that, in being disposed to think or to re-think something. EITHER this is the observational summary, or the thing is the other sort. It cannot be both. This statement from Denton is categorical and emphatic and is indicated to be a matter of observation: that this is the TYPE of thing actually FOUND by investigation. The same applies to fossils, also noted by Dawkins, if understandably less emphatically since they never bring categorical evidence,  as shown with virtually endless negativity, in his defence. But again, there is no beginning of a progression of tiny steps to show the enormous follies of totally unintelligent creations coming from the pathetic past to the brilliant present. Such evidences  are systematically omitted. Variations from time to time  are pushed (modern man has them in his own population acutely, for example) but the progressive presentation for observation is as starkly  deficient there, as in the molecular case. The undying efforts of the mindless do not appear. They should be the main thing over time.

Observation has NOT occurred of this vaunted process EVER. Even Dawkins, having made the use of 'observed' had to explain in that glorious triumph of British wit over fact (such as Punch was good at exposing in fun), by noting one additional fact, which is fact, not non-fact in verbal format to the contrary. What then does he say this time ? It is this:  NO ONE is known to have been THERE when it happened. When what happened ? When evolution happened!

If no one was ever there WHEN it happened, then how was anyone able to observe it ? This is monstrous. But it is illustrative of the impassioned desire that can turn even a fiction into a fact, a theory into an observation and an irrationality into an assured result of modern science.

Modern science is

bullet

not a magician, and
 

bullet

neither does matter  find itself making itself, let alone from an outset of isolation,
 

bullet

nor does information,
 

bullet

nor do fossils evidence at all the making
of a vast series of tomfool mistakes, singular witlessness,
 

bullet

nor does unintelligence show itself producing
the exact results of an intelligence way beyond our own,
 

bullet

nor does the logic of cause and effect, sombrely retire,
in the face of inadequacy producing an unobserved marvel,
rather than adequacy first producing it,
and then stopping as anyone may stop being creative.

It HAS stopped. Organic evolution  is not to be found in the unintelligent part of nature; and in our intelligent part, we do not evolve, but think, consider, ruminate, cogitate, make intelligent guesses, and create away since we have what the evolutionary postulate utterly lacks. This is what we are good at, mentally and spiritually, and so we do it. What lacks mind and spirit does not, does never show this facility, this sphere for operation. The Bible of course STATED that it happened; that it stopped; and that the latter is our present position. This is verified. The means such as we have, are verified in type. The Bible indicates we are in the image of God, but derivative. That too fits. There is no problem but with rorting imagination, misleading words, undisciplined hope and erroneous instruction.

Creation ? The work relevant was done and is never found being done. It happened in terms of results,  on so vast a scale that the products are both sophisticated in format, logic, mathematics and inter- and intra-systematic correlations; and they are not shown, even to the cellular level, in any form, fossil or other, that is on the way up, and daunted till vast difficulties are overcome; but rather what we find is a sophisticated systematics which is the norm for intelligence, and never found from a moron, let alone a total non-intelligence.

Figs from thistles is all but child's play in the face of such aspirations. This does not happen, far less something from nothing, and results without cause, or inadequacy presenting its opposite systematically, and leaving no other testimony!

Actually, man understands from millions of cases of it in his own life, what it is to create. It involves in some cases  thousands of underlying facilities, abilities, trained or innate skills, expressive capacity, synthetic  thought, visionary perception and the like, at say the level of literature - some of it - and then an  awareness beyond all means proceeds. It ushers in an inspiration which passes means and SEES what is to be done. All this is infinitely far from matter in its observed capacities, and a norm for mind mixed with spirit, as in man.

Scientifically, as to method, it is a norm to look for the most germane, the most intimate, the most linked, the most proficient area or arena for the solution to a problem of why something is happening, or is in place. Here, the search in evolutionary dictatorship has moved PRECISELY into an arena where this kind of information-burst is not to be expected, is far from linked, is almost as far as possible from what is linked to it. Then there is that other problem. What is being EXPLAINED in these  ludicrously far-fetched (and non-germane) fields, is  NOT something that has been observed. You are explaining what is not found. Stephen Jay Gould of Harvard fame, has spoken of in this domain, as noted in Wake Up World! ... Ch. 6. A summary part is presented below.

 

Let us then summarise a little.

Ø         What does NOT happen in the present, even with intelligent help (life);

Ø         or without it (creation of matter);

Ø         what contradicts basic laws of physics as been shown in the preceding chapters (and see Index, Thermodynamics), both as to creation and upward movement in the creation;

Ø         what is contradicted by all evidence in the past, which decisively lacks links so vastly that Gould professes himself unable even to imagine what might have been the way of these marvellous mirages of mighty transitions, if they HAD happened;

Ø         what lacks the evidences of the thousands of steps of transitions by gradual and illogical processes,

Ø         what, though harassed and prodded REFUSES point blank (as when the fruit-fly Drosophila was X-ray assailed for 50 or so years with the nil read-out noted - That Magnificent Rock, Ch.1, pp. 32-33) TO PRODUCE at the level relevant to our discussion, even with much ENERGY and INTELLIGENCE applied by man;

Ø         what insists, as Gould himself shows, on a diversity and depth, a creativity of prodigious proportions and a design manoeuvrability of intense practicality, in vast, ungradual, enormous thrusts into action to the point Gould wisely despairs of dice box engineering, and looks for something more to the point:


  
  THIS

is not going to be created, in terms of anything with any even distant relationship to science, by 'ecological vacuums' - like the poor crying for food - or barrels that brim over: metaphors are but poor engineers. Even the UN needs money, to supply the food.


Instead of a narrow beginning, Gould complains and laments, on the basis of the Burgess shale which he interprets as is customary in evolutionary circles, and a constantly expanding upward range, multicellular life reaches its maximal scope at the start, while later decimation leaves only a few surviving designs. He estimates that most have gone. To be sure, major things appear at the first, and evidence of playing about is memorably absent.

Opportunity to a dunce to pass his exam may be repeated times without number, under the most air-conditioned or even non-competitive circumstances, provided only he PERFORM at the RELEVANT LEVEL, and it is not a case of induction. Vacuums do not CREATE what they suck in: this, it  has to be there. Opportunity does not make what must take advantage of it. It is all that same (IMPLICIT) deification of 'nature' which is to enable it, now to perform mighty prodigies of creation, in short order, in amazing diversity, in profound depth, in staggering abundance, in a profuseness belittling the normal powers of very imagination.

Ø        How does it do it ?

Ø        WHERE is the evidence of such capacities ?

Ø        in negatives? in failures ? in anti-verifications, any one of which is enough to invalidate the theory which is affronted by Burgess ?

 

This is mere addition from what has been in part, an evolutionary and frustrated contemporary, Dr Stephen Gould. The point remains. What has to be explained is what is not found; so that science is turned on its head. On top of this, it moves to fields of null contribution evidentially,  in looking for solution. In scope, it happened. In sustained observation, it does not happen. Why ? Look where it most pointedly and most obviously does not happen. What a method is this!

Anything further from the truth, and in this case, scientific method, it would be impossible to imagine. It is wrong in arena, logic, attestations of necessary results, clashes with superabundant facts continually increasing, as to SEEKING an explanation; and what is to be explained is NEVER observed. Fairy tales can be nearer to fact  than this. If you observe something, you may be sick in mind, or flawed in eye or wrong in instrument for the purpose; but over time, it is expected that the observation, repeatable, will be confirmed if it is of what is happening, of fact. It may be misinterpreted as so often has happened in science; but the THING happening will stay there, unless the observation was from defective apparatus, human or other. It will not be moved. It was observed or not. If observed, what then  ? 

Can nothing help it ? can it overthrow the observable realities, inject the needed items and grounds ? But by nothing, this observation cannot be moved, or helped either; for what is NOTHING is immovable, since being not an entity or potential or hypothesis, but a void, it is not subject to the impact of force.  Nor can it supply it. Force  would have no place and no way of contacting what is not there; nor does what is not there exhibit forcible and palpable results. This is one of the most profound deceits of the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. Scientific method continues to do very well; it is its abuse which is being exposed now by hundreds of Ph.D. scientists and publications. People like Dr Duane Gish and Phillip E. Johnson have had notable success in debates, and the same droll impostures continue like a car engine which though the key is turned off, through mechanical fault, continues to pulse, repetitively,  to the same old throb.

The clatter of irrelevant chatter about what in the field of observation comes as a non-event, is as noted,  ultimately based on nothing, when God is removed in mind: but this continues, heedless, feckless, reckless. Its weight is the same: nothing is to be found in it, scientific method has no purchase on it. Like a dream, it is not awake to observable reality. Dawkins looks for his 'incomprehensible' something, which is merely his name for what is missing in any explanation. However, in vain does he seek to explain without it. He appeals to what he does not cite, and explains with what does not cover the case, and in fact, distorts it in a truly classic manner, suitable for citation in logic classes.  While then he explains nothing with mystic language and misfit entanglements contrary to observation, law and relevance, the biblical depiction, perspective and basis explains everything*5, and so far from having constant failure to verify or to explain, it shows constant felicity and facility and depth to explain the whole bundle of problems, enigmas, depths and heights, widths and grandeurs to which we have access, and in some things, illustrate.

That is the difference: explaining everything with the biblical depiction, the handbook for the creation, or explaining nothing. For that category of thinker, the answer is missing, but the words continue, witless entanglements with obscurantism. It is time, as it  always was, to face reality.

One illustration may help. You know a youth, aged 12. His height, nature and mind are observable. You see him again at age 14, 16, 18, and as a man at 21, and you have seen thousands of such youngsters, and had a day to day opportunity to watch the sort of thing that happens, and so in the cse in hand, have no difficulty at all in saying, This is a case of continuity. This youth has not been created 4 times over and over again. He just grew.

If however, no-one living on this earth, has  ever OBSERVED the evolutionary sort of growth, one not according to the instructions and flexibilities of a given kind in DNA, but  from one SORT of thing into another, diverse in nature altogether, or to a degree far greater than that between boy and girl, a composition of a different kind, what then ? Then the assumption that any one in particular is NOT a new creation is no longer applicable. If the results of such changes are NEVER found in illustration of the sort of progress to be expected on such a contrary-to-observation theory, that is ridiculous or horrid works of unimaginable folly, then of course the hypothesis fails at the level of observation, and at that of confirmation.

It is just like theories, another work of mind. There are variations, and indeed the same is true in music, on an original production, that do not alter its kind. When however, you make a new sonata, or concerto, or symphony, or work in literature, then this is a separate work of creation, only by slovenly ignorance attributed to its being REALLY just an adjustment of the first piece you did. THAT  is not the way with creation. Construction (and all forms of life are logical constructions of great facility and agility in process) has to have its contentions confirmed. What it is has to show itself. In the organic evolutionary dream, this is not so. It has to have its capacities displayed; again in evolutionary thought, this is not so. Creation of some things is simultaneous or not at all, in its very nature. Thus when doing my Master of Arts for Melbourne University, one day, indeed over 3 days, I saw it all, the beginning, middle, end, progress, resolution and finale, or something very like that. It took me some three weeks (from memory) to get it all down.

That was a creation. In man, it can be without such a suddenness, but the better it is, the more integral are all the parts, the more matched the contrivances, the more impactive the theme and the variations, the more comprehensible the outcome, the more impressive the conception and so on. In the case of man as a being, then the result is more impressive by far WITHIN US, than we can by any means produce. As creators of theories, we may excel in fantasy, or not; but as creations, our creativity is nowhere near that to be found in us. It is this which beggars us; we are scarcely even apprentices, compared with our own construction!

Yet we can see the SORT of thing that creation is, in our own limited way. We understand that.  The number of efforts before reaching OUR creations may be not a few, but limited by grasping things, in a given field, with ability and facility, and moving in perspective and mastery. That  is normal. The higher the intelligence, for a given field, and all the other powers of spirit that make for creation as noted above, the less the attempts necessary, would be the general drift. The mode of achieving this result is conceptual, knowledgeable, spirit-driven, mentally large in scope of ingredients, recognisable in its overall capacity as a result. That is what is constantly found, in this type of thing, which starts, moves in ways not found to continue, and stops, and leaves its record.

Where the thing drops like the Messiah music through Handel, then we see the phenomenon of creation categorically. When we (in our own little ways) do things in that vein, we feel, intuit, sense, grasp, perceive something of the wonder of creation and rejoice in it. It is like that. Naturally, a destructive purpose, concerning what is good, would bring moral static; but let that be granted, yet when there is no conscience problem, there is a certain rush of achievement,  almost like a bnirth. Such is creation.

It is in this field that we move INTO the OBSERVED evidence, and in the KNOWN TYPE of background for it, and in the logic necessary for even investigating its mode of operation, the discipline in that ACTUALLY matching that in our own thought, in a merger of rationality. This leads to a sound rationale. It  looks to what is akin in type, sufficient in ability; and does not even consider nothing or its supposed offshoots as a basis. Naturally. Neither observable nature nor logical need supports such notions. The ONLY way the natural, of this type, CAN come is from what is not itself (nature does not create itself before it is there to do it), nor when there, is it EVER found doing things at this level, without intelligence. That comes from the sufficient-for-nature basis which as shown above, is of necessity both eternal and equipped with adequate capacity for the threefold work of mind, matter and spirit, and their integration in one unit.

Another observation: the remedy in the only demonstrable basis for creation, the only one verified and vindicated, works. What is that remedy for erupting and confused man ? It is the validated and verified book of declaration from deity, the Bible. It has specifications listed in words. They apply. Like creation, the remedy works. It is not a matter of groping but exposure. As with scientific laws, they are there; you just have to find them. You use evidence.

A final point: the observations in terms of words in this verified publication from the Maker, are always fulfilled when they involve specifications for what is then future. This gives a true scientific opportunity for observation, the sort that DOES happen and CAN be seen, for it has sometimes thousands of years in which to be fulfilled, a fair notice for those who want to check, thousands of years of it being past already. It is there for those who desire to see the point of actual OBSERVATION as distinct from verbal rumbles which are NOT this!

On these topics,  see the following *5 below.

 

*4A

See on validation, The gods of naturalism have no go!   12. See also It Bubbles ... Ch. 9, including *1A. For further detail on method,  see What is the Chaff to the Wheat!  Chs.   3 and   4.

 

*5 See on these topics, the following.

Deity and Design,

 The gods of naturalism have no go!

SMR and TMR

but the extensive coverage in

LIGHT DWELLS WITH THE LORD'S CHRIST

WHO ANSWERS RIDDLES

AND WHERE HE IS, DARKNESS DEPARTS

with

RELIGION, RELIGIOSITY AND REALITY IN CHRIST.

In the vast coverage shown in these, especially and systematically in the Light Dwells ... work, what is shunted is faced, and what is found is coherent, internally harmonious, non-reductionist explanation of the nemesis of naturalism, both what it fails to explain and the reason for its failure, along with the systematic ground of failure in even lesser follies which loom in the darkness of vain philosophy (Colossians 2:8).

Man without God is like a body without spirit (cf. Ezekiel 37), but in this case, in terms of Ephesians 2, it is like one dead who does not know it, and yet feels for life where it is not to be found. See also on this, Dizzy Dashes ... and the Brilliant Harmony of Inevitable Truth Ch. 6, especially in this phase. Man with an imaginary god and not the demonstrable one as in Romans 1, indeed the God of the Bible, is like a corpse walking, aroused but not awake. What God has to say has been clear from the first (cf. Barbs, Arrows and Balms  17), and remains applicable to the last, for He has left no putrefying puzzles (cf. Isaiah 1) but the ground of life and death, and the way from the latter to the former (Isaiah 42:23-25). What applies to Gentiles was the same sort of spiritual disease as afflicted Israel:

"Who among you will give ear to this?

Who will listen and hear for the time to come?

Who gave Jacob for plunder, and Israel to the robbers?

Was it not the Lord,

He against whom we have sinned?

For they would not walk in His ways,

Nor were they obedient to His law.

Therefore He has poured on him the fury of His anger

And the strength of battle;

It has set him on fire all around,

Yet he did not know;

And it burned him,

Yet he did not take it to heart."