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The story of the Vikings is intensely interesting; but fear not, this is not to be an account of their 800-1000 glories of war, passion for death in battle as a religious passport to Valhalla, their Danelaw in England, their incredible fortune hunting, exacting massive payouts from England and elsewhere, their use of the Dneiper to access the Byzantium arena, their touching on the coast of Africa, their contact with America via Herjulfsson, ravagings in France, and gradual overthrow and then slow decline. The point is this: once, they were such a plague in their bloodthirsty martial religion that the prayer came to be: Lord, deliver us from the fury of the  Northmen! Such things are found in the National Geographic, April 1978. Thus it could be hard to characterise it as news.

What IS news is a new thrust of pagan ferocity, dabbling in powers and forces with its own imagery, aloof from reality, fighting for what vanishes, as did the short-lived Viking hegemony, for a time under Knut, even found in England! before consolidated forces in various sections of the globe, overcame them, drained by bloodshed and meeting more obstruction.

The new forces also have had a day in England (as in many other places, where they have invaded what often were but poorly defended sites). Since the 1850's, the follies of Darwinism, preaching glory in this world by thrusts of might, the alleged pattern of progress, have ravaged their prey. Wars of glory have become commonplace, the only shame being this, that as with the Vikings, the ultimate end is pathetic and poor.

The world is becoming poor, though a fringe is rich.
Millions walk in hunger, myriads slave at war, foolish and vain pseudo-religions abound ^{*1 :}

• like Communism in thrall to the god of forces^*2, the concept of doing it by this or that sort of imaginary might, on this or that sort of imaginary spree,
• like Darwinism (Darwin did not dump the fact of God so readily as the God of fact^*3, himself inundated with foolish concepts never established, and later comprehensively refuted, a fact he realised in the geological record, and acknowledged - that is, the unestablished part!), with the same sort of undivine god as Communism (Marx was keen on Darwinism),

 
• like Islam, with its much older vain delusions, trusting in a power, a force, a battle-conscious overcoming, promising to warriors the golden entry to their own sort of heaven, filled with gratifications.

The bloodthirsty character which plays about it, now here, now there as shown in detail and summed up in More Marvels (cf. Lord of Life Ch. 9), is now being adequately attested as you have Dr Mahathir advising the world of the need for action not limited to peaceable means, because of the Palestinian situation, and similarly Moslem Iran, Iraq and Syria far from appeased, while news of Iraq's holocaust plans circulate and are addressed in various meetings of various parties, who evince concern, advise of action, and wonder what to do about it.
 
 

It has of course been going on for a long time (cf. That Magnificent Rock Ch. 8, News 118, SMR pp. 125ff.), but although it has raged and ravaged in the USA, with various court cases, involving States, and found something close to supine submission (though not by this author) in South Australia, now we find its image-crested prows ploughing into England, very much as did those of Vikings in times of yore.

However, these prows are if water-vessels at all, only found on the rivers. The threat is from within!

In the Guardian Unlimited, June 19, 2002 we find quite an article devoted if not dedicated to the work, the labours, the oratory and the passion evinced by one, Professor Richard Dawkins. Now it is really best if you read Secular Myths and Sacred Truth Ch. 8 first here, for otherwise the author would be involved in needless repetition, the reader quite possibly in needless ignorance about what has already happened, and some being bored, have to wade through the preliminaries, and others, being uninformed, wonder needlessly. A  good plan ? One assumes it done for benefit to all.

The term 'guardian' seems to evoke a useful thought here. England fell (temporarily) to Vikings through lack of integrated action, being bled by ceaseless raids without proper response, with a weak king, it appears: it won back independence with concerted action, determination and considered response, involving in the domain of Europe, no little presentation of Christianity, eventually reaching the heart of the problem, Sweden, with considerable result.

It is in danger of falling quite as needlessly to the onslaught of this other weird mythology^*3A which presents itself with blatancy, insists with repetition, like the Viking raids, and argues by mere force. Its reasons are absent as its words are present. It seeks to rule the schools .

But first let us note the fact that this Guardian article declares that Dawkins is wishing to characterise the religion once so strong in England, that of Newton (Sir Isaac), Faraday (d. 1867) and Babbage (d. 1871), Maxwell (d. 1879),  and Morse (d. 1872) , Boyle (d. 1691), Lord Kelvin (d. 1907), Joule (d. 1899) and Fleming (d. 1945), and across the channel, of Cuvier (d. 1832), Linnaeus (d. 1788)  and von Braun (d. 1977), as in one basic aspect that of "fanatics" whom "we have to contend with."

Between the arms of this selection alone, we have astounding developments in biology, computing, integration of the whole physical system, chemistry, electricity, rocketry, classification of living things, medicine and communications, mathematics, physics, with developments in thermodynamics and electronics. The work, in general, is that of genius, highly original, propelling understanding with éclat! It is in no sense that mere painful panacea, that anxious pseudo-anodyne, cultural conformity which so often turns into cultural calamity because of its reinforced pride in man, his manners and his moeurs. (Cf. SRM pp. 422Eff., S 1ff., and 422Qff..)

This is arresting, indeed, but not as much so as is the mythology presented by this evolutionism, this naturalism, to the minds of oppressed students with a professor of high profile disparaging teaching which shares what such men believed. As Dr W. R. Thompson, when Director of the Commonwealth Institute of Biological Research, expressed it a century after Darwin dabbled in things of which he was largely unaware (such as genetics, and micro-biology, the underlying system of structure):

"A long-enduring and regrettable effect of the success of the Origin was the addiction of biologists to unverifiable speculation. The success of Darwinism was accompanied by a decline in scientific integrity." As if this were not enough, he also wrote in the following way,  in the same Preface to a new Everyman edition of Darwin's book:

As to Darwin:

If we found in the geological strata a series of fossils showing a gradual transition from simple to complex forms, and could be sure that they correspond to a true time- sequence then that would be something.

This is certainly what Darwin would have liked to report but of course he was unable to do so. What the available data indicated was a remarkable absence of the many intermediate forms required by the theory; the absence of the primitive types that should have existed in the strata regarded as the most ancient; and the sudden appearance of the principal taxonomic groups ... Darwin in the Origin was not able to produce palaeontological evidence sufficient to prove his views but ...the evidence he did produce was adverse to them; and I may note that the position is not notably different to-day.
 

But what was his characterisation of this ill-thought out pageant of tradition, still persisting in some quarters, despite the work of Stephen Jay Gould (cf. SMR 234ff., 226ff., Spiritual Refreshings (SR).... Ch. 13, Wake Up World ... Ch. 6) and Professor Michael Denton (SR op. cit., End-note 1), whose end-of-the-line dictum  "The concept of the continuity of nature has existed in the mind of man, never in the facts of nature" based on a classic presentation, deserves attention.

Speaking again of  Thompson, we find this: 'He moreover notes that since "there is a great divergence of opinion among biologists, not only about the causes of evolution but even about the process," it is "therefore right and proper to draw the attention of the non- scientific public to the disagreements..." '

He proceeds :

To establish the continuity required by theory, historical arguments are invoked, even though historical evidence is lacking. Thus are engendered those fragile towers of hypothesis based on hypothesis, where fact and fiction intermingle in an inextricable confusion.

This phrase is not mere metaphor. It is based in historical activities found in Israel and biblically attested in the days when Israel, like England, having had much of the truth of God, elected to do OTHER THINGS to their children, and with their own lives to boot. You find it in II Kings 17:17, where there is a survey of the devastation which came to Israel (the northern part, which had long separated from Jerusalem and Judah, and served its own idols! and on which indeed, an early prognosis had been prophetically delivered: national disaster - I Kings 14:8-15). ONE of the reasons for this predicted judgment is here itemised. It is this:

• "And they caused their sons and daughters to pass through the fire, practised witchcraft and soothsaying, and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the LORD, to provoke Him to anger. Therefore the LORD was very angry with Israel, and removed them from His sight; there was none left but the tribe of Judah alone."

Causing their children to pass through the fire is a ghoulish testimony to what naturalism with its seedy symbols can produce. As Jeremiah 2:23-27 has it, it is all too clear from that day, and it is not different in this, for God the Lord does not change; it is the world that changes at His word!
(cf. SMR Ch. 8). Black print points will be made, to help understanding and to apply, as if in parentheses, between segments of this continuous bllue presentation from Jeremiah.

" 'Has a nation changed its gods,
Which are not gods?
But My people have changed their Glory
For what does not profit.
Be astonished, O heavens, at this,
And be horribly afraid;
Be very desolate,' says the Lord.

There is a change from what has the divine efficacy, to what lacks it.
People with electrical power on, have opted for candle light, with no matches. People with reservoirs, have decided on wells.

“ ' For My people have committed two evils:
They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters,
And hewn themselves cisterns - broken cisterns that can hold no water.
Is Israel a servant?
Is he a homeborn slave?
Why is he plundered?

The wells do not even hold water! The personal God is replaced with impersonal, or impractical non-conductors of spiritual reality, making them like mere slaves, without liberty and without strength.

" 'The young lions roared at him, and growled;
They made his land waste;
His cities are burned, without inhabitant.
Also the people of Noph and Tahpanhes
Have broken the crown of your head.
Have you not brought this on yourself,
In that you have forsaken the Lord your God
When He led you in the way?

" 'And now why take the road to Egypt,
To drink the waters of Sihor?
Or why take the road to Assyria,
To drink the waters of the River?

Politico-religious alliances can be opted, but with devastating consequences. Reliance on flesh is like relying on a balloon when you jump from an aeroplane without a parachute.

" 'Your own wickedness will correct you,
And your backslidings will rebuke you.
Know therefore and see that it is an evil and bitter thing
That you have forsaken the Lord your God,
And the fear of Me is not in you,'
Says the Lord God of hosts.
'For of old I have broken your yoke and burst your bonds;
And you said, ‘I will not transgress,’
When on every high hill and under every green tree
You lay down, playing the harlot.

Other peoples have failed and walked in baseness, and have suffered the judgment; so why does this people follow so barren a way ? It is its own wickedness, not some strange 'problem' which has brought that barren fearlessness which treats the living God as an unfaithful wife, her husband.

" 'Yet I had planted you a noble vine, a seed of highest quality.
How then have you turned before Me
Into the degenerate plant of an alien vine?
For though you wash yourself with lye, and use much soap,
Yet your iniquity is marked before Me,” says the Lord God.

“ 'How can you say, ‘I am not polluted,
I have not gone after the Baals’?
See your way in the valley;
Know what you have done:
You are a swift dromedary breaking loose in her ways,
A wild donkey used to the wilderness,
That sniffs at the wind in her desire;
In her time of mating, who can turn her away?
All those who seek her will not weary themselves;
In her month they will find her.
Withhold your foot from being unshod, and your throat from thirst.
But you said, ‘There is no hope.
No! For I have loved aliens, and after them I will go.’

No naturalistically conceived solution exists to sin; lords of life of this and that dynamic are imagined; but the problem is spiritual lust. The people move as if inebriated, unable to stop, forced by the obsessive compulsions of sin, that must be indulged in its ideological, immoral messes, that repay what is asked for, in the coin that fits the slot of revolt.

“ 'As the thief is ashamed when he is found out,
So is the house of Israel ashamed;
They and their kings and their princes, and their priests and their prophets,
Saying to a tree, ‘You are my father,’
And to a stone, ‘You gave birth to me.’
For they have turned their back to Me, and not their face.
But in the time of their trouble
They will say, ‘Arise and save us.’

You seek to attribute to 'nature' the power and personal majesty of God: it is revolting in its arbitrary fallacies, a sure expression of the depth of the delusion which comes when the powers that reject God, are ignored in their very basis, as if they could be what they manifestly are, by virture of thoughtless, mindless matter.

" 'But where are your gods that you have made for yourselves?
Let them arise,
If they can save you in the time of your trouble;
For according to the number of your cities
Are your gods, O Judah.

“ 'Why will you plead with Me?
You all have transgressed against Me,' says the Lord.
'In vain I have chastened your children;
They received no correction.' "

Let your imaginary pretences help your lusty pretensions, let them help you when terror (or terrorism for that matter! ) shall come. It is useless to play a double game. If God is Lord, follow Him; and if you want to mix your spiritual drinks, you will only get drunk. Correction rejected, what is left but judgment!
 

Here, then, is the next stage in which even JUDAH (cf. Ezekiel 23) fell away to a vast extent (though always there was a remnant of the faithful as so dramatically exposed in Isaiah 6:11-13, one of the places where the NKJV is far clearer than the AV translation, not surprising entirely in view of the fact it was rendered some hundreds of years nearer to our own time ^*4).

So do nations sometimes have multiple opportunities to return to the Lord in substance, though not of course entirety, since even Jesus' disciples, the 12, had one devil (predicted of course, and useful, but wallowing in his own will cf. John 13:2, 6:70 cf. Joyful Jottings 25).

Acts 17:24-26 with Romans 1:17ff., Psalm 94,  together not only speak of these national things, but also on the decline of nations, the failure of spirit, the blindness which leads to a worship of absolutes which are not there, or relativisms which merely contradict themselves.

England has long been declining in spiritual things, with some little peaking perhaps in World War II when at times such as Dunkirk, there were very many indeed who sought the Almighty's intervention! This has been an arresting topic in such sites as The Other News 13, A Question of Gifts VI and Wake Up World! ... Ch. 3.

Nor is it alone in Europe or indeed the world ^*5 in this, though certainly singular, since it once came, like Judah, so far towards the Lord. Transatlantic, the USA is not vastly different. The fall of the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001, like an announcement was far more impactive than would be the fall of say, a 14 story building in any city! It was not only a question of size, but elegance, advanced architecture, and like the Titanic, special reinforcement to take care of (almost) any eventuality! Its fall was grotesque because its arising was so high, with so much, in so many ways. It was almost like the obliteration of a suburb, using its gas supply! Ironic, devastatingly bloodthirsty, unprincipled, but as its own electricity was lost, so it electrified the world! It is not so safe ... any more!

This has been so for long, though in some ways, the Cold War paralysed its perception in the very magnitude of the stand-off. Now it is coming home.

Let us however revert to our current special interest in England because of the virulence of the assault on sober scientific method, as if it could be made to avoid, for its naturalistic opponent, direct negation of verification, which is the case, or confirmation in its due results: creation. This, it stands THEREFORE ALONE, since nothing else meets the due methodological specifications of scientific method (cf. SMR pp. 140ff. and *8 below)  and covers the case as does biblical creation in particular, in this whole field.

Whatever, therefore,  the intention, which in the end is known to God alone: this is the outcome of the attack.

England then, it is now applying more pressure for its nature gods. The best that one can say is this: it does not know what it is doing.

You may say, gods ? The matter is covered in the references provided in *1 below, but the point is that evolutionism thrives on references to 'Nature' - note the capital quite commonly employed - striving, or needing, or foreseeing, or wisely producing marvellously satisfactory solutions in the invention of kinds of life, as if what it is seen NOT TO DO were quite properly to be attributed to it BY ASSUMPTION. Since these powers are what require more than man or nature exhibit, both products of limited capacity, and material nature evinces only this, that it is mindless (cf. SMR pp. 80ff., cf. 348ff.), this therefore constitutes a religion. It is investing in SOME OBJECT OR OBJECTS or other, the powers, prerogatives and precepts of the Almighty, and then attributing these to it in a LEARNING mode so that it is INSTRUCTED by it.

That, it is religion, but as noted in Barbs, Arrows and Balms Appendix IV and 30, it is also idolatry. It is just the same as in Israel of old, but simply tied to the myths of the Greeks, and with some updating of externals, dressed in modern clothes that really alter but little of the 'body' beneath: man's ceaseless excursions into naturalism (cf. News 122 with SMR 422ff., 252Aff., 419ff., Ch. 2 Supplement and Spiritual Refreshings ... Ch. 13, SMR Ch. 3).

Like all idolatry, it tends to be cruel, for it forgets the God who made man, ignoring the reality,  that his sensibilities are to be sought where they came from, not in the plight to which sin has brought them, and in which rebellion has clothed their smitten environment, let alone this with simplistic selectivity (cf. Beyond the Curse). It is not for nothing that the empires have tended to be vile, violent and insurgent; that the declining West with its return to such paganisms as evolutionism proclaims, has showered every evil hue on this earth in the last century, neglecting or distorting not only the goals of life but its God, if it were possible: yet for what is possible,  performing this operation  in their minds.
 
 

Among them have come the theistic evolutionists, whose mixing of pseudo-divine dealings with the secular follies of the nature myth, make a mixed marriage of the supernatural and the naturalistic, as open to moral decline as it is closed to scriptural sanction or evidential support.

This they do, as derelict towards what geology in general takes as the Cambrian evidential realities, the data attested by many including Stephen Jay Gould^*5A,  as are many others amid the mutually discordant, jumbled mass of eager but frustrated contestants, lauding, or lording it over the turgid surge of evolutionism, itself but a phase of naturalism (cf. Romans 1). Amid all this, they proceed, liasing with the enemies of God, while all together their heedless, reckless onrush proceeds, here one advancing the more guilefully, there one more fiercely, brandishing their roused spirits till the earth reels, as it began to do in 1945, and the whole history of the world whirls into that dark depravity so tellingly forecast, and in such detail, by Jesus Christ (cf. SMR Ch. 8), whose way is diametrically opposed to these depravities of spirit as to the distortions of creation.

Thus relative to  Genesis 1-3, and in particular Genesis 1:27 and 2:24, we see these jointly related by Christ to the beginning of the creation, as in Mark 10:6 with Matthew 19:4-6. Here, from the Messiah's mouth,  we see the very deeds and words of God in Genesis,  being attributed to God, the Father of Jesus Christ,  in terms of practical, contemporary outcomes, binding on the people of God (cf. John 12:40, where Christ relates Jonah's incarceration to Nineveh's actual fall, and His own  actual coming death and rising). In the Bible with decisive consistency, it is God who made things good, who loves mercy and kindness, and who has made man in such a model, yet not without liberty; and it is He who has brought on man the derelictions which depravities produce, and the curse which only Christ can redeem (Galatians 3, Romans 5). From Him have come the judgments on the ceaseless spiritual innovations, making new gods without ground (Deuteronomy 32:15-21), or of nature a god without power (Jeremiah 16:19-20): a perversion of spiritual liberty which in its vanity, brings blight.

Not at all after this biblical model is theistic evolution, which invents a god following nature, where curse is confused with creation, and judgment with the joys of the Lord.

Indeed, all this is as far from biblical creationism as it is possible to get (cf. SMR pp. 179),  so that when some seek to make a wedding of this and the other, as if carnal aspirations could comport with Christ's affirmations, or sacrifice with self-interest, it is an exercise in delusion^*5B. The degradation of the theme, evidentially as morally,  dissonant from the word of God,  needs to be faced and remains judged. What does it portend ? In this thrust and survival way,  darkness is quite simply preferred to light, and made a motif. When it is dark, its is easy to stumble (John 8:12, 11:9-10).

The world is excelling at this fallen and failed practice. Its ways do not work: they blight the earth, ignore life's worth, found only in its source, not in its (imagined) summit, man, and

• as in its naturalistic confusing, we find millions abasing themselves as if to hell (Hosea 7:16, Isaiah 57:9-13, Matthew 7:13-15),

 
• so do we likewise, in the scriptural application, as predicted by Jesus Christ, find the climate is warming (SMR Ch. 8, Answers to Questions Ch. 5).

Let us however notice, in the milieu of such things, as formerly in Israel, so now in England, what is occurring. Let us see what is to be found in the Guardian report to which reference has been made. In England, an assault has been made. What has been the nature of this assault ?

We have observed news concerning this popular author, and noted Professor, Richard Dawkins, and his call to arms! Evolutionists awake! comes the thrust of his theme song.

Let us consider the principle of the thing, all personalities apart, which is really quite essential in a thing of this magnitude. In terms of history, it is as if Danes in England, having temporarily taken the throne (here the cultural sceptre is intended, only), are calling on Danes everywhere to unite to prevent the English reaffirming their ancient codes, and returning to their ancient religion and ways of thought and practice.

After all, what the Bible ITSELF teaches is indubitably creation (cf. TMR Appendix, SMR pp. 179ff., cf. Colossians 1:15ff., John 1:3), and what the sovereign of England undoubtedly takes as the Book of Wisdom is the Bible, and what the Church of England addresses as truth, is the same (in its 39 articles - it is now as a standard, and has long been on vast mutation exercises as noted in the reference above to A Question of Gifts).

What then would Dawkins propose ? We have already seen that a school, formally authorised by the Government is one which he might rather like to see merely formerly authorised, seeming to be inciting a negative review of the glowing accreditation which even PM Blair noted, it holds. Why ? What would lead to such a desire that such a school should depart ?

It is quite explicit, which is quite wonderful to see, in terms of frankness at last in some such cases. It is because it presents CREATION as one thing to study in ascertaining reality! It keeps to the national curriculum but ALSO teaches this toic in certain places! Is it to be short ? No, it appears, just silenced. Such seems the thrust of the recommendation: HOW on earth could it be accredited! Let the inspectors retread their (errant ?) steps, and proceed to put it in place: which appears to mean, out of place! How dare independent schools ever teach any course on such a thing in the domain of science, even where the State required syllabus is kept!

This  in the land of freedom of speech, noted as a refuge for Nazi-fleeing denizens of the deep in Europe in mid-20th century infamies, and long before, a place to research and THINK! THIS! Oh England, you have waylaid yourself.

Does he propose debate ? Is there evidence that is to be shown in open and equal concourse ?

No, whatever may be the subjective grounds, and we know nothing of these, the objective fact is that this becomes in setting, a matter of authoritative power invoked, which could then be used to quell, suppress and perhaps exterminate the teaching in science at least, of creation in schools, EVEN AS ONE OPTION TO CONSIDER! By a startling irony however, in terms of scientific method, as noted above, there does not happen to be any OTHER (cf. SMR Chs. 1, 3, 10, TMR). Here is how humanity baffles itself, and not in this field only. Let the ONLY answer which satisfies all the criteria, be removed.

Let that, for the moment,  as a matter of procedure, pass. The jealous wife may like least the best looking option for her erring husband; but here, it is the broken marriage between man and God which is looking at the least of all possible substitutes.  But then: as logically and morally, spiritually and historically there IS no substitute for God, ANY option looked at, is bound to have broken teeth, when inspection is made!

What in the name of all science, is there to be afraid of, that force must be used ? One radio announcer here in Adelaide shows the state of mind of many of the populace, when on radio he assured the author that the University of Adelaide could just be visited to find examples of evolution. Of thought, perhaps, away from truth, but of the biological fact ? It is precisely BECAUSE there is NO evidence of this ever happening, of the increase of information in the generation of generations, that the fight is tough for the evolutionist; but the hands are tough. It is the same in some other countries, and indeed in the 1990's multiply laden prize winner, Dr Kouznetsov of Russia indicated that at that time it was easier to teach creation in Russia than in the USA! (Dr Kouznetsov spoke as a noted creationist in so saying cf. SMR pp. 218ff.).

The author had some touch of the same passion without knowledge, as evinced by the radio station on that occasion,  when in an academic  institution in this country, lecturing in communications, he met an impasse. The presentation of scientific method to show the facts relative to evolution and creation, as an exercise in communications, distinguishing between prejudice and care, was forbidden: a tremendous academic storm being roused by such 'audacity'. Naturally, one had to decline further lecturing when the prohibition on freedom of academic presentation, based on defensible logic, was to be enforced. One pointed out that it was necessary to ameliorate the slant away from numerous realities in the passion for evolutionism which vacated the institution of balance and factuality; but the answer was not to dispute this fact, academically highly proper and justly mandatory. It was simply to say this: IT IS NOT CONVENIENT. SO truth had to go in order for convenience to stay!

It was not a question of 'teaching creationism', but of presenting a methodological critique, and examining the consequences.

It is a pity that such zealots as those acting in such a way as this, who appear -  to be fair in terms of the above definition - to be religious zealots, cannot abide competition, but tend rather with journalistic eccentricities or with administrative nostrums to rule the roost, to push the buttons to such an extent, while yet they never manage in this modern world to cover the academic debating floor with sustainable and sustained victories. The work and words of Dr Gish throughout the USA and elsewhere have been proverbial for their victories in open academic debates by the scores, and the author and scholar, Phillip E. Johnson, appears to have found it an exhilarating experience to do much the same, simply using logic and scientific method to deflate and explode the pompous pretensions and personifications of nature which so often are rendered by this religion when it is in academic dress^*6! (Cf. SMR pp. 129, 147, 211ff. ).  Expert in law and teaching for 20 years at Berkeley California, in the University of Cal., he found the gradualists inept and the case for naturalism hopeless, in debate and presentation.

As they found, so has this author found in some 50 years in various nations, churches and academic institutions. There is never an answer. The acclaim is purely cultural^*7. The opposite, creation, is demonstrable.

What then does Dawkins desire, as his words of exhortation would seem to imply,  as part of the new pseudo-religious establishment (as it appears at least to be) ? It is this, according to the Guardian report.

Misnaming the science falsely-so-called as science^*7A, and confusing the 'evidence' with irrelevance, as is quite normal in these cases where the desires seem so to void the method relative to this topic, that it is not noticed, this assault on teaching integrity or skill or both,  calls the never invalidated Biblical account 'myth', and the naturalistic myth 'science' in a verbal tour de force which omits an important fact.

That fact ? What is it ? The RESULTS of the evolutionist anti-scientific method, over the decades past, have been such a plethora of mutually contradictory and evanescent theories, each criticising the other, ending in a dual effort to make the origin NOTHING or else START with no known ground construable, let alone viewable or observable in action of ANY kind, that to abuse the name 'science' for these efflorescences is merely to lower the level and standard to which it more properly refers^*8.

In practical and actual fact, there is ONLY ONE record in this affair which has stood AT ALL, for none of the others find peace or victory, since each is so amply subject to aborting criticism from the others and logical considerations not hard to find, that none of these theories can say, I AM IT. Which is that record ? It is the one in the Bible, which has stood for 3 and one half thousand years, is espoused by some of the great scientists of today and the past, has groups of eminent scientists, making like King Alfred in his day at the national security level, an organised rebuttal of naturalistic assault, while it meets with precision and meticulous exactitude ALL that scientific method requires, is verified on ALL fronts. The rest so lack verification and so are subject to its opposite that even to suggest them is an affront to the method of science. It relates intimately to that well and forcibly exemplified phenomenon of religious distortion.

The Bible on the other hand, has long been written, often been smitten, but never falls. It accords as noted with the three main laws of science as NOTHING to the contrary in this, does or even can (cf. TMR Chs. 1 and  8), it contradicts none, which is what no other theory can do (cf. above refs. and Stepping Out for Christ Ch. 2, with SMR pp. 140ff.), and its provisions satisfy what all monism fails to do (It Bubbles ... Ch. 9, Repent or Perish Ch. 7, Little Things Ch. 5), the entire range of the data.

What then does Professor Dawkins appear to want with this pseudo-religion ? Is it that it face the facts nationally, in all class-rooms, in copious debates, that it stand or fall on its merits or lack of them, so that not politics but logic is called to account ? We do not hear of it, but merely the real-estate sort of pitch for the benefits of this religious seeming passion. It has words; but the deeds that go with them ? We see them not at all, nor has anyone seen them, for they are missing. ALL links are missing as Denton so well acknowledges in his immensely scholarly work, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, and what does he say ?

Let us consider a short excerpt from Spiritual Refreshings Ch. 13 here:
 

In fact, even in the biological realm Denton in his EVOLUTION:  A THEORY IN CRISIS, a work which is a technical masterpiece, though its chief contribution is not philosophic or metaphysical, and its religious position is uncertain, is at pains, in all conscience, to show in realm after realm that DISCONTINUITY is the name of the game. Continuity is the name of the desire in historical thrust. Man wants the latter; nature provides the former.

Thus he declares (p. 353):
 
• "The concept of the continuity of nature has existed in the mind of man, never in the facts of nature."

 
• He adds:
• "In a very real sense, therefore, advocacy of the doctrine of continuity has always necessitated a retreat from pure empiricism, and contrary to what is widely assumed by evolutionary biologists today, it has always been the anti-evolutionists,, not the evolutionists, in the scientific community who have stuck rigidly to the facts and adhered to a more strictly empirical approach."

 
• Indeed we have this: "Even in classical times Aristotle's opposition to the evolutionism of the pre-Socratics was based on his acute observation of nature and his appreciation of the facts of  biology." Things tended to be fixed, this was their genius, that it what he saw.

 
• The DISCONTINUITY simply means that things are not equipped for ingenious upgradings. Information theory deplores such a thought; the second law of thermodynamics PRECISELY opposes such a thought (cf. Index) ; nature does not co-operate with such a thought in the entire gamut of variations about a type; cells, Denton tells us, abhor such a thought: that is to say, there is NO primitive cell, NO intermediate cell, ALL cells are intriguingly and fascinatingly sophisticated.

 
•  Professor Thompson's note on the relevant observational facts of palaeontology (in his New Challenging Introduction to the Origin of Species (1956, Everyman)), to the point that:
  
  "If we found in the geological strata a series of fossils showing a gradual transition from simple to complex forms, and could be sure that they correspond in a true time-sequence... well: but This is certainly what Darwin would have liked to report but of course he was unable to do so. What the available data indicated was a remarkable absence of the many intermediate forms required by the theory... The position is not notably different today." (Cf. S.J. Gould, SMR pp. 234-235.)

 
• Dr Michael Denton (see pp. 114 ff. SMR) affirms that not only is there no "primitive" to sophisticated cell sequence in time, none being primitive, but also that just as sequenced fossil intermediates are lacking morphologically, similarly developmental sequences lack in the micro-biological relationships between creatures.

 
• Thus, he states, these do not appear, but what is present is a "highly ordered hierarchical system" (op.cit., p. 278) at the micro-level, from which any such sequence is "emphatically absent". Moreover micro-divisions between them are "mathematically perfect". Indeed, to take a case, different kinds of frogs, though relatively similar, have a "molecular divergence" as great as that between extraordinarily diverse kinds of mammals (op.cit., p. 290) ... These findings, with Genesis are more parallel than railroad tracks; and Genesis ... came first. They, within the ramifying network of attestation of the word of God, provide verification of it, unmatched, extensive and refined.

Similarly, vestigial organs, a concept more honoured in the breach than in the observance, and indeed conspicuous by its absence, in terms of empirical verification, have been now almost entirely verified as misnomer, while the actual FUNCTIONAL NEEDS of what are merely by unlicensed imagination attributed to posterior products of past usage only, lie fallow in the soil of fact (SMR p. 198).

End of Excerpt.
 
 

• However, Professor Dawkins in a way grotesquely evocative of that misplaced zeal in the witch hunts which spoiled some of the early American history, might appear intent on ignoring the mythical element in the inventions which no matter and no life knows, which no eyes see, nor yet its attestation, which no valid logic can create. Instead, with vaporous and irrelevant attributions to the bold declarations of the Bible, standing then, standing now, in vast and full accord with all evidence and logic, and required by the latter, what does he do ? He appears to be insisting that creation, Biblically defined,  which with sophisticated and unique ease does cover the case,  is in some way a weapon, an instrument for evil.

 
• The sober realism, neither reductionist like the evolutionist myth, nor sloppy like so many vague and imprecise myths of man, the explicatory force and verified compilations of the Bible are, we learn, in science to be dismissed. Life has not its equal, no presentation* compares in longevity, resistance to all change, evidential felicity, predictive power; and it is to go, unheralded, no sadness to see the best depart, without competition, by a seraphic sentence, inflicted as on millions of people,  in Communism's wayward day in Russia, without warrant, without appeal, without ground.

 
• Why ? Because for its own part, it does not FAIL ANY test of scientific method, whilst evolutionism with the other myths, fails repeatedly ?

 
• Is truth then evil ?

 
• Is verificatory preference on the part of the data, when sifted into slots,

a danger ?

If so, then to what!

Thus does religious passion or its parallel, produce in even the most brilliant of minds, gaps like that in the relevant geological record; and as there, so here, these CAN be systematic! It is neither skill nor ability, nor even conscious motive which is in question: it is just the relationship between the clamorous statements and the state of the case. That relationship is, as noted, negative; and the Bible, to its even greater credit, has long characterised the CAUSE of such things as this, as we saw in the last chapter. In one sense, it is entirely impersonal, for it applies to the greatest and to the last, as does influenza! (cf. Ch. 1, above at *1).
 
 

Dawkins, in the Guardian report,  proceeds to exhibit a gratuitous mischaracterisation of two Genesis chapters, which signifies a confusion about Genesis, one merely mirroring the zeal of his passion. In religion and politics, such things are almost pandemic; and it is always necessary therefore, to examine the case most carefully.

Genesis, says he, has two creation myths. This is contrary to demonstrable fact in two regards: the character of the text and the elaborate, sustained and consistent application of its declarations with ongoing history (cf. A Spiritual Potpourri Ch. 9, SMR pp. 179ff., 485ff.), on the one hand, and the inter-relationships of the sequential parts, on the other. It is like the case of Bultmann, noted by C.S. Lewis (cf. SMR pp. 861-867), one of reading between the lines in preference to the perception of what is actually written upon them.

Firstly, the record of creation in Genesis is

• one of the most monergistic, majestic and irrefutable claims, in terms of all related evidence, that it would be possible to make, economical in verbiage, incisive in tone, providing first the splendid depiction in the monergistic majesty of Ch. 1, and then the intimate account specialising in man (cf. A Spiritual Potpourri Ch. 9, TMR Appendix),

 
• leading on, with pointed relevance,  in Ch. 2, to the surrounds and bounds of the historical episodes which flare out into our present time, interpreting, applying and specialising as the case requires:

 
• without apology, without interruption,

 
• like a jet, having crossed the Pacific, gliding slowly down to Sydney airport.

Lacking these baneful features, so often found in what is indeed myth, as in evolutionism, which thoroughly lacks any interface with evidential reality, let alone systematic law, a point Popper^*7B soundly declares, just as it lacks predictive power, and for that matter, ground and account of any organ's invention, as Popper also soundly notes, and as he further affirms, is NOT a scientific law, having no power for verification: biblical creation triumphs graciously. There is really, simply no competition. Nothing else has this stature of predictive power.

By Genesis in particular and the Old Testament in general, kinds remain; variation about them is provided for; system is explained; principles of propagation and coding with its revisionist editing to distance error, all is accounted for, long before 'science' knew anything of it. Through it, the second law of thermodynamics is in principle propagated from early times, as the law of conservation of mass and energy, in its basic account, and with this, the law of biogenesis.  By it, the lack of transitional links between major categories is predictable, just as Denton most strenuously affirms to be the case. Through this the lack of developmental simplicities in cells is predictable, for the record omits all steps and stages for any given eventuation of life, merely declaring that GOD SAID and that it was DONE.  The data for this, is to be found is seen, for example,  in TMR   Ch. 1.
 

The time reference (cf. SMR pp. 174ff., Answers to Questions -AQ - Ch. 8) that introduces us to our world via its creation, is in terms of days, with day and night sequence. Minor issues are dealt with in the above reference, but the explanation of days is not in something else. The terminology is what we use, the direction is explanation, concatenation leading to eventuation. There is then no time for something OTHER than the WORD-DEED explication (which DNA so magnificently confirms, as to the words inscribed!); and what is found is not other! Distortion of context, thrust, wording and the use of double definitions and the like, is merely to attribute to the writer, an incohesion which in fact is in the mind of the critic. What is written could not be more decisive in attribution of time periods, command sequence, word-deed correlation, than it is.

Special definitional dilemmas, based on imaginary double-standards, as if the sun meant the globe, and the light meant the stars, and the kinds meant no kinds, and days meant months or years or something other than the designation of astronomical reality to which direction as to its institution is given, are total eisegesis, intrusion into the text, and confused, illicit intrusion at that: for if there had been such an abuse of clarity of terms, it would undoubtedly have been a fault in the writing. It has to be made clear that the attribution of loose verbiage to a document should result from evidence of the practice, not an invasion of the erroneous habits of a critic, or his imaginings that the writer has them! As to the magnificent clarity and data in detail, then, see the SMR loc. cit. and Answers to QuestionsCh. 8.

Genesis is testable, has been tested, and has been attested in test as providing all that it says, with objective eventuation, at all verifiable levels: and these are many. The more modern science in its actual empirical reality becomes, the more the declarations of the Bible on this topic, once beyond human probing in some things, are quite staggeringly attested. WHO would have thought of words ACTUALLY governing the work of KINDS! WHO would have thought for that matter, of general relativity as having some bearing, as it may do, according to Professor Humphreys (cf. SMR pp. S21-30) ? or that his highly specific magnetic predictions using what he propounds as biblical principles, would be astonishingly verified, when naturalistic assumptions failed appallingly to come even near the prediction which he made! (cf. op. cit. S 22).

By whom would the concept of a periodicity implanted into things, by writing, as in Psalm 139
(cf. Joyful Jottings 16) ? Who would have imagined the laws of information technology, that information cannot be increased in a closed system, and imagined their application to the ever triumphant Genesis ?

The first record of creation to endure without mythological features, it is also the last to endure with its scientific features. Its majesty is not merely in manner; its precision is not only in presentation: it is in eventuation, confirmation, verification. What speaks contrary, falls and is washed away. So much of science has this fate, which has sought to attack it. It is past, passé. Genesis, it is in no difficulties whatsoever, after 3000 years. Indeed, it exults and is exalted. They have hounded and harassed 'nature', but it like a stubborn donkey, won't go: indeed, like Balaam's ass, it seems to say, Have we not served you all these years, and look, you attack me! It makes no difference. It does not go. That is all (cf. Secular Myths and Sacred Truth Ch. 8!, Little Things Ch. 5,
A Spiritual Potpourri Chs. 1-3).

Science to the contrary is muddling into endless claims and counter-claims in just a few years, and sometimes sooner. The record speaks. It calls, from this alone, for what is commensurable with the results of millenia, contrary to the failures of the theories of mere decades. Let us be objective.

Verification is not subversible.

Those who wish a priori to exclude God and personality from the account, do not for this reason achieve objective grounds for criticism; merely illustration of their monism which is itself met by indefeasible destruction from logic (cf. Repent or Perish Ch. 7, for example, and SMR Chs. 1 and  3). Genesis and the whole Biblical creation record, however,  does more than avoid all failure. It simply surpasses: it endures with majesty, in the very tone of its declaration, for the PRINCIPLES which we find, are wholly consonant with the DECLARATIONS of method, found in this book! That surpassing splendour, for what comes from God, is precisely what one would expect. It is assuredly what one finds.

If, on the other hand, without seeking to beg the question, you look at the work of God, is it so inadmissible that He should actually DO and SAY and PLAN and PURPOSE and ACT ? It would be like wanting mathematics without figures, numbers or logic! It is a mere dabbling with the self-contradictory.

In fact, Genesis first gives the vast and incisive overview, and then, a little later, the pointed preoccupation with the part which the divine mind is designing to focus: MAN, and how he in particular gained his precise situation. (Cf. A Spiritual Potpourri  Ch. 9, and in particular, *1, and Ch. 7.) We examine the moral brilliance likewise in SMR pp. 179ff., and consider the implications with other scriptures.

Dawkins seems unaware of the developmental thrust of the first chapters of Genesis, the descent from the majestic to man, from the general to the particular, from the creation to the desecration, in explication of all things. It is not wasted: omission would damage the conspectus, just as compression would distort the grandeur allying it with the shame, as is not uncommon with what is in fact mere musings of man.

When God speaks, it has style, sublime clarity in what it wishes for all, and his insistence on verifiability backwards (from his speech at any time) and forwards (to history confirming it at any time) is most emphatic (cf. Isaiah 48:3ff., 41:21ff.). Does it not occur to some that this CHALLENGE is in the nature of SCIENTIFIC empirical testing! Repetitious concepts are mere ad hoc application of philosophy! What happens must be tested in all ways, according to all kinds of events. Knowing the answer before you test is like becoming a magician instead of a scientist. It is not really recommended for science, and represents a blatant abuse of scientific method (cf. SMR  pp. 330-331 - the cult of the forbidden).
 
 

Secondly, the concept of duality is ludicrous in view of the intense, cohesive integral character of the functions in the text. Each chapter contributes its sublime and direct part to the development of the whole, like a body with working parts. Not to notice the body is not a good preliminary to the discussion of its parts!

What then is it like, to say this sort of derogation of Genesis, that we have witnessed in this report from Great Britain ?

It is like a test situation. Let us consider the thing in a dialogue.
 
 

Student: I had a low-power microscopic picture and then I took a high-power one. The resolution in the second was higher, though the coverage was less.

 

Examiner: When will you make up your mind! Which is it ? the high or low power one.

Such an approach is worse then appalling: it is evocative of thought concerning the utterance and the validity of any world view descending to such vilification of the straightforward. The case in Genesis in this respect could scarcely be clearer, and it is outlined in some detail in A Spiritual Potpourri Ch. 9, and in Appendix to TMR.
 

As to myths, see SMR pp. 378ff..

That is mythical which attributes powers to objects which show neither the latency nor the patency of power, and imbues natural objects with resources with which they fail to show any attestation; and which then seeks to imbue such things with illicit and undisciplined 'meaning' (cf. SMR Ch. 3). That is naturalism precisely, and the EXACT record of evolutionism’s niggardly and reductionist approach to the necessities of performance for production in every sphere and dimension, as for validity requisition concerning the attribution itself! It fails in process, principle, procedure and performance, and in domain validity alike. (Cf. Little Things Ch. 5, TMR Ch. 5.)

It is FOR THIS REASON, that it has no stability, and it is really rather evolutionisms than the singular,  since there is neither peace nor progress in its resolutions. It stabs in the dark; acts as if to mesmerise with endlessly protracted hopes; falls constantly and fails to follow scientific method with a ruthless seeming passion which appears to blind.

The Bible attributes to one demonstrably present (cf. SMR Chs. 1, 3, 10), whose word verifies itself without exception over millenia, the work of creation. It presents the data in the light of ongoing history of the most precise kind, often checked, and evocative of data which merely grow in stature, if possible, as they constantly meet archeological challenge, which, by the nature of the case, is a continual thing, and a good one (i.e. exposure to data).

Its method is explicatory, its manner is didactic, its procedure historical, its integration of all, total (cf.  A Spiritual Potpourri Ch. 9, SMR pp. 485ff. where wider fields of scriptural integration of concepts are displayed as well).

Indeed, in Paul, the fiat creation of the new-made world is once presented as a basis for the mode of donation, of creation, of the new-made life in the Christian, on conversion.

Thus he declares:

"For it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ" (II Cor. 4:6); and again, "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation: old things have passed away: behold, all things have become new" (II Cor. 5:17).

In all these things, the Bible divulgement, the valid depiction, stands unique. Its fulfilment in science's investigation merely the more confirms it, though science changes so in these fields that it has in some of them, but little reputation; and the Genesis-style, code-conditioning character of life is merely one of the remaining facts that continues unchallenged, being the more obvious as time progresses and research augments. (Cf. Joyful Jottings 16.)

What then do we find ?

No elements other than those in line with the sovereignty and power of God appear, and all things are coherent, consistent ^*8A and in exquisite logical array; but they DO have one provocation which, as in Romans 1:17ff., some find inexcusable.  In terms of the ACTUAL evidence however, it is THIS which is inexcusable! (TMR Ch. 1). The fact is that the Bible speaks of God and His creation in terms of distinct, simple, clear-cut, decisive, incisive, efficient and proficient action, orderly, organised, resulting in both the possibility and the actuality of history, which it immediately and in direct terms, in a most practical way, uncovers, inviting contest, meeting challenge, both explicitly and implicitly, identifying the source in word, as in ‘nature’ in deed.

Unacceptable to mere prejudice, this is the consistent and to be expected situation when God, as Creator, speaks to man as created. It explains, it speaks in relevant terms, it is consistent with both aspects.

What then ?

This rejection syndrome^*9  against the deity's declaration, indeed against the mere conception of it, this exclusion zone for thought, this anti-specification for logic, this mere miscuing of nomenclature does not stand when you get away from the mythological, naturalistic preconceptions, and turn strictly to a discipline which knows no favourites, bills no philosophy as if required before it tests,  and looks at results. That, it is scientific method. Just as a priori, validity is precluded by a world without absolute truth (TMR Ch. 5, cf. SMR pp. 999ff., A Spiritual Potpourri Chs. 1-9, Barbs, Arrows and Balms  6 -7), so  a posteriori, verification is given gala treatment by the readiness and indeed appetite for examination and test, exhibited by the Biblical statements (cf. SMR pp. 140ff., Ch. 2, TMR Ch. 1).
 

This is precisely where scientific method makes a contribution. The fruits of the Biblical statements are consistent with every application of this method. This is outrageously to the contrary with the strictly so-called, evolutionary myth.

Moreover, the evolutionary myth attributes to something inexorably not attested in principle, in power, in perception, in residue, in verification, in any way, capacities it never shows.

• It acts as if strength or force equals intelligence and code-making facilities;
• it ignores evidence of and the constraints for the close casual connection of facility and ability;
• it imagines strengths where absence is the fact of observation and test constantly, without exception.

 
• It ignores every presentation of necessary assignable power, and its minimal prescriptions (cf. SMR pp. 252Aff.);

 
• insists on the presence of what does not show it,  where the visible renders the null-facilitating nothing the answer to all such tests; to the point that one physicist has loudly proclaimed nothing as the inventor of it all! (cf. TMR Ch. 7), which while a pointed reductio ad absurdum, does nothing to answer anything;

 
• and then has the facility to talk of Nature wanting, seeking, striving, meeting needs and so on,
• in a way not merely ludicrous, inconsistent and question-begging,
• but quite fanciful and utterly unsuitable for adult minds, dealing with non-leisure pursuits! (Cf. SMR pp. 211ff., A  Spiritual Potpourri Chs. 1-3.)

THAT: it is myth, not as a term of revealing abuse, showing the disarray of the position being defended, that it must descend so far: but in this case,  by PRECISE AND ACCURATE DEFINITION, never invalidated. Is this evolutionism, then, A Beautiful Myth - à la Dawkins' specification for some things he evidently has read ? not at all. Its ugliness, anti-utility, obloquy, frank divorce from the ideals of many who nevertheless with a double irrationality hold to it, its infamy with facts which it murders as freely as the bodies of those whom its specifications inflame, such as Hitler and Stalin, its stark inadequacy to cover its field: all of these things are the height of the grotesque.

Again, in the absence of absolute truth, to declare it, is a contradiction in terms.  Validity does not attach to such antics (cf. Repent or Perish Ch. 7, Barbs, Arrows and Balms 6 -7, TMR Ch. 5, SMR Ch. 3). This diversity from other seats of rational enquiry is another characteristic of myth.

And the correction for this, so much purveyed by Dawkins and many others, this in England, he would have as a ground for exclusion of schools ? Is he then recommending the demise of the authoritarian, high-handed irrationalist repertoire of evolutionism in government schools ? Not at all. Quite the opposite. Indeed, not only in government schools, it appears, but assuredly even in private ones, he would have this myth mandatory, teachers not holding to it in schools, told they are unworthy of the dignity of science in their professions.

• This is a recipe for decline, a proposal for national suicide, a defamation of truth and an instigation
• to the loss of that very thing for which England is - or rather has been - so justly famed:
• the insistence on fair play,
• due competition, freedom of expression.

Yet here, the concept seems a social forcefulness to determine these things with a myth which lacks all force, and can accomplish just what it shows itself to accomplish: nothing. When however the affront to both reason and to God is considered, it may indeed accomplish something, but that, it is not what is desired! It is a rough replacement, justice, for education; nor is it merely from above, but in the very minds and hearts of those abused with this delusion, and fed this mental drug with State-made spoons, that it comes so readily to be felt.

England once did - and now is in danger of losing this - one thing very well as the nations go: it insisted on performance in contest, the goods in context, competitive display of ideas and voluntary conviction about the result. Now, with the disciplined pursuit of the actual requirements of scientific method in danger of giving way, where what appears to be felt necessary for religious enthusiasm of those following the secular myths, freedom of expression and due competition, nearing the sacrificial pyre, England looks as if it may lose much more than the World Cup, for which also, for some time this year, it fought so well!

In spiritual things, there is always the greater tragedy, which so far from exonerating the misled, rather the more deeply brings out the error. When you for long enough, in enough ways follow what is against what God has said, and reason directs, and are misled by convention, corruption, complacency, ambition, contrariness or whatever other thing may eventuate, then one may see in practice the fact that the mind is not a mere machine. It reacts. It responds.

The spirit of man can be soured, or seared as Paul puts it to Timothy (I Tim. 4), and just as ulcerated flesh cannot act right, neither can a spirit so left, inhabiting a mind in this condition. Then wrong conviction actually can come to those actively misled, just as necessary unsoundness in the flesh comes to the ulcerated wound. It cannot sustain its arguments, but it certainly will try.

How lovely on the other hand is the compassion of God, not for the presence of  "a lie in my right hand" (Isaiah 44:20  ) amongst those who scoff, but  for the people who hold it, if at any time they may relent, repent and return to reality, and being restored, be redeemed. Listen to Jeremiah 31:18-20:
 

"I have surely heard Ephraim bemoaning himself:
‘You have chastised me, and I was chastised,
Like an untrained bull;
Restore me, and I will return,
For You are the Lord my God.
Surely, after my turning, I repented;
And after I was instructed, I struck myself on the thigh;
I was ashamed, yes, even humiliated,
Because I bore the reproach of my youth.’

"Is Ephraim My dear son?
Is he a pleasant child?
For though I spoke against him,
I earnestly remember him still;
Therefore My heart yearns for him;
I will surely have mercy on him, says the Lord."

Thus when Professor Dawkins is reported as strongly criticising Emmanuel College, Gateshead, for teaching creationism as a valid alternative, to evolutionism, he is not wrong in one aspect.

It is not a valid alternative: that is not a fair description of its degree of victory and mastery, its unique validity. Far MORE than this: creation is the ONLY available option, and evolutionism is an invalid, much varying, never stable, inconsistent and by definition, mythical alternative which is being used as a dictatorial substitute for reason.

However it hardly improves the position of the critic when what he excludes is the only answer! That nevertheless is the way things have proceeded in multiplied colleges, in terms of the cultural condition of the world, a vast, spirit of the Age, intellectually requisitioning and spiritually characterisable dynamic (cf. SMR pp. 422Qff., and cf. 316Dff.).

Thus this contrary-to-reason indoctrination course which is being so vehemently pushed in Great Britain, apparently in some cases at least, with a seemingly splendid surge of militant feeling,  changes things (not for the first time, but here very explicitly). At least, its aim is to change things, and since they have already been changed almost without limit, to the degradation of scientific method, the nation and its young, the change appears to be more likely to be one of the final thrust. However God is not mocked; and the sword, in principle, rather like the case of the celebration for a wedding recently reported, when the ammunition was wrongly inserted, wounds the bearer. In the gun case, it killed bridegroom and many guests.

The wounds appear in the end, though the scoffer mocks at first. That, incidentally, for this phase of our Age as biblically defined, is also predicted as an acute phenomenon: which as seen in this case, is precisely what it is (cf. Answers to Questions Ch. 5 on II Peter 3).

That sort of prediction some two millenia ago, moreover, it is just what correct method, and sound logic tends to expose when in mercy it meets truth: an exhilarating and continuing exhibition of reinforcement whether in the pronouncemnents of the revelation attested, in progressive logic, empirical compilations, verifications or  concatenations. Truth, it is like that!

Let us however consider the apparent aims of the British action, in terms of the report of the Guardian .

It has these three interesting features: if it were implemented, it would appear to

1) remove from the young, freedom of investigation and enquiry, in schools, including INDEPENDENT ONES!

2) dictate professionally in terms of myth to teachers, so that their abasement before this mythical idol (as it is, in that it is an implicit religion, in this case aggravated by having neither revelation nor reason to support it) could be made a condition of having work!

3) expressly cast doubt on the propriety of registration of a school, to say no more, if it fails to conform to the cultural clique, labelled aptly enough, naturalistic evolutionism, which in the simple light of fact, is a philosophy at war with scientific method!

Vigilance as Dawkins indicates, is indeed required, but the stifling of freedom of speech in favour of obligatory myths, wholly unverified claims, and this in the gratuitously rejected presence of what has only verification, whether in terms of its total presentation which is broad, or of the detail which often appears, and that over three millenia in its triumphant course, this is not its due application!  Rather it is to preserve what is good, what lasts, what endures, what wins, what has the victory, what meets the case, what leaves all opposition worse off than cripples who cannot move.It is not however creation that will suffer, but those members of it, those nations within it, which treat the case with cavalier contempt, from their ill-constructed falling wall. This is the pity of it, heightened immeasurably, when the young are made victims of the authoritarian assault.

The corpse of Christ did not fail to be resurrected; and the word of God, in this way impounded despite performance and validity criteria, will not be bound either. It simply continues to do what it said (cf. Isaiah 55, Matthew 5:17ff., 24:35). That is simply the way it is; truth is like that, and so attests itself.

Further, the case is merely aggravated when we consider that the Biblical report not only accords with all known scientific laws, but unlike evolutionism, virtually predicts (or if you will, simply declares) three main ones long before their 'scientific time'. On the other side, in terms of method, failure has been fatal already for the organic myth of naturalism, through lack of verification where required (TMR Ch. 1, pp.  5ff.), for in this sphere, negative verification after due trial, simply dispenses with a theory! Thus evolutionism has long died, but the funeral rites are engaged in, long after decay has been complete (cf. SMR pp. 315Aff., TMR Ch. 1). In this respect, it is a far more religious phenomenon, even than the World Cup Soccer, which can have music rather like boisterous hymns chanting away, and mourning like that for some decayed idol, when loss occurs, even at an almost national level!

If it is not 'nature', then perhaps sport or sportsmen, SOMETHING, our poor humanity NEEDS, and irrationally insists on investing with pseudo-divine dignity, lest in its departure from the living God,  it feel its nakedness, as at the first.

So it continues, this regime of what is rotted, this continuance with a theory ANTI-verified when in fact, this is, after due test, quite simply fatal. If it is wrong, it cannot be right. That is all there is to it at this verificatory level.

This combination of positive and negative elements, then, its total failure on the one hand, and on the other,  its total eclipse by what meets ALL requirements of scientific method superbly, and beyond imagination, makes of this dismissal of the latter,  a thing of putrefying shame: the term is not too strong, in contrast to that stridulous jactitation which is used, as against Christ in His day, so against creation in our own, that it might fulfil the biblical prediction, that so it must be!  Evolutionism is without support, hanging in space, kept there only by human gravity.

As to this furore, in some ways like that for Diana of Ephesus (Acts 19), one of the symbolic goddesses of earlier times,in its love of symbolism and 'nature', it is not new. Nor is it new in other countries today. Force (via law) is often used to seduce (in fact, whatever the intention) scientific method into an allure for what is never more than glamorised hopes, irrelevant oddities better explained by creation: and this in the light, or better in the darkness, of flat contradiction by anti-verification repeatedly administered to this ebullient, erratic, despotic and necrotic substitute for a scientific theory, this same evolutionism. (Cf. A Spiritual Potpourri Chs. 1-3, 7, TMR Chs. 1, 8.)

It is to be admitted that something not far from this devastating revelation of the allure of this naturalistic theory has happened in public (that is government) schools in this one's own State, in Australia,  for a long time (cf. TMR Ch. 8); but the matter has not been nearly so public! And no resistance has been offered to the exposure of this imposition on young life, through the use of government facilities as an indoctrination forum. As one Minister of State declared, "I cannot argue with you." The cupboard is bare.

One says, 'Forum' ? Yet there is scarcely room for any debate at all, and none in science, so that instead of forum, what shall we call this situation of oppressed school-grounds, evidently afraid of freedom, excluding open rational debate for the children: an indoctrination camp ? But there is not usually night accommodation. Then perhaps an indoctrination regime, or more fully: an indoctrinative educational regime.

If it is less, it has yet to show the evidence, or give any rational, logical reply to the challenge of over 10 years which has been provided in this State!
 
 

Meanwhile, one may ask further where this naturalistic fallacy fits.

It is kin to the god of forces, as above, a defiling of reality with an abstractionism which loses even logical coherence in the telling. It is force without face, intelligence without mind, it is symbolism without thought, it is administration without source, it is code without thinker, it is construction without builder, it is nature without beginning or ground or cause adequate for its construction, it is something endlessly from nothing: it is invasion of categories without simplistic reductionism. It is magic without sufficient method, and methods exploded, for literally it is magic without any method at all, being thus the better magic, but the worse science, if that term, in view of the vast violation of scientific method, could aptly be applied at all.

In this lies its similarity with communism. This too needed a face, and Krushchev tried to give it one, to repair the omission in the robot face; but in the process lost his own place, and became a strange unslain survivor of a regime mainly noted for death to what it does not like, and threatens. Then it needed cash, and decided in Russia, its great point of origin in practice, to revert to other things, so that it could live.

In China, it did just the same, employing vastly the technical prowess of liberty as  found elsewhere, in its constructions, and the desire for gain, in its distributions, while keeping political power at the dictatorial level. It failed from the first (cf. SMR pp. 925ff.), and shows it to the last. But these, the naturalistic symphonies of which man is so proud, they do not work. That really is so simple even for the pragmatic, the empirical. Logically they cannot; and that is one good reason why they do not! (Cf. Barbs, Arrows and BalmsAppendix IV, 30, It Bubbles ...Ch. 9 ... , Little Things Ch. 5.)

That, it is the way when death tries to live: it needs injections, and if left too long, it needs an undertaker. God, for His part, He never undertakes for naturalistic confusion, mocking its jejune simplicities and complicities against His manifest power (Romans 1:17ff., Jeremiah 2:19,27, Psalm 94).

So man blows himself up with arrogant pride, abuses science with invasive philosophy, and next, in the very glory of the inspiration, but with no little consistency with his first and fallen error, he wars on himself, to survive, to be strong, to show, to blow, to enact the whole saga of spiritual death, of which evolutionism is merely one exemplar, communism another. Both become mass killers in the exalted mind, and broken bodies of their victims. Inconsistency of morals with the underlying theme does not continue for long; it sags. It falls. Man then returns to his naturalistic worship, and this being a mere symbol of rebellion, he gets what rebels get.

Frequently he dispenses it, the one to the other, the one nation to its ilk.

There are two special features however in this, which distinguish this particular rebellion. First, it is against God, hence against life, hence its death toll is high, its life wearying and its soul destroying influence is augmented vastly. Secondly, it is against reason, so that reasonableness is never the spirit of the thing. This vacancy is increasingly in our day, whether in the seemingly almost pedantic insistences of many strikers, or many independent nations, or the sheer assertiveness of it, when the mordant determination becomes the theme more than the realism of the issues.

Strife increases its testimony, at once a verification of the revolt against the God who having made creation, has demonstrably laid down its rules, and for man, its redemption.

Man has fallen in love with his 'nature'; and then, as the imagined head of it, with himself^*10A; and thence, since his errant heart and clamant clamour is so great to the very heavens, he hates himself, and so wars and preys on himself, reason long since fled, and foolish mouthings of pretension and pretence, becoming his speechifying symptom of defeat. It is exactly as in Romans 1:17ff., from start to finish, staring man starkly in the face, like cigarettes in the light of atrocious TV advertisements, which at least expose the realities somewhat! They still smoke.

Man in general still rebels against more than his own body; it is against his own God.

Humanism thus raises itself on the wreckage of naturalism; and they seek to control, yes to seize the controls and direct, like naughty children with no idea of the nature of the home, trying to run it!

In this way, the excess of enthusiasm for man without God, finds

• man without man, and in need of repair,
• lacking individuality,
• with meaning excised by 'meaningless' thinkers who meaningfully tell us all about it,
• without ground for originality, scope for error,
• and ex all interpretative force for the whole round of human endeavour^*10.

Thus man so engrossed and controlled by fiction, is led by the nose, for  it plays about as in Communism, as in naturalism's legacy, with international forces, with laws and legalisms, with freedoms that do not work, with work that has no freedom, with theories of this and that kind which go on in martial order, to kill millions, till it sees that it should really INTERPRET, or it may die.

Confused, it turns to panaceas, which have failed so routinely that FORCE is the thing.

This direction  is seen in the new WAR ON TERROR, which is taking, in terms of pity for man,  some all but terrifying swipes at liberties, and these have vexed Australia in its political considerations, as it ponders powers by one man to decree organisations illegal, to hold without warrant and the like: all for safety ?

• For this, or perhaps the force deployed will also be for the purpose of helping people to find what it is socially DESIRED they should find, that sort of life, that religious direction which always implicit in naturalism, finds its own level when fear or love of fiction, arrant or rampant religious surges oppressing the defeated spirit of man, dictate. (Cf. the vast gulf between this and meta-religion, both in spirit and in result, in A Spiritual Potpourri Ch. 15, *1.)

What Dawkins is speaking of is presumably merely social force, instructor pressures, examination requirements for a preferred point of view, authorisation pressures to remove from acceptance, those schools not yielding to all of this endeavour.

It is an appalling intrusion, by all appearance, which he fosters; and still it is not yet physical force.

It is this however which nevertheless will come in quick step accord with  the war on terrorism mentality, in such means as the new ICC (Ch. 2 above) and the new unities so zealously and confusedly being sought and in numerous other ways, as the various passions mount, including those of monism in matter, monolithic scenarios in politics, and social ideological babels, blaring their wares^*11.

Already the USA has become noted as a combination of Moslem and Christian, with Judaistic values and so on. The war on terror has evoked this comment from India, as will shortly be attested. The folly of the co-operation with Moslem (cf. News 195), and the praise to this religion, gratuitous for government, has already been observed; but our present point is that it is there. It is one of the many unity movements which are propelling societies and bodies towards unity. Fear propels; anti-God lust, seduces; natural desire for unity, perverted, induces. It all proceeds as predicted, and at an all but amazing rate, to the unity which is to come for the political power to dictate as predicted (cf. Revelation 13, Regal Rays from Revelation Ch. 11).
 

• It is all tending to unify, to congregate nations and powers and thoughts (cf. Red Heart, Dead Heart and Pure Heart Ch. 10, Answers to Questions Ch. 10) to get a peace before the pieces leave no need for it.
• There is passion in this movement which is galvanising the anti-God forces, the anti-biblical groupings (you see the Islam-Christianity approach gaining in the USA as an Indian witness very interestingly attested - More Marvels Ch. 10 cites it^*12).
• This passion is augmented by the passion for ONE which is a perverted distortion of the FACT that God IS one and that there is a unity for the race, a peace for the heart, an understanding for the mind all in ONE place, who is a Person and who KNOWS, indeed has declared it (cf. Isaiah 41, 43, 48; Secular Myths and Sacred Truth, Epilogue, and see Repent or Perish Ch. 5, A Spiritual Potpourri 1-3,  7, Ancient Words, Modern Deeds Ch. 9).

Biblically, as in creation, so in politics and war, in history, in redemption, in gospel prediction, the forecast of moral decline, ecclesiastical decline BUT NOT the failure of the church, of Christ's death prediction, and its date, that of the trend of events, of the special case of the Jews (cf. SMR Chs. 8 and  9, The Biblical Workman Ch. 1, *3): the word of God has it all.

In creation as in all the rest, it speaks, and it happens. The forces to the contrary surge and purge, renew and err again; but the Bible, it does not change, has no purge: it is merely DONE.

It does not change as does this erratic pseudo-science, this science falsely-so-called (SMR pp. 315Aff. ): it does not have to, for it does not - unlike this passionate substitute for actuality of method, go wrong at all. It just stands like Gibraltar, and will long after that has gone, just as it has for 3400 years and more, stood not only unabashed, but a tower impregnable, that cannot be destroyed,  already. That of course, it is what you would expect with the word of God; and as to the other, it is what you would expect of what contravenes, contradicts and seeks to replace it, not being God, and being contrary to Him.

It all fits. Everything fits: the only thing that does not fit, is this fit of imagination which wants to make scientifically theories, debarred by scientific method, to 'go on playing', like some erratic player from some errant club, which ignores the rules.

Politically and militarily, it moves as Biblically it must, as logically one would expect in view of the naturalistic fallacies, towards FORCE. If it won't work, says the distressed householder, MAKE IT! So in his ignorance, ill-temper or both, he tampers with it, using a ... hammer! Force is the ultimate depravity of abusive minds, when reason has been dismissed! Cf. SMR pp. 125ff., 154ff., 721ff., 750Bff., 707ff., Secular Myths and Sacred Truth Ch.  6, Beauty of Holiness Ch. 4.

It has come from various idols, naturalism being but one, in the past. The 'beasts' of Daniel 7 and Revelation 13, are, after all, nations, empires, fitted with idolatry, without the knowledge of God, doing their inane business, presuming into religion, exercising power in the domain which in the end, is also their doom. Intoxication is their spirit's frame; power is the lust; control is the quest; glory is distorted, perverted, and given to man, till his time comes. Meanwhile, there are the people of God, who being without change, with His word continually ineluctable, find in Him ultimate meaning,  ultimate direction and since He is eminently merciful, though never gulled, deliverance both now and ultimately, from judgment (John 5:19-23, 3:15-36).

In the meantime, oh they try, yes they try!^*13  There is some divine irony at such things, in view of the unscrupulous haste and waste so often found in the process. For example, in Isaiah 14, you see a picture of hell being excited at the prospect of Babylon, Great Babylon's king coming to join the ranks of the ruined, who went before him (Isaiah 14:9-17), and of course the sense of the satanic is not far away: the used goes to the user. Of no use are either in such a setting!

To take recent cases, there is a lack of ground for personality in the forces, the faceless forces, smugglers of God without a name, in Nazism, Communism and Humanism. The hideous pathos of the first two we have noted; but the last ? it talks of face, of meaning, but has no base, so that  it erodes into the ludicrous worship of man, which being unrealistic, produces the reaction of CONTROLLING and CONTINUING the BEAST! as in International Actions, shrouded in a sort of misty glory, tainted by error and prejudice, in ICCC provisions and the like. Man then sees himself as the lead in evolution, ignores the logic, and taking the bull by the horns, imagining he is the crest of the nameless, meaningless, causeless^*14 wave, tries to move it (genome, genetic engineering) the way he wants, and then ?

Then, waves not readily being bent, even surfies knowing there is a quieter place in the tunnel (cf. Wake Up World! Epilogue): behold it is as in II Thessalonians 2.
 

It commences; it ends: this Age.

The man of sin appears, showing himself in the temple that he is god, in a sort of spiritual display which ends the mockery of many years, the humanism, the naturalism, the evolutionism, the spiritual posturing and the irrational pretence.

He'll give it a face, man a place, as excavating from his nothing with relentlessly futile tools, he seeks the impossible and is met by the actual in the calling of the END, by God. This poor man, summing up the delusions of many for so long, he is god ? not almighty alas, any more than was Sennacherib whose robust pragmatism fell likewise in dramatic circumstances, since it lacked logic, principle and truth. You may trace that in Isaiah 37. This other ? it comes and you may trace it as it arrives, like all the other Biblical predictions (here II Thess. 2), mocked before it suns itself, its end accounted before it begins.

The end of the whole list and litany of beasts will not be other.

One of its first delusions is to subjectivise truth, then pragmatise it, then internalise it, then reject it, and then force rules. The other is to ignore God, and that puts man into the place where at last he deems himself best for the job, and what he does with it, it is already empirically clear. It has not worked, does not work, continues not to work, works more and more vainly with a payload of less and less and an appetite for more and more. The universe ? It merely makes no response. That is the nature of matter. It neither talks nor can make speech.

But the thing appeals. Hell does not. There is the cross-road for man, his will and his woe.

The other cross is the only alternative (cf. Answers to Questions Ch. 10, TMR Chs.  2 and  3).
It is God's woe for man's weal, but man must first take his hands off the wheel, and seek the will of God, for which He made him. Trusting in himself is like garbage trusting in the bag. It is garbage because it is dead; it is dead because it is severed from the source of life, it is severed because it sins, and refuses redemption. It shrivels (Mark 9) because that is the end, where spiritual life was, the heat of exposure arising,  while death wilfully unmet by mercy,  insists on coming, even to the delusion.

The beautiful thing is this: that the garbage is not so by its creation; by its misuse; by its fate: it is garbage because it INSISTS on not being redeemed, and so dies what is called the second death (Revelation 20). The first death, it applies to the body; the second is the exposure to reality of the fictitious, which cannot live a lie in the light.

WHY WILL YOU DIE! is the exhortation of God!

Let us hear it (Ezekiel 33:10-11):

“Therefore you, O son of man, say to the house of Israel: ‘Thus you say, “If our transgressions and our sins lie upon us, and we pine away in them, how can we then live?'

"Say to them: ‘As I live,’ says the Lord God, ‘I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn, turn from your evil ways! For why should you die, O house of Israel?’ "

*1 Cf. Barbs, Arrows and Balms Appendix IV), 30 - Highway to Hell,
The Kingdom of Heaven Ch. 8 (the Spirit of Envy) , Ch. 10, Part 2,
Repent or Perish Ch. 5,
Wake Up World! ... Ch. 6, SMR pp. 125ff., 925ff.,  News 37, 118, 121, 122, Secular Myths and Sacred Truth Ch. 8, Cascade... Ch. 5,
It Bubbles ... Ch. 11, for example.

*2 Cf. SMR pp. 707ff., 721ff., *11.

*3 Cf. SMR pp. 221ff. at *31, 226ff., 140ff., 108ff.,
Wake Up World! ... Ch. 5,
Stepping Out for Christ Ch. 10.

*3A

On myths, see:

SMR 202, 251, 252Hff., 305, 309-310, 315C-316A, 327, 332D, 378-385, 438, 443, cf. 934ff., 976, 999 with this note, 1025; and in
The Rest, News 111 (demythologising demythology cf. SMR pp. 374ff.),
Lead Us Not into Educational Temptation, Appendix, TMR 8, pp. 254ff.,
Answers to Questions Ch.  5 pp. 116ff.,
Wake Up  World! Your Creator is Coming ... Chs.  4,  5,
News  82, SMR 374-385, 252H-I, 422Eff., 999-1002C,
A Spiritual Potpourri Chs.  1-3,
Kingdom of Heaven Ch. 8;News 90;
Spiritual Refreshings  Ch. 16.
 

*3B
Of interest here is a summary after extensive reviews of many disciplines, in SMR pp. 422B:
 

Even when there is some element of spontaneity (and we men in part have a measure of it via our enduement with creative personality), there is need of a cause of the structure for this: which operates at its own level, all duly contrived, produced, conceived and constructed. No consideration of different ways of working removes in the slightest degree, the need, the necessity of causing what works. Nor does it remove the contradiction of imagining 'grounds' of the concept of causation, if not objective: a mere sophistry for begging the question. Calling into being on adequate grounds is, after all, causation. You can account for nothing by demolishing accounting: and scarcely speed its demise by assuming it. (Cf. pp. 332E-G supra.)

Objective causation, as we have seen, leads only to the transcendent, Almighty God who, in different domains and dimensions, has provided for a creation and a creative component, called man, indeed one both discrete and frequently indiscreet, whose insolvent insolencies include even this: that what is not there spontaneously produces what is; or this, that man caused causation; or even this - that a causeless base is the real cause, of what happens happening. Truly man is remarkable, when in full flight from God, for the works of pure fancy, fantasy and folly which he self-contradictorily dreams. That indeed, is what the Bible calls them - dreams (Jeremiah 23), the hallucinations of unholiness.

And the cause of all this hullabaloo, so often repeated as men seek a magic mirage to support their insupportable contentions, whether mythical or physical or whatever might be the current mode: it is a rebellion which try though it will, can never unmast the tower of reason from the ship of thought.³

Thus in physics we find this erratic passion, as also in biology and psychology: this irrational lust for result without reason. Just as in primitive iridescence of splendour, biology invents life by academic fiat, saying, Let there be Life, and there is not life, not even with man as mouthpiece, rather than matter; and just as psychology invents goodness, saying, Let there be goodness, and behold, from all this, no goodness arises, but merely a reductionism in thought which is only too aptly mirrored by the reduced morals of contemporary observation: so physics now has its turn. The universe must now likewise 'arise', with no causative interface, naked of ground, free of basis; deprived of observation: nor is law found for it; neither is means, nor basis for any of it. Frustration becomes the father of the universe!

The hilarity of it all is the more pointed for this: we are told the 'truth' of these magical potions from magical potentates who invent irrational 'reasons' while despising the integrity of reason; who tell us 'truth' while imagining scenarios not only necessarily deprived of truth, but in a system where it necessarily could not exist (cf. Ch. 3; pp. 30-41, 284-289, 299-316G, 321, 383-385 supra; 698, 934-936, 1014-1017 infra); who give reasons for unreason (cf. pp. 1-10, 30, 264-266, 284-310 supra, 999-1002A, Chs. 5, 10 infra) and grounds for groundlessness; who use what they abuse, and affirm what they dismiss in the very interstices of their thought. Self-contradiction always however has this delightsome result: contradict yourself, and others need not bother.
 

*5 Cf. Joyful Jottings 5 and 14, with
News, Facts and Forecasts 121 and 122.

*5A

See SMR 236ff., 224ff., Wake Up World! Ch. 6, Spiritual RefreshingsCh. 13. See also Spiritual Refreshings Ch. 16.
 

*5B Using the reference to SMR pp. 179, the reader finds the diametrical opposition of all thought of using cruelty FOR creation, instead of rebuking sin by exposing it. Theistic evolution and its spawn, the usual invasive forces which seek either to bypass, ignore or surge into scripture, in which case merely using it for philosophic purposes in a sort of grand theft and plagiarism, not merely ignores the text (cf. TMR Appendix, SMR pp. 485ff., A Spiritual Potpourri Ch. 9), but contradicts the theme, thrust and morality of the Bible inordinately: hailing from afar, it leads swiftly to anithetical religion.
 

The commencement of the SMR treatment at 179ff., appears below, to introduce you to the reading of it.

EXCERPT:

The special pleading of popularisers of the irrationalism of organic evolution makes it desirable to deal rather directly with this aspect, for the sake of clarity: you might say for clarity about charity. As the exponent of charity, Jesus Christ is equally Biblically presented as the co-Creator with the Father, to use the apostle John's words, of 'all things'; so that 'without Him was not anything made that was made.'

The crisis of collision is perfectly apparent - it is a matter of using power to protect or using power to delete (others) and advance (oneself)... and we turn to the scripture to prevent philosophic accretions posing as 'Christian'.

Apparent, then, from the Bible are a number of points strongly relating to theistic evolution. At once, one recalls that Scripture concerning Jesus Christ, which states:

"He, though He was rich, yet become poor, that we through His poverty might be made rich" (II Corinthians 8:9).

He paid a ransom to redeem those who, being penitent and having faith in Him, were n themselves wholly unacceptable.

Imagined (*42) evolutionary procedures, on the other hand, hold rather a strong relation with the doctrine that a creature, though it be strong - rich, possessed of power to secure its desires - yet will annul the life of another creature, if its own survival (or perhaps even its own satisfaction) is at stake... and this, it purports, is the way of creation! The given creature will secure itself; and the devil, or anything else that may happen to be in the rear, take the hindmost.

This amiable philosophy holds the view: the creature must survive.'Thou shalt survive' echoes its elevating exhortation! This is the extra-Biblical commandment, here biologically pronounced. If the reason for it is less obvious, the popularity of this call with Hitler, Stalin and an impactive, large segment of teachers and politicians, those very vocal in these areas, is too well known to deserve further comment here. (Biblically, this is the creation's "subjection to vanity" - Romans 8:20.)

The two procedures, Christ's and this one, may now be related. They differ roughly as do God and the devil, harmonise 1ike plus and minus, are akin, like light and darkness. In the way of Christ Himself, one dies for the unfit (in the sense of 'deserving damnation'- John 3:30-36, Luke 13:1-3); while in the other way, the creature takes what it can get... (You might almost paraphrase the spirit of it: 'And be damned to the consequences for the rest'!)

*6 See his books Reason in the Balance, and Darwin on Trial.

*7  Cf. SMR Ch. 2, pp. 140ff.., TMR Ch. 1,
A Spiritual Potpourri Chs. 1-9,
Wake Up World! ... Chs. 4-6,
Stepping Out for Christ Chs. 7-10 for example.

*7A Secular Myths and Sacred Truth Ch. 7. and Cascade...Ch. 3.

*7B For the data concerning Popper, see SMR pp. 305-308, 145-148, 105.

*8  Scientific method: cf. SMR pp. 140ff., 226, 251ff., 234ff., 307ff., 315Aff.,
TMR Chs. 1 and 8,
and see indexes,
in SMR, as such, and in The Rest as a sub-division under science.

*8A See the factual presentation in contextual environment, in  A Spiritual Potpourri Ch. 9, esp. *1. See also TMR Appendix for more detail. Dispensing with facts, whether in 'nature' or the Bible, is no way to progress anywhere good.

*9 See SMR Index for the multiplicitious illustrations and nature of this syndrome.
 

*10
Cf. Secular Myths and Sacred Truth Ch. 7, which covers this in detail,
SMR pp. 292ff., 257ff., Ch. 5,
Repent or Perish Ch. 4.
 

*10A
Indeed, it is just this now more than latent trend which has been increasingly exhibited as man probes, like some questing adolescent, intent on his powers, scheming ignorantly with the illicit, hoping as he strives, striving as he hopes, always wanting to be arriving, yet without his home from which he has come, like some some garageless car. Meandering, murdering, thirsting, bursting with energies untamed, resolve inflamed he careers; but the result can scarcely be called career by this stage, more a careering.

I AM becomes more and more nearly his inflated philosophy. It is precisely such a naturalistic myth which can lead to that ultimate solipcism, that utter disregard of reality, by which a man, called "the man of sin" (II Thess. 2:4ff.) is to rehearse his act before admiring humanity, and SHOW HIMSELF THAT HE IS GOD!

So do biblical predictions not only fulfil themselves, but prepare historically very often, with long warning if you are looking at all, a people for their judgment. It is like people in a canoe coming down the Niagara River, hearing a sound for quite a time, and feeling a vibration, so being warned; but feeling mighty and not at all to be intimidated by ANYTHING, proceeding as they row with great energy, over the head of the falls.

Proverbs 1:20ff. says it with incisive eloquence and rigorous realism.
 

*11

Cf. Dawn of Light Ch. 2, pp. 53ff., including the Scene,
News 121,
SMR pp. 732B, 743ff., 750Bff., with 374ff.,
News, Facts and Forecasts 8 - sham, shame and co.;  13 - symphony and seditions - two heady heads,  14 - deadly d's;
Repent or Perish Ch.   5 inventions in mind.

*12 The US, it was reportedly indicated, is now not a Christian nation, but a Judaeo-Christian-Islamic one! See the cited Chapter for this from ABC  News Radio report (red print helps identify).
 

*13 Let us consider here but one example.
 
 

In Secular Myths and Sacred Truth Ch. 8, we were looking at one source for endeavours, that of transcendent 'Nature', invested with deity, magnificently arrayed by imagination, but alas, like some beauty queen chosen for the wrong reasons, unable actually to perform!

One of the many chores which this humanistically sequestrated 'Nature' has to perform, one of the innumerable powers accredited to this idol that cannot speak, think or understand, but which through the provision of life, is in multiplied members endowed with instinctive exhibition of 'frozen thought', and in man contrived to be operative by creative brilliance, intellectual grasp, presented with the gift of understanding, spiritual perception, moral awareness, God-consciousness, wisdom's survey and error's blight (the negative of the photo!),  is this.

It must be made a maid of all work, for there is so very MUCH to be done. Starting from nowhere in particular, or simply nowhere at all, it has quite a feat to achieve. All these products must come teeming from its material grasp, and this itself, must come - the form of transmission is hard to conceive when nothing is the source - but from nowhere. Nothing without cause, can certainly be. Causeless, we can begin there. But there too we end!

'Nature' might be flattered, but it is supremely un-cooperative. Nothing of these kinds can it create; it merely plods along, and man proceeds along, just as made, without change of kind, without new inventions with new information, without further episodes, the equipment for them discernible in any way, the principles for them knowable at all, their procedures observed, their fitness accredited. Nothing is to be found. Thus when this collapse of mind known as naturalism proceeds, there is a lot to be done. It reaches everywhere, and finds nothing anywhere.

Hence it must serve, too,  in the fallacy of the dates. This is a sort of dance which has been invented by perverse human understanding, perverting practicality into unreality in the interests of the magic mystique of the magnificently foolish flop called evolutionism.

Thus enormous TIME is necessary. That is the normal sermon from naturalism. It is repetitive in the extreme, based on nothing, and achieves nothing. One is reminded of the days when at Scotch College as a chemistry student, one would hear: Smith, nought! It was the teacher's rather individualistic way of starting with the lowest mark, for the exam, as he brought out into the light of public air, the doings of the students in their test.

This work for 'nature' in prodigies of time, is similar. It achieves NOUGHT.

It is of course a mere misunderstanding, but as seen in *1 of Ch. 1 above, this is par for the course. If you divorce from God, then divorced in measure is all truth, the core and kernel of it, the viewing platform and the perspective of it, so that not only do you distort automatically, but your alienation as in Ephesians 4:17ff., Romans 1, is a ready source of self-defence, as of some desperate criminal in a law suit, moving here and there ill-advisedly, delinquently, as if to escape.

God exposes in practical detail such an attitude both in Malachi 2 and 3, the torturous excuses and manipulations, and in Jeremiah 2:31-37, Proverbs 1 and Isaiah 7, where the devious Ahaz in uninhibited vainglory, makes words serve one purpose, while his heart serves another.

It is not always conscious by any means. The scriptural attribution of blindness, sclerotic spirituality, reaches to the point of a pathology of principle so vast and so profound that endowed with arrogance, or endued with acrimony, it can declare infinity a zero, and a zero an infinity. You see examples in such scriptural sites as Isaiah 42:18ff., 48:3-8, and even good kings could wallow for a little, before being rescued from immersion in mud.

Thus Jehoshaphat - whose son was a monster among monsters, killing all his brothers for the sake of the crown and 'safety' within its purlieus - not once but TWICE followed the folly of his marriage to crucial collaboration with an unbeliever, by joining forces in war with apostate kings of the North, the sector of Israel which rebelled formally from the Lord, and working with kings of that land.

In the first case, he was almost killed by the treachery of his apostate partner (I Kings 22), and in the second, even the prophet Elisha called for music, before announcing the deliverance of the Lord for the straying monarch, declaring this. "If it were not that I regard the presence of Jehoshaphat, King of Judah, I would not look at you nor see you!" (II Kings 3:14). This word was to the improper partner for Jehoshaphat!

What! the grossly devious and delinquent son of King Ahab via an unbelieving wife, the now deceased King, the son himself now a murderer of distinction, namely young King Jehoram, who followed the ways of his apostate father, was he a right choice ? Was this Jehoram of Israel to the north, a fit companion in battle for good King Jehoshaphat of Judah! Heaven forbid... This almost fatal weakness of the latter, Judah's king,  his fall into fellowship with the forbidden, came to develop into something close to a kink, and it was this which led him twice into such false alliances with the North, just as Bush of the USA has a false alliance in Moslem lands, expressly handling the religious element the while (cf.  Red Alert ...Ch. 6, Cascade... Ch. 5 ).

It cannot be blessed (cf. Romans 16:17 with the above and see Cascade loc. cit, with Kingdom of Heaven Ch. 7).

Let us however now return from illustration of the desperations of biblically defined spiritual delinquency from the Lord, to the little matter of dates. Both attest making combinations and collaborations which are unfruitful!

It is remarkable what some people do in order to get dates. It is so with the affairs of the heart in romance. The slightest pretext will do, for the aroused emotions and desperate desire which motivates.

It is not limited, this desire in man, to such emotions. It occurs in the more profound devotion, or lack of it, to the Lord Himself, who very often compares the love for God with the love of man for woman or vice versa; for the love of God for man has created man with a potential for love.

In marriage, especially now that no-fault laws gloat over morality, it may degenerate into fraudulent sentimentality, not really valuing the other party so much as the emotion itself (not that sentiment rightly placed in purer quarters is anything but admirable). It may debase itself into disloyalty express and assured, as when one royal personage is reported to have declared of alliances outside marriage, in secret, that this is the way of men! It is not. It is the way of sin.

Man without God may DESPERATELY seek for a date of another kind, a chronological one: but with the same intensity, to propitiate the conscience, attenuate the arrogance or extend the sense of dominion in the false and febrile domain of inveterate imagination.

It is difficult indeed to find any other ground for the endless ignorings of data so tremendous in scope, varied in kind and amassed, which allow nothing in the billions, or millions of years, but only thousands for the age of the earth!

That, however,  is how the thing goes. To GET ALL THIS, we need TIME, gentlemen, TIME!

 

Its Magic

It reminds one of some Chinese business persons of one's acquaintance. (This is not suggested as specific, in any approach for Chinese persons, for whom one feels considerable cordiality as a race; but rather appears the particular proclivity of some  met, and as such, deserves its place, along with other perceptions of others with other features, whatever the race, elsewhere formed and expressed.)  As to these of whom one speaks: They do not believe this in commerce, it is clear. Desire is not taken for the result. On the contrary: They assign causes for results!

A house, said one, is not only a place to live: it is an investment. He bought several of them, and chose his districts with financial, if not spiritual, discernment. There was a massive price rise in houses in the city, and presumably he 'made' hundreds of thousands of dollars.

It was not, he would be quick to assure you, TIME, which did it. It was CHOICE, selection, wisdom, understanding of his own worldly sort (seeking such things as mandates, it seems), action, intelligence that did it. Time was a mere accomplice, not to the point. It did not create: it was a mere butt for action.

In this regard, the case is so. Time does not create anything. Intelligence IN TIME, as when we mature, that may create. WISDOM, spiritually pure and godly, in time may create greater depth of understanding and a more mature love, it is true. But the FORCE is not mere push; it is apt dynamic, directed intelligence, endued spirit, working with what IS, and what is appropriate and sufficient, namely God, not with what is irrelevant and laughable, a comic and derisible ditch for pearls!

No system creates: it merely illustrates. What it has, it gives. What it lacks, it cannot provide. Whether air conditioners, cars, cranes of computers, what is 'created' is precisely what is the enabling power resident within that system, and nothing more. There is absolutely NOTHING for nothing. When we say, thus, that the Gospel is FREE, it is true; but it did not cost GOD NOTHING! It cost the cross of Christ, the labours of endurance, the pure and pitiable cries to His Father (as in Hebrews 5:7); for He was not putty but man, and the bearing of sin is an infinite horror: yet He DID it because of who He was - and is. God is not defective; Christ, God as man,  did it. He did it with the full power of God; He did it with the full vulnerability of man, yet without sin (I Peter 2:22ff.).

Thus the passion for time is misdirected from the start. It is a reality without regality. In this sphere, it is irrelevant. (Cf. Ancient Words, Modern Deeds Chs.  9 and 13.)
 
 

Its Maid does not Co-Operate: Its Evidential Abyss
Relevant Data and Discipline

On the other hand, it is also contra-indicated by the evidence. That Magnificent Rock, Ch. 7, Section E, and Answers to Questions, Ch. 5 in section L and Appendix, SMR pp. S1ff., show some overview of grounds for this assertion. It is so. NOTHING can be understood of ALL the evidence except on a young earth notion. ALL can be understood however on just such an understanding.

There is only one  small major area of bitterly and astutely contested concern, the radioactive, in which specialised minds show a lack of concert, a variability and a brilliance which leaves the matter incapable of total resolution. What is known however emphatically removes the possibility of giving great age radiometric datings: the variables in this method, the uncertainties theoretically, or if you will, put differently, the mutabilities in some of the data presented as regulative of time measurement, are far too great for guesswork. They are themselves in need of measurement, and not all may be susceptible to this at all, as shown in the above references.

In this radiometric field, there is ONLY one sure result: the date of the foundation of this earth or the universe by this means,  is NOT KNOWN. It is presumption ALONE which can assign it.

There is however a coverage which meets the case, and in TMR above, this is noted, as is much further to cover the case more completely yet, and indeed from a logical perspective, entirely. That done, one notes that all then harmonises, from all methods of dating, whatsoever, with thousands of years, not millions, not billions. It is a simple fact that no other harmony is available. That in itself, in terms of scientific method, puts the biblical time of thousands of years as preferred. The two methods, from man's estimates and God's mouth: concur.

The bulk of evidence, taken as one whole in survey,  is clear and relatively simple, consonant only with a young earth. The rest, in this one area, is an arena of conflict, but with no current difficulty in the sense of disharmony. It is developing, as science must, and the current status quo is highly agreeable to all the other evidence, so that a coherent and unified scientific comment is available only from this direction, nothing else covering every item. The earth, quite simply, is comparatively young, if we are to follow all the canons of scientific method. That alone is what meets the whole scope of the case, and is contradicted by nothing.

The maid of all work, 'Nature' cannot even be requisitioned here, where physics strains at the leash for more understanding, and mathematics seeks to find repose. It is of the nature of the case that it should be so, as you seek to grasp the physical ultimates, and the more so when so many fecklessly imagine that these are THE ultimates, and try in vain to make them create, as if time and matter could account for the vast specificities* and galactic walls in the universe, which with many other features outlined in the above references, refuse to submit to such a slather of misrepresentation of their tasks, as the pseudo-divine naturalistic postulates would require.

Time does nothing but evince what is in it, if intelligence, intelligence, if wisdom, then wisdom, if brilliance of understanding, then brilliance, if meaning, then meaning, if truth, then truth, if judgment, then judgment. Man is in time and such qualities are in him, potentially, but only if he takes what is entirely beyond our time, God, whose these resources are, whence they came, He being their sufficiency, and indeed, the sufficiency of the entire universe which, without Him would have no cause, and causeless no chance of existence. In vain do they seek to make "nothing" king as we see in TMR Ch. 7 and Barbs, Arrows and Balms 29 and Cause. It really never could have had any future, which would make our time nullity; which manifestly it is not.

In vain, to they try to make 'nature' invent itself, then having made itself, make its qualities. This is mere magic, investing with the capacities not evinced ever, anywhere, in any way, systematically, in principle or in practice, in experiment empirically or in thought experiment noetically, in equipment or in its performance, what lacks them (cf. Repent or Perish Ch. 7, *2). Imagination without discipline (cf. SMR pp. 287ff., 293ff., 313ff., 315Aff., 249ff., 251ff.) makes a discipline without imagination. That is, when imagination does not suffer the disciplines of thought, it leaves its field evacuated of that realism which makes of imagination a sound and useful worker, and disenables a topic from being correctly termed scientific!

Otherwise, it is the febrile licence of the unlicensed, working magic for children, unfit for the sober works of mature mankind!

* See TMR Ch. 8, Sections E and F. Here detail is provided, in this fascinating area.

*14
See Causes. Cf. SMR Chs. 3 ,  5, TMR Ch. 6. See also Predestination and Freewill, Section 4.

*15