CHAPTER 6

News 103

THE EVACUATION OF COMMON SENSE

First, shut your eyes...!

It is sometimes instructive to pursue a scenario in the imagination!
It is however important to realise what IS imagination, and what is science falsely so-called.

It is quite legitimate to imagine a discussion.

The fact is, said my interlocutor, that you are without doubt ignoring some novelties of modern thought on this issue.

How very sad! came my retort. To think that the concept of negative energy, never observed, should not be mentioned (cf. Technical Journal of Creation, Vol. 16 (1), 2002, p. 33!

Let us then consider an aspect of this article. A major point made in it by John G. Hartnett appears just, and could be extended. Whereas, he declares, it was once said (Dirac) that "that which is not observable does not exist", these days "what is said is, 'I know my theory is right. Therefore anything required to make it work must also be right whether observable or not. ' "

As to Dirac's dictum, while its trend is robust compared with some of the febrile and factious fantasies of the present (such as gradualism in the face of the Burgess shale deposits cf. SMR pp. 234ff. and Wake Up World ...Ch. 6), it has the painful self-contradiction systematically present in all naturalism (q.v.). In the present, it is simply this: the 'theory' that what is not observable does not exist, is itself not observable in that vast reservoir of data, 'nature', but is a concoction, per se of no greater objectivity than the ravings of a drunkard. It is an occurrence, not a declaration of nature, or a finding within its observable workings! Hence this theory does not exist (by its own argument). But it does. Hence the theory is wrong.

It is of course true that this irrational dictum (as it stands) has a salutary element. While it is ludicrous in principle, in that for example, the desire for truth is not observable in the workings of nature and its laws, or that for accuracy of measurement,  and for that matter the desire for peace, or power, or the appreciation of beauty (cf. It Bubbles, It Howls, He Calls... Ch. 9) are not observable except in their effects - and such things as these are the very type of the pre-conditions of the theory in its musing survey of things: yet keen observation in any realm certainly is to be desired, if you are seeking to characterise it.

As to the nature of truth (such as is implicit not a little in the Dirac dictum, as cited), this  itself is not observable in nature, and the elements which proceed with it; and as to validity and aspiration for it: these too are not found as raw observable data in nature. Rather do they occur amid the phenomena of methodological 'holiness', as people are surveying events with the supremacy they seem to feel must be acknowledged in terms of the way the universe actually runs. These of course are wholly invisible things; and not merely do such things as these undoubtedly so MUCH exist that their results are pivotal for the world and its history, which is most observable; but they are the basis of all discussion, interpretation and meaning, at the human level. Indeed, such things can drive men to death through overwork, cynicism from frustration, and nations to death, through mad submission to such dictates of the spirit: yet there is one point that is a merit in it.

It is preferable, IF your domain is material events - such, for example as the chemistry of anger, what it produces in the body and so on - to have material data to which these are to be made to relate. If you can measure them qualitatively or quantitatively, that is one more facet of your observation. Domains have their ways. Thought has its validity harassment (for the wild) and chastening (for the unwary) and joy (for the godly, who have no problem here, since being in the truth, they can readily find its parameters continually self-confirmatory as well as unique cf. TMR Ch. 5). Material sciences too have their little ways: thus it is quite a good idea to be observant, since you are trying to assess, realise and relate to the modes of the thing; and hence to see ALL it does is desirable, and to see it accurately is better still.

Why be loose ? Why build on mere flights of imagination, when matter does not imagine ? (cf. SMR pp. 80ff.). Why imagine that it does when it lacks the liberties and active attestations of their use, or capacity for use, which are inherent in thought ? (cf. SMR pp. 315A-316G).

Thus, if your laboratory field of interest is matter, why not account for things, in terms of their interactive resultants, in the light of what they do, rather than what they do not, and worse, what they attest they cannot because of lack of equipment for the purpose! (Cf. SMR Chs. 1 , 2, 3, 10). Yes, THAT part of the old-fashioned approach had merit. In short, know what you are talking about, and talk about what you know.

However when one says 'old-fashioned', one refers not to the enormities of the early Greek philosophers, who related very much, at the fundamental level, to the wild harassments of evidence in the interests of impossible theories, which is so normal today in the usages of science at the ultimate or religious  front, when it there erects tents of construction on the top of logical vacuums and wonders why the (scientific) advocates never agree, with each other or in the end with the facts. They forever change, sometimes dismissing as puerile or utterly inept, the labours (and at times even the laborers) of yesterday.

In this field, the article by Hartnett (creationist in emphasis) is not evincing much delight in vagrant theories, whether of Hoyle or others (as he reviews the work, A Current Approach to Cosmology, in which Hoyle is one author). This is to be commended!

Despite its meritorious aspect (for what concerns it), the dictum of Dirac, whatever may have been its own intended point of application, is as far from wisdom if allowed to roam unqualified, as anything else could possibly be. It may be useful for a point of contrast, but it is futile if it endeavours to stand alone!

There is however another feature which arises in any discussion in this sort of area or arena. Thus the Big Bang, which is really a virtual refinement of Descartes' bombastic nonsense, the concept of everything, whatever its source (Descartes did not elect to dispense with one, wisely, but others do, being thus merely irrational), is no more or less ludicrous than Descartes at the operational level (cf. TMR Ch. 7, esp.  D and E). Laws do not come by chance. Codes to not arise by indifferences. Logical cohesion does not introduce itself as an afterthought of what does not think (cf. A Spiritual Potpourri Chs. 1-9, Repent or Perish Ch. 7).

Thus in particular, the concept of the Big Bang (cf. SMR 76ff., 79) has always been outrageously naive and simplistic, and its contra-evidential aspects, some of which the article of Hartnett notes, do nothing to enhance its fundamental omissions in the arena of logic, and indeed commonsense.

It is however, for all that, in one point in alliance with fact. The necessity for a cause (cf. SMR Chs. 1,   3  and  5, Predestination and Freewill  Section IV and Causes) makes necessary the provision of a commencement of our material universe. Some even face the facts long enough to note that the dissipation of energy being observable, in terms of its availability, and the sources observable being limited, a commencement is indicated. This is an empirical theme in parallel with the logical necessity noted above.

Hence the provision of anything which relates to attestation of a beginning is per  se in concurrence with this fact, however distorted and ludicrous may be its imaginary ramblings thereafter. If the Big Bang, on more research, begins to lack even this, in the midst of so many hypothetical ifs and maybes, as are made to appear from various scenarios of desire, so be it. Nothing alters that fact  that all attestation of a start, per se,  is to the point, whatever its variable standing as scientific nostrums in the field change, assured assertions  alter, as they do at a rate so amazing, now affirming this portentously, now denying it, now qualifying it, that it is strange that any rational being does more with this abrasive scientistic field than observe its frustrations and follies, and bypassing these, proceed on scientific method instead. Contradiction is the eternal consequence of trying to start something from nothing, directly and admittedly, or actually and surreptitiously,  whether at once or in secretive imports and inserts of the relevant powers, forces, laws and actualities in underlying style, required for any such buildings.

In so  doing, they might then note method of the naturalistic fallacy and fantasy (cf. The gods of naturalism have no go!), its procedures, its interim values and then look to the underlying logic for what stands, to the actual empirics for what is operative in more than the imagination,  and with relief look to the demonstrable word of God, since it never changes nor has to, always being smoothly and magnificently as indispensable for wisdom as irrefragable to reason and agreeable to certain evidence.

Strange, yes, but readily accountable! That is part of the cohesion of true knowledge, that it meets EVERYTHING in one perspective with no ad hocs and no intrusions (cf. Ephesians 4:17-18, Romans 1:17ff., 5:1ff., Ephesians 2, and see Biblical BlessingsCh. 7, News 87, The Biblical Workman Ch. 2).
 
 

NEGATIVE ENERGY AND VACUOUS ENNUI

Let us take an interesting illustration from Hartnett's article. Thus the work being reviewed by him, makes much, it appears, of the point that negative energy has to fit into some schema in magnificent clothes, being a sort of counterfoil to positive energy, so that all is nice and balanced, and can be seen this way and that in some sort of interactive harmony. Yet the mere fact that this negative energy has never been observed, as is well in tune with the general flow of the review, does not seem to concern the authors of the book! You build, for what you see, in terms of what it does, NOT in terms of what it is not seen to do, and does not attest power to do, and is not induced to do!

But let us leave this so normally outrageous aspect of the naturalism of the book under review in the TJ article, and look in the arena of its critique, at what is even more ludicrous, lacking in common sense if you will, irrefutable logic if not.

The origin of the nicely harmonious (if not observable or sensed in any way), imaginary universe, which is for some reason allied to this one, with all the various laws of its operation (like a cricket match with rules), its imaginative negative energy and its observable positive energy and the like, its habit of doing this and that, emitting this and that, doing so for this and that reason, in this and that schema, and in this and that realm of operational containment and constraint, constitutes as rapacious an act of intellectual robbery as the imagination of the Big Bang model, down the line. There,  everything conveniently invents itself whether in blast or gradual mode, as if all you need for fine porcelain cups is rough clay, and for those with just the thinness for the most discriminating lip, is a universe and time.

To have the clay, however, and the rules for furnaces, and the furnaces themselves, and the phenomenon of heat, not to mention the stability of the earth for having things to settle down nicely, the interaction of coherent rules and laws, to enable things to catch each other in the ways they do, in one cohesive realm of thinkable action, to which the astronomers are in fact addressing their own thoughts, so that the fit is so nice in prospect, even if the naturalistic premises make it so ludicrously mutant down the decades: this is a thing or rather, a universe given! It is a question begged, it is order invented from nothing, form and format from nowhere, what starts drawn from the sky of imagination, its pressures and potentials landed from some imaginary platform which does not need to exist, it is reality invented by imagination, undisciplined, reason undesired, an exercise in futility, a fiasco of the scientistic, forgetful of the scientific method itself, hungry for power,  disdainful of contrary evidence on the one hand, and necessary reason on the other. 

As well give endless mountains of food to starving India, Aids-control for ruinous Africa, peace to Afghanistan AS CREDENCE TO SUCH ANTI-RELIGIOUS FLIGHTS INTO THE IRRATIONAL. What arrives needs, outside the mysteries of myth,  what it takes, and that here is understanding, power, law and predictability of events so that plans may mature wisely and the like, and these delimitations and dynamics, their source, not from nothing or question begging, but from what is sufficient and not adventitious. You always need what it takes to get it, and what it takes is not to be found nominally, as if words to it: you need the power, the premises^*1 and the concerted action.

THIS is just as ludicrous an omission, as is the lack of evidence of what is assumed within it, namely the nice devisings of ever superior and more advanced, complex law ... except, of course, now it is seen as Stephen Jay Gould (loc. cit.) admits so nicely, even these (from their sort of aspect, logically) hideous anomalies of the facts, the most advanced laws squander themselves into existence at the earliest phases of recorded life, or thereabouts (depending on the latest change in the various derisible wriggles of statutory seeming change in naturalistically vexed 'science').

They do not even have the materialistic decency to WAIT, but coming squalling in like heptuplets, in sophisticated masses, all at once! So too at the earliest phase of any imagined universe, there is all that it takes to have what it gets, and alas, matter has neither the grace to exhibit this power, even when intelligence prods it, nor the interstices to reveal it. Hoyle merely whisks into the imagination a symbol, but ignores the necessities associated with it. You need a substantial reality for the symbol, and a modus operandi, that its works might be found. Space is not its author, for this is itself merely part of the thing to be accounted for.

Common sense has long been held captive and to ransom by science falsely-so-called (cf. Ch. 3 above),  and the endless endeavours, as that cluster of Hoyle and co. here, to wreck some theory of the latest conception of fashion, with some theory of the next conception of fashion, itself as ever in this field, eagerly awaiting its own seducer: these are,  quite objectively, like the fashions in Paris of ladies' dresses. It pays. It arrests. It provides interest. It never ends. It clothes the moment, and variety is its name^*2.

No doubt, early background radiations may again enjoy some renewal as the lutte à mort continues its lunges and counter-lunges, each materialist tearing down the fashion of the preceding. That, it is the flair of science when it engages in its weakness (like a mannequin taking up throwing the hammer at the Olympics - you marvel not at her failure of strength, so much as of wisdom!), namely trying to ignore logic and in the process, inventing what it neither sees nor can manufacture and then talking about observation^*3.

What however does not alter is the logical necessity^*4.

The reason it does not alter is this, that God, who is demonstrably there, has imposed it both on the material, the mental  and the spiritual. They exhibit the impress but not the impresser, who having made matter, is not  a few threads of, but the weaver. The author is not susceptible to the textual representation; unless, as it his mode, he speaks. What he says, this is apart from his works. So the Bible is apart from the creation. It is this which speaks; the creation attests. Together they move as one.

The prevenience and creation by God, of the full variety of His desire, this also is the reason why the works of mind, matter and spirit cohere so well, and reason has such constructive power; while the breach of it in any of these domains, has appalling consequences. The rationalist can even abuse THIS fact, by seeking to remove God and replace Him with reason; but then there is no reason for the reason, one good reason for rejecting rationalism as just as pedantically inept and inert as naturalism. A universe of mind, matter and spirit where reason operates is one which requires not only itself - a deposit that evidentially does not dynamise worlds, whereas it inhabits this one, as in SMR Ch. 1  - but its reason, and reason for its use of it, as in SMR Ch. 3.

It is indeed mindless and unmindful of the evidence to desire a universe which itself invents mind, and then imagines up spirit, having first decided not to bother with reason for its own place in the material part of the order of things, at the outset. Truly man is a marvel, and hell is comprehensible, not merely in terms of the morally abhorrent without absolution, but of rational obfuscation, without clarification.

Even at this level, however, there is beauty. The beauty of it all is this, that just where the necessity lies, there lies also the dramatically confirmatory, elegantly verificatory Bible, in itself incomprehensible without the same Author that the universe has (cf. SMR Chs. 5, 8-9), pellucid when adopted. Moreover, the majesty of it all goes yet further: for just where both of these lie, in terms of colligation, there is Christ, limned by the prophets, outlining the course of history, providing the solution^*2 to man's problem. That ? It is sin. The solution: its bearing and bearing off (I Peter 2:21ff.^*5,   3:18).

All problems thus cohere in one concentrate; all solutions come in one unity. It is the only unity man is going to get, that of the Author who made him. It does not have to be invented; no Ph.D's are needed for its depiction. It has been here some 3500 years. Meanwhile, man loves to spree without it, as if death were his glamour and defeat his desideratum.

One was speaking to a young aboriginal girl recently, and she was evoking an interest in the things of God. Desiring to illustrate liberty, I noted that it would be a great day if she could make a doll which could look her in the eye, and say , NO! and I HATE YOU! - as attestation that it was no mere puppet, not of its emotional negativity towards here knowledge and care of it!

Oh! she replied, I would throw it in the rubbish bin. That, said I, is hell.
 
 

NOTES

*1

That of course is one of the points where Hoyle as an individual,  for all his errors, is right: intelligence is a primary requisite cf. SMR pp. 226ff., 252Eff.,  but see also SMR pp. 422H-L, where 'nature' is burdened with this undiscoverable asset, being in observable terms, as rational ones, merely recipient and non-inventor as it proceeds in its statutory course. Hoyle's insistence is right, but his allocation of location is contra-evidential, and irrational cf. SMR Ch. 1.

*2
Dr Harold Slusher, in his Origin of the Universe gives one reason for this phenomenon. Three excerpts from The Shadow of a Mighty Rock, pp. 76-78, give some elements of his picture:
 

Further, Slusher indicates; "If it takes as long to form such a simple object as an interstellar grain as the calculations indicate under the most hopeful conditions (that do not actually exist at all), how can the notion of huge ages for the stars and galaxies have any credibility and be taken seriously ? Effects such as evaporation, sputtering, and vapor pressure would seem to destroy any grains that might be formed"- (p. 46).

 

Rod Burnitt's article in TJ Vol. 16(1), 2002,  noted above, shows the enduring untested and ad hoc assumptions being made in this field, meandering listlessly like a giant hulk in the languid seas. If all sorts of things which are not found, if all sorts of examples not seen, if testimonies from the heavens not given, were to be given, then things astrally would be different. No doubt. As to particle formation and star formation, however, the actual scene and any observable developments are of another kind. Imaging what you want to support a theory is not far different from Just So Stories, of Kipling fame, with the difficulty that this modern variety is not intended for children.

A little later we have this:

Similarly negative effect on the time scale often assumed comes from the existence of theoretically 'recent' cases which yet incorporate allegedly ancient, developmental materials in stars; and this despite the theoretically vast differences between the ages of the stars, on a scenario hostile to a young universe. Citing similar spectra for many stars which, on evolutionary assumptions should be among the oldest and the youngest, and considering the supposed trend for 'various heavier chemical elements' which on that basis, 'should be formed in the stars', Slusher contrasts this with the facts, noting indeed that stars that might be deemed the 'oldest' show 'abundance of the elements from carbon to barium' two magnitudes less than is the case for 'younger' stars, such as the sun, when theoretically they should be greater.

 

Further on comes this point:

 

Thus (p. 8), Slusher speaks of the 'instantaneous snapshot' of the universe which the present situation presents. But, depending on actual distances, and the speed of light (the former with its models - p. 78 infra {and see TMR Ch. 7, Section E, Endnote 2, with Barbs, Arrows and Balms 15}; the latter with a history in fact under enormous controversy, and affecting 'brave' time and age estimates dramatically), we are seeing events occurring in distant yesterdays, different object distances giving different 'times' to 'view'! What DID happen ? Because of entropy, the law based on observation and found in related theories of many kinds, it is not possible to reconstruct the past on this sort of information. All that can be said is that it was far more complex and highly organised then than now. Perhaps as illustration, one could conceive of trying (without other present examples to 'go by') : what a functioning appendix looked like some thousands of years before it is first seen or dug up.

 

'Reconstruction' into projected former times from the degenerative and rotted, disintegrated and dispersed back to the constructed and operational, when theoretically you cannot (to revert to the actual case) see what it was, becomes an exercise in imagination. If it also rejects current realities of entropy, it is a contra-evidential piece of fantasy, not even remotely related to science, or to any data from this universe. In all fairness, that is precisely what science fiction is. The impact on such considerations on logic, and vice versa is considered elsewhere..

.

When the very character of the universe is the QUESTION, then ASSUMPTIONS about the character of the universe at time t_{1 or} t₁₀₀₀ are simply not scientifically useful. The ONLY time such things become useful according to scientific method, is this: when a series of verificatory observations singularly favour a series of conceptions, such that no other conceptions meet with this favour. This renders an hypothesis worthy of consideration, whilst negative findings do not achieve this lustre! They attest the pertinacity of the faithful, not the perception of the diligent.

IF things were of the current mode, or not the current, represented some modification of the current type, and IF there were forces not now known, or of such and such a specifiable but not discoverable type, which do not command attention by specifiable derivations actually found with a distinguishing 'finger print' that if not definitive, is notable, then such knowledge might occur. It would at least reach to the plane of worthiness for thought.

SINCE however the QUESTION for, scientific archeology of the heavens,  if you want a term, is to IMAGINE what is to be found, its measurable relationship to the other type, the one that digs,  is more mirthful than worthy. Imagine people finding in their imaginations, multitudes of attestations about former methods of political rule, and on the basis of some theory not in the least attested by evidence, projecting what this would have 'required' of the political domain, and then actually TEACHING such preposterous presumption as if it were something in some way divergent from political mythology! So is it with this vain domain of nature myth. Archeology has its problems with illegitimate romancing, to be sure, but of this kind of dimension of licence, it has little knowledge! The illustration merely attests the licence.

If actual archeology  did, to the same degree, then its findings would be far more vagarious than they actually are, and its continual and febrile renovations would be perhaps as consistently unreliable, and persistently self-assured and equally chronically variable, as is the case in the 'astronomical' realm. Pure imagination in such a 'science' is pure farce.

The facts continue to frown on the follies, which never meet their 'solution' since the liberties taken for the sake of the anti-evidential theories held in the overall view, resist the logic which denies them. The particular application is merely the mutative assignation of the imaginary. As such, its mutations, which are most real, that is, the constant movement of the fictions of thought that are supposedly to relate to the Cinderella shoe of the actual universe, which is never amused, could almost call for a graph to illustrate their psychic impetus from decade to decade! Thus there is always change in this field, not merely from more data, but from more collisions with vagrancies of the past. Since no combination of dogma and observation can be stable in such a situation, the actualities of theoretical dynamics, the rate of change of thought,  are themselves fascinating, and more instructive, at this specialised field, than the products of fantasy.

In this field, at this nature myth level, the very mutability, and the very ludicrous combination of arrogant self-assurance and abject renunciation in just a few years, instead of being a testimony to progress, is a verification of domineering imagination, set where it does not belong, not following what is actually found, or using the razor of truth, to eliminate ANY hypothesis (if it could be called one!) which does not conform to all facts. Nature does not produce nature, since this is simply begging the question: the question is WHAT produced it.

The answer is in terms of adequacy for ALL that is found as in SMR; and the non-answer is in this industry of permutations and combinations which are to do business in deep waters, so that what are the activities of the actual, have to be forced to become the institutive work of what has to have ground for its own existence, before it can be, and so do anything. The building of empires of order from what is empirically non-existent, hence always surmised, and logically impossible, is a task for the Emperor's clothes fable. All admire, since it is fashionable to do so; but the clothing, quite simply is not there. Nothing that makes itself from nothing is logically possible, actually visible or linguistically meaningful; and what makes itself without the creative capacities to embrace the thrust of law, the criteria of code and the realities of the geometrical, chemical, physical, on the one hand, the mental and originative on the other, and the spiritual and volitional on the other, or to display them in any single mode: this is merely a pseudo-scientific adventure into the impossible, with results proportionate and co-ordinate.

It comes from nothing, and comes to nothing.

In this, it is all one: the wrong one.
 

All that essentially is left, in such a case as that, in this particular field, is a universe of which the creation and sustaining is the most evident reality, logically necessary, empirically attested. What it took, is what it takes, in all the categories of reality, including that with which to donate the exquisite perquisites of logic, to a universe which 'respects' them, and at their use, for hundreds of years, has paid heavy dividends. The disparate character and ingenious devices of the total realm of creation, and of each section of it, has been considered before; and efforts to 'unify' it all have failed simply because it is not one. There is no internal colligation available.

Quite simply, this is because, as with our own creations of great variety, with underlying principles nonetheless, that are similar: it is One who made it. While His thought is endemic, His imagination has made, as we make, many different things, which have some common principles. This obsession with investing categorical the realm of what is made, to what makes, is contrary to all knowledge, logic and evidence. It is unproductive and corruptive. It simply does not work.

See for further reading, SMR Extension on Great Burials, pp. 422Eff., Wake Up World ... Ch. 5,  and Ancient Words, Modern Deeds Ch. 9, which cover in some detail, various aspects of this brazen imbroglio.

The solution to the 'problem' of trying to make what is made, from itself, will always be one; the solution is to take it as it is, and to brand the ridiculous what it is, mere machinations with magic, devoid of basis, without attestation, a sort of parallel to seeking to find from an embryo, what food stuffs made it, a reductionism so fantasied, an omission so categorical, that were it not that men find condemnation for the omission of the God who put them here, for the decline from His redemption, it would equal and far surpass the flat earth society, leave stunned all that Alice ever made of her wonderland and evoke cartoons so comical, that it would have some rolling on the floor...  and others weeping for the race.

When the justice of God however is considered, the cost of the comedy is tragic to the epitome of all sorrow.
 

*3

 What is it like ? it is like someone cultivating a belly resembling not a little a pot-bellied stove, and talking in lecturing severity, on diet.

*4 Cf. Repent or Perish Ch. 7.

*5
This in I Peter is so summary, succinct and pithy:
 

"For to this you were called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that you should follow His steps:

“Who committed no sin,
Nor was deceit found in His mouth;

"who, when He was reviled, did not revile in return; when He suffered, He did not threaten, but committed Himself to Him who judges righteously; who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness—by whose stripes you were healed. For you were like sheep going astray, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls."
 

This is spoken of course to Christians (I Peter 1:1), but it is applicable to all who come to Christ in faith, to receive Him, who died the solution to the pernicious plagues of sin, rose from the grave, the resolution of the meaning of life, the provision of its power and peace,  and the Ruler to be and constitution of the only just society that will ever be (cf. Isaiah 11, Revelation 21-22).