at times assertive and corruptive, at others unperceived,
like mosquitoes that fly in an unguarded window;
but the direction of the result is towards one incline,
though those afflicted are often able to disengage rapidly, and suffer but little!
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CHAPTER TWO
DRIFTWOOD CAN STILL BURN
DRIFTING IN ITS GENERAL FLOW
Drifting downstream above the Niagara Falls might be enlivening, romantic, pleasant; but it is deadly. There is a time to dream and it is not where life is concerned, palpable and intrusive! The architect may have his dream, but to have it while on high scaffolding, inspecting work, and configuration would be a dizzy act. Baalam had a dream, where much money was an ingredient, an impetus, and much obedience to the Lord was an idea, a preference, which was to be seen in his talk.
When it came to his walk, he pursued the money despite the word of the Lord, which had told him concerning the project in view NO, do not GO! Even an ass was used to instruct the erring prophet, the ass facing the angel's sword. When Balaam learned of his peril he did not turn back, no not even then; for it seems he had some dream that perhaps ... just perhaps ... this might be the most profitable enterprise of his life!
So he drifted until God used him to proclaim blessing where the King of Moab, seeking to employ him to curse Israel, had hoped the opposite. In fact, constrained even in his error, he made one of the predictions of the Messiah! Moab was distressed! Eventually, as we saw in the last volume, he appears to have given to Moab advice on HOW to corrupt Israel, rendering his two-faced relationship with the Lord a thing odious and infamous! (cf. Let God be God! Ch. 10, II Peter 2:1-12, Revelation 2:14). The drift ministering time, became the crash ministered judgment. He name is used as a symbol of greedy corruption. His corpse was left early, on his decease. Drift may lack dynamic; the result may not.
Again, Demas is noted by Paul in II Timothy 4:14 as having forsaken the Christians, having loved this present world. However in Colossians 4:14 as in Philemon 24, we see him as part of Paul's group in action! It seems that drifting into this or that frame of mind, he eventually was entirely subverted, so that his hearing not having been mixed with faith (cf. Hebrews 4), his way fell like an aircraft without power, from the heights of near approach to divine fellowship, to the trough of mere self-satisfaction.
Well does one remember when ministering in the United States, a young minister equipped with a magnificent church building and a good congregation, speaking of the funds this author then received (admittedly minimal) as a just index to one's value! He seemed unduly sensitive to such considerations, and strangely evaluative! It was not so long, however, before one heard that he had left the church in company with a choir girl, to sell cars.
Drifting in morals, in thought, in dreams, in aversion, in grumbling or whatever, is a daring escapade: if you analyse the nature of drift, you find it brought ruin to Israel often enough (cf. Numbers 16:1ff., 14:26ff., cf. Psalm 106). A spirit of grievance had deadened their hope, invaded their convictions and made their way complex, even in the end so spurious that they failed to enter the promised land itself when, at the end of a veritable tunnel of miracles, they saw the light, the last step NOW ready for them!
One of the most effective possible ways to avoid blessed experience of and work for the Lord, is to grumble, to complain, to be less than whole-hearted, in short, to drift.
DRIFTING IN ITS DEADLY END
In Matthew 23, accordingly, you find Christ condemning as none before, the Pharisees and scribes, the obscurantist deviationists who knowing much, perverted more, seeing much, were blind to more, having much, insisted on adding to the word of God, suppressing it by clever or even crafty conventions so that, as Christ put it in Mark 7, they made void by their traditions the word of God! Religion did not save them, but mere gave opportunity for their drifting hearts to find a boat in which to lie as the Falls approached.
Theistic evolution is another such case (cf. SMR pp.195ff., 179ff.). Drifting with the tide of fanciful evolutionary thought, never verified, never programmable, never doing us the favour of occurring in its outputs in the laboratory, always hoping, never finding, its schools competing and slating one another not without reason, since all are wrong, it has offered a boat situation for some who are still in the church, perhaps even members or ministers.
Ah! they say, entering into this drifting denial of God's word; and like Balaam finding some way of trying to excuse their 'tolerance' as if it were not rebellion against the word of the Lord (cf. TMR Appendix, ), they try to combine the imaginary power of the universe to make itself, before it is there, or despise reason, to have it there as a gift from nothing, in a sea of confusion with various divine acts, as if to exaggerate the monumental character of their ship of confusion in a sea of blasphemy (cf. SMR pp. 208ff., 79ff. 'friendship with facts').
This they do, contrary and disquieted, self-contradictory and in competing mutually hostile evolutionary camps (cf. Wake Up World! ... Chs. 4 and 6, SMR pp. 211ff., 199ff., 226ff., 234ff.) and thus persecutory like Saul of old: contrary to each other, to all scientific law and all observation, all investigation of equipment, all rationality and causality, with an elfin existence then to be attributed to the Lord!
It is a farce from the first, a fiasco in the end (cf. SMR pp. 121ff., 179ff, A Spiritual Potpourri Chs. 5,8, 9, TMR Ch. 8, Appendix 1, Wake Up World! Chs. 4-6, News 16, Barbs, Arrows and Balms 14, Beauty for Ashes 3, Biblical Blessings Ch. 7 and see SMR index).
DRIFTING IN ITS VERY VARIED SITES
A) an ill-suited incursion
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At times the
drifting is in life, at others in doctrine, at times assertive and corruptive, at others unperceived, like mosquitoes that fly in an unguarded window; but the direction of the result is towards one incline, though those afflicted are often able to disengage rapidly, and suffer but little! |
Sometimes the surging of a culture even enters unknown into the words of someone quite alien from it, so that it becomes like a virus infection from without, to be purged.
Unfortunately, the often most helpful work of Dr Sarfati has in one point been rather marred by the intrusivist limitation applied to the text of I Timothy 6:20. This is found in one errant page in his very useful book, Refuting Evolution 2. It is a very small section of his book, but from an exegetical point of view, it is too important to overlook. The better something is, the more important it is not to omit improvement. In heaven, nothing will need to be improved; but it is not there yet.
In this cited work, Refuting Evolution 2 pp. 217-218, then, we learn that the notable phrase of warning in this verse, does not refer to organic evolution. Strictly the phrase used, duly of course to be understood in modern English as in all translations, since this is what we speak, does indeed refer, though not exclusively, to organic evolution. Knowledge includes science as a sub-section so that the term here used is broader but not narrower than 'science'; while on the other hand, 'science' as used in the spiritually most relevant fashion, does indeed now involve itself outside the strict domain of scientific method by abuse of terms and domain. Indeed, in the process, as will be noted, it violates this method, thus perfectly fitting the warning in Timothy.
Thus this phrase is MOST relevant, MOST applicable, and indeed it is so in terms of a long strain of naturalistic, fraudulent propaganda and philosophy, of which this modern variety, the science FALSELY so-called is but one.
This, as shown in Cascade 3, relative to an earlier version of this view, is not in its coverage a correct statement. The reference cannot be truncated in this way. This phrase in I Timothy, to be sure, does not apply exhaustively or specifically to organic evolution, any more than the phrase 'wife abuser' applies exhaustively or exclusively to men who beat or bruise their wives in a variety of ways, of which this is merely one characterisable fashion for it. That term COVERS it however, very well.
So here, the term 'science falsely so-called', in the old English language of the AV, should indeed in our modern English, simply for clarity, be rendered 'knowledge falsely so-called.' There is nothing in the least difficult about that. That specific form and formula for knowledge gathering, that specialised and often useful mode called now by the term 'science' is indeed NOT the specialised term, nor does the term used have that specialised meaning. It does however COVER IT, and the total formula of words in I Timothy 6 covers it exceedingly well, substantively and not peripheral, being totally applicable.
In this way in the text noted, the treatment of a minor semantic error in terms of older English, readily corrected, grows to a significant expository omission, so unhappily allowing the impression of a diminution of the biblical warning despite the actual text.
How readily does culture degradation penetrate, even where it is explicitly, by intention, excluded! It can influence words or even thought, unless extreme care be taken, to the point that it becomes a sort of implicit propaganda; and in this case, rarely in history has such intensive, ruthless and crude propaganda been mounted for so long as by those proponents of organic evolution whom, in their place, Dr Sarfati exposes very often with great acumen.
Like a mist unnoticed to blow the craft of thought to the jagged rocks of error, this cultural inculcation works. In fact, and this is even more important relative to the word of Dr Sarfati on this point, we need to realise that biblical terms, what the writer (physically, unless he had an emanuensis) Paul, may or may not have had in mind is not relevant to the question of the ENTIRE scope of what is written. Paul indicates that the words and the substance are GIVEN by the Author who is God (I Corinthians 2:9ff.), and vain is it to let it appear that God is tele-psychiatrically or psychically analysable as to what He had in mind.
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"For who has known the mind of the Lord ? Or who has been His counsellor ?" |
He pertinently asks, inspiring Paul! (Romans 11:34).
The only sure path is to accept what HE CAUSED TO BE WRITTEN. Then one must exegete this. That, it is a duty whether it be to friend or foe, a responsibility before God.
To be sure, humanistic, liberalistic, old-fashioned theology loved so to specialise on the current, the contemporary, often with explicit exclusion of any miraculous inspiration or divine intention other than the immediate, that it would actually do such things, make such assertions ON PURPOSE. The generation that is heir to its over-wrought and under-thought follies is often exposed to such triviality.
Making the claim as to what a writer means, beyond his words, however, whether with Shakespeare or the Bible, is merely an intrusion of other minds into the mind of the author. It acts, whatever the intention, as if to determine this apart from the words, as if knowing that they are more or less expansive than they in fact are, because of assured knowledge of what the writer was thinking, in terms of our own cultural misconceptions or aversions.
When it comes to the all-embracive mind of God, the actual author of I Timothy 6:20, God whose prophetic exploits are His alone, it even more, infinitely more improper to imagine, our mini-minds proposing their midget understanding in the presence of what He actually said, as if to determine it beyond what is said. Even more, if possible, is it necessary to be content with what is written from His expansive knowledge, than is the case with our mere colleagues.
Further, this is mere expansion of the very simple point of being responsible for one's own utterance, not vicariously but directly! : for what was intended by the words is what was written, and there is no exclusion written. Moreover, as shown in Cascade ... Ch. 3, there was over the preceding centuries to the writing of I Timothy, a vast philosophic background to the knowledge falsely so-called phenomenon, in mysticism, in arrant and arrogant reductionist naturalism and the like.
It touched on eminently 'scientific' sorts of surmises, at least as feasible - though wholly irrational and amusing at times - as is organic evolution, that black-guard of truth and assassin of reason, which has us believe, just like those ancients, in what is never seen, never duplicated, never derived from the very structure and principles of whatever field, whether this be such as matter - or diverse imagined spirits of different worlds and so on.
It had varied then as it has varied now. It is the endeavour to escape God which acts in all naturalism, like a form of embracive Communism among men, as if to ignore the MAKING and DISTRIBUTION of the products on the part of the producer, allowing merely the grabbing of what is there with desire on the part of those who desire. When it comes to God, this ordered universe, this machination of machinations, this myriad of brilliances that outshines all of the works of man, quite objectively, then robbery is on a highway indeed.
To divorce the product from the Producer is a wonderful way to get, gain, grab and run with it and with, as have the tyrants desired for millenia, now with more, now rather less of the globe under their jack-boot heel. Why grab from God ? why, there is so much to gain, that thought in such exploits of fantasy becomes intoxicated, and others soon swig away to their delusion (cf. II Thessalonians 2, Romans 1:17ff.)
Organic evolution is merely ONE of the many mystical, unscientific, anti-evidential, wholly unverified and much anti-verified oddments in history of naturalism! As such, it is, to be sure, somewhat more specific than some, though no more verified!
We cannot imagine that human reason did not work till Francis Bacon, however much discipline needed to be applied in the wider and broader schema of philosophy, such as the teleological evolution to a type, of Aristotle, or the more limited naturalistic but individual concepts Parmenides or Heracleitus, or Democritus (q.v., cf. TMR Ch. 7, Wake Up World! ... Ch. 6, Spiritual Refreshings Ch. 13), in turn.
While the highly practised forms of reason were even formalised in some ways by Aristotle, centuries before Christ and over a millenium before Bacon, of course they lacked in this or that, as do men now. For what do we have now in our so modern marvels of deliberate thought, thrust on the multitudes by thousands of misled academics ?
What now is found in this advanced world of thought, sunning itself like lizards in indolence ?
It is
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the promotion of
abused thought and improper principles in their fatuous addiction, in milling millions, to the irrationalities of declaring truth where the model permits none; |
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the declaration of
progressive process when the laboratory omits the relevant action; |
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the imaginary
accretions of information when the sciences are distressed that they must do
it themselves, for knowledge but fails in the created processes in fact,
as time progresses, basic biota lost but not found; |
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the febrile mental
fashionings and fabrications of assembly line marvels with prodigious conceptual corollaries, thrust mindless into the imagination, a very odyssey of dissolute thought, despite a manifest and often laborious world plan which provides building blocks and intelligence, and insists that you use your own mind to gain the products of mentality, your own reason to have the habiliments of reason in your products. Moreover, it smiles in grief, if it were possible, with the inane urbanities which protest that really, it is other than we find. |
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Not so, absurd science falsely so-called.
It is time what we found became what we speak. When do you plan to meet facts instead of dogmatic fictions, drowning in the immensity of the lake of mystic irrationality.
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Meanwhile, in this industry of pretence and pretension on the part of modern man in his battalions and battles, God in the clothes of a prisoner is excluded, and mysticism is exuded into this pot of filth, this imagination that refuses all discipline, and would have what is from what is not, in principle, in practice and continually, whereas it is never found, any more than is the key to the door when you have lost it. You need another, apt for the task; and this, it has to be made.
In fact, some of its worst examples of error are just like those of today in such theories of those who share this disease of the mind, this rapture of the soul, this enthralment of the spirit, which leaps to the skies of wonder, like Icarus of old, only to find it all melts in the heat of the day. Imagination is a wonderful thing, but while tales for the kids can be stimulating, for man it is required to understand.
Instead, this so great and sophisticated generation proceeds to run amok. The captives of spirit and of mind, they imagine things without warrant, apply them without success, ignore inter-faces between the imagined agents, fire, water, atoms, change, permanence, whatever occurs to them, drawing on their ancient heritage of delusion with the vocabulary of today, and act as if this world is a matter of constant miracle, nothing needing to be articulated with anything else: it just happens because it happens. This is as far from science as Mars from earth.
The constancy of 'nature' is the constancy of nature, not its invention. Its constant decline is the decline of the purposively fabricated, over time, not the mode of creation. Loss is not gain; failure is not production; ageing is not birth.
The invention of nature is the work which makes it exist, not the consequence of its existence. What is being excluded is no mere case: it is the power to make this programmatic, this mutually organised integrity of relationship, this parapet of design (cf. SMR pp. 211), beyond all designs man has ever made: himself. It is to devise its parameters, mould its form, occasion its existence and stabilise its performance.
Past the schema is needed the Propounder of the Schema, so that its existence is causatively construable (cf. Causes), not made a part of its presence, as if being present constitutes the cause of its being present. A car is not on your driveway because it is on your drive-way, but as a result of a causative action placing it into existence, and this collating it with this carriage-way. Anything less is not merely mysticism, but magic; and denying reason, cannot consistently then use it to argue ANYTHING. The only other way than making it, is to steal it, the current case in organic evolution, communism and all the other idle blasphemies which want man to run that from which he is in fact running away: for you cannot really have the product without the producer except by theft; and then, obviously, you must deal with your 'victim' from whom you may find your bright grab is merely your desolation. What you grab needs care; and you, not being its author, are not the carer, but merely responsible in His presence and according to His prescriptions, in the setting which He has provided.
Things are as they are, and not other.
Thus, thrown in, as scientific law attests, is naturally the decay of 'nature', since what is adverse to any design, does not improve it, but leads to its use-by date. What is perfect for its continuance needs to be devised; and not so is this with us. It is designed, as designated, to be responsive to abuse in an appropriate way (cf. Biblical Blessings Ch. 7); and we experience this appropriate way, in one aspect seen in the second law of thermodynamics (cf. Romans 8:18ff.); just as we do when our own designs are man-handled. There is no slightest difficulty in anything when you follow the truth. It is like a paper-chase:
keep to the evidence and the next piece,
and so on to the end, is relatively easy.
Ignore it and you fail readily.
The discipline has not been applied in ANY of these naturalistic fantasms of thought, old or new, recent or ancient; and they have all become quite ridiculous. In fact, in terms of naturalistic insolvencies, masquerading as knowledge (in each case over the millenia of their arresting and reductionist imagings and surmises), organic evolution is simply a matter in its major thrust, to remove the need for God to function so that we might be lords of life or lives of desired desecration, without Him (cf. Stepping Out for Christ Ch. 9, esp. pp. 112ff., Spiritual Refreshings Ch. 3, Repent or Perish Ch. 5, Acme, Alpha and Omega Ch. 9, Defining Drama Ch. 10, Delusive Drift or Divine Dynamic Ch. 2).
It is but one of the family of atheistic mystical gnosticism*1 (cf. SMR Ch. 10, TMR Ch. 8, Snorkelling). How marvellous its rites (cf. TMR Ch. 10 (2) Evolution as Religion). It is a 'special' knowledge given only to those with the relevant imagination, Hoyle deeming the ideas "nonsense of a high order," from his Cambridge Chair in Astronomy, and Jay Gould, a basic Darwinian aspect likewise, "literally incomprehensible".
At those points, each of these exceedingly eminent and recent scholars is quite right. This is the truth. We have shown this repeatedly and in detail, in such books as TMR, SMR, Wake Up World! ... Secular Myths ... and so on (cf. Evolution and Creation in the SMR and Other Indexes, through Search).
As such our organic evolution, as to type, is very definitely in the portfolio with the others before, during and after Paul's day. This is so; but even if it were not, the words being those of God, are not to be reductionistically remoulded by assumption, for if there is ONE THING you CANNOT do with God, it is ASSUME what He meant (with or without realising that you are doing this): but rather here above all, you must cling to WHAT HE SAID. If it is so with all writers, it is infinitely so with God whose word of all time in the Bible is relevant for instruction (II Timothy 3:16).
The word of God is what He meant. Its scope is history, as far back as the Fall, when devilish wisdom was first followed to make God a mere commoner next to one's own prowess, and not really necessary for life. "Has God indeed said ...?" came the odiously aspirant sneer from the devil in his performer's clothes (Genesis 3:1). He is only trying to stop you being at His level! he intimated in a ludicrous failure to recognise the difference between the Constructor of man's marvel of threefold, mind, matter and spirit, being, and man who is so gifted beyond his own comprehension. Man is ever in this mode of trying to forget his origin beyond mere ancestry, the origin of ancestry itself.
Genesis is a crucial alert to the awake, an alarm to those sleeping! Its spiritual warnings are as recent as tomorrow, covering the scope of events and developments to which man is prone, instructive for righteousness, often delving into the future with the certitude that the spade may reveal for the past, or reverting to the past with the assurance no archeologist can have, since there are no possibilities of error; and indeed God declares just this in defiance of all limitation, as one of the perquisites of HIS speech, beyond all others (Isaiah 41:21-22).
Whether indeed it be physical or spiritual life, it is all one: his generic words of warning cover it all. Whatever the brand or style of intrusive, invasive, God-deleting or sidelining philosophy or thought: none of these are make-able in practice, being rebels from logic as from the Lord. Except in the mind of harassed and subdued man, they are as dreams. Dreams and guises are mere flotsam and jetsam of disappointed philosophies, always coming, as if there were nothing new in the universe of thought, with this or that non-inter-faced imagination, this or that non-verified concept, this or that anti-verified concoction of thought.
In this sense, there is nothing new under the sun: Not even being sun-struck, with the sun of naturalism, not even the sun-dance of the deluded. If however man becomes washed up drift-wood on the blazing shores of the equatorial philosophies that rob the soul, it is not that he cannot burn. A blaze of burnished dereliction can for a moment even seem a thing of desire; but its end is not to be desired.
Just as man may openly rebel, a tiresomely all but timeless pre-occupation, so the products, the by-products, even of his rebellion, political, pseudo-scientific, means of power exempt from customs control ... can like SARS, infect others, some more, some less, some in a little for a moment, some more gravely. It is therefore important even for those who do not rebel, to be aware of the dangers of delusive cultural impact, and not only so, but to avoid them. It can come like a Stealth bomber, scarcely realised; but in the mercy of God it can be banished.
What God has before His mind of course is all reality, for from Him and to Him and through Him is all; and when He utters a warning, woeful indeed is the concept that He REALLY meant JUST this or that, despite the entire applicability of the concept throughout history, and the utter lack of any limitation in His speech. To limit God is unwise always; to do it in a generic context of warning to man is yet more unwise. This thing however may enter from the constant lapping of the waves of culture, about the castle of thought, and entering, these waves needs immediate exit.
Thus in terms of the section of the book in view which was noted, we must realise that what God is warning about is not merely "anti-knowledge", as is there stated, but KNOWLEDGE FALSELY SO-CALLED. This is a twisted variety which misuses method, just as scientific method (cf. TMR Ch. 1, SMR pp. 140ff.) is grossly abused in organic evolution, and this so much so, that it remains ONE of the theories of which one could legitimately think in such a warning, and more so, one of the most eminently relevant!
Disordered thought was indeed a fault of Philo, but also of Heracleitus, indeed of Darwin, but also of Democritus. The modern additions to the pastiche where this is a combination of alleged knowledge, alleged superior method, superior access, all based on riotous imagination: these are mere novel applications of the licence shown in so many ways for so long before and long after Paul. Whatever variety it is, it is specifically and precisely covered in the actual words "knowledge falsely so-called", and the fact is that 'science' in its drab convict dress of 'falsely so-called' is one of the roll call of the twisters of truth, with confidence claiming knowledge.
The esotericism of this organic evolutionary concept, as a matter of fact, is one of its chief features, its hopes always dashed, ever proposed, always a riot against scientific method, consisting in special knowledge for the naturalistic elect, pushing imagination into places where it has no legitimate place, using theory to fashion 'facts' and ignoring their refusal to co-operate by means of verification, with all the swagger of other misled religious exponents:
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whether their gods be explicit |
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or as here in the
self-aggrandisement of organic evolution, merely implicit - |
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imagined to be at work, though never seen at it, |
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to have wrought things though their equipment never appears, |
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to be inherent though their trail is as dead as that of a corpse, |
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who did not in fact, while life lingered, at all walk the road the misled bloodhound pursues. |
What then ? Relative to this point of science falsely so-called in I Timothy 6:20, the concept that it is WRONG to conceive that the phrase in view refers to evolution is inaccurate at best. In fact, the word of God here refers to ANY referent which meets the criteria of the statement. This is the simple, inevitable, linguistic fact. ALL scripture is relevant for teaching, and to limit it is the perquisite of God, not man, and the work of doing so is that of the text, not of textual intrusion. What the Author had in mind has for its criterion the mind of God, not of man. This then is the second and major point in view.
If, let us emphasise, this is so in the works of man, infinitely more so is it in the words of God, the Maker of man before whose awe-ful eye history is as territory surveyed, as He knows the end from the beginning and challenges repeatedly man to show he can do anything similar! (Isaiah 41,43,48).
SOME OVERVIEW
What then ? Knowledge includes the 'science' category, like ALL other classes of it: Assuredly therefore it refers to the pretentious aberration of organic evolution, which even in method is PRECISELY knowledge falsely so-called. Scripture is not just by inspiration of man; it is by that of God. In other words, the Greek word is most inclusive of types of knowledge as shown in Cascade ... Ch. 3, and 'science' as now used, is simply a specialised type of this, wedded to its own method.
Organic evolution, a functionally materialistic type of mystic gnosticism is in fact an example then of "knowledge falsely so-called" and one of the best examples of all time, since its weighty self-respect approaches paranoia in its persecutory emissaries and missionaries (cf. the recent English case ...Beauty for Ashes ... Ch. 3), its endless preachings on TV and even in unprotected schools which are shamelessly invaded (cf. TMR Ch. 8). In that in this case, as if it were connected to 'science', it even misuses its own method (cf. TMR Ch. 1, SMR Chs. 1-2), a knowledge precisely so-called, as such, it qualifies at a premium as a referent for the term.
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Thus just as it is
fallacious to try to 'interpret' I Timothy 6:20 to mean this, "knowledge really means science", |
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so is it
fallacious no less, and even more dangerously so, if it is not done in mere ignorance, to ignore the fact that "knowledge really includes science"! |
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ONE of the ancient
and modern referents to the word of Paul is naturalism, and perhaps some of the chief ones are found in the history of thought before God inspired him, (cf. Cascade ... Ch. 3), just as now in our late phase of our Church Age, organic evolution is completing the circuit with all the ponderous pretension that makes it fit so well into the prophecies of our doomed earth. This is indeed, in its growing antagonisms to God, and as He predicted (II Timothy 4), turning to fables of which this organic evolution is by definition and through the inveterate and tortuous works of its proponents, one of the most aggressive of all time (Answers to Questions Ch. 5). Here in this mystic naturalistic fable, much is discerned by the imagination, and claimed; though as a cause, in the light of common day and observable occurrence or adequate verifiable productive mode, it is one left naked on the highway. It does not in any of its verifiable effects, in any of its inordinate claims, enable any of such products as are attributed to it. Neither do they visibly arise, nor can they be nudged to do so, nor do they, in causal continuity, manage to express themselves; nor are they found to be strewing the earth with their myriads of forgotten pathways that do not work, in the imaginary movement from small to great sequence, They excuse themselves. They cannot be viewed, verified or even extorted from it. Intelligence cannot stir it to naturalistic action. It is subverted in science, its eyes averted, facts never converted to do it service. Foolish indeed is the lead that loves its own lordship, and trifles with
Christ
However, we are too old for
fairy-tales. We need plain, factual realities, logical necessities and This all makes a case of a
fortiori, for the proper application of I Timothy 6:20, which with its
co-heirs Not only therefore is the
mind of God not to be so limited, |
Science's moods and follies, or rather the afflictions with which it is internally visited, sometimes corrected sooner, sometimes later, are it seems, relatively rarely mere procedural failures. Rather one frequently finds the case to be this. The failure comes from the vulnerability inherent in the fact that the scientists who make science, are people well-equipped like their brethren in other trades, with prejudice, passion, lust and desire, whether philosophical, moral or religious.
Thus, when they opine in areas of non-expertise, there is no slightest need to give to such invasive and intrusive opinions, past their schedule and underivable from it, any more credence than one would to those of anyone else. Indeed, in our generation, in the relevant arena of explicit or implicit mystic naturalism, this is largely white-coat guru-ism at work. Others may use black frocks, but the dress chosen does not alter in the slightest degree, the situation in such a case. Many follow these gurus, so in function if not in name.
It is in the FORM and the FORMULATION and the OBSERVATION (of whatever order or realm) and the VERIFICATION that one is to look, not in the outpouring of philosophies to which 'science', being forced to 'concur' - since it has no police - is vulnerable ... These are those which periodically seize it like a leaf, muddling its method, confusing its findings and even making hope replace finding, when mere refutation grows wholly unacceptable to the passions involved.
IF EVER there was a form of knowledge falsely so-called, including those species mentioned by PAUL in I Corinthians 1, where the world by knowledge failed to find God, being too wise (cf. Romans 1:17ff.) - those of naturalism seeking to find out knowledge beside, without or contrary to God - organic evolution declares itself a pearl of performance, an al Qaeda of devastation, ignoring the constructions of reality, pursuing its way regardless. Indeed, it matches the ancient trend most expertly; and if not the best ever, it certainly may be so, because of the ponderous pretension and illogical aspirations for a causeless and coded system*4, entirely or largely self-sufficient, so that what merely performs is to have invented itself before it was there, in order that it might do what it does, upon arrival, which makes of this phrase, a quite perfect place for application.
The sufficient cause for what performs*4 (cf. SMR Ch. 1), this is departed from as those on airplanes depart from passengers with masks, fearing SARS.
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Perhaps never in the history of naturalism has such precision mixed with such excision, |
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such irrelevance been bandied about with such abandon, |
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such surgical neatness been so wedded to such total irrationality, |
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the whole presented, if not with machine guns direct, |
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then through the educational facilities and media of advanced nations, |
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with all the passion and irrelevance of native orgies to the gods of nature. |
While we pine for those so afflicted (as in Romans 1:17ff., at this or that level, as the disease more and more permeates society), we also grieve for those who do the afflicting! Lamentable indeed would it be were there no remedy! (cf. Repent or Perish Ch.2, Beauty for Ashes Ch. 4); and the marvel remains this, that God cares to apply it, to one, to all, freely who enter His domain by faith in that redoubtable door, the Lord Jesus Christ (John 10:8,27-28).
B) a well-suited raid (Popper)
It is also reported that Karl Popper's stipulation on scientific method that one failure in verification is lethal, is to be adjusted and adapted to what one might deem a more sleazy approach. Thus this is too strict, it is said, and more leeway must be given. You cannot have things excluded because they fail. Why not then dote on failure and live to the full in fantasy!
Maybe a service is to be in because it was near if useless; timidity is to be near enough to temerity, since they have much in common, or we are invited to equate aspiration and desperation, or even aspiration and respiration, the excremental and the incremental, curt and cart, follow and fallow.
Error acceptable ? Inaccuracy good enough; one exclusion not enough! How often in computing the SLIGHTEST LITTLE lapse, or gaffe can produce horrendous consequences, despite the tiny thing done wrong, and the huge size of the total system. Words are symbols, and we cannot afford to start misusing them, as if we knew so much that a light error is of midget significance!
Unwise is he who would agree to such vapidity. 'Science' cannot speak, for it is a methodological result. Scientists cannot speak for it, unless they follow it; for otherwise they are talking of something else, and misusing its name. What is testable, is to be tested; if it fails, it is to fail. When it succeeds, then to the point, it stands for the time; until it succeeds it does not stand at all: it falls. Condemned buildings may look good; but when they fall, it is devastating.
Prying without piercing is as vain a pursuit in science as anywhere else; and here more so, since its whole purport is to find what is the case in terms of what occurs and is mirrored in the structures justly and adequately formed in the mind, which in due course are verified on all sides. It is its symbolic logic which is its essence, wedded to what occurs. If it goes beyond the realities in view, to surmise what is not there requiring a theory, it is sky-high with pride; if however it goes below its field, it is abysmal in folly, failing in its very task. It is often kidnapped; but it never kids.
If however science properly so-called: the uninvaded, non-philosophical mode of working, where to observe, directly or indirectly but actually, then to theorise and test is the pass-word for the name, the sort worthy of any dignity - if this is to be deemed too strict for one to reject what does not work, that is simply making not merely a prophet's room for philosophy, but a parent's retreat! If the thing DOES NOT WORK, it is wrong. If it does work, to be sure, it may still be wrong; because it may not have been adequately tested (cf. Newton and Einstein, and the same applies to the later). Yet it does not provide the answer, so that the verification does NOT attest that the theory imagined is the reality that operates, this is not science which whines at such a result. It is philosophy which opines.
The most minute element may evince a total misconception in understanding; the slightest lapse may hide in its entrails, or if you prefer the less biological, may imply in its symbolic depths, a misconception so vast as to be almost inconceivable. The purity of the purpose is to be assessed by the conscientiousness of the lively intellect which does not stop with hope, but only at the door marked, WRONG. If scientists often presume into philosophy, that is bad; if they now are to be incited to subsume into error, this is more ludicrous than all the other intimations of mortality, coming from this invaded frontier. It is like a lover asking his loved one, if after all, when they are married, he need still love...
It omits the essence: CAREFUL and adequate INPUT first, and ACCURATE and apt test LAST, so that what stands, for the time, has the beauty of conformity to actuality, both in data and mental construction to cover it.
Science properly so-called needs no excuses. If it is wrong, it is wrong. It must learn. Man must learn to forget about a science demi-god, and come back to earth and have a scientific method which is MERELY an attestation of what so far works according to concept, so that if it does not work, it is unceremoniously dumped. Methodologically, it does not start with theory, but proceeds TO IT from what it indisputably finds. Then it tests this and fearlessly rejects it, if it fails in verification.
That is one reason why organic evolution should be unceremoniously ousted from its paragon place of idolatry. Why idolatry ? it is simply because so much is made of what is simply not the case (cf. SMR pp. 140ff.). In the Cambrian case, it is actually hilarious (cf. Laughing Stock, Wake Up World! ... Ch. 6). MORE is found then than now ? and that is how it came to be ?
It is in just such refusals to
ACCEPT refutation (it is quite possible to refute organic evolution, since it is
in fact refuted in every evidential outreach cf. TMR
Chs.1, 8), which make of that mystic
miasma of organic evolution, an idol. It seeks to replace God with His
implements, to make His world with His products, harassing them in vain;
and failing to do ANYTHING in practice like it, or to find ANYTHING in matter to
perform it, it surmises the opposite of what it finds (cf. TMR Ch. 1,
loc.cit.), only happily like an
incurable optimist, smiling at grief, if indeed recognising it at all. What then
of this mystical illusionism ? It is dashed eternally and contemporaneously
alike, and it is frustrated in impotence.
So is it
moved to send missions to Mars to find out about what made us, as if that our
product could help find the Producer without whom all Nature cries like the
shrieking of shells, There is no way.
It wails in incompetence, asking if perchance we cannot see its actual competence,
fails to be close to what it is meant and sent to be,
knowledge dressed in the clothes of humility;
while its subject of study, this world, continues to proceed as it has been formed to do,
with code and contrivance,
matter and form, laws and structure, accomplishing what it is,
informing nothing new with new information,
but losing it continually, losing biota, losing parts, missing categories which depart,
the norm of design as the attrition of its labour yard takes its toll.
Just as books do not write themselves,
and to seek to make endless physical and chemical reviews of the compositions of the pages and the nature of the print for this purpose is vain and repetitive nonsense,
blind with hope and empty of nous,
so the search for the Author is to be in the direction
of the powers evinced, not the products composed.
The facts are not all that are missing, the evidence is not all that is lacking, the verifications are not all that are defunct, for the requirements of causality itself are despised*4: and in terms of scientific method this mass and array of negativity has long since despatched that theory of evolution as a school-boy is failed at 0% by a wearied teacher. That it does not go is due to one thing only, its idolatrous convenience. Gould's scramblings are eloquent, given gradualism's ludicrous failure, and his justified derision on the decease of Darwinism, in terms of his findings, with the inability to climb (cf. Wake Up World! ... Ch. 6 with Ch. 4).
In science, properly so-called, we look for the facts, the data, and then for that adequate to contain them, all of them, not some, not in contradictions of pretence but in the precision of all the variety, nothing subdued, nothing assumed, everything demanding what could originate them, secure them, propel them into existence, whether in things small or great, all the components considered, every diversity and divergence.
We do not push; we work. We speak of what we both see and hear, both physically and spiritually, each domain attesting itself with evidential luxuriance, the natural with its deeds, the spiritual with its words and deeds, the former enmeshed as what is said, becoming what is done
(cf. It Bubbles ... Ch. 9, Little Things Ch. 5, Spiritual Refreshings Chs. 6, 13, 16, Repent or Perish Ch. 7, Beauty for Ashes Ch. 4, SMR Chs. 8 - 9).
It is not this or that only, in the end, but all; the system and the stylisation, the limits that lord it over the things in it, and the liberties which permit man to make error even on purpose, if he so desire (cf. SMR Ch. 1, It Bubbles ... Ch. 9, Little Things Ch. 5, SMR pp. 348ff.). LACK of means is not the way to find the means; excision of the functionalities for institution is not the thing to imagine; and it is this monumental monstrosity of false logic which lies, like a slain dragon, puffing by pumps to make it seem alive, which mars all such naturalism.
The dynamism to INVENT system in its cohesion, particularities, disparities of kind (cf. SMR pp. 121ff., Chs. 1-3, 10, It Bubbles ... Ch. 9), and the capacity for these to interact, each according to its own limit, and to transcend, each according to its own ability: it is this which reason requires.
With the dynamism is the design; with the design the thought; with the thought the executive ability, as you can see when you contrast a philosopher with an engineer. With this is the will, for to think is not to do, and the difference is will, and power. The material merely acts; it is its incursion into existence which is to be covered, so that it might act. For such incursions, it shows neither means nor method, plant nor power, thought nor direction; but the precise opposite (cf. TMR, Ch. 1 ). Surmises in opposites is not the work of scientific imagination; but rebellion using science as a school-room (cf. Chapter 3 below).
We do not look where there is no equipment in design or in operation; but for evidence of
where there is (cf. Spiritual Refreshings Ch. 16, Gracious Goodness Ch. 9, Sparkling Life ... Ch. 4 ).We do not insist that the car has its manufacturing plant on board when it is evidently merely equipped for transport, fully occupied in all its phases and forms with this task; or that the basis of order is its absence, or of existence is its absence, or that nothing, being defined as having no future, broke definition and sported a universe by oversight, when it was thinking of something else: though of course, being nothing, it cannot think at all!
Hence to lessen the means of testing for what procedurally at least is true, so that it does not really matter, matter, matter (as Gilbert has it in his own designed composition with Sullivan), if it does not happen to be right: this is a madness or if you prefer, a secondary infection, a weariness that is pathological in kind, at the principial level: for what is almost true, as often enough seen, in terms of operation, may be UTTERLY wrong in concept. There may be some degree of correlation existing only under some circumstances, the divergence resulting from sources uncomprehended, so that the theory is merely a misleading venture in operational statistics, lacking understanding and possibly wholly misleading.
If science in words is to gauge facts and imagine correlations of powers, principles and operative procedures, then let it do so. If it is to mess about with things not understood, averse to the discipline of reality, then let it be consigned to the realm of philosophy quite directly, a mere series of words matching badly a mere series of events, with no truth back of any of it, except the 'truth' that there is no truth, the normal alogism of all cynicism.
Indeed,
What lacks truth is naturally inclined to be lax on the finding of it; and
...
What wilfully excludes it is not likely to relish its exacting standards!
It is not good enough for anyone to say, This is how it is now viewed, for we are going to relax specifications on science. Are we ? In that case, relax credibility in science, and let the absurd and irrelevant philosophical and religious preachments which for so long have addled the minds of many, which should never have leapt into anti-evidential existence in such a discipline, be doubly defunct. Wrong from the outset, now false in the onset, let them be less fraudulent by being recognised as mere philosophy, usurping the place of science, not only in method, not only in false application, but now in the very precision for which science could be renowned, if it only knew how to keep to its limitations. Let it moreover be bad philosophy, utilising reason in its enforced absence.
But what of the traditions of evolutionism ? They lack evidential basis, verificatory confirmation, and now, harassed almost beyond bearing, as Stephen Jay Gould so beautifully exposes, moving into the realm of the ludicrous, the irrational, they comb the earth for some way to survive, their own fitness to survive being utterly demolished. Why change the definition of science! there is the way that indeed weighs nothing, but not nothing is the imperious contrivance that so seeks!
That, it is simply to remove not merely the limitations of experiment, not only the constraints of logic, but with these, the accuracy of what is to be tested, or the tests with which they are to be tested. Naturalism is defunct, who will bemoan it! But let no one who values truth, or has any interest in its articulation ever be so supine as to imagine that such a step from the importance of accuracy, so that EVERY failure of a theory is fatal, once duly tested, and ALL theory must meet ALL criteria, in the realm of science itself, is possible. Logic laughs; truth blushes; shame bows its head.
The world drifts, changing its standards as it does so. Let then its correct bearings show where it is; even if war and bloodshed, madness in tension, gross outrage as a norm, incredibly arrogance in religions aplenty as in science, populate the earth with even more pressure that the billions can ever exert. This is the divine procedure as outlined in the book of Revelation, for example that palling Chapter 6. Who would not mourn for those stricken with this metaphysical SARS, invading the minds of the careless, scarifying the corpses of its victims without pity: SCIENCE AVOIDING REALITY SYNDROME.
NOTES
See SMR pp. 422Eff., for the long-lived philosophic ingenuity of smuggling divine characteristics into ostensibly lesser things, by a lack of articulation and a presence of confusion. This dynamic has animated much of philosophy, exactly in accord with I Corinthians 1:18-25 and Romans 1:20-22.
It is always enlivening to see generic principles articulated in scripture fulfilled even in modern times, almost with the sort of consistency that influenza, a disease of many strains, yet a disease, appears over time.
Atheism's presented computer simulations, well answered by Dr Don Batten at www.answersingenesis.org/ga -
are a marvel of irrelevance.
Not
only is the selection (cf. the exposition in Earth Spasm, Conscience Chasm
: and Renewal of Life, Ch. 1) based on the preservation of the directional flow
desired, hence a purposive work in a supposedly non-purpose (i.e. 'chance' - and
Ancient Word, Modern Deeds Chs. 9 and 13 on
this
oft-used misconception in this field) situation, but this is programmed in
an ostensibly non-progammatic field as it must be at the outset in such a model;
and further, it is wrought in a situation where purpose and program imply, nay
require, thought and intelligence, for to conceive a purpose is not a
thoughtless act, nor to fulfil it one requiring no intelligence, yes and
personality, for all these qualities require at leas that; and enterprise to,
for the thought and means to act are not action without enterprise added.
A power to implement all this is likewise needed, and since it is to fashion it all, it must be part of it, since then there would be nothing to create the part that it is not itself, so that it might be part. In other words we are speaking of an immaterial, super-natural Being.
We can for ease of memory propose an acronym: NOT EMPTY.
The point is that any world which used such a preliminary paraphernalia is not empty of what it is pretended it lacked, namely the power of God.
E stands for enterprise; M for mind; P for power; T for truth, needed if your purpose is to be effected, and comprised in this Personal Power's matching thought with deed so that the deeds are as thought; Y is for Yearning, or the thrust of desire for the operation of enterprise to be a relevant attainment. It could not be less, and not less than this is God.
Then there is the NOT. The N is for NESCIENCE, the lack of or inability to have knowledge. This is omitted in this very well-adorned, though inadequately DEFINED MODEL, so that we have NO, nescience omitted. The T is for truth, without which nothing could be known, and since knowledge is needed for purpose, then there is need for truth, and since purpose must be effective, there is double need.
Cf. SMR pp. 378ff..
Cf. More Marvels ... Ch. 4, SMR pp. 1080ff., and associated references.
Cf. News 100, Spiritual Refreshings for the Digital Millenium Ch. 13, SMR Chs. 3, 10, pp. 422Eff., 121ff., TMR Ch. 7.