CHAPTER 7

THE PEACOCK'S TALE, AND THE DREAM OF DAPHNE

How to make inventions of mind, without having to lift a finger,
or get any results, outside the mind!

 

This may not seem a particularly constructive occupation, but it needs attention since it engages the mind of millions, students, lecturers and children alike, in what is one of the greatest delusions of all time: one equal certainly to the errant thought of peace without Christ in this world, verified as such with a sterile monotony just as He continues to be rejected by those so wise nations of this world, one parallel to the desire to perpetual motion without inexhaustible energy and ineradicable components.

Consider now the tail of the peacock, which becomes its tale in this manner.

One day, says the tale, there was a non-peacock. For argument's sake, and to avoid needless tedium, there is this perfectly happy, normal bird. Not with it lies any source of overweening pride, or any ornament which makes it difficult so much as to walk, in high winds. No, it as yet lacks any of the hundreds of brightly geometrical orderings, which would inhere in its tail, were it already a peacock. Not for it, as yet, are those muscles so superbly proportionate to the strain in elevating so vast an edifice - and it is truly vast in comparison with the size of the bird, almost awe-inspiring in its hi-tech specifications to enable its erection in that fan-shaped splendour which staggers the eye with its sheer intricacy of brilliant order, masterliness of design, poetry of feather, co-ordination of colour, sheens of gold and luminosities of green, as the outer extremities, even when it is unraised, catch now this, now that light.

Not for it in this humble state, is the head held high, its stalk elevated crown sitting atop the blue gleams of its head feathers, as if to give notice:

What is this ? the peacock seems to say. If the lion with his roar and claw is king of the jungle, then I with my beauty and geometry, artistry and architecture, daintiness, delicacy of sheer intricate wonders of feather, am king of the avine culture!

Yet how did the ordinary bird, already mentally wearied (the tale might proceed, if for a moment slightly reasonable), by its contrivances in creating feathers (just never found in stages which are proto-feathers, to be practical for once in this slovenly style theory of organic evolution), yes and in achieving the aerodynamic necessities for flight, such as hollowed bones, or bars and hooks to make the feathers just stable and manipulable enough, the wing length and claw musculature, beak facilities and digestive apparatus and heart originalities, all for the good cause of BEING a bird at all: how, one asks, did it set about becoming a peacock ?

It is, to be sure, rather like asking, HOW NOW, how, but in what manner, style or methodology, did the VW set about becoming that 1970’s Cadillac ? In what way did it alter its design specifications so felicitously, acquire the metal and its specific strength, the altered architecture of the doors, the very different style of engine, put it in the front instead of rear (a little technical achievement for its special design), achieve the other tyres ... but one would not bore the reader! Yet how ? How! someone may thunder.
 
 

SCIENTIFIC METHOD HARASSMENT CASE DEVELOPS

Good gracious man! don't you realise that there are people called designers, and this is the source of design: the thing does not invent itself, as you see if you have half an eye for any of this world's work ? What are you ? a dreamer ? People like you would get nothing done ... N, O, T, H, I, N, G! Clear out now! I want to talk to a man of sense and awareness. This world is too busy for your dreams!

Ah! but, says another, this is a false analogy. Cars do not design themselves, but birds do!

Looking to see what romancer is making this address, one might be astounded (except where this world is already becoming the Mad Hatter's Tea Party in disguise, in some of its institutions, and indeed perhaps more and more of them!), to find a scientist.

Now one must be clear: it is not just ANY scientist. There are many hundreds of them who would make no such statement, and in Korea it seems the very establishment has frequently sounder ideas, there being an enormous number of sober seeming Presbyterians in the land, and equally, a large quota of creationist scientists. You can, one is informed, there even have a University where creation is specifically addressed as a serious issue, indeed taught, in that, after all, that is what the evidence attests, not 'nature' invaded by thought, massacred by imagination^*1, its lifeless corpse a mere cover for the departure of the actual reality in this world: yes nature, its dead and clammy hands forced to subscribe to what is as divorced from it, as any film star from her erstwhile husband.

This however brings back to the issue. Does 'nature', provided only that it is not material nature, but biological nature, actually build these things, can you really see it doing so, or attempting to do so, or the enormous spread of billions of failed attempts in that there are to be seen myriads of 10% or 20% or 40% efforts, failed but replaced as Nature, incontinent of courage, remorseless in energy, mindless but never mind, makes the codes needful for the operations, necessary for the integral establishment of the equipment, needed for the operation of the wholistically conceived ... ah, bird! Yes bird.

One has not heard ? only denial. NO IT IS NOT THERE. Ah but! says our self-interrupting scientific specialist (the science-falsely-so-called type, which abound under the delusive force of this failed philosophic dream, imported with licence into 'science'), they disappeared!

Disappeared ? in total ? one might ask. As G.G. Simpson put it, in a SYSTEMATIC manner disappeared ? Ah, but of course, chance is no more. Well as to that, it was always irrelevant to the issue (cf. Ancient Words, Modern Deeds Chs.  6,  13, SMR Ch. 1). No, we are not looking for difficulties in finding evidence, but for multitudes of miracles to suppress it. After all, if there are stacks of failures for every success, they should litter the globe. We should walk on them, stalk on them, dance on them, use them for building materials, they should be like the starling in migration, darkening not this time the sky, but the earth! It is because of this nonsense that the punctuated equilibrium contingent (oh not Darwin! they wisely chant from their other and adversative evolutionary corner), has arisen to wield the axe.

No, no! they chide. Of course not. It ... sort of HAPPENS! The equilibrium is punctuated with non-equilibrium. How extraordinary! Here we are (on their agenda and dating fiasco, but let them wear it - cf. TMR Ch. 7, Section E), or 'nature' is, for millions of years doing virtually nothing ...
N, O, T, H, I, N, G in the way of advance, with a wholesome lack of originality for 'nature' in its non-mind. Then suddenly, it is felt, up come the draftsmen capacities, here are the architectural wizards (no, of course you cant' see them), the codifying mathematical contrivances of all but infinite brilliance coming into their season (like a mating season, but we do not see this mating). Then all of a sudden, it is done!

Ah well, says one, it is not altogether in a moment, although to be sure that was the view of Nilsson -  (the great Scandinavian biologist whose voluminous work had no small attraction for FACTS!  cf. SMR pp. 108ff.). It is rather longer than that, but relatively exceedingly short.

Well then, in millions of years, nothing; then in a relatively tiny period, a sudden thrust, like a volcano suddenly erupting after so long, the workers flushed by the thrust, co-ordinatively swarm ahead, felicitous in industry, agile in communication, the plans develop, the trials bring better and better products, and the sense of team-work between crypto-mathematician, crypto-architect, crypto-artisan, this zooms to a heroic level, and the co-operation of so many talents in so vastly integral a team, proceeds just to DO IT!

There are two troubles at once noticeable in this however. First, volcanoes are destructive. Admittedly they are often not always at it, but rest awhile, even for hundreds of years. Yet when they get into their diving suits, if you will, or get down on their marks - this is mere imagery but it incorporates the point of relevant, apt action in cohesion - they show their flair to the air ? Their flair however is what inordinate energy impacting on structure performs. It is just pressure being released. It blows things up. The only point then is this, that blowing things up is rather different from the most fastidiously intricate code work even made on this earth! That is the difference.

It does not really help to invoke such natural phenomena, for observation tells us one thing clearly: they do not BUILD the intricate, or sustain the coded, make the integral operational functionaries such as life has, conceive its orders or execute them, for they are far too busy in their evacuation of their premises to weigh the creative needs of the next venue. The fingers of exploding matter are not fit for writing.

A system does what it has. If it equipped to manufacture code, we need to see the manufacturing plant and admire such programmatic advance, seeing into its interstices and watching, ever ready to learn, from such advanced gear. Yet where is the program to make programs, and where is the evidence of its work ?

We do not see it. We do not find it. It never appears. Even if we found it, it would merely be a stop-gap on the way to God, adding to creation what makes creations, and requires its own cause; but in fact, the Bible stated otherwise, and empirical evidence states otherwise, for the thing is not found.

Now is that science which never appears ? Is that science for which the principles are found to be the exact opposite, the scientific principles actually observable in action (cf. TMR Chs. 1, 8, Stepping Out for Christ Ch. 2, Wake Up World! ... Ch. 4). In fact, as these references show, the actual laws implied in the Bible are precisely the three which Professor Barnes, Physics Professor formerly at El Paso University in Texas, has outlined as the most significant or embracive.

So we are to invoke Nature contrary nature, to do what is contrary to all evidence and to the rules of evidence, so that we may institute what is contrary to all code competence, in order to achieve what can only come in steps - even if these could 'arise' from the relevantly amorphous - however swiftly, unless the whole design, as Nilsson conceived it, just 'appears' ? A word like that, however, it is a word. It does not DO anything!

To be sure you get enthusiasts like LØvtrup (SMR pp. 252Aff.  ), who see something in the genetic embryos, in the starting edifices perhaps, in the realm of ontogenetics, where something vast could happen minutely; but again, the same power and precision is needed for the nascent or the miniscule, as for the vast. It is the design, the coding capacity, the entrepreneurial totality of the enterprise, a circumstance with which we are so familiar in dealing, in a building way, with nature, or 'Nature' if you insist, but it adds nothing but a capital letter. That, it is a capital addition to the propaganda perhaps, but not to the capacity of what, capital or no capital, is being signified!
 

Nilsson of course had it happen in all its marvels, an ORCHID at once, but was not so clear on how the stages of its magnificence arrived; while Goldschmidt's hopeful monster somehow arrived^*2  with the need for selecting from its awesome and prodigiously fertile equipment, which it got ... ah, somehow.

It must also hurry up with it. It must not delay. It must in fact produce what Stephen Jay Gould estimated in terms of many times MORE designs at one of the very earliest (assumed) stages in terms of rocks, the Cambrian, than now exist. So there has to be a REAL hurry up! Not merely must it be a SUDDEN eruption of a constructive kind, if one can envisage this (this author cannot do so, since eruptions by nature are unakin to precision), but it must be of a controlled kind, an instructed kind, an integrally alert kind, an entrepreneurially envisioned kind, and it must produce far more in a tiny fraction of history, than in all the rest of it.

And this, including our notable present ? Alas, instead of giving us some yardstick or scientific mental apparatus for estimating what is fast and what is slow in such a strategy as this, for creation, since that is what the result actually IS, merely gives us the PRECISE OPPOSITE to observe. And that ? it is a matter of things left to themselves,  not growing more advanced at this or that rate, but becoming more damaged at this rate or that, depending on ever so many things, and going in reverse. The ‘Greens’ are merely an example of reaction to this phenomenon, as is the current longing not to lose species: after all information is being lost at a grand old rate, the precise opposite of the need. (Professor Giertych deals with this in extended style - cf. SMR p. 252H.)

Thus scientifically, one is to make reverse equal forward, and a flood (of ideas or concepts or codes) to be the method by which what is not there does whatever it does so well.
 
 

SCIENTIFIC METHOD HARASSMENT CASE REVIEWED

Now let us return to scientific method in review. In fact, we need what HAS all the capacities involved, all at once, to make the things coherent in the end, and we need, if Nature is so different, not ONLY the myriads of part-step failures which should fill the globe as it were, but the methodology by which they even got so far as to be recognisable as failures at all. If now, however, we say this, That to be a failure in an enterprise, you have to be at least RELEVANT to it - a piece of wood is not a failure at a maths test because it is not relevant, it simply does not move in that sphere - then there would not be EXPECTED to be any failures, since what is inadequate cannot in any time, turn itself into what is relevant, in functional prowess.
 

	That is the logical fact.
	The other is the empirical observation about failures even if they were possible, they hide, wall-flowers, ashamed to be shown. Perhaps however not ABLE to be shown ? Certainly they are not able to be found!
	The third is this, that partially operational mid-points between actualities of design found, such as partial feathers with DNA and other characteristics indicative of upthrusts, are not found.
	The fourth is cumulative in character. Neither is the machinery for upthrust of design intricacy and perspective found, nor are means for it found, nor are evidences of it found. Barren is the hill on which nothing is found, and bare the dust of speculation, which never settles, being whipped up continually by vain hopes, which NEVER work, ALWAYS replaced with NEW vain hopes which never work, so that the clownishness of the anti-scientific musings is the more displayed by the extravanganza of extravagant concepts, culled from imagination, rebuked by law, logic and eyesight alike.
	The fifth likewise proceeds augmentally. It is that not only are the constructive capabilities not found empirically, which would show the capabilities to co-ordinate, control, order and by code constrain things to become in a life process, of another kind than they are. Quite to the contrary, a major law of information science is simply this, that new information in kind, does not APPEAR, does not ARISE. Tired authors may HOPE for a self-writing book, but whether in life-construction or word-construction, this is not the way of things.

You have to THINK, and KNOW and CONSIDER and CO-ORDINATE thoughts and INVESTIGATE ways, in order to write a book, in turn to constrain thought on the part of the reader, or action on the part of natural objects. In that latter case, however, like some kind of robotic reader, they must read out what you write and then DO it, having thus what the normal reader lacks (thank goodness!), a power to implement orders without intervention!
 

The sixth proceeds to new depths! Constraints to KEEP things where they are in kind, quite simply, HAVE been found. Those to bring design increments in kind, these do not appear. Nor could they. The domain has its own parameters, dynamics and constraints. Their lack, however,  is not their presence and the use of some word or phrase to disguise this elementary fact of life and logic, is neither commendable nor in the very slightest degree of any use. The presence of the contrary is not verification but desolation.

The seventh ? Not only is there no automated progression, or effectual rise in view, as distinct from the case in dream, adorning the operational tarmac of the twenty first century in this field, but in what is deemed near the first of the whole thing, the very plethora of design is flung about as if it were a nothing, like an expert author executing books by the week! To the very Cambrian ‘Age’, life comes gate-crashing in as if there were no gates, exuberant and superabundant, like light in its strike, sudden in its eventuation, scorning gradualism, mocking miniaturism, dabbed like the paint from  an expert artist, where and when and how he wanted it, without regard to the thought that either he was not there, or had no mind! It is not merely that the concepts are wrong, but that they are ridiculed, even by the mouth of the sheer exuberance of the evidence. (Cf. SMR p. 234).

What then ? They are contra-factual, anti-empirical: antimonies, one and all. They broach what they cannot do, they do in words, what involves self-contradiction structurally and systematically.

They CALL on facts, they find them not; they CALL themselves scientific, but suffer no rebuke by empirical failure, and negation.

They CONSTRUCT in mind what nature refuses to acknowledge; they mind in their constructions what natural law eschews, moving in a realm of mutual collision of concepts, adrift, awry and absurd; and this they do continually for what is nearing two centuries, without aid but from irrelevance, without licence except the authority of pride of place in universities and schools, without support but the monies flooded continually upon them, from Mars hopes to theoretical anomalies, enlisted like any rabble, constructed but unconstructive, called but deaf in the ear. (Cf. A Spiritual Potpourri Chs. 1-3, 9, SMR pp. 140ff..)
 

The eighth is this. It is that the laws which science has enshrined in words, the BIG THREE (first law of thermo-dynamics, Second law of thermo-dynamics, Law of Bio-Genesis - there are other names one could use) are not only the CONTRARY of the theory, but FULLY ACCORD with the FINDING! By now, it is apparent that organic evolution has only one thing to do with SCIENCE, that is: that it contradicts it in method, in assumption, in empirical constraint, and rational argumentation. Evolutionism is properly called, therefore, not only by its name, but science falsely so-called. (Cf. Secular Myths and Sacred Truth Ch. 7.,Cascade...Ch. 3, Beauty for Ashes Ch. 3.)

However, let us return to our peacock, for after all, here we have this perfectly natural little bird, or medium sized bird, looking forward to being a peacock, but how is it to be done ? Its manifest destiny, as Theodore Roosevelt is reported to have said of the nature of white race rule in America, its manifest destiny (since there has to be an adequacy for a result, or you do not get it, and if there is one, then so it must be): the manifest destiny of our medium sized and ordinary bird awaits it. How will it then come ?
 

THE SESQUI-CENTENARIAN WHO BECOMES INVOLVED ...
AND THE DANGER TO HIS HEALTH

any peacocks about ? we do not wish to offend them
but the task is required, so if they are there, just give them the bird

Along now comes a companionable sort of fellow, rather old it seems, but he seems to want to join us in our discussion, so let us make it open to him to do so, for he may contribute something of interest.

Let us at first ignore all the little points above, and consider the thing actually happening. Use magic if you like, but let it start. Now here we are, and some spots begin to appear on its plumage. Why ? Oh well, maybe the coding was mutated by cosmic rays or other intrusive agents. You know how it is in a car assembly plant, if a tractor drives into its midst, losing control, and the like. You know how this helps as with all intricate apparatus. Thus, for example, try bumping the arm of a jeweller engaged on his most demanding exercises, and observe the result.

Very well. We get spots.

They are not carefully designed spots, because with things outside a system, coded in brilliance into an assembly line, with the initiative past, the actors present, and the assemblage co-ordinated to the nth degree, you do not gain coded entries like that. They need what it takes to make integrally relevant code to the original. We get spots. The birds with these spots attract other birds without them; they mate, and the result is more spots. Again, the spotted birds are seemingly more fearsome, so off go scuttling in dismay the competitors for food. The spotted birds do a superb job of surviving. They in fact do it; they continue to be there. Great stuff!

Now a new colour comes to the spot. This was another cosmic tractor, or advent if you prefer. This is even more successful. Hi ho, we go! After a while, there is an elongation of the tail. How did it happen ?  Something simply happened to alter the code, a  little thing. We all know from our computer work, do we not, how easy it is to alter an almost infinitely sophisticated program by having something just pop into it !

You do not ? Come to think of it, neither do I! In fact, the smallest little fraction of some tiny part of the entire totality of systems which does not do what it is supposed to do, because of some fault in it, when it is integrated into the other working systems on my computer, makes me lose things with great address. It does not seem to right itself, or to correct  itself, but to spoil my  work, again and again. I find it a net liability, since I must now be sure NOT to activate this alien and intrusive agency, by seeing what DOES activate it, and not doing that! It is a fault in my system because it is neither co-contrived, nor is it in any way relevant to it. It does not share the purpose of the whole, but merely spoils it with alien invention.

Now then we have a slightly longer tail and a spot. Let us suppose that the other birds are very negatively impressed with these changed avine features, and things prosper on the survival front. To be sure, I do not see any peacock. Never mind, this particular bird which we now envisage, it has a special feature: it happens to get a two-tone spot. The other birds are rapt. This is amazing.  Often do they peer at this oddity; it preoccupies their minds, they change their conduct because of it, back off from the spot. They do not bother to worry about the BEHAVIOUR of the spotted bird, since this is obviously irrelevant. They are, to the bird, philosophers. They DWELL on the thing, and the mere fact that there is no slightest advantage for the competitor seems to them perfectly irrelevant. They just have the notion, perhaps, the entirely grand notion, that life has to GET somewhere, and unless you play-act, it won't go.

However, as we proceed down our track, the inherent entrepreneur always a wall-flower type, but forget that, we come to the finer stages. After all, it is quite useless to have our putative spots without indisputable accompaniments of exquisite taste, suitable form and the rest, before you get anything much bigger, let alone monstrously so (in the case of the giraffe a brand new heart SYSTEM arises), and with that you have to have simultaneously the associated nerve, nerve-disposition physically, blood vessel reorganisation, sinew adaptation (is that the word for making something that works in this new system ?), neurological construction to cover the changing events, eventually leading to (someone is leading) the exquisite structural engineering for the struts, the supports, and all the intricate devices for allowing the enormous feathery display to be steadied in the wind, both instinctively (that does not mean it does not have to be done, but it is provided for, so that it is done), and in terms of forces and their mastery.

It is sort of symmetrical, biochemical, neural, skeletal, sinew-musculature composition, a co-functional synthesis with the provision for all the ingredients of feather attachment in such a case of spread as this, operational functionality with such a weight, eating capacity with such a drag, behavioural characteristics with such a structure to manipulate, you know, that vast and ramifying,  that immense and collaborative network of mutually adapted, code directed, ordered and symbolically organised, part-by-part mutually accommodating,  totality. It is this which is required. It is a grand design, no less,  imbued with effectual working and executive capacity to relay the code to constructed composition and the composition to endurance, and the endurance to continuation in successive generations on the constructed plan provided, which would make any difference.

There, alas, it ends.

It needs not only imagination;  it requires the facility for actually doing what it has to do. This it lacks, not being like a million parts for a super-car, say the Aspirant, not knowing it had be an Aspirant (can you blame it ? it can't think), and so made of Aspirant parts, rather than a composite of  various other makes of parts (they also DO have to be made as even a Volkswagen owner with an ageing car needing part replacements will know), and indeed, not of any make, since there is in this fairy tale, no maker. It doesn't even know it has to be a car at all, and so select to that end. It hs run out of ends because of the philosophical presuppositions. Yet the show must go on ? What then ? Blink and have one for the road, till the police get you ? the logic police ... or else wake up. After all, it is only a dream, but it can act as a drug!

Somehow, in the dream, the absence of design, the absence of mathematicians, the absent architect, this does nothing at all to dampen the desire. On comes the result, like an avalanche launched from below the sea, coming up and doing great things, for ever up, and not down into the appropriate oceanic valleys,  or solidifying into brave basalt. How ? why,  by sheer will power, for as C.S. Lewis once pointed out, this is a great myth, and imagination demands it for some. It is just that myths do not belong in science. You are supposedly sensitive to ... evidence, accustomed to logic, watchful of the collation between theory and imagination, with actuality and events, to scientific law and quality, and mental vagaries for mere pleasure.

Let us however forget all this, for how otherwise could we proceed with the dream - forget it for some few moments!

Now we have a particular female. She is looking at two different designs of tail. She discerns the difference from the earlier model. Another ... ? Certainly, it is appealing, this one.

Yes one design, the new one, has 'come to be', you know 'arisen' somehow to be one of the most superb designs of colour and geometry, articulated not on paper but in cells, all with coded DNA's happening spinning away their frozen thoughts into action. Another is ... well, other. It is good, you know,  she thinks, but of course in her own vein, there is no doubt about that.

It is good even in competition with Rembrandt, this last design; but there is a certain je ne sais quoi, a quality, an atmosphere which happens to appeal to the finer aesthetic sense of the female peacock beholding all this splendour. She is overcome, predictively, because you see of the shade of superiority of her aesthetics (at so high a level of course, it is needed rigorously), and she mates. Predictively ? Ah well, the dream must go on, for the moment that is.

That, then, the tale goes on, that is how the design ...arose. Need for something not thought of, somehow communicates itself from nowhere, and behold, Aladdin to the fore, here it is. (Cf. SMR pp. 132ff., 117ff..) Tiresome people may negate the female peacock's aesthetic facility and point out that selection of the best requires first is creation, but in evolutionism you are not allowed to talk of that, so you ignore that ... problem. You know, it is rather like bankrupt people discriminatingly choosing between 2 houses when they can pay for neither, and are used to living in a tent.

Nor is this unhappy absence of the felicitous qualities of living design and appreciation all; nor is it merely the absence of its evidence of the progress of such things left immortal (or for long times) in the rocks; nor the presence of precisely the opposite in the gradual attrition in FACT of designs (SMR p. 252H) of living things, cumulatively vast, leaving the present relatively design-denuded; nor of the gradual imperfections which IN FACT arise in them, rather than inventions of new kind.

After all, one supposes if you are going to contradict everything in the name of science, it becomes a habit, so let us continue with it, in our survey to see its cultural kingdom more and more.

Alas the more complex the construction, the more multiplied its mutually adapted and common coded parts, to the millimetre, to the same ground plan and with the same type of collaborative components with the same computer programs (DNA is far more advanced than the latest Holden), and the same relationship of each part affected integrally to the one program and not an ill-assorted medley of inept orders with no constraints or imposed conditions, neither structurally aligned nor mutually adequate; and the more highly specialised the apparatus and the work: then the more disadvantageous is the result. It sits in the mass of ill-assorted combinations which merely help erect the dysfunctional and make a drag on life with the non-operational, so that the thing dies out in advance, before it comes, through sheer abundance of frustrating futility, where what is needed is coded utility.

Actually, living process is more interested in actuality than this, so that what it cannot produce from its own resources, it does not, and not doing it, it does not leave the evidence, for nothing done is nothing seen; and then of course, the actuality of the brilliant, the presence of the sophisticated, the marvels of the ingenious, these sit on the trail, attesting the sort of source by the sort of product! It all fits, on the one hand. On the other, literally nothing fits; and that does not endorse nothing as the source, but merely that such sources have nothing to do with the realities we face, and for that matter, which face us!

Small wonder, then,  what is sought cannot be, since codes do not construct themselves in the conceptual realms ex-conceiver; and it is not found, since what cannot be is not, and the imaginary steps do not occur; for what does not walk has no steps.

The theory of evolutionism is constantly an evacuee from scientific method on numerous grounds; but it continues like some illustrious pensioner, kept for his humour, for his past, since he accords with the whim and caprice, the fancy and desire of the government in office.

Do you like the tail of the peacock ? She did, that philosophical peacock, we are told. But do you like the talk of the tail, the tale of the peacock ? You do not. Why, you say, first you invent an inbuilt codifying engineer, then an equally shy architect and mathematician, and then you call on the services of a micro-biological functionary far superior to any we have as yet, and pushing them into service, you have discriminating female peacocks which constantly 'bring on' the best designs of this clumsy (aerodynamically clumsy) piece of meticulous ingenuity, like a superb luxury flat built only for select purposes.

Such is the tale of  the tail of the male, and these tails on the way, alas never found in process or aptitude for process, they are chosen as by art critics until we have the superbly overpowering wonder (to our own minds,  steeped in design and its aesthetics) of the actual ... result !

You do all this, the critic continues, drinking wine in his concern (a mistake, but there it is! he is disturbed you see), while in the process contradicting laws of science not only of the first order of magnitude, but never observed to be contradicted, while calling on a logical vacuum to erect a building vastly in excess of the challenge to build of the Twin Towers, and you do this in the entire and systematic lack of evidence, and in all possible opposition to the way we find building actually works in this universe, and yet you ask me to believe it ?

The conversation becoming more interesting, let us see it more graphically presented.
 
 

THE FANTASY IN ME MINOR

No, of course not,

I reply, in fact admiring his shrivelling contempt for the illusory.

How could any rational being be expected to believe it ? It is of course a fairy story, a fantasy up for consideration in some other universe.

Some other universe!

he/she expostulates (or they may actually have been a husband and wife team).

In what SORT of universe is causality to be absent, adequate causality ? Do you expect things to have NO qualities ? or if they have qualities do you not realise my dear chap (patronising perhaps, but then people get stirred at times), that qualities are such only because of their inherent results when they operate and this IS cause and effect ...

Stop! stop, I cry.

There is always danger of high-blood-pressure linkages to stroke.

I am only joking!

Joking indeed! Forsooth

(educated fellow)! cries he.

It is no joke to try to intimidate a perfectly orderly nature of the Universe ...
... no need for a capital,

I intimate, discerning its presence from his tone - but impervious, he continues:

and subvert it into performing sans logic, sans evidence, sans coding specialist, sans the actual direction of the thing, sans the observable equipment of the thing ...

You know how Shakespeare used the French sans for 'without' to describe getting old; well this is using it for not being there to GET old. How could it ? Thus I continued in reply (cf. TMR Ch. 7):

Indeed, many do just that.

Yes, in fact, you have to have SOMETHING THERE before its various contrivances and arrivals, and defects, or deficiencies, or efforts are even to the point at all. You do not use nothing or anything inadequate for the very simple reason that it IS inadequate, and we must be very practical people if we want a universe. We have one, but the same applies when we consider its arrival.

But I prefer reason, actuality and evidence. Nothing is so jejune as creator. I mean, it comes to nothing. We have something! That is the difference.

Nothing has nothing to do with it!

he cried intemperately.

Certainly, it could not have anything to do with it, being a declaration of absence,

I concurred. He looked interested so I felt free to continue.

But you know, when they have for so long been talking of nothing relevant, nothing able, nothing concordant with the type of output required, I suppose a certain frankness impels them at length to talk of nothing at all, for nothing to the point, is logically nothing.

You cannot be serious ? he charged.

Well, as serious as such a narrative permits. These things do happen!

You mean to tell me,

he exploded,

that a mysterious force, equipped with coding facility, structural sentiment, intelligent capacity to co-ordinate what has to be all there to work at all, has to have itself  instituted in a short space of time; and then that it did all this in a vast spread in the so-called Cambrian era, by a sheer magical exuberance, exempt from logic and law alike, and then forgot all about it, its incapacity exposed in nature, necessity and evidence alike  ... It is double-minded whimsy, nothing more.

The evidence,

 he said, leaning over towards me with a look like the lake in its quietness,

is not only living, but material; and as to matter, its powers are of a domain where its capacities are limited, its nature exhibited and its record but of itself. Matter is neither its own analyst nor a will to live, nor yet is it a coding recorder, an orderer, a purposeful being or a construer of schemas. It simply follows what it is, unerring since error is irrelevant to the purposeless. It is its own realm, just as is a cotton sheet, before a creative lady makes it marvellously by dint of thought, into a stunningly beautiful hat!

What has got into these ...!

Stop! stop!
I cry again, seeing his face now beginning to grow redder.

I have only been telling you the sort of thing which science is saying, or rather ...

Stop, yourself!
he exclaims.

This is not science, it is nonsense. It is the entire opposite of science. HOW dare you make such an ignominious butt of science as you did, even if it were only a joke!

There are those,
I tell him,
not all to be sure, but many, who tell  children these things, in principle, and call it their science class.

He dropped in a faint,  and I fearing death,  called the doctor.

He revived. But how, I asked gently, did you not know ?

I have been on a secret space station for 100 years, and lived long, he said. I had no idea that this sort of thing could so take hold. And for that, my dear fellow, just LOOK at your earth.  What are all you people  DOING with the thing! Your mad ideas do not seem to stop at this gross distortion of the venerable name of science! It is all of a piece.

I believe in what is sufficient, in God my dear man, the Creator for the works which by nature ARE creations, precisely what are to be deemed creations, since they totality is not found manufacturable in this world, except by creation, indeed not at all by us, all of us or any of us. It is from what outperforms us, needs no basis being the base, and does nothing now, having expressed the desire and purpose already.

Hence leaving things of this kind, in their various dimensions and their own limits and kinds, He has left things to perform and be assessed, has left us simply with the equipment, to perceive, to conceive, to consider the point, which of course means finding Him - well, the ontological entity, so magnificently equipped,  responsible! As to the equipment, manifestly, it performs as made, makes performance but not itself.

I then told him that for my part, I was merely exposing the monstrosity.

The Gospel,

I assured him,

is the missing link they forget. It is this which is to ally us to God, which most refuse, so that the world is more and more approximating the refuse which is its destiny. It is all planned, has for millenia be penned, is proceeding both in LACK of new creation kinds and PRESENCE of the dreams of our kind, such as naturalism, which prods the poor thing, Nature, and wants to make a dumb and incapable god of it, so that man can swagger like some dying monster, on the stage of life, ignoring his origin and destiny alike.

The other PRESENCE is the testimony of the word of God, the Bible, with that perfection of conception and testability which we see in nature, even though things have long been declining since creation, and that of Christ, who came, acted as the Bible declared, did what was necessary to redeem us, and abstracting Himself, addressed to us the need to find Him by His word, pending His return.

Yes, well, he said, the other testability is this, that the Gospel was predicted, and is as predicted, just as the nature of the universe is stated, created, running down, subject to divinely constructed laws, and the character of those major laws is likewise biblically stated. Without that word, man as merely relatively, knows absolutely nothing; but in such a state, when did you EVER find one who so speaks. He couldn't then even know that he knows nothing. He would be a logical mute.

It is all antinomy, impossibility, otherwise, whether in epistemology, 'Nature's epics' or mere livability, nation with nation. The only possibility is God, who confirms Himself scientifically, whether in history or science, in power with people or in power through prayer. History is His, and it finds itself constantly where He said it would be.

We became friends after that, but his scientific brethren on the whole, resented him. They had no answer for him, and if there is one thing which makes people unpopular, it is being right, when other people want to seem it, but refuse to be it.

THE DREAM OF DAPHNE

Quite a time had passed, and my sesqui-centenarian acquaintance (interesting that he should live so long up there) and I happened to be admiring a daphne bush. Incidentally, he decided that he did not like the italics at such length, so the method now is to use simple inset. But let us return to the daphne (my friend is imaginary ? of course, but so are the exploits of evolutionism: we are getting used to the sort of thing).

Now there is something about this plant which appealed to us both. We were considering its humble structure, not a towering giant, its quiet demeanour, not a jutting or obvious sort of plant at all, rather reminiscent of those shame-faced Christmas roses, its strangely individually crafted seeming little branches, looking as if they were living life without too much regard for people's thoughts, being busy with their own productions ... and speaking of that! Productions ? Look at that flower. It has an old world look, a quaintness, a sense of short-bread and doilies on an elegant table. It is so precise in its geometry, so tasteful in its demureness, so soft in its colouring ensemble, while yet each colour is a clear one and the tidiness crisp in a way which matches the scent, a softly penetrating delight.

It is almost like a dream, so beautiful, and its fragrance is like the clouds on the fine Spring day! its design unobtrusive but declarative, demurely joyful, the ensemble with quiet artistic atmosphere, its individuality its own rarity and the view's balm (cf. SMR pp. 236, 251- 252I^*1).

Where do you find its fragrant equal ? It is not easy. It elicits a joy, it conveys an impulse of delight, it produces for the lover of beauty, the sort of thrill which perhaps a great aircraft designer might have felt when he invented (if there were only one, rather doubtful, for SO MUCH design is needed, but still, if he were very great at his work, perhaps) the Concorde aircraft.

I was sharing these thoughts with my acquaintance.
 

Like a dream, I mused. Ah there is the rub, as Shakespeare might put it.  Dreams are most productive, in terms of emotions and meaning; but not of structures. For that you can have a dream if you want to, but you must have all that goes to MAKE IT HAPPEN. Dreams are not auto-consummative.

What in the world is that ? my friend asked.

They do not fulfil themselves. They need something, someone, to make them happen in actuality, when before they merely transpired in mental or emotional or spiritual events,
I responded.

Daphne, now ... I proceeded.

Daphne, he reflected, is one of the most amazing integrations of fragrance, quietness, gentleness, precision in flower, endurance of scent, delicacy of appearance that you could please.

One day, I continued, for we knew each other well enough by now, a perfectly ordinary flower was sitting in its little botanical cupola, and a little perfume arose. The nearest insects were ravished, and being able to detect quality when they found it, they so encouraged this bush over the millenia, that step by step, it manufactured better and better stuff, until daphne scent arose.

Discriminating insects! I must say, he replied. They know a good perfume when they smell it, and the daphne bush has the knack of producing the goods. The difference between the good and the exquisite, they can tell. Clever little beasts, you would almost think they were men.

Why not ? I asked. If insects have to be men, then men make themselves gods. It all fits: a sort of paranoia of typology, a euphoria of erratic thought. That is the very essence of dreamy evolutionism.  But, I continued, listen to this.

Yes, and not only that, every time the insects liked what it produced, it found a way of telling this, and so advancing in the way that was right. You do not see endless fails for that reason, over the myriads of years, all produced in vain. Nor does your bush think for one moment of dying out while it is failing. It knows how to play the game. It is all self-operating. The power to produce, the capacity to formulate, the chemistry of fragrance, the engineering of the means of production... the endurance during failure over millions of years, the ...

All have to happen simultaneously, he said. Even the lack of evidence, reason, and law, all have to happen simultaneously. How else could you have a fairy tale ? That is precisely what makes them such fun. Everything that CAN'T does, and whatever does NOT happen, COMES, because that is what magic does.

Yes, and indeed nothing can happen at all if there is no system capable of its construction. Moving bits of bricks about is not architecture. That requires knowledge. You need to be a sophisticate of your domain, not a mover of bricks. Or a fairy ...

But where do the 'bricks' come from ? he queried.

From nowhere. There is nowhere to posit if you start with nothing; and if you start with something, it is not going to be bricks.

What then do you start with ?

I did not do it! I commented rather wryly, admittedly.

Certainly! he smiled, but how did what did it do it ?

It is perfectly easy, I observed. You only need the materials, the powers, the privileges, the proprieties , you know, the knowledge, the wit, the wisdom, the capacities, the chemistry, the biochemistry, the synthetic constructive power, the concepts to encode, the codes to sustain, the commands to convey orders ...

You mean God ?

 THE GOD OF GENESIS SPEAKS!
NOT THE CLOD OF EARTH,
INDEED NOT THE CLOUD OF NOTHING AT ALL
- MINUS CLOUD

Certainly. You know, He SPOKE and it was done. That is what Genesis says.

Nothing else is adequate to produce from NOTHING material, everything moral, spiritual, physical, chemical, biochemical, neural, mental, spiritual that is found in creation. Start with nothing, end with it. Start with a system, then all has to be automated. We do not find it so. Start with many systems, you need God to create them. Start with God, you get many systems; but more than that, the architectural capacities and the functional facilities which create the myriads of individual designs, not in the end, but in the beginning ...
 

In the beginning God ?
 

Of course. That is not only HOW but WHY it began. That is where all purpose came from, which is the contrary of matter, the character of person.
 

You know, he observed, when you come to the Creator's reality, instead of the dream and the tale, it is rather wonderful that He has made such products as these fascinating exhibits of skill, will and beauty. What a bounty, and what a test life really is.
 

The only test which is germane to man, I responded, at the ultimate, is however just one. Will he find the daphne of the soul, and peacock's tail of the life, the beauty and the bounty, or will he drag his fine feathers of manhood in the dust, an insult to humanity, requesting annihilation which cannot come, since spiritual beings have answering to do, to the God they ignore, the life they repossess, as if it were a vacant block, land for the seizing.

Christ came that they might have life more abundantly! you know. It is very mean-hearted now; for reductionist chatter and simplistic clatter in the lust to survive, arrive, contrive, is increasingly replacing the thankful delight in the God of creation, the Lord of peace and the Guide of life, and Jesus Christ, as obvious as a traffic policeman, is bypassed with a passion which is the other side of an inelegant selfishness which makes asses of those myriads self-centred enough, family centred, culture centred, to remember only their own dreams, or those of their nominees, the expressions of unbridled desire, loathsome appetite or partisanship, indifferent jaundice.
 

Of course, of course, he commented. I have noticed this. When you forsake meaning (the statement to this effect BEING meaning, cf. SMR Ch. 3), meanness of heart is a certain result, and when you promote meaning while forsaking its only conceivable source, you are merely acting out an irrational drama which unless it is for fun, or edification, ends where all the irrational presumptions do.
 

Yes, I concurred, it is sad, when the father of fragrance is deserted for the midgetry of morals and the starvation of spirit which is now frequently called life, as if debasement were the answer to magic, and deletion the desire. Christ however remains, the only option, the divine gift, which with life itself, is the consummation of the ague, by its healing, and the answer to the irrationality by its replacement. When God speaks, this is His word. He has no other word for man, so irrationalities of mental folly play with absurdities of moral pretence, to produce the ultimate fiction.

When, however, I continued, man is the dreamer, and is founding himself on his dreams, he explodes even himself amidst his fellows as now is the practice of many Moslems.

Dreams, he proceeded, explode in the daylight. Christ is the only light that has lasted, and for good measure, His words have lasted incapable of refutation, for two millenia! They themselves are in the container ship of the Bible, the prophecies of which join with His own like one vast school, all dressed in the same uniform, and what a SCHOOL! It teaches what history does, presents what man needs, and never alters.

Dreams, however, you seem to have become a world of dreams for millions. Dreams of how you began, as if science, when dressed as so often in philosophy's mantle, takes a holiday from reason every time God is mentioned, or else seeks a distortion so blatant, a substitute so inadequate that it is a marvel that thought can so evacuate reason.

For our creation, you need the motive power, the constructive ability, the thrust, the upward gradient director. You know the downward one, the one we actually find in practice, it is the Second Law of Thermodynamics actuality, which is quite natural, when designs, long made, have to meet various conditions which impact on their endurance. Why, it is exactly what you would logically expect, what you empirically find and in the laws of science, actually formulate. It is this, and not some 'intel within' know-how to make it go 'up' as distinct from merely being more energised which we meet. It just goes down.

In fact, I mused, this whole disease of the mind called organic evolution is based on a sort of myth: 'nature' has to have a spasm, a constructive spasm (when the equilibrium gives way to the unknown wonder that does all the jobs in an integral splash of productive coherence). It is like dragon-fly wings drying as the new insect emerges, take the pre-ordained shape - since that is what is IN them, in the interstices of their construction; but this it does because it has already BEEN created. It is mere routine. Inventing the routine is another matter, not seen now, except in man as one of his attributes, likewise gifted on him on creation.

But creation itself ? he asked.

I regarded him with interest, noting his increasing animation as time passed, since his return. He had matured and seemed to have found the Life eternal for himself.

Spasm and incoherence are mere code words, I responded. They are mere engines in disguise, for their task is not that of spasm, and the essential source is not naked energy, or undirected power, but energy with work to do, and appointed tasks to perform, sufficient for their outcome, by its income, for their form by its formative prowess, for their operation by its operational felicity.

System has nothing but the nature of the system, and its nature presents the confines of its production, in logic as in life, in observation as in cogitation, in need as in its requital. Past that, the cause of the system is to be found, and the greater its abilities, the greater the cause. In the end, from nothing you get nothing; from the sufficient you get the result; mere stages cannot disguise it, nor can dreams create it, just as nature will not attest such dreams as if they could drop from the fantasies of the mind to the factualities of life.

It refuses not obliquely, but dramatically, in evidence, in flourishes, in methods, in principles, in laws, in controls, in every whit of its being. It refuses even to know the caprice of the irrational, the very bare boards of the universe mocking as able, the delusions of the thoughts that contrive what can never arrive, except in their domain, the very ships of imagination on the sea of confusion. Nature is not sufficient.

In turn, for the sufficient, for what is adequate for the end,  you need what provides it with existence and power; and therefore,  only in the eternally self-sufficient do you ever have what is  to be what will be productive at all, leading to the results known as the universe.

Empirically, principles unfound on earth, except from intelligence, have to operate.

They did operate, not least in founding man's intelligence, derivative and inferior as it is, in that sublime scope of the Creator.

They do not in 'nature' do so now. That is precisely what the Bible says. It is the historical, empirical, logical, biblical fact.

The speech of God who in the beginning spoke, and it was done, has provided man (Colossians 1:15, 3:10). The speech which through the prophets, and in Christ Himself, has been sent has provided for man (Hebrews 1:1-3).

Creation's liberty has led to love's remedy for the breaches. Man has a long record of wanting to trust in what God has created, 'nature', or the mind to think, the psyche, or the thoughts he creates, philosophy, or the ways he contrives, culture, or the jaded shadows of thought found in science falsely so-called, a variant of philosophy, in his thrust for glory, his jaundice at shame, paranoia or cynicism which defeats its own cause in its self-degradation of the thinker who thinks it^*3.

This, it is his tragedy. It is becoming epochal, and critical now. Man becomes his own victim.

It is the triumph in Christ which makes of life a thing so glorious; for while created life and the world about it are being degraded in due process, in the passage of time, physically, like any other creation of this kind, over time, there is in the living word of God, the immutable Christ, the paragon of pardon, the acme of love^*4, the glory of God given as man to man (Hebrews 2), who till this very hour, remains offered to man (I Corinthians 6:1ff.). Through Him as door, one may enter into the innermost recesses of life, into the presence of God as one of His very children: "He came to His own and His own did not receive Him; but to as many as did receive Him, to those He gave the power to become the children of God, to those who believe in His name" - John 1:14.
 

 WHEN THE BEGINNING OF THE END, ENDS
(Matthew 24:8,14)

This state of the world into which I have so suddenly be thrust, he urged, it is merely the beginning of the end. There is much more tragedy yet, for if you ignore reality, it must hit. The abyss of conscience, man talking up a universe which is not there, as if speech of man would make it, which it manifestly does not, intelligent though he be (he is far too late to account for it by his own action), it is one of the discordant uglinesses of your world, you know.

If you are hit with the facts, however, I noted, then there is hope. The future in fact is Christ, and renewal of life by Him, in accord not with myth but the mastery of the God who foretold His coming. As to our way of dying as a substitute for life, amidst ugly dreams of delusion and concoctions of feeble cant, which the 20th century so illustrated: it is this, in conflict with Him, or it is Himself who has already overcome the world and its sullied songs. We come to Him who died for us, or we die in our own sins, philosophical ragamuffins, cultural scorners, autonomous captives, at war with God Himself. Yet in that conflict, you are fighting the life source which made you what you are, and that, it is a sort of personal cancer in life, of life, against life, your own.

Put that into millions, I remarked, and you have the thing you now call history.

Continue in that line, I pursued the point, and the world itself will be history. Yet before that time, the ultimate run-down, the final entropy, which is no mere quiet ending, but a display of power as at the first (II Peter 3), there is to be a direct display of power as when Christ Himself came, of the sort of power the great prophets showed in deed, word or both, as for example in Elijah, Elisha, and the words of the great evangelist, Isaiah, whose gospel from God surged into the world some three quarters of a millenium before the One who made it happen came.

There is ? Yes I think I remember reading of it in the Bible.

This power is personal, for we are the culmination of the creation of the personal God. It is a matter of Christ returning for His people.

Companionable action, he observed.

It is not less, but far beyond that. The world is moving to its final storm, far from its moorings, and the social and political, the economic and the cultural is to seek its prey, far from God, yet still in His world. In this process, there will be a time of terror rather like what would have happened if the Moslems had succeeding in quenching Europe in the 8th century, or Hitler in the 20th., or Stalin! More than that, by this time, the cultural captivity^*5will be so profound that many will want it that way, until they no longer have the power to remove it. Same thing happened with Hitler: wonderful hope, hopeless disaster, and no way of getting rid of him till the disaster finished happening.

This time, the world is the pawn. In this, the drama unfolds: the dream is not merely biological, it is psychological and economic (SMR pp. 611ff.), making the magnitudes of man tiny (cf. SMR pp. 620ff.), while the power of God IS verified as no dream ever is (cf. SMR pp. 623ff.). This approaching time is to surpass all folly, all horror; but it will be short (cf. Revelation 17:12-14), "one hour with the beast". Then the humanistic contrivance - ultimately backed by the devil and with him back of all this prostitution of science we have noted, and this quite as fraudulent in psychology as in economics, with a synthesis of the latest of mode of each^*6 this will issue like a pustule in a boil. It will appear in the man of sin, the antichrist figure, whose insane self-admiration, perhaps thought of as epitomising that of the human race, or its best, or whatever, will lead to flaming disaster (II Thessalonians 2, Revelation 19).

These spirits on fire with themselves, their wily wisdoms, self-will and self-rule, their autonomies and their appointees of mere desire, he mused, they flame away, but are so combustible. They not only DO not last, but cannot, except in judgment which has its own ways. What lasts is God, and those who are His (Isaiah 51:6). Where the beginning is, there the end is, the alpha and omega, the beginning and the end of all creation, its founder, fabricator, redeemer of all those who receive Him, its destiny and its judge.

It is merciful that the Judge became man, he confided; it is all the more certain, however, that His rejection by men is inexcusable. On the other hand, His protection is more than humane, it is divine.
 

It was delightful to see his progress.
 

END-NOTES

*1
Three of relatively short quotations from these pages may help some readers.

1.From p. 234.

 Of recent interest on this ancient topic, is Stephen Jay Gould's book, Wonderful Life. In this, he investigates the 'Burgess Shale' in Canada, one discovered by Charles Walcott, in British Columbia.

In 'checking out' the facts, he gathers data for the interesting declaration that diversity, ''disparity in anatomical design'' of life in these Cambrian rocks exceeds what is in our contemporary oceans. Of gradualistic concepts in the face of this vital profusion of multiply-modelled, hi-tech abounding life, Gould attests this: ''literally incomprehensible''! (Op.cit., pp. 208, 260; cf. p. 160 supra.)

Not merely, then, is there a substantial contribution to currently known life immediately in this first basic 'geological age', as the theory has it: it exceeds what we now have in the oceans. A more delightfully sharp rebuke to the evolutionary notion of gradual arrivals could scarcely be constructed by Lewis Carroll, even with all his gifts, even if he set his mind to parody evolutionary pretensions. Here, however, the 'parody' is found... in the facts. Evolution is a parody of a scientific theory, one so gross, that if it were instead a scientific theory, those who hold it could be appalled by the gall of the maker of the parody.

Put more specifically, in terms of form: the theory of gradualism
is a parody of the facts; a rejection of the evidence;
is falsified as a scientific theory by continual confirmation of this contradiction of what it would predict;
and its
formally defunct character is re-asserted with the progress of knowledge, with increasing and now mortifying force and firmness. That is its logical character. It is like the corpse of Lenin: very dead, but surprising kept on view. In this case, however, wanton devotee work is not interested in acknowledging that the corpse is (scientifically) dead.
 

2.
From p. 251.

DISCIPLINED, DEVIOUS AND DELINQUENT IMAGINATION

'Imagined' is the point in science. Anyone can imagine, given normal intellect and human nature. It can be great material, in the line of poetry, novels, cartoons, certain types of political commentary - really great or merely sardonically called 'great'. Children may imagine; and their imaginations may be poignantly appealing, or rambunctiously amusing; and so on. But when it comes to a special phenomenon called science, one no greater but specific and distinct, then we need to beware of special pleading in endeavouring to make definitions which in the manner of a propaganda ploy, give the name and type of dignity of science, to the performance antics of what is in fact merely meretricious metaphysics. It is fatally easy to re-define science so that its verifiability and impersonality become lost, but the kudos relating to these things, is far from lost. In that case, a slide, a name misapplied, some illusionism with words, and plausible propaganda replaces hard thought. It is easy; but illicit.

Now to be sure, metaphysics is not all bad; not by any means. It is just that it often takes off from a plane of imagination and lands on a moonbeam. Science, by distinction, often takes off from what is indisputable - at its best - and lands on what is a clever, comprehensive and formulated presentation of what is going on. Not, incidentally, of what is not evidenced.

On the way, it is publicly testable, demonstrably verifiable, and even then not too thrilled with itself, as to detail, lest more data humble its proud suppositions, making it relent, if not repent, and try again. (Cf. pp. 145-174, esp. 154-5 ff. supra, and 931 ff. infra.) Science per se is disciplined. (Cf. pp. 330, 332E-G infra.)

It is because of these criteria that it has a measure of reliability and a measure of dignity, and that the term 'scientific' is not readily held in disgrace; though of course scientists when, like many others, becoming bumptious or bustling with their own importance or ideological preferences, may be digraced, as Lord Zuckerman seems to have felt with no little sorrow, by non-scientific errors. As he showed, this they may freely do as if it were science, facts being disregarded for the love of theory.

Imagination which does not have such criteria of test, purging, refinement, collaboration with other verified hypotheses and so on, may be just a marvellous exhibition of the lust for wonder, for new worlds or fabrications of pert fantasy. It is indeed not to be disregarded just because it may become the intellectual parallel of a moral libertine, in such a case. This creativity ideally, this facility is part of the wonder of the creation called man. It does not really matter if this or that pedant, scholar or sophisticate happens to prefer to call that 'science' which is mere merriment with the imagination. It is stringently necessary however that a word-game be avoided, in which the manipulation of terms obscures realities of fact. This becomes a logical slide through ambiguity.

Thus the use of the term 'scientific' for the febrile and more rollicking gestures of the human fancy is not recommended. It is not just a question of terminological abuse: it can readily become a source of profound confusion. Thus the type of attention given to testable, verifiable, carefully constructed, rigorously formulated, precisely probed work called science, can then be switched to the type of situation appropriate to children's fantasies. Then by verbal molestation, the spurts of fancy are suddenly accorded the toga of truth, or at the least, the pullover of perspirational, intellectual work, as if toiling with and on what is to be found by inspection... careful inspection, not mere insurrection against the facts, or riot against logic.

It is for this reason that W.R. Bird's attempt to bring in a sort of pseudo-sociological survey of who says what about science, does not affect the issue. Whoever says whatever, it will always be error to bring the well-grounded kudos of one thing, earned in one way, to the name of another. Perhaps two definitions of science would help: one for work and one for play, word-play. (See also Ch. 3, esp. pp. 311-316.)
 

3. From p. 252D

Rather hilariously, not content with hopeful monsters, so well-equipped, ingenious ontogenetic excursions beyond the script, and punctuation which knows better how to pause than to begin, let alone act, we have also had attempts at a disease oriented system of construction, as if pathology were the embryology of design! However ingenious man is, his endeavours to ignore the point are always and pointless and both historically and predictably so, history being the tomb of the ashes of such vauntings, sprawled like an army in defeat, each new army fighting on the bones of the forsaken theories that never did, because they never could make it.

Dr Ted Steel's insistence on pathological incursions, on disease-activated alteration - say to the immune system (ANU, The Australian, p. 3, Dec. 6, 1994), moving into the area of reproductive typing, is of interest - no more - in the illusory field of organic evolution. Here the rational question has always been - not this:

1) Is man's system impregnable to change in any area ? Is it invulnerable in the code-room to disease ? Is its reproductive system immune ? or are those vital premises inaccessible to disease-engendered diversification, to ravaging assaults, salient impacts, to the dynamic of graded and ungraded stimuli, moving through the activation, de-activation, re-activation, mis-activation or invasion of the genes ? . . . but this:

2) Where did this system come from ? and this:

3) How is it so highly organised as to render most junior by comparison, man's highest conceptual, structural, engineering, accomplishments, his most advanced functional designs ? What is asked is this:

4) Who has contrived this system ? What called to be this correlated, co-ordinated, integrally multi-disciplinary masterpiece - one that in turn acts as equipment for a mind and a spirit that move in splendid facility, in the imaginative triad called 'man' ? (See pp. 348-350 infra; and Ch. 1 supra). What contrived, composed, conceived, constructed that technical triumph, that creative wonder !

As noted, there are many forces, there are many stimuli to the system in situ, to which it can respond, activating, de-activating, re-activating or abusing it, in many ways. A new generation may receive from its predecessor, and receiving, pay . . . So-called pleiotrophic genes (multi-task supervisory, sub-system managing) might multiply such destructive, warping or deforming, such mutant effects. The pith however remains this:

• What created it ?

An accident (cf. pp. 81-88, *18, supra) is not an automobile plant, nor is it an automated production facility: nor is an incident an engineer, nor is a corruption a code-maker, an event a signification, a happening a command, an impact a conception, nor is an embroilment the equivalent of synthetic, symbolic thought!

Accidents have interesting results, not in all circumstances materially regressive for a given purpose. To be sure, they could have superficially advantageous results . . . Thus belly-fat could conceivably be sheered off by an unforeseen impact (though it could be a sanguinary affair). However that is no systematic advance in the design, in the functional, synthetic criteria of the system; and it is this, when we are examining the construction of such systems, which makes demands upon reason. Accidents indeed may diversify cars (for example, a mudguard of a 1963 Pontiac, knocked off in a slow trip, might conceivably reduce petrol consumption . . .); but they do not build them. They do not moreover fabricate, create manufacturing premises, the genius of which is opposite in kind.

Like viruses, accidents may 'modify' productive premises. They may even reach to the core codes, in the case of sophisticated robotics costing billions of dollars to instal and operate: these however they do not make. They do not construct them, or for that matter, make their power to absorb undesigned impacts (those unforeseen, undesired, or anti-functional); or intended ones (covered in the scope of the code: design-correlatives). As to these latter: in the case of complex living equipment, provided with a complex range of inbuilt, programmed responses, this variable is an awesome and impressive option. Not amazingly, moreover, many genes are subject to alteration like any other maulable hi-tech equipment. The marvel is the depth and efficiency of the defence of 'kind', in the case for example of the human body, as an exponent of life (see pp. 140-145 supra) - the rigour of its copying, even to hundreds of generations; and of its power to produce such copies, to hundreds of generations, and this despite the ever-growing impacts of 'mankind's' misused environment - whether spiritual, mental, physical or terrestrial.

The requirement to the point - to achieve and account for the depth and height of biological life . . . ? This is not horizontal by-play at any given level; but rather is it vertical ascent which is integrated, codified, empowered, activated, sustained, secured, achieved and enforced. And, of course, observable . . . All that is foundational. Haphazard 'helpfulness' is not systematic construction; the onsets of evocative stimuli are not the genes with facility in their systems to respond (like car alarms), in certain cases. Confusion and creation are alternative options - but not for reason.

The logical need we face: it is arrival, not survival. It is construction - not constriction, emplacement or displacement. We are not in effect, talking of 'bombing'; of pathological environment; of invading the factory (here in the special case of human life in particular). Our topic is the building of it: not onset, but outset; not its impact-sustaining or -responding powers, but their origin. UPGRADING of codal design specification, of synthetic symbolism with its implementation - not irruptive intrusion into prepared premises: this has demands that nothing can demean ... Indeed, as for man the surveyor of this scene, human life, like the rest being 'finished' as God's creation: here such upgrading is never seen. Our time is God's display-unit, not His easel.

For the precise emplacement of this item in Christian-Apologetic procedure, see in SMR pp. 316B-C, *18-*19 infra. In effect, just as Ch. 1 shows the necessity of God, and Ch. 3 His inescapability, so Ch. 2 (verification) illustrates the lack of rational competition at the level of Scientific Method, to the acts of the Creator. To this reality, scientific method must bow; from this, aggressive myths - in science or elsewhere - may depart.
 
 
 

*2 Goldschmidt's dilemma: Since it is not gradual, what is it ? Where can it come from ? What is its source ? What construction agency could produce such a thing in such a proliferation in such apparent ease and multitudinous variety around kinds ? His famed 'hopeful monster' is just a smorgasbord of things ready for selection, with the quiet disregard as is universal in this area altogether, of where in the world these hopeful things came from. Actually, of course, the dilemma is false. They did not come from a world which knows nothing in itself of how to create them. They came from the Maker of the world, which in any case independently requires its producer.
(See It Bubbles… Ch. 9, Little Things Ch. 5, Spiritual Refreshings ... Ch. 13.)

Here is a citation from SMR p. 252B.

In another perspective, nearly half a century ago, Professor R.B. Goldschmidt, who served as a Professor at the University of California (cited by Gish) pursued his theme with similar anguish at folly. He noted and listed various high technical marvels of life ARRIVING UNHERALDED AND ABRUPTLY, and posed well the absurdity of gradualism in yet a third perspective. In this he is not unlike Professor Gould of Harvard today; for Professor Goldschmidt cries (it. added):

The facts of greatest general importance are the following. When a new phylum, class, or order appears, there follows a quick, explosive (*48) (in terms of geological time) diversification so that practically all orders or families known appear (*49) suddenly and without any apparent transitions ... American Scientist, 40:97 (1952).

 
*3 See SMR Ch. 3, Repent or Perish Ch. 7.

*4
Surprising at it may at first sight seem, this love does not rest on mingy mediocrity, stingy spirituality, but seeks the best use of talent, the grandest development of character, tests, tries and refines; and ignorantly many fume and fret, when the fact is that this very response may itself need correction, showing a lack of faith, not the mere resignation of indifference or the gross insult of bitterness, in the sight of the Lord Himself. In that way, the road may become rough, the puddles seem lakes and the corrugations mountains.

Of great value in the sight of God is the unfading loveliness of a humble and quiet spirit (cf. I Peter 3:4, Isaiah 66:2, 57:15, for He revives the spirit of the humble, and revives the spirit of the contrite ones (cf. Psalm 51).

In Psalm 66 you see a vista of the purity of victory, wrought in many tests:

"Oh, bless our God, you peoples!
And make the voice of His praise to be heard,
Who keeps our soul among the living,
And does not allow our feet to be moved.

"For You, O God, have tested us;
You have refined us as silver is refined.
You brought us into the net;
You laid affliction on our backs.
You have caused men to ride over our heads;
We went through fire and through water;
But You brought us out to rich fulfillment.

"I will go into Your house with burnt offerings;
I will pay You my vows,
Which my lips have uttered
And my mouth has spoken when I was in trouble."

Peter, again, advises us that the genunineness of our faith is something more precious than gold, like metal to be tested with fire, and that the result is glorious, something ineffably wonderful. It is not to be compared with suffering; for that passes, this remains.

Faith ? Look at Hebrews 11 and its examples of those who looked to the Lord, as seeing Him who is invisible, looking for a city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is GOD. It is not some psychic mark or effort, though labour is involved. It is formed in REST in the Lord, and moved by TRUSTING in the Lord. It is not something erratic or arcane, but is so much more than merely trust in this, that it is founded BY God, rests IN God, has the companionship OF God; yet it is by no means less than trust!

Life is never for auto-pilot. To be sure, there is the sympathetic nervous system, and there are elements of control in much of our substratum of life. This however is not to demean its grandeur or lessen its responsibility, but rather to enhance it, for then we are not forever preoccupied with the need to remember to draw the next breath and the like, so that we may CONCENTRATE on the top priority, the LORD and His work and that love of His, flared towards us as sun flares move a little towards the earth, yes but they are ardent! and it is this which in hearts which receive Him, can rebound towards our fellows: not to help them die, but live!

 It is not a love which is mere sentiment, and thus our testings are far more than indulgence, but never less, when we are His children, than fatherly.

Freed of a chiding conscience, being pardoned, but by no means evacuated from the lessons of our failures, we are taught and brought up in the most exacting way at times, lest indolence of heart, complacency of spirit, mixed motives or even a flippancy in success, or an insensitivity in triumph should mar us; but again, how often the Lord's mercy is so profound as to excite wonder. HE is a FATHER! As children, we grow best in a faith which, being genuine, does not fail, for God has not appointed us to  wrath, but to obtain salvation (I Thessalonians 5:9-10). It is no part of purity to doubt this, but an insolence. On the other hand, it is no part of faith to imagine it removes one from due discipline when, wrongly citing this as ground for indifference to the challenge of life, we should act as King David did once, as with faith we are so placed that sin may abound! (Romans 6). This is specifically theologically excluded.

Yet in some ways this is not necessary to say; it is just that pathology of the spirit occasions the word. In fact, does LOVE NEED to be reminded that its object is so pure and precious that deflections are unthinkable ? Yet if it should grow so tame and tepid as that, then the reminder comes, in the manner of love, with discretion, discernment and if necessary, with a pungency which sharpens flaccidity to favour. Whom He LOVES, He REBUKES and CHASTENS. If this is too much, where is the child's response to his
Father ?

If there is no childhood in the heart towards God, where is faith ? But if one has trusted in Him, as He is, according to His covenant, then rest assured, THE SPIRIT TESTIFIES WITH OUR SPIRITS THAT WE ARE THE CHILDREN OF GOD (Romans 8:16). Corrections may ensure, but the result of chastening is the peaceable fruit of righteousness and the basis of the sheep's love of the Shepherd is His immiscible spirit of sacrifice and solicitude, tested itself to the uttermost when, having made loud cries to the Father at His own approaching redemptive mission (Hebrews 5:7), as it loomed, He nevertheless so wrought and fought that He prevailed in purity (Matthew 26:52-56, John 19:30, Hebrews 9:12-28, 10:10-14), to accept the foul, to cancel it and so pay the way for light in darkest places (Matthew 20:28, Galatians 3:1-13).

Once born, the child of God has HIS seed within him/her (I John 3:9), and there is no more question, for the inheritance is forever (Ephesians 1:11).
 

*5 See SMR pp. 422Qff., 422 Eff..

*6 Cf. SMR pp. 611ff., 750Bff., The Other News  5, Beauty for Ashes Ch. 5.