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CHAPTER 1

MYTHS and RELIGION

This is taken from

Red Alert ...

CHAPTER 7

MYTHS AND RELIGION,

RELIGION AND TRUTH

Myths

That is a myth, says Joan disgustedly.

It is not, says Robert. It is an absolute fact.

What is the point of this ... discussion ? Clearly Joan conceives that the statement, declaration or assertion, the datum is not a fact. Further she believes that it is clearly so, although it is embedded in some specious presentation which to the unwary, might seem acceptable.

What IS a myth ? We might characterise it as some presentation which does not meet rational grounds of enquiry, but which is tilted at rather than covering the point, perspective or plan in question.

Thus it is a myth that 'nature' which does not even exist, made nature. It does not exhibit in anything any power to do so. It is a product and proceeds as installed. It is not really so difficult to see that my monitor, though a remarkable invention (less so that the slim line one without radiation which is available, but still notable) is not operating in a self-creating mode. It did not do either of two rather obvious things.

1) It did not make itself. The work of a mind is evident in its integrality of purpose, its comprehensiveness of coverage, its economy of method, its collage of components
mutually sized, suited and progressively operational and so forth. The work of acting AS A MIND, however is not apparent from anything which the monitor does, in nothing whatsoever.
The hypothesis that it had a mind would be a myth. It would bypass the actual, the nature of the object as it is, clearly presented in a multitude of synthetic ways, each analysable by mind retrospectively and disposable in terms of mind, in plan, and actualisable only in mentally
prepared methods.

2) It does not think. Its powers are the consequence of thought, but it exhibits no freedom (only power to transgress when some of the carefully composed elements wear out and so cease to conform to design specifications, but that is the fault of design not computer), no imagination, no conceptual power. It shows however vast conceptual action in the arrangements of parts and their overall signification and function, correlative to specifiable purpose.

To declare that it thinks would be

a) anti-evidential

b) anti-functional

c) a confusion of the result of thought with its actual practice.

We have on many occasions (cf. Wake Up World! Your Creator is Coming ... Chs. 4-6, A Spiritual Potpourri Chs. 1-9 and earlier chapters of this current volume, not to omit SMR Chs. 1-3, 10) see that this is in generic terms, the nature of the nature of this world.

Myths and 'Nature'

There is no Nature; for there are many 'natures'. You do not look at a tribe and say, This is their nature, unless perhaps you are talking skin colour or conceivably height range. The personal nature is likely to be so diverse, that to talk of their 'nature' might in some cases at least, be deemed racism, a sort of collectivism of thought which does not bother to differentiate major differences of fact, and hence is both unscholarly and inaccurate.

In referring to man, animal, microbe, matter and so forth, to make a reference to 'Nature' is in peril of being inane. You may speciously define your intention as specifying all the diversities which meet the eye, but why on earth call it 'Nature' as if it were in some sense a thing.

The universe is a thing, for it is the ONE whole thing. It is not 'Nature' however, since its spiritual, moral, material and mental facilities vary to the point that the composition is not conducive to any particular 'nature'. It is visible as in a blow, invisible as in love, it is hard and it is soft, it is aqueous and it is aerial, it is conceptual and it is implementative, it is ideational and it is material, it is mental and it is intellectual, it is moronic and it is ingenious, it is fashioned and it is fashioning, it is programmed and it is personal ... (cf. It Bubbles ... Ch. 9, Little Things Ch. 5, SMR pp. 348ff.). Now you COULD certainly use some term to mean a conglomerate of all the diversities of natures which one can see, and the universe is not a bad effort; but the term 'nature' has a meaning.

It is NO nature which we see but a vast and exceedingly diverse and divergent collection of natures.

You could say, by 'Nature' I mean just that. This however skirts the issue. The term refers to a composition of qualities, or a quality, and when what we have is specifically a vast heterogeneity of the same, the singular term 'nature' is inept in the extreme. It is rather like calling something a thingummy, in order by vagueness, to escape definition of any kind.

This misuse of the very term however is not the only consideration. Implicit is the concept, when a capital N is used, that there is something which IS nature. What then is it ? If it is all, 'nature' is precisely what it is not. If by 'nature', you mean the whole assemblage of things with created characteristics, qualities of specifiable kind, then the term would more intelligently be changed to Creation; or if you do not want to use that term for some kind of inhibition, then The Natural World would do, in that it is a world in which things with natures exist. We hear even of Mother Nature, as if the fact that things have specifiable natures, like products in general, being made to that effect, meant that they had a mother.

We could envisage going to a car assembly plant and saying, Ah! here is mother car! Apart from the figurative, there is what it figures. It is not MOTHER CAR but a car making plant. it is NOT a car at all! Production facilities are not a type of object which they create. It is precisely for this reason that the concept is so inept as to be derisible. Assuredly it must be beyond its product, or it will not be able to produce it.

The possibility of some kind of psychiatric care might arise in the mind of some, at the ascription, mother car in such a case. Mother car ! Anyone can SEE that it is a band of people intelligently creating cars, and why this 'sexist' stuff ? Why not father nature ? and in any case, why mother or father ? Why not here is the car assembly plant, and if you want to be more specific, the plant plus the people who labour to schedule; and maybe the designer too, if he happens to be about at the time of your visit. Cars do not have mother cars, but inventors who are not cars, and if they were, they could not make them: anyone knows that. Manufacturing is a process of wit and astuteness, in which intelligence, initiative, invention and organisation plays a part; and essential is the timing so that the varied processes can be articulated in ways which both meet the final design and the procedure towards it, so that things can operate in the right order.

Cars do not arrive by chance; the system in which this COULD arrive by chance would be one involving some kind of carefully moulded and modulated contrivances of the most exquisite kind, so allowing its due operation to occur productively.

WHATEVER the inventor of this class of observable entity, and WHATEVER the process of invention-becoming-visible object, it is the FUNCTION which is ineradicable, in view of the nature of product, functional-complexity and code manipulation of events. Not Mother Nature but engineer, entrepreneur, these are the terms. Not Mother Car Nature, for all cars, something naturing itself into maturation in their lives, not this: for there is no generic car which makes cars and is their parent, a father to all. In fact, there is the generic IDEA, and the generic POWER, and the generic ENGINEERING SKILL and the generic INITIATIVE, and it may be one or a team who do all this. The nature of THESE PEOPLE is that they possess al that such functions are ascertainable as requiring, at least. They could be greater; they cannot be less.

Production does not involve a system doing its thing, which is arbitrary and idiosyncratic; it requires a system which is managed, minded, moulded, made, fashioned, fulfilled, maintained and before that understood and analytically comprehended, etiologically sustainable whether mental, physical, bio-physical, neural, cranial, or in the realms of vitality, spirituality or personality. Things incomprehensible do not make themselves from deprived bases, illiterate in the worlds of construction. Etiology does not cease because of myth in any field; myth ceases because of etiology, to be applicable to all fields.

Past that, production needs what can not only envisage this, but perform it, do all this, functionally, make it happen, institute it, operate the devices, install the contrivances in the domains of mind, matter and spirit; in our case, people. People for their part likewise need all that, at the level requisite for these astute analytical things called our minds, those astounding spiritual things called our lives or spirits, endowered with our wills, and those artfully contrived things called our bodies, and the synthesis of the same, this without mere subjugation yet with unified cohesion and meaning as one whole for composite, but unitary action.

They need this co-functionality and cohesive integrality so that action becomes meaning, and meaning understanding, understanding a base for imagination and imagination an exercise beyond appearance and the actual, even in sphere, harmonious with the concourse of reality and hence able to adjust to it masterfully and intimately.

Chance is merely a byword to bypass the issue. It is used to imply that you do not need what is required, ignoring the sort of thing which IS required. Chance is the ultimate misnomer of the twentieth century at this level, producing the blood, confusion and profusion of idiocies in much called history, as pride and circumstance have waltzed with excitement and attainment, to produce nadirs of necessity and horrors of degradation.

We need to think again. It does not work because the concept is unworkable; when you work on it, you are overworking a Morris Minor as a tug boat engine for Queen Mary, while ignoring the fact it is not suitable for water.

Let us however revert from the general, to the particular, illustrative case. The NATURE of cars or carcasses (which some of them bear), is not found from the car, but is only ascertainable as to some of the steps in its creation from that; from something NOT the car.

The MANY NATURES which are upon the earth are similarly not ascertainable as being some sort of mythical fantasy world, in which natures make themselves before they are there, and invent non-nothing while there is only nothing: not this, mere self-contradiction and anti-scientific musing in mythology, that contra-causal, contra-factual dream world which does not bother with actuality.

So we do not plan to use 'Nature' in general, but Creation, which is quite simply what it all is attested to be, except that the inventor is far beyond us in power and wisdom, might and power, able to create universes not cars only, and of course, ourselves (cf. SMR Ch. 1, TMR Ch. 1). There is no need to proceed to myth in ANYTHING, except for children's imagination or fantasy buffs. It is best, if you mean to be taken seriously, to deal scientifically with the observable evidence, and logically with the requisition clauses involved.

Myths and Religion

Mythical religion per se, as parallel to and twin of naturalism.

In the case of religion, MYTH is a typical cultural invention from the entrepreneurial phase of the mind of man; and it is a substitute for rigour of thought, here as anywhere else. It presents gods and goddesses, or fairies, of different kinds of powers or idols, just as we had them in 'nature' before; and these do their stuff, and have interchange or in the Greek case, even intercourse as seems best to the libido implanted in them by the mind of man, their inventor.

Man is quite as good at it in the specifically religious sphere, as in the other domain of Naturalism, which has impossibly 'Nature' which does not even exist, doing this and that, selecting what is best with rare foresight and insight and so on. It is all delusion, active and every whit fulfilling the definition found in II Thessalonians; and for that matter, the historical epoch in which we are now placed (the End Times in their movement to Christ's return - cf. Answers to Questions Ch. 5, SMR Chs. 8 - 9). It fulfils as we have seen earlier in this volume, II Peter 3:1-5, where both the flood and the return of Christ are denigrated in our contemporary society, many myths being substituted for the raw facts (cf. News 1, Secular Myth and Sacred Truth). It fulfils equally that other End-time specific, the prediction of Paul.

Which one ? It is that in I Timothy 4, where in the "latter times" people will "turn aside to myths". Now that naturalism is one of these myths, has been abundantly attested in various volumes including the present and those just cited above. What is now interesting is the fact that now, the word in Timothy is as much fulfilled as that in II Peter 3. People believe what is with definitional accuracy dubbed 'myth' , not only in the more obvious case of naturalism, but in that of supernatural synthesis. That in turn is classifiable as a variety of naturalism, as it is all the 'nature' of man's natural projects, a contained collection of fantasy spouting like larva from odd depths.

It goes like this. God has no Son - courtesy of Muhammad; God has an only begotten Son, command of God; God hasn't anything, courtesy of Buddha (cf. SMR pp. 995-1026); God is not something you can talk about but there are heaps of god-type things (courtesy of Hinduism cf. SMR pp. 269ff. and index); God is what we are becoming (courtesy of the myth of Mormonism^*1, which somehow has things of finitude become things of a divine category, with all the banality of other fairy stories, or if you prefer the appellation, mythological machinations); and so on.

So, Peter has a son and George has none, and they are both REALLY the same man ? Impossible. George has a million dollars net fortune, and Peter has the same net liability, and they are actually the same person ? Not possible. To imagine otherwise is to speak not in parables, but irrationally, in something akin to insanity, or at the very least, inanity. It is a simple contradiction in terms.

So God is this and not this, that and not that, and essentially is not there, and we do/do not become Him, and so on: how ludicrous! It is irrational, grave comedy, grievous abandon like a 'teen kid plus alcohol plus dad's car showing off to his girl friend: an insult to intelligence, a betrayal of reason, a mythological production in which we are accounted for in terms which even in their definitional preliminaries, contradict each other. In what other phase of life which such inanity be even considered, except in terms of re-sending the author of such muddle to Primary School, that is, if they still teach Grammar enough for such a purpose.

There is only one religion which INSISTS on being checked to the uttermost part, and this is that scientifically unique one, Christianity (cf. Isaiah 41, 43, 48 where God challenges to do JUST THAT!). If you want to be pragmatic, what works, then this does (cf. John 14:11). If you want evidence, this has the same desire, that you receive it (cf. John 3:11, Acts 4:20). "We cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard," declared - when put under duress, the apostles Peter and John.

If you want detail that stands investigation, this has it; if you want complete consistency of all concepts, it is there; if you want forecast by millenia in detail, it is there; if you want retrospective analysis and narrative, it is there and never in millenia has man shown it to be otherwise, while his own 'science' changes like the ideas of a child of fashion. This is not to disparage the usefulness of science, but its immutability, for it lacks this to a vast and ultimate degree. The Bible in this as in all other matters, is as clear in distinction, and even contradistinction, as is finitude from the infinite. It stays.

Indeed, for this reason and all of these, as that it alone is logically validatable, we call it meta-religion, one member of the class only^*2.

Myth is precisely what true religion, that is the religion which purveys the truth, can degenerate into, when it leaves its validating basis. It loves the supernatural intrusions to occur in fairy-like fey ways from the groundless boundless, not from God; or it excludes them in any way; or it makes of everything one long miracle, by denying with liberalism, the rational ground for anything, or of man, as in humanism, the inventor of his own being, courtesy of various powers, which are too vague to be knowable or even coherent, and prepares to turn itself into God.

In all such things, you have only the inadequate masquerading as the adequate, while the adequate is forgotten. It is just part of the scripturally traced syndrome, with the symptoms and diagnosis, fitted with prognosis, as set out in Romans 1:20-31.

Denying program, plan and design, man then takes over as a mythical 'power', though in rational fact a product, and in some inscrutable way, involving thought worlds and com`munions of thought or anything else mythically ecstatic or adequately emphatic (cf. SMR pp. 866ff.), it moves on to unnatural sex, now being freely touted in this State even to the very young, with a flamboyance of unnatural actions, emotions, indeed to such an accompaniment of the invasive music of man’s licence, a swamp of evil talk and ungodly walk, as Paul describes in Romans 1:17ff. It certainly is not omitted in Jude’s characterisation of debasement of man in religion, nor in his application of this to the last chapter of the book of history, before the Lord returns (Jude 5-18). Whether seen as the consummation of iniquity in principle, or in practice, with chronological application, it is one. It is here.

The sexual additive is certainly not being omitted now as same sex 'marriages' are authorised in some places, and these with other similar mythical masqueradings of man as if he were an inventor, and not an invention, that High Place of Naturalism, and tragic crash of humanism. Principle portrays it in the Bible, and time conveys it in the same place: it has it mapped in prognosis and in prediction alike. We have arrived, in this sense, and are there!

The sentiments of love in the field of marriage and procreation, as an access route to new bodies to be born, and new personalities to be loved in due reverence to the Inventor, these become mere raw data to be manipulated by programs from psychiatrists who tell us how natural it all is. Natural to be contrary to your design ? to act contrary with equipment for race-production, to its production ? to flirt with Aids production ? It is like trying to plough the land with a fountain pen. However successful you might be in a thing of minor scale, it is not the appropriate act to the design. It is however precisely the outcome of naturalism as Paul, by this verified, propounds in Romans 1.

The myth of NATURE, of MAN, or MAN's RELIGIOUS PRODUCTIONS to be served in religious intensity, of his moral programs, eggs without a parent, founded on himself who is in truancy from his Maker, without morals as without truth: this becomes the order of the day, and people can even be prosecuted for not holding to all its unravelling oddities, including the innnermost feelings of those who practise such things. They must not feel hurt, embarrassment, shame or other self-styled negative emotion as they proceed in their wandering ways. Such is the nature of the case in Victoria, in principle, with its new laws.

Indeed, this is but further verification, this time at State level, of Paul's final dictum from the Lord, in Romans 1, that there are to be

· "boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents,
undiscerning, untrustworthy, unloving, unforgiving, unmerciful,
who knowing the righteous judgment of God,
that those who practise such things are deserving of death,
not only do the same, but also approve of those who practise them."

Marriage itself is in danger in this land, of becoming obsolete, as people indulge themselves in this or that procreative, or merely pastime relationship, with possible spawn outcomes, without the fidelity of commitment, or the nest-nurturing concern with children, of making one home for them all.

Hence we have this mythical basis of religion in which the obviously irrational becomes the entirely immoral, in which indeed no morals are available (cf. News 19), except those of the ruling majority, which may change them at will, so that it is mere desire sanctified by a word now irrelevant and deprived of any meaning.

Meta-religion diagnoses the condition in advance (Romans 1), and presents the remedy in advance (Romans 3), and the time in world history when these things will ... mature, towards the end (II Tim. 3, I Tim. 4, II Peter 2-3, Matthew 24).

RELIGION AND TRUTH

Notwithstanding all of this furore, truth cannot be known, far less propounded unless it exists, not as a reaction statistic for man (which is an event, not an assessment of reality) but beyond the subjectivism of pragmatic scenarios, in isolation from adventurism, lie and concoction, cultural captivity or psychological chains.

Without absolute truth, you cannot even know if there is any; but if in such a model, you PROPOSE IT, then what you propose CANNOT be true. Such is the reality of all relativism at this level; and yet you have a sharp, not to say perceptive person as eminent flautist James Galway, in his autobiography, James Galway, An Autobiography, refreshingly declaring that he returned to seek to play to the glory of the true God, and to read the Bible daily. Yet as he 'matures' we find that, perhaps taking on some of the environmental flow of things, he can now 'see' that the Moslem and others can also find God and know Him, each in his own way. He for his part, being what he is, brought up as he was, finds it most comfortable, convenient, apt to proceed with his Bible reading. He sees something like meanings in things, so that it can all be all right.

How is such contradiction all right ? You obviously need to 'see' beyond what is being said, so that it is all a matter of proposals cast in words, rather like fairy stories, myths or the like: in this way, if it says that Christ is the ONLY way to God, then in some inscrutable and linguistically unknowable way, it means that this is not so. When it says that He is the truth, again in some bloom of psychical feeling, it is found that this means that He is as good at it as anyone else; and when He says that you must believe in Him to be saved, He means, actually, that really you do not need to do so.

This emasculation of words, frank denial of proclamation is obviously far below the standard of English of a seven year old, so that we ask: Does maturity bring this glorious facility to see beyond what is said to the point of flat, repeated contradiction, even to the essence of a man's being, while you 'follow' Him!

In fact, in such a case, you are following precisely one thing, your own thoughts; and you are not following another precise thing, His! Let us recall a point from Stepping Out for Christ Ch. 1:

But Christ ?

It was not

with symbolic cries that He anguished as He faced the atoning death (Hebrews 5:7), or

with symbolic sweat like great drops of blood, that His torture commenced before the nails (Luke 24:44), nor was it

with symbolic agony He prayed, and stayed aloft to be scorned by supercilious, superficial priestly people, upstanding in body, supine in soul, who admired His murder.

· Symbolic nails were never placed searing, into His flesh;

· nor were His prayers symbolic, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing!" (Luke 23:34), and if it had been, then no symbols would the pangs of tortured conscience and stricken spirit be, in hell, for those who then... would not be saved, or indeed, have any way by which they could have been.

But God ? He did something substantial, with substantial flesh and substantial reason for a substantial purpose and a substantial result, even a city which has foundations, whose builder and Maker is God, a people who are special, the children of God, redeemed thereby, sealed and sent to serve in the love of Christ, while the world lasts...

He came, He saw, He did, He was killed and He corrupted death for ever; it will never be the same again (cf. Hosea 13:14). He IS its destruction. The FAITH comes in when you RECEIVE first Him, and then with Him, His words (John 6:68, 6:40, 5:24). Without these, you sink in the froth (Matthew 5:17-19, Isaiah 8:20, 12:48-50).

You cannot have your Christ and not have Him; so if you do not follow Him, you are most assuredly following something else. As He declared (Luke 14:27ff.): "So likewise whoever of you does not forsake all that he has cannot be My disciple. Salt is good, but if the salt has lost its savour, who shall it be seasoned ? It is neither fit for the land nor for the dunghill; but men throw it out."

Let us consider the 'language' diversion again, from Stepping out for Christ, Ch. 1:

· In the end, there are two sorts of religious language: there is the language about religion, from man, and there is the language about man, from God.

He speaks also of Himself, and of the way which in His own mind, He has chosen, from Himself and to Himself. When the language of God is rejected, the language of man becomes trivial, since he ignores what is his actual meaning, in the interests of cultural cliques, cluttering philosophies and endless revisions of what he does not care to know (cf. SMR Ch. 3; cf. Things Old and New Ch. 10 and News 121, 122 where practical expressions of this outage are seen to occur, at more social levels). Predictably tending therefore to find himself ‘meaningless’, he does not say what he means, or realistically even mean what he says.

Thus this style of approach, contrary to Christ to the uttermost degree, becomes multiple rejection in terms of a religion being forged, as Freemasons have long forged it with the same principial fatuity towards fact, being beguiled and deceived as Paul explains (cf. II Thessalonians 2:8-10 and SMR p. 710). We have seen this metamorphosis into myth in an advanced form in Lead Us Not into Educational Temptation! Part IV, some of which appears below. It is of considerable point to note that this assessment of the direction of flow in Victoria was made some quarter of a century ago, in 1977, and it is very like the same sort of slant which is found in mythical religion today; and it is quite apparent that just such a self-contradictory philosophy serves well the prison features of that State today, as if feelings were God, subjectivism were sovereign, logic had long since died of a cardiac failure and truth were cast aside.

In fact, THAT, it resembles to an extraordinary degree the words of Isaiah 59, where "truth is fallen in the street", and this characterisation precedes the annunciation of the return of the Messiah in the power of His might, to rule (Isaiah 59:13-20).

In attestation of this state of things, and its preliminaries in Victoria in particular, we turn once again to that work in the quotation which follows.

IV. SYMBOLS AND EXPERIENCE

The Insidious Splendour of Symbols

Correlative with the claims made already, this Report Religion deems it a true dictum that RELIGION HAS LARGELY SYMBOLIC LANGUAGE. On p.230 of the Report we read: 'They are less literal in their understanding and better able to interpret and use its largely symbolic language.' After all, it also deems all the religions to be such as to have their own consistency; and each even to possess 'its own inner logic so that it constitutes a consistent world view for its adherents' (p.152). Compared with God, this Inner Logic is not really very good: this 'logic' is neither consistent nor clear, requires no test, laughs at religions which require no test and is an object of such apparently and almost ostentatiously abject worship that its every mood is sacred, so longer as its speech is not clear. Like Organic Evolution compared with Scientific Method, for its standing, it stands where there is no ground; it lives by defiance of logic, and calls itself after the name of what it neglects. Insidious, it is so embracive as a drunk and disorderly can be, wanting to possess what it cannot understand, and having a 'logic of its own', which does not relate to rationality.

But let us return to the specific matter of symbolism and see what 'inner logic' does with it. The assertion: religion has largely symbolic language.

True, this claim is empirically and historically wrong: of course Kierkegaard allowed his readers to wring from what appeared to be his heart, the assertion that one had to thrust the will into the arena in religion, and commit a virtual intellectual suicide (scarcely a synonym for a conception of a consistent world view). True this fact in about as well-known as the Buddha statues' seeming attention to their navels. True also that this precise position is not necessary to the Report Religion (although it may smooth things in popular reaction); but it is indicative of the slant. The CONCEPT of consistency in some subjective sense specifically to be contrasted with the scientific - shall we say certainties? or rather hypotheses? - is evidently eminently dear in the philosophy exhibited by the Report. It seems too strange that such an error as this could be made; for the Report, whatever its other deficiencies, does not give gross evidence of merely wilful haste. In fact, to its leisurely style and literary method we plan to give attention later.

Nevertheless, we can discern the immediate point without undue intellectual dyspepsia. IF all the religions (oh yes, well then. in fact, the acceptable ones) ... have a consistency and world view possessing Inner Logic in some perhaps esoteric but apparently statable sense; and if so many so flatly contradict each other so vitally, deeply and in some instances competitively, what then? Clearly, any outer logic. any actual consistency between themselves being actually precluded as sufficiently to the point as a criterion, and an inner logic of a mystic variety being allegedly the case, we look for ... symbols. What else?

The concept is popular, as can be seen for example, in the Book of Confessions, adapted by the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. (1967). Here a number of things are asserted which by no means are coincident; but a certain drift and trend is seen to be present. and all the cited creeds (including contradictions as infra) are taken together like so many multi-vitamin pills. Concomitantly with this fact, we find it asserted in the actual Confession of 1967 (a comparatively new one) that the thought forms, the cultural forms were dynamic that were implemented in the divine writings; and this occurred in such a way as by no means to preclude error. Thus we are led to symbols capacious enough to hold contradiction, and to retain 'meaning', so that error can commend the actual diction at the conceptual level. Symbols, symbols ... there lies, we gather, the implicit answer.

It is not of course meant that words are symbols expressive of reality, by this; but that words (including syntactical combinations) are symbolic even in their connotation of the realities which are hidden in the love of God.

After all, Kant felt there was an 'as if' test case; certain profundities were to be taken (with all concessive grace) AS IF they were there. Certain morals in some sense actually mentionable could croon in weird distance and yet penetrate the impenetrable and still make themselves known. It is an exercise in contradiction, where lucidity is the opposite of the procedure, and instability the nature of the expression. One almost wonders if there is enough STATIC quietness about anything to allow any word or meaning to be allowed to stand long enough for it even to be enunciated. Even if, however, it is actually got out before change sets in, we still have the delightful restfulness of knowing, it is only by being impossible that it becomes actual. If you think that is nonsense, we are in concurrence. It is however the sort of background which helps one to make some estimate of the meaning of a document so blatantly self-contradictory as the Russell Report.

Thus, in the Kantian drama, the philosopher would not have man KNOW intellectually that they were there, at least in theory; for the noumenal was not allowed to be known. That was a rule in the game.

In reality, men were permitted to know it was there; know it could not be known, whilst cognitively becoming aware of its ground and character of unknowability even to the point that its categorical intellection was in already performed. Man could indeed even know its species of relation to what they were permitted to know, and categorise in the areas of its domain - and their own, like globe charters setting forth an unknown continent (Terra Australis?) in vague outline on their maps. Indeed men could know with intellection (rational thought in comprehensible categories) its impact, so that a substantive and imperative dictum and datum, a categorical imperative was communicated all too conveniently to our intellection.

Man could audit its unspeakables and intellectualise its non-cognisables till shame in this agony of self-contradiction would seem to force them to acknowledge that it was not alien to cognition, but merely to comprehension. As to that, there is still the original 'problem': the religions are lavish in divergence, the one from the other; and no clash of opposites produces logical meaning, but only the certainty that one or both must be in error. But that is too obvious to be permissible to abstruse philosophy. If the game is up, there is nothing further to play. The avid readers however must here be referred to my larger and detailed work on this topic in Predestination and Freewill section).

Thus it is no newer than Kant, or older than 1967 that the symbolic approach to religious 'truth' is to be discerned in vigorous operation. It is so common as to be commonplace . We are thus forced to this estimate of the Report Religion, admittedly bordering on a consensus approach, especially, interested in statistics and questionnaires. Black and white surfaces may be reconciled when they are 'seen' on symbols of colour. There is of course a slight problem: those who may have seen the colours are less ready to dismiss the divergencies, ignore the contrast or equate the radiance of the one with the near nullity or the other. The one reflects much; the other has already lost this power, having absorbed indeed but not having transmitted.

Now at once it must be realised that not all who trying to be tolerant and anti-combative, indeed irenic, really wish to go so far as the above congeries of irrational conquests would take them; but this is the path and in all charity, all need to realise it. In fact, it is worth while, as we are on this topic, to go back that same quarter century, and find from the thesis presented at that time by this author, to Melbourne University, this assessment of the codification of the religion being then envisaged in 'forward thinking' places, which doubtless the Bible would, in the AV, term 'froward thought' or something such. This excerpt therefore follows in the hope it may help some to see the nature of their DRIFT if this is the channel they are flowing into!

Here, from the Thesis in view, we go further, and actually take the formulation of a Creed to mirror all that was being said in this prescriptive overture for Victoria, the Russell Report, its position ludicrous in irrationality, yet belligerent in nature, and seeking to contain all things as if in its truth-nescient embrace. Such is man, that he embraces so much as if intoxicated, here The Truth, which is kindly passed on to us, while in effect denying its very existence to man absolutely!

SECTION XI

ASSEMBLAGE OF PRESUPPOSITIONS

CODIFICATION OF THE CREED

It is always a challenging task to formulate a creed; but when that task is to formulate someone else's creed, the matter is not simple at all. However, when that party has disgorged, delineated or depicted its thought in some 343 pages of deposition {The Russell Report}, the labour is not at all outlandish in principle.

Again, when we have so far considered its deposition somewhat extensively and minutely for something like 76,000 words, to this point, directed to investigation and remedy; and when, indeed, formulation or even proto-creedal consideration has been given, then the matter in hand seems perfectly appropriate (if one may borrow a much-used term in this context!).

First, we shall plan simply to itemise elements, giving a sort of corporate life to the Report Religion, personified in the parallel, as if an artificial person with a constructed religion. On pp. ff. and elsewhere in this work, we have discussed 'absolutisms'; and allied, we have seen the 'tribalisms'. Without excessive attempt to theologise at the outset (that is, express in terms that are theological, material which is exhibited to exist in this field of the Report Religion) - as our stated analogical purpose at length requires, we shall now proceed.

· I. There is a deep unity in the human situation.

·       2. This is expressible In various religious formulations.

·       3. Religious pronouncements and attitudes without this datum are destructive of this unity.

·       4. Such unrelativised and uncoordinated approaches. or viewpoints resistant to synthesis or correlation are archaically concerned with what is absolute.

·       5. Only views susceptible to synopsis, available for integration, evincing awareness of implicit unity, with ALL religious faiths are academically worthy.

·       6. The synthetic view is so academically worthy that it is virtually secular.

·       7. Children exposed to it are fortunate, blessed and are not being indoctrinated.

·       8. It is against their interests to be voided from its presence

·       9.    i) Religious relativity is absolutely right.

           ii) Moreover unknowable absolute truth has absolutely made us know this fact; for with us, nothing shall be called impossible.

Obviously other parts of this work, sufficiently well-known to the attentive reader, are also involved in the above - thus, for example, the correlation with the Report's treatment of the right of withdrawal is explicit.

Now we turn to an allied phenomenon of this phenomenological religious approach, in the Report. One refers to that of myths and symbols. It is so intimate as to demand immediate insertion at this point. Intimacy indeed makes now more reasonable, a stronger analogical aspect, taken as moving towards other religious forms or formulae, outside the Report Religion. The reader may notice this in what ensues.

·   10. Symbolism is a characteristic of most religious language. This enables variegated synthesis of differently discernible underlying substances in religions.

·       11. Myth is significant in religion, and all religions may usefully be treated by demythologising, relativistic, reduction processes.

·       I2. Miracles are suitable for this process, and adolescence is a fitting time for this specific application of the rule 11, above.

·       I3. No religion deals with a significant, systematic array of integrated facts, in its central teaching; for the susceptibility to syncretistic integration between religions would die as a result. The contradictions between different religions would be made irremovable, irremediable, by having objective systems of this kind for each religion- or for any one of them, in general.

THAT would violate the first and greatest commandment.

This is: Absolutisms are destructive.

The lord thy god ( if any ) is a relative god, and no absolute dicta may he (or it) speak. Conservative components may prefer the wording: The Lord thy God is a relative god... This sort of variety is not to be depreciated. It lends colour to the homogenisation, which is not to be neutral in tint, or expropriated from its outward forms and modes, unless the first and greatest commandment, requires it.

· 14. There is a sermonic addendum summarisable: For the lord thy god (Lord thy God) is a symbolically expressible god, and no hard core facts shalt thou attribute to him essentially; for how shalt thou, 0 man, know what is divine; and in all his speakings, there are, and indeed must be, no words that are absolutely, systematically, divinely true. Thou shalt humble thyself on the earth, for thou art but man. And what does thou know? but know this, O man, that we know. Thou shalt moreover humble gods under us; for why not!

·       15. It is forbidden to any god to speak the truth in logically valid terms; for this is outrage in the kingdom of gods: for then there might be war on the earth amongst men, either physically or spiritually; and possibly in heaven also, if there is one, which of course will depend on our demythologisation process, which is in process. Thou shalt not stir up such a goddish part of thy nature; but thou shalt speak with one voice and with one heart with thy neighbour, seeing he dwelleth securely by thee.

·       Thou shalt not exacerbate human tensions by religion, for religion is thy peace; and where in the world will we all be, now we have such power, if any god or man should provoke to a divergence past convergence.

·       Therefore this command also is to be learned and executed by Staff and principals, and imbibed, for their own welfare, by ALL students: Thy gods shall be in harmony, and only educated and appropriate gods of this type are acceptable, adoptable or to be taught, acknowledged or allowed on any school grounds.

·       16. Thou shalt in no wise make thy religion socially divisive; for is not division bad? and thou shalt remember the wars of old. But thy religion shall serve society, aid its unity, and be subject to its dicta; for thy society has inalienable rights and indefeasible powers; and thou shalt serve thy society of which the Educational Establishment is a highly significant part, and the Government a glorious unity, with all thy heart and with all thy soul.

·       17. The soul which shall not remember these things, to do them, shall not think in his heart: I will raise my horn on high, I will exalt myself with an individual religion, an absolutist view. For this is absolute doctrine, and the society, thy society is a jealous society; and thou shalt have no gods which shall stand before it. For thy gods shall operate only by licence, thy churches shall co-operate, thy ministers in schools as chaplains shall know these things, and do them, and have them written in their minds, lest at any time they should forget, and revert to something else.

·       As to such, who move from the Way, they being not absolutist in diction; although thou may by all means have an exemption, if the lords thy gods shall accept interpretation, so that their words shall not seem absolutist. For the society, thy society is an understanding society, and understands gods and their little ways.

The discerning reader, again, will perhaps notice the resemblance to obsolete archaic speech forms gnawingly perceptible in our proto-creedal formulation. This aids the sense of parallel, and shows the extent of the intrusion, almost to comedy, but in apparent gravity, in this coup d'église, which has been necessary, lest education suffer, teachers are dissatisfied and the State does not continue to express itself as one mouth with one spirit, and one heart.

Our literature, is beginning to look more like some of the religious literatures; but this is intentional.

It helps the analogical process, and enables the imagination the more readily to savour the data in each case, by putting in parallel, the external forms.

In fact, one at all intensively versed, whether from his youth up (a youth perhaps not given the valuable 'secular' Religious Instruction, which is to be so helpful) or otherwise, with Biblical language, say in the not uncommon Authorised Version, will be likely to observe dozens of sympathetic phraseologies relative to that document; but this is not at all outside our present project. The Report is in view; and its views on symbolisms and particular propensities in religions, provided they be relative, is very sympathetic.

The Report? It positively likes and favours what it evidently regards as the quaint little particularities, and we have noted this (supra pp. -45). Since it ALSO stresses that our cultural background (pp.158, 270) makes some emphasis on the content of the "Judaeo-Christian" religion socially (one should think that would be the word) appropriate (it seems certain that would be the word), it would not seem unfitting to use this format in this preliminary stage at least. It is conformable to some of the Report's own indications.

Further, it would seem necessary in one instance to consider a component specifically. In the rest, the extensive preliminary work would render it merely verbose to recapitulate; but in this, there is a step which needs formulation. One refers to point 15 - and the words - 'For then there should be war in earth amongst men, either physically or spiritually; and possibly in heaven also, if there is one'. The word to notice is 'either...', - and has been shown to be - ', in the first instance. The Report is - and has been shown to be - concerned at anything divisive, defiant of unity and so on. It is intriguing, that: DEFIANT is certainly a correct analysis of the tone of the Report to any such, and we have this rarefied thing, which any ant would understand, DEFIANT OF UNITY! Here is unity clamouring for succour, for support, for indulgence, nay, for sovereignty, with a mouth - not noticeably in its own possession.

At the very least, then, since the nature and quality of man's spirit is in part in view, spiritual battles are deprecated in the Report Religion (that is, present company always excepted, battles other than the ones necessary if the Report would ever get to be implemented : there might be battles indeed, but since this is 'appropriate', it is perhaps exempted from the commandment.) As to physical war, the intense stress on indefeasible social rights, necessary social integration and sovereign powers make it clear that anything which could threaten this phenomenon (assuming it is one) or this possibility (assuming it is not yet a phenomenon) could effect a wrongful battle. That this MIGHT even be physical is not excluded: that society has - shall we say a physical aspect - is clear.

The possible inclusion of any facet of that unified society in its admonitions is therefore not contrary to so inclusive a document, so sovereign in social power and propriety. It could not be accused of ignoring the fact that people have more then merely ideational or ideological properties. It is not keen on absolutising symbols.

As for the procedures in heaven: first it must be realised that the strong presence of symbols in the Report Religion must make the existence of heaven at all, in their religion, something objectively uncertain - the beliefs would be deemed supra-rational, it would seem, by the correct, orthodox (?) 'religious believer' (p.232) in the Report System. It might transcending (possibly transcendent or even transcendental) in their symbolism. On the other hand, the use of symbols, we learn, is not at all per se to be discouraged; and as has been noted, we are specifically not to engage in mere religious decodification to the paint there is an undistinctive and weak residue. It is all very precise, like the goose-stepping technique of that abstruse religionist who wrote Mein Kampf, this system. Hence, considering both these already excavated and reviewed criteria, we reach a suggested formulation hopefully with come delicacy.

· 18. Thou shalt interpret thy symbols and eliminate thy superstitions (and oh that thy heart might be prepared for this, for it is thy good we tell thee, and that of thy child who is before thee, this day); and thou shalt consult with the philosopher and the academic culturalists of sound relativistic opinions, in order that thou mightest be wise in this matter, demythologising as the case may require; for their assumptions are good assumptions, and thy society is jealous for them. Thou shalt not at all turn from this; for that way is destructiveness.

· 19. Thou shalt not attempt to prove thy religion; for it cannot be done. Thou shalt accept this, the religion of thy society, humbly, and indeed gladly, without proof; for what proof is necessary when the lord thy society, and his prophets, the religious and academic functionaries in relativistic concourse, shall speak; and thou shalt listen, for it will surely come - from time to time from some appropriate source. For didst thou never learn in thy days in the absolutist wilderness, or elsewhere in thy ideological youth, that thou mustest take it all by faith. Trust us, thy State, for we know what is good for thee and for thy child after thee; and our awareness of different viewpoints is corporately singular.

By now, we are becoming familiar with the religious absolutism of this relativism; and whilst it may be a trifle embarrassing in prospect to seek to create in analogical style a religious literature for creedal purposes, subsequently the task is not without interest. After all, the specialists are aware of the religious backgrounds one would hope, and possibly the significance has entered in some measure into their - what shall we say, libido? unconscious?; but rather, should we say in our own language, into their minds.

At all events, however that may be, it has entered into the Report, which objectively is our sole recourse in the matter.

It will be observed that we are proceeding to give to some of the concepts of the Report Religion, a yet more familiar religious terminology - the 'Judaeo-Christian' mode.

It is time to be more specific on the religious basis itself: for religion in still given a place of some kind. The Report, page 96 in particular, is relevant particularly at this point, and could be consulted.

· 20. Thou shalt give heed to the religious word, for this is the word of religion. The words which the lords thy gods shall speak, all of them, shalt be as a testimony to thee this day; for these are the words of religion. This taken comprehensively is the religious "word"; give thyself to it.

·       See it syncretistically, for it is thy symbolism. Symbols are important in society, and satisfying for the soul; for we do not know everything, and what we do not know looks beautiful In symbols. Only thou shalt not elevate any one word of the religions, as in the former times, when absolutism was rife.

·       21. Thou shalt not attribute to any one word, or to any one god, a monopoly of truth; for no world view has a monopoly. As for our own, this is secular, though it be most religious. Indeed of the good and essence of all religions this shall have a monopoly, because it is right; and we, as the State in all its profound instrumentalities, must be said to know it; and thou also with thy child shalt know it. But if thou shalt in any wise attempt to avoid this datum, then shall trouble be possible (except that the State, thy State moves slowly, and it may take a while before - if necessary, but should it really BE necessary? we act - as may more readily be done, if we have Section 23 changed in the 1958 Education Act). Then may thy child, even thine, be compelled to remain in our classes of SECULAR RELATIVISTIC RELIGION; and this shall go hard with thee, if thou shalt resist it.

·       Moreover, even if we, thy State, shall not take this step, or fail in it (for we are all but men...), still we may incorporate the components of our Religion in thine English and in thy Social Studies; and in sundry places. For to avoid us, the State thy State, it is most difficult; for ours is power and we mean to use it; for it is for thy good, and we know it. And here lies glory.

· 22. And this, the religion of thy State, is concerned with what is most true; and be thankful that the State thy State has at last found out this thing; and do not rebel, as by saying that Jesus Christ is the truth, and what rejects Him is a lie; for this is most offensive, and thou shalt see how to interpret this symbolically or relativistically, or else thou shalt not say it: it shall not matter which, so long as it is clear that you do not mean what you say, when you say such things, but speak in symbols which mean anything but what they may seem to mean. THIS, it is religion, and this is how the matter goes; and it goes smoothly, smoothly, for how else on earth would you expect it to go.

· We have made it perfectly clear that in the unifiability of religions, there is no exception; and the underlying unity is applicable to ALL religions. Now is not this, Christianity, this Judeao-Christian religious object of veneration, a religion? We should have thought so. Therefore do not this wicked thing; for it is absolutist. If thou hast been a Protestant, thou mightest by all means see that this species of religion has had a rather intellectualist position; and thou shalt take this to thine heart; for who would want to have a rather intellectualist position?

·       23. No, thou shalt seek syncretism, and thou shalt seek it with all thine heart; and thus shalt thou value ecumenism of the embracive kind; thou shalt enter imaginatively and sensitively into the viewpoints of others, and shalt participate in their festivals, be involved empathetically in their sacred parts, and thou shalt be mature; for this relates heavily to growing up; and it concerns thy children. As for them, we shall help them to mature. You will see, we shall not leave this matter in abeyance, we thy State, for we have spoken, and mean to keep on speaking, as the matter shall require.

·       24. Yea, mature they must; for who wants to be divisive or destructive? The religious code words have a compulsive feeling; and we deal in codes, and in symbols. Symbols in their teeming abundance are thy life: here lies a distinctive of religion. What mere man can, at the movement of an intellection, a thrust within his mental apparatus, create such codes and symbolisms? and oh how helpful is the native splendour of a code! Only thou shalt interpret it, indeed, thou mustest by all means interpret it, since otherwise it is a mischief within the State, thy State which speaks to thee this day.

·       25. And thy children shall not be given too much intellection too soon: for as Piaget has said - and whilst there may be some flexibility in the matter, we shall follow him. Thus shall they imbibe sacred festivals from their childhood and participate most broadly before explanation could possibly be effective: for this is the view of the State thy State, and we plan to stick to it. How then would they be likely to be such immature or archaic souls as to be assured that some one religion is right; for all are in them, for they are in all. How beautiful is the peace that should then results. (Oh the glory, Selah.)

·       26. Thus shalt thou be involved and thy house, in authentic community; for one thing is assuredly authentic, and that Is community. Do not wickedly say in thine heart: the one thing that is authentic is the Lord our God; for this is largely symbolic language. Nay, be advised that relativistically shalt thou seek for the truth (do not wickedly say 'I have it' , as is the way of the absolutist - for this in tribalistic and well-known TV series often should show thee how primitive that is, for the TV is instrumental in much that is good, and you should watch its cultural enclaves with distinguishing attention when they, as so often, do our work for us).

·       In this authenticity, then verily seek for what is most true; but beware lest thou think thou hast found it.

·       27. Nor is this merely social; for in society there is a religious stratum; and we, the State thy State, know it. Thou shalt beware of ascribing idolatrous status to other religions; for they all have their religious word, and all these words have an underlying unity, and are they not largely symbolic in their diversified expressivenesses ... and if thou dost not know it yet, when shalt thou know it, O man who listens to the State, thy State.

·       If someone is worshipping at a statue and tells thee, I am not worshipping such and such a god, but merely giving to it my devotions in the divine plateaux: do not assume he is wrong; no, do not suppose or analyse; for at face value, shalt thou take whatever is deemed correct; for in us, the State thy State, are the academics, and who are you? Thou shalt abide by this. Thou shalt not say: Perhaps the State, our State is unaware that his symbolic frame of reference is crystallised here, so that this is the actual focus of his visionary thoughts, and he worships it in ignorance, not examining himself, but following a traditionalised rationalisation. This is offensive; and thou shalt not even envisage the possibility.

The data shall not be analysed, or disquisited upon. Thou shalt not psychoanalyse or even think of logical possibilities; neither shalt thou apply the Bible, or its definition of God, for that is not the religion of the State, and if you insist, you will become a nuisance as so many others have been to so many other States, even being called dissidents; for we, thy State, are the psychoanalysts, for we have psychoanalysed religion itself, and know what is under it and how it is expressed... and if we, thy State, can do this, what is to be denied to us!

·       Do not say in thine heart: Perchance he has concretised his god into a statue, or his symbolic language type god has for him only this objective existence, nor that his heart revolves around this, and he regards it an precious in a way no symbol could be for those who distinguish between substance and symbol. No! for we have told thee. It is all expressed in largely symbolic language, and the distinction we will not even allow .

Thus shall thy syncretism be helped; and thou shalt be helped in embracive ecumenism as we have said; and we say it again. Thou shalt cause thy child to have enabling experiences of wide range; thou shalt abhor tribalism, and ancient absolutisms, for we now know better; and all such religions as the religion of thy State... these shall progress.

·       29.    And our schools shall be places where pleasant lines are drawn; for they are exceedingly broad, and our rules are exceedingly broad. Thou shalt not, O principal, whosoever thou mayest be (for our eye shall see it) allow divisive groups into the school; and whatever groups may gain access, these shall humble themselves, as thou, O parent, wilt have humbled thyself, and the tribalistic, absolutists gods; for absolutely this will not do. Acceptable groups shall have no pretensions to absolute truth; for this is both divisive and destructive, for the mouth of thy State, it shall have said it (if this goes through).

Here endeth the Broader Creed Approach.

End of Excerpt.

From what follows in Lead us Not into Educational Temptation! we now supply just four paragraphs. The whole of this may be read in Section 11 of that work, regarding the voluminous and ruinous Russell Report which had been generated in Victoria before that time.

Again, a religion provided with 343 pages of premisses, presuppositions and other less than cogent considerations is susceptible to interpretation; and should we attribute to its attitude an unwillingness to codify? Perhaps as a religion; but then, the Report seems unaware of this aspect of its protocol and attainment, of its work; so that we must make an analogous presentation to religion, since its apparent nescience on this point would preclude it seems, even the idea.
Indeed, the Idea seems contrary to the hopes and imaginings which it expresses; for it seems to be replete with religious controls without expressing knowledge that by its program, there is being or would be created, in the appropriate controls and knowledge, the right mode of approach to religion, and the correct approach to religious 'words'.
Religion is ever at this, and an approach to ultimate reality so profound that it can even interpret the nature of other approaches, classifying the acceptable and the inappropriate as a matter of fact; and this without denying there is a god, and while making an insistence that facts are not the real substance of any religion: this would logically have to imply access to this ultimate truth. It is so hard to do, since explicitly the Report distances this so far from its purvey, in requiring the same of others, that it is by definition unattainable, just as it is required of those to whom, in its ignorance, it renders absolute the knowledge of the unknowable.
Such is man; it is so very much less self-contradictory to deal with God direct, and to avoid these nebulous meanderings, misaligned to logic, and taking their own, vitamin type, with them, not visible alas, to the secular kind.

So mythology is invented, and all is to be disposed by mythology, authorised by the State, its status mythical, its meaning irrational, its portent authoritative, so that it is a preliminary premiss that it is true that there is no truth, and that it is certainly true that you had better believe it; for if you do not, precisely as in earlier persecutions in history, you will be given what it takes, to subdue you, if possible. This is a possibility which the State takes most seriously, for it is happy to sacrifice truth, from what is in existence, while affirming it for the sake of existence, that is, if you want to live happily within it. The State therefore BECOMES your God, assessing all gods without any approach to reason, just by authority and myth.

An anti-rational, philosophically impotent, religiously authoritarian, truth-denying and affirming body, the State becomes the very picture of impiety, shrouded in the clouds of confusion from the sun of righteousness, until its judgment attests, as so often before in history, the folly of its self-willed paths. Here one could consider SMR pp. 429ff., 439ff., 362ff., 991ff., 1008ff., 305ff., where the diverse deviationist wrigglings in this reckless riot of irrationality in religion are considered, ready for the State to manipulate, folly to maintain and ruin to receive. 'Comparative religion' becomes simply a superlative seduction from truth, founding arbitrary desire on the assertions of 'truth' they first deny, then affirm, never verify, always invalid as they turn to anything other than what stands, monolithic in majesty, free of taint, coherent, consistent, validated, verified and progressively so - see TMR Ch. 5, It Bubbles ...
Ch. 9, SMR Chs. 1, 5, 10. In these climes, especially as now, the ultimate - cf. Answers to Questions Ch. 5 - the Bible is left just as rebellious children 'divorce' their parents, and become street sleaze subordinates to new masters.

If this is not what Paul predicts for the last stages before the return of Christ, the turning aside to myths, what could be! How holy a pair they make, naturalistic mythology and political mythology, all in the same service of authoritarian dismissal of truth, and the manufacture and implementation of myth as the ultimate.

In all of this, of course, the State is self-contradictory, anti-evidential, presumptuous, unscholarly and circumventive, merely mouthing phrases of certain philosophies as if their enunciation were in some obscure way related to reason. It is all built on nothing more or less than assumption, self-contradictory in kind, without having any apparent concern to look at any facts whatsoever. In this sense, it is as anti-scientific as it is possible to be; whereas Christianity declares, LOOK at the facts and CONSIDER them, and do not GENERALISE without first doing so.

If you do not want the only valid approach to ultimate reality^*2, so be it ; but why die into the grandeur of a politically built, unstable mortuary, built on an earthquake site, smiling in intoxicated rigors at its own image. It is founded on one thing only, itself. What then is this self that we should believe it ? Some of us prefer evidence and logic to the merely psychic, which otherwise can degenerate into the psychotic without much notice being given.

It happened literally with Hitler with his irrational, cultural surrealities, so sure, and with Stalin in his, with Mao in his little red book; but this book, whatever its colour, merely enshrines the vaporous humanistic delusion of making man the centre and agent, and his philosophy (take your pick, none works) the criterion, his law the strap, and his prisons and payments, the subduing agent. If it happened nationally, biblically it is to happen internationally. After all, Hitler came very close indeed to making it then; but Europe still needs a little time! (cf. Biblical Blessings Ch. 2).

Here then is the very epitome of the prediction of Paul in I Timothy 4, for in this case MYTHS by definition (prescription of things which by their own model CANNOT be known, is made the basis of all things, and these being as a result inadequate, because incapable of accurate representation far less potent application, like shadows, are merely alogisms one and all, in some places systematised into law). What glorious myth! Do not however understand: what is glorious is the precise, the pulsating and potent completion of Paul's prophecy about the last times, not the confused depravity of nescient myth parading as something better.

Has knowledge increased as Daniel foretold (Daniel 12) ? Of course.

Has then myth decreased ? Not at all, for it is rampantly ridiculous and ridiculously rampant, as are the dreams of those intoxicated with the drugs of culture and the spirits of desire.

Impossible, says the pedant, the pundit ? How could myth increase!

Alas, the possible is transformed into the actual in pungent proliferation. This decease of perspective is accompanied by multiple births from passion in the arms of arrant desire: it is happening, and man is even using law (as currently in Victoria - Galloping Events Ch. 7, *2 and DIAMOND 10), in effect to enforce the essence of this myth, absurd in formulation, pretentious in compulsion, its warriors and those like them increasingly securing the servitude of a people to myths as barren and naked as any of old. In this, for a category of the deluded, world-wide: pride is put in depravity and self-assurance is found in ruin.

It is not ignorance which is the curse, but knowledge falsely so-called (I Timothy 6:20), doing service now in naturalism, now in religious extravaganzas. This too, as we have seen before, and now append, is also as predicted. What doctor ever predicted the entire course of a millenial disease with such extravangant precision and delicious knowledge!

So does the Bible like an expertly navigated speed-boat, move ahead of the field and come back and report what is to be when the fleet catches up, and finds out for itself the history about to be exposed, for itself! That word, BECAUSE it is of God, NEVER misses. Science has nothing to match it, for the most simple reason that this is of man (and often most commendable, when it keeps to its method), but the book of the Lord, it is His!

MISSING THE MIASMIC MYTHICAL, MYSTICAL POINT

In this way did many in Victoria, and do so many others, immerse themselves in all but inconceivable muddle. Their miasmas are a tissue of myth, embroidered with authoritarianism, simplistic as with any other dictator, mystical in outline, since past all definition and logic, they KNOW; and in this knowledge there is no basis, but only the irrational membranes which pulsate in a sort of experiential glow, as if ready to affirm, We love the Beast, and there is none upon the Earth who can Compete with the Beast! almost word for word with the prediction for the gory day which is yet to come (as in II Thessalonians 1 with 2:4ff., with Revelation 13:4), but now marks out and stakes it place.

Let us then see it in context.

^"Now the beast which I saw was like a leopard, his feet were like the feet of a bear, and his mouth like the mouth of a lion. The dragon gave him his power, his throne, and great authority. And I saw one of his heads as if it had been mortally wounded, and his deadly wound was healed. And all the world marveled and followed the beast. So they worshiped the dragon who gave authority to the beast; and they worshiped the beast, saying, 'Who is like the beast? Who is able to make war with him?'

"And he was given a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies, and he was given authority to continue for forty-two months. Then he opened his mouth in blasphemy against God, to blaspheme His name, His tabernacle, and those who dwell in heaven. It was granted to him to make war with the saints and to overcome them. And authority was given him over every tribe, tongue, and nation.

Leaving then the case mentioned earlier in the biographical work, for the generic, we move
to the very essence of the irrational, mythological in the sense that it abandons any known
or even adequate cause for talk, and assumes that man is the basis of the belief, so that
it really doesn't matter, doesn't matter ... what you say or do or think, be Christian or humanist
or Masonic or Buddhist - and many are involved in Islam in vast measure in making the
difference to be drawn in blood: so long as you use the vocable 'god'.

You can slay or be slain,
be oppressive or expressive, have a god submerged in manacles, and submerging others,
manacles of human pretension,
or else the One who unchains our sin and exposes us to the light of truth,
without which NOTHING that anyone of this persuasion has to say, has ANY validity.

Both are not available, since truth and fiction here have insufferable friction. Validity has
no truck with invalidity, in mathematics or in meaning. One goes one way or the other.

It is a testimony to the grandeur of God, and His acute holiness, that such opposite roads so much as exist, and that one is so absolutely consistent, valid and verified!

To ignore the vital one for the other, that is a testimony to the necessity
of the payment of Christ for the sin of man, even of all and of any who receive His gift,
and so come home.

Myth made man, then, is the litany, which is simply another way of avoiding the issue,
ignoring the scientifically formulable realities, pursuing the necessities of logic,
ruling man by man and for man, and failing to find out what man is:
a muddle of shadows in obscurity.

Hence it is a movement in the dark, using darkness for light, confusion for logic
and litany for love. Perhaps it is the most forlorn alogism of all time; but then,
it HAS to be a suitable preliminary for the antichrist and his self-adulation as if he were god,
and this, it is nearly there already.

The point is that this is a pointer; and the point of the pointer is that if you insist on unravelling the chains of thought, then this is for you; but never utter the word logic, or the term, reasonable, or the idea of truth. Simply for the sake of, and on the basis of no truth, do what you are told, and become nice German Shepherds, fit to guard the heels of the antichrist, the man of sin, the man of unreason, the man of supreme, superb authority, whose death will undo the myth that he is god, as God has said in many ways before, and will show once more (cf. Ezekiel 28:9).

ONE of those times was that of ancient Israel as so eloquently presented in Ezekiel 16, as can be seen below.

There God excoriates the nation for its receipt of a divine favour which was like an abandoned child, brought to health, food, faith and beauty, a thing of splendour; only to belittle itself, degrade its ways, worship follies, vanities, things that are not, and to find itself successively dispossessed, abandoned to the mud and the thud of come-down without the parachute of repentance or the waiting green sward of truth, with which mercy is in the most intimate friendship in the beauty of the holiness of God. Its children (Ezekiel 16:20), just as now in South Australia and so many other benighted educational lairs, have been sacrificed to gods who are not there (Deuteronomy 32:17-21), whose very names are legion and forlorn, mere myths erected like some tower, awaiting its fall.

"And when I passed by you and saw you struggling in your own blood, I said to you in your blood, ‘Live!’ Yes, I said to you in your blood, ‘Live!’

"I made you thrive like a plant in the field; and you grew, matured, and became very beautiful. Your breasts were formed, your hair grew, but you were naked and bare. When I passed by you again and looked upon you, indeed your time was the time of love; so I spread My wing over you and covered your nakedness. Yes, I swore an oath to you and entered into a covenant with you, and you became Mine," says the Lord God.

"Then I washed you in water; yes, I thoroughly washed off your blood, and I anointed you with oil. I clothed you in embroidered cloth and gave you sandals of badger skin; I clothed you with fine linen and covered you with silk. I adorned you with ornaments, put bracelets on your wrists, and a chain on your neck. And I put a jewel in your nose, earrings in your ears, and a beautiful crown on your head. Thus you were adorned with gold and silver, and your clothing was of fine linen, silk, and embroidered cloth. You ate pastry of fine flour, honey, and oil.

"You were exceedingly beautiful, and succeeded to royalty. Your fame went out among the nations because of your beauty, for it was perfect through My splendor which I had bestowed on you," says the Lord God.

"But you trusted in your own beauty, played the harlot because of your fame, and poured out your harlotry on everyone passing by who would have it. You took some of your garments and adorned multicolored high places for yourself, and played the harlot on them. Such things should not happen, nor be. You have also taken your beautiful jewelry from My gold and My silver, which I had given you, and made for yourself male images and played the harlot with them. You took your embroidered garments and covered them, and you set My oil and My incense before them. Also My food which I gave you—the pastry of fine flour, oil, and honey which I fed you—you set it before them as sweet incense; and so it was," says the Lord God.

"Moreover you took your sons and your daughters, whom you bore to Me, and these you sacrificed to them to be devoured. Were your acts of harlotry a small matter, that you have slain My children and offered them up to them by causing them to pass through the fire? And in all your abominations and acts of harlotry you did not remember the days of your youth, when you were naked and bare, struggling in your blood."

"Then it was so, after all your wickedness—‘Woe, woe to you!’ says the Lord God—
that you also built for yourself a shrine, and made a high place for yourself in every street."

(Colour change added to signalise the parallel to the present.)

God does not alter at all; but He does alert people. Here in ancient Israel some 2700 years ago, is the version of ancient times, of the present final fall into the abyss of unconscionably proud man! The time lingers; the stage does not. It presses on to the finale of foolishness, the acme of vanity, the summit of vainglory and the litter for the dead (Revelation 19).

	Here is the infernally lying, creeping,
	yes arising to shout its last vociferation,
	in one febrile falsetto:
	awaiting the dynamic dispersion surely coming, from the eternally divine.

It is therefore time to cease drifting into such evil dynamics, to awake to righteousness, to realise the truth that man is a product, a personal one, with immense and marvellous intimacies available with the God who has revealed Himself, one only, in one book, the Bible, in one man, the Christ Jesus, and in one way, the way in which He is pleased to do, the truth. He has said HIS mind, which can never mix with ours, as if the Inventor had to learn from the product. He has shown HIS Son, who can never be relegated to mere man, since He became one to show the One who MADE man, and AS man took FOR man the meanders of His sin upon Himself, so that He might take man, in perfect justice through blood-based pardon, to heaven to be with Himself^*3.

Here absolute truth, with an absolute mind and an absolute statement and declaration, who with an absolute covenant and an absolute pardon, by absolute power has shown in absolute, verified, unvarying and predicted ways, the facts of life, the generation, the degeneration and the regeneration for man; and it is absolutely necessary to ignore the absolutely deprived and so depraved contentions of self-contradictory man, who absolutely without any absolute in his declarations, is absolutely wrong, lacking the truth by the inherent necessities of his own model requirement. Absolute truth can be found only when it is THERE, PERSONAL and willing and able to CONVEY itself to the milling mind of personal product man.

It is as Peter put it to the Jews in his own day (Acts 4:11-12), now to be realised by all in our own:

"This is the stone which was rejected by you builders, which has become the chief cornerstone. Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved."

NOTES

*1 Encyclopedia Britannica declares: "Mormon doctrine diverges from the orthodoxy of established Christianity, particularly in its polytheism, in affirming that God has evolved from man and that men might evolve into gods, that the Persons of the Trinity are distinct beings, and that human souls have preexisted."

*2 Cf. A Spiritual Potpourri Ch. 15, *1, SMR Ch. 1, pp. 50ff., TMR Ch. 5, It Bubbles ... Ch. 9.

Acts 4:11-12, Titus Chs. 2-3, Romans Chs. 1, 3-8, Galatians 3, I Peter 1, Hebrews 1-4, 8-10.

	a) anti-evidential
	b) anti-functional
	c) a confusion of the result of thought with its actual practice.