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In terms of summary of such areas as SMR Chs.1-2 *1, and That Magnificent Rock, Ch.1, the results can be given a useful outline in one area.

There are really two positions. There is unscientific evolutionism and there is scientific creationism.

Personally, I am not fascinated with the title "Scientific Creationism". Science does not entirely relate to creation or to evolution. However it does partly relate, in its due methodology; and in that respect, creation wins hands down. There is no contest.

In fact, there is a lot of evidence for adaptational change; which may result from mutation, impact of circumstances in terms of programs, equipment and so forth. Some would call this micro-evolution, but as it is merely adaptation*2 and not progressive in upward design conditions, the term is misleading, if not confusing for the issues before us. I prefer 'adaptation', since that it what it is. In erecting a building, such as the layers of creation and the functionalities for integration, if you do not go up, you are getting nowhere.

There is zero evidence for heightened design change, vertical as distinct from horizontal movement. You could magnify it to the last degree, and it would still be zero. Zero times a trillion is still zero.

Now the point is that we are dealing with extrapolation when organic evolution is asserted as if it related in some way, to science, to scientific method. That is always a very dangerous procedure. (It represents the continuation of an observed trend in mind, or in graphical plotting.) However in this case, it is infinitely worse than dangerous. It is false.

You here find the extrapolation of what does not appear*3; you are going to the asymptotes, if you like to think in graphs, without points to plot in the first place. It is delightfully ridiculous, fit indeed for Alice in her Wonderland. If it were in this vein, I should not only approve, but guffaw, smirk, grimace or what will you (or more precisely, what I would). However, when death is the price, the joke is too large to be either classic or excusable. You cannot go to the nth degree in terms of what is not there. THAT is not an extension of what appears, but an invention of what does not appear. No wonder it is called in terms of prophecy to cover such philosophic surges, the lie*4.

To summarise: The facts that on that basis, you could not know truth (SMR Ch.3, pp.S1 and 422E ff.), and your speech would not have coherence logically in that sufficient causality as a principle would need to be deleted, that magic or miracle is invoked on a systematic basis in ways contrary to what is the obvious and long established way of things, and that you would need a god-producer for man, to make the mere discussion rational, simply add to the mirage.

In reality, this provides more of the broad spectrum of darkness, an illusory display, one requiring merely procedures in form, to deal with what has no light, indeed no existence. However as you apply categories to darkness, you find how very dark it is.

If therefore the light that is in you be darkness, how great is that darkness! (Matthew 7:23).
 

Note

*1 Special attention may be given to SMR pp. 159, incl. 131.

*2 Adaptation media also in our minds, may be seen to function. It depends on the way we are brought up when very young, the stimulation of potential facilities, and on our own spirits with which we pursue. None of these things however produces superman. The race continues. We raise our brand not at all. Its fruits continue; its products accumulate; its nature remains.

Indeed, depravity, debasement, self-induced diseases, social digressions into manifold follies, gravely commended by physicians who do not heal, economic disasters, even wars are grasped, the last often with abandon, sometimes with felonious assurance, while millions die: if the other modes fail to tame the wild exuberances of the flesh that always tend towards seizing the power of God. To this, though without acknowledgment, they often address themselves, indeed without even understanding it or His creation, and successfully seizing only those seizures which degrade the race, over and again, only to stimulate the wilder diseases of the spirit, instead of repentance and return to the Maker. Our century has been a microscope, and the slides not a few, are in the long, wide drawers of the laboratory of history.

Kill God ? Yes, the 'death of God' was a verbal approach, highlighted by Nietzsche and with various implementation procedures from our own Adolf, who achieved in various minds, star status till he exploded, like many another myth. The Communists quickly added their version - while the same reactionary illusion seized on it, as if thought were outlawed and reason defunct - to adorn the century still more with its renegade ravages that still mar Europe.

Calvary was a more explicit assault on the deity, but it thwarted such plans, overthrown in the bodily resurrection and indeed, in the purpose of the plan of salvation, of which this was the brilliant, predestinated and prophesied component (I Corinthians 2:7-13, Act 2:22-32).

Otherwise ? illusionist plans are many, from the side of man. As to God ? regimes of rebels try to demote Him, symbolically denote Him, accuse Him, misuse Him, lampoon Him, kill, crush or revile His servants! They may even attribute God's creation upwards, to the curse downwards - with ostentatious irrationality. (See SMR pp. 179ff., 252A-N, 591-592, S1-11, and That Magnificent Rock Ch. 6.) It is done on campus as well as in battle, in prisons as well as outside. These are the social and philosophic norms.

Thus is the splendid gift of spirituality, moral and rational life to man 'rewarded'. The spirit of Eden is still robustly alive, even while - world-wide, the race degrades itself and dreams the dreams of convenient power.

Topsy-turvy is the news as these false furores work themselves out, in all but innumerable cases. Upside-down glasses are still worn as a fashion, as in one of the Moody-Science films, where they were actually used to illustrate a point. The quaint contortions resulting from the intellectual version often appear in news magazines or newspapers, in lecture rooms and in blood.

The other world is still the source of this one, its King and God our Creator, to whom we owe rationality and the ways of spirituality even though that road is narrow and rather seldom used (Matthew 7:13-14,21,24-27). Righteousness, the righteousness of God is free, beautiful; and like much that is lovely, it has its own requirements.

Received as a gift (Romans 5:15, 6:23, 3:23-28), this righteousness is a path of light in life (John 8:12, 6:40), clean as sapphire, dazzling like diamond, that must be followed, and is followed where the gate is entered, which is Christ Himself:

Enter in at the narrow gate; for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leads to destruction, and many there be who enter through it:

for narrow is the gate, and acute is the way, which leads to life, and few there be who find it.

Our very brains, those receiver-transmitter units for the so often vagrant spirits of our race that use them: these also are narrowly constructed with inexhaustible-seeming, brilliant techniques, types and procedures built-in for remarkable adaptations, whether when injury occurs or oppression. (Cf. SMR pp. 316A-G.)

Like other magnificent equipment, however, which we ourselves make - though our own products do not compare with our personal endowments in their depth and scope of function - it can be blessed or blighted by its inventor, and like some, it is to a point, auto-adaptive through design parameters, procedures and specifications marvellously built in (Psalm 139:14-17). We should understand something of such things in their creation: we do them repeatedly in our own creations, our own work. (Cf. SMR pp. 71-72.)

This wonder of donated equipment, with which we live and by which we are able to work: it does not however create itself, nor is it radically changed to another design; it does not become another model ("That Magnificent Rock", Ch.1, pp. 22ff., SMR pp.81ff.). Its brand remains.

The race is human, if increasingly inhumane at a conspicuous level: even where at times solicitous, often even in this it is arrogantly presumptuous against its Creator in its human procedures and aspirations. (Cf. SMR pp. 125-128, 578ff., 611ff., 620 -623, 659ff., 839-841.) His words of warning to the world are as to ancient Israel, in essence the same: Amos 4:11-13, Revelation 5:6, 9:20-21, 17:13-14. The fearful pathos and the endless justice interrupts man in his spiritual vagrancy, the more so as nations turn wantonly, with increasing carelessnessof Christian blessings of the past, waiting on the forbearance of God (Jeremiah 2:5,31).

His words and truth and provision for restoration to those who shall come to Him as He provides and invites, these remain likewise: Jeremiah 31:19-20, Isaiah 55:1,6-7, Luke 13:1-3, John 6:63,50-53. Let us note one:

Surely after I as turned, I repented; and after I was instructed, I smote upon my thigh: I was ashamed, yes, even confounded, because I bore the reproach of my youth.

Is Ephraim my dear son? Is he a pleasant child ? for since I spoke against him, I do earnestly remember him still: therefore my bowels are troubled for him; I will surely have mercy upon him, says the Lord.

*3 While one is studying SMR pp. 81ff., it may be amusing and helpful, bearing in mind the discussion on the fact that vital things do not suddenly become equipped with miracle in their natures any more than those of physics' domain, which appears there, to extend a little.

Imagine a car grave-yard in which someone of another century, say deprived of civilisation for some reason... comes upon those quaint vehicular objects which we call with such familiarity 'cars'. The person probes and considers. It is amazing: unaware of industrial history and the intelligence and input of information which proliferated in it, he experiences confusion. How COULD these items turn the one into the other. OF COURSE they must have done this, for there could be no question of the enormous output of intelligence and originality involved in producing so very many allied yet differentiated models except through transformation, the one into the other. So he thinks!

You notice the assumption: he does not! He is like a child of our own time.

In fact, of course, the expertise and intelligence and research needed to understand in minute detail and adapt all the computerised techniques and mechanical procedures and so on, would be so colossal as to make the mere origination of the original seem simple. But our imaginary future investigator is as devoid of common sense as appear to be the impassioned proponents of organic evolutionism, and set in their ways.

He proceeds: behold, here is a Volkswagon, and there is a Jaguar. There is some difference. Along further he finds a crashed Boeing 727. He reflects. Yes these are indeed very different. Perhaps there was some... sudden change here, some new beginning ? This he can conceive, though he is not able - as is the case in the vital fields, the living fields now - to find just how! A small matter: scientific method can be as readily thrown away to undisciplined thought then, as now. So he continues to 'ponder' and to be confused, developing various idiotic theories about car manufacture, and eventually even making a special philosophy in which people can get Ph.D.s, which teaches that when it comes to engineering, there is a special power-assist, intelligence assist, which comes in some special way which has not as yet been found, but which has no intelligence.

Then he comes to a Mercedes, and considers there is a very close similarity to a Jaguar. Yes, this is a clear case of transformation. You can see the streamlining similarities, less conspicuous in the case of the Volkswagon, and certain components show high-grade steel, and steps to increase engine power! Yet... when he comes to consider just HOW this was worked, his initial assumption that it is easier to transform than to create amongst the myriads of components, does not find much help. He is in an agony of thought (it is called philosophy when it goes no further because it 'knows' the answers before it asks the questions and so never finds any!). How can this be ? He does not find out, but discusses divinity and so forth with increasing knowledgeability because he rejects the facts on that topic as well as on any other pertinent to the 'advanced' aspects of the question in hand.

As we know in our own operations, in fact origination is in general easy for the mind that first creates, which has the information and the principles and the power and the desire in the first place. The adaptation of application of principles and the usages adjusted this way or that is something with which many of us are acutely familiar. Creativity can use and adapt its formations in various ways, and often does so. It is a thought process which does not require expensive and extensive engineering: it is done in the mind. The results can appear spectacular.

I myself in my own way often do this type of operation with words; and from the New Testament it appears that Jesus Christ, our example, did things of this kind from time to time. It has an added advantage. With words, it tends to emphasise and drill in the thoughts because the subtle variations have a didactive, an instructive effect, forcing thought on the one hand, whilst increasing basic familiarity with concepts on the other. At times the teacher will even intentionally rather vary the principle introduced into a form of words, in order to jolt a student into thought, which otherwise might have been stuck in a mere verbal formula, parrot-fashion, without enough understanding.

To return, however, to our creative investigations in engineering, where it is metal and not ideational objects such as words with which we are concerned: the similarities often hide enormous differences, similar functions being found in different genes or indeed in very different creatures. This is just so: the understanding mind is able with facility, and sometimes with joy, to adapt some principle, some construction, some mode of working, some function with another base, environment or structure, allowing the imagination to play like a hose on different windows, always varying, in much the same.

Examples appear in such works as Evan Shute's "Flaws in the Theory of Evolution" pp. 142-145,128-129, 59, just as examples of the sudden arrival of the most diverse and "sudden" gross changes are cited (pp.196ff. cf. 26) by Shute from Merson-Davies: "the most striking forms - fishes, ichthyosours, pleiosaurs, pterodactyls, birds, mammals, bats, whales - the forms which represent the most striking departures or specializations of structures come in the most abruptly." So it is with creation. So we find. The mind is shown by its fruits, and if it is great, then, as we find, great sophistication may appear anywhere, any time, and readily abruptly in the outward expression, or indeed within!. Thus Shute quotes Muller (op.cit., p.26): " ... even the bacteria have protoplasm about as complicated as that of higher organisms..."

The naturalistic power to act is not found; the naturalistic laws to create are not arrived; the naturalistic modes of upgrading are not seen in action; the natural laws which do work are the opposite (SMR pp. 329ff.); and the criteria of creation are consistently expressed in the field in view. What has to be explained is the product (cf. SMR pp. 252E ff.; and the requirements are not found in nature, either logically in terms of causative power, or operationally in terms of observable expression.

We have the VACANT HOUSE OF NATURALISM, except THAT THERE IS NOT EVEN ANY HOUSE to do the housing.
Exhibition of the evidence of the divine mimicking powers  of naturalism is equal to the full scope of the magnitude of
nothing. Systematically, actually, empirically and practically, nothing.

The gloom that intensifies until the darkness of folly is all that is left, except for its appointed place.

What is found is that very massive myriadform profusion and ease of splendour which is typical of creative processes such as we know, and as shown in SMR Ch.2, it is such as to dwarf our own skills whilst preserving some analogy with them in modes of procedure. What is, is here; it is not becoming at the vertical level. That is precisely what the Bible says. The Creator created this universe and its contents, and has stopped at the physical level, so doing.

It is now spiritual: and those who prefer, may now reject further creation in the form of a new and cleansed heart. After all, it can be thought rather humiliating NOT to be made into a superman, but "merely" to be cleaned up, transformed so that you arrive where you should have been! (Ephesians 4:24, Ezekiel 11:19). Humbling oneself however is one form of realism, and confrontation with reality has its own burdens, not ineptly characterised as "the lie" (II Thessalonians 2:10-11). The rejection of the sheer magnificence of Jesus Christ, in addition, rather puts residues in the shade (John 3:30ff., SMR Chs.1,6,10).

*4 The lie" - is of great interest. You find the expression in II Thessalonians 2:11. The context places the image and the reality. It is a question of a deceiver who epitomises on earth, the devil's procedures. Its essence is "deceivableness" of a specific variety - "deceivableness of iniquity" or "of unrighteousness". Its object is to prevent salvation.

It is accompanied - in advanced stages, it seems - with an "active delusion", enabling folly and falsity to be adopted. It is in the spiritual area of this evil presence who is to declare to himself, or more precisely show himself that he is god - apparently well-satisfied with the spiritual mannequin parade. He does it "in the temple", evidently feeling this lends him more in the important area of authenticity, so borrowing the place, if not the grace.

Thus the essence of this lie is to undo the testimony of God, the maker, creator, sustainer, and to substitute in the creation, and for it, a fraudulent imaginary power that is not to be found, and cannot act. Like the 'emperor's new clothes', it is all a matter of pride, presumption and/or delusion, made abler to act by two things:

i) the state-of-the-art deviousness of the deceiver, and

ii) the motivation of the deceived (2:11-12).

The sending of the active delusion as a judgment, is the seal on the deluded (human) goods.

There is something similar in II Peter 3:3-4, where 'scoffers' in the 'last days' will question

a) the flood

b) the judgment it represented

c) the judgment to come

d) the actual coming of Christ to judge the world

e) the power of God, or interest, or both, in 'intruding' into His system, or the system, to execute judgment.

It also relates to Romans 1:21ff., where the generic evil of attributing to the creation what is the performance of the Creator is the prelude to spiritual manias so bad as to be all but indescribable. Cut out the foundation and the building falls. We are currently on a guided tour of the ruins; but some pieces are to be redeemed.

The base trouble is outlined in Romans 1:18-20. If it is sad there is such folly, it is nevertheless far from being unrelieved sadness; for the Gospel is good news, and once the diagnosis is seen to apply, one has the door to enter (John 10:9), to where the goodness of the Lord is.

I am the door. By Me if any man enter, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out and find pasture.

Again in John 10:1:

He who does not enter by the door into the sheepfold, but climbs up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber.

(Cf. Revelation 22:17, John 4:14, 10:9, 1:12-14, Isaiah 55, I Corinthians 1:21-31.)