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NEWS 57
New Life,
Meeting
the Designer, Not by Chance, but by Design
Critique of an
Interview
Looking at Facts
"Evolution: A
Theory in Crisis" was on the whole an expertly presented book, apt in language, precise in
depiction, knowledgeable and ready to deal with facts. In this, Dr Denton made
a succinct but salient contribution to the exposure of Darwinism, to exhibition
of style in the creation and the attestation of the "perfection" of miniaturised, coherent, correlated work in program and
maintenance, implicit in living things. Even the smallest, he indicated, were
such in their underlying, complex and remarkable equipment. There was no
evidence whatsoever of evolution in cells. They were as cities from the most
simple. The concept of 'continuity in nature', he pointed out, has existed in
the minds of those who speak rather then before their eyes!
All this we have noted in
SMR and elsewhere, in detail, in its place. However in New Life,
an interview with Dr Denton, subsequent to the writing of this book is
provided. In this, one sees the unhappy movement from the all but amazing
reticence in speech of Dr Denton, when it came to identifying the source of the
wisdom and contrivance, integral in character and brilliant in design, which he
had attested. Dr Denton in fact had another interview with Dr Wieland, in which the noted author indicated something
closely resembling a reflection on the Creator. Not now however, not that is,
in any sense which would meet what has been shown to be the logical requirement
(SMR 1, ASP
1-9).
In this interview, we find
that Dr Denton continues to regard anything which would, for example, show a
series of small steps culminating in "the avian lung", itself a
"solution" which is "fantastic", as "miraculous".
In fact, of course, it was miraculous in the sense that a competent cause
operated to produce this apposite result, and the competent cause was not of
the formed and formulated character known as matter, which shows only capacity
to obey. It was what is termed 'spirit', which simply signifies an operative
efficiency and sufficiency which is non-material in format, but which exhibits
concepts and has dynamism. There is more, but not less.
It would, then, according
to this report of an interview with Dr Denton, have been miraculous for a
series of mere gradual short steps to have instituted this coherent and
brilliant and intimately inter-related whole, the avian lung, incorporating as
it does a brilliant solution to certain problems and giving specifications apt,
adroit and adept. It lacks a logical interface for this fashion of being, style
of procedure, avenue of operations. In some detail, why this may correctly be said
has been noted in such places in Repent or Perish Ch.7, in some detail; as well as in SMR Ch.2,
esp. pp. 251ff..
Observing that "gradual changes" as an idea for arrival of what is, has gone "out of vogue", Dr Denton notes that in fact, "punctuated equilibrium", arguing for "sudden jumps in nature", without intermediate forms, is "really only a description of the apparent jumpiness" of what has in fact come to be. "I don't think," he added, "it is actually an explanation for biological design". It is really a "label" of "a palaeontological phenomenon". "The fossil record seems to be jumpy and in many cases it would be difficult to imagine exactly what the intermediate would be." It is, then, not merely, as the famed Dr W.R. Thompson pointed out (SMR Index), that the intermediates lack in fact; it is here being noted that they seem to baffle the imagination as to what they would be.
It is rather like trying to "imagine" what an intermediate
between a Volkswagen and an Apollo rocket would be, if there had to be a line
of flight from the earlier to the later models, in some sense practical and
manageable! (even by intelligence!).
At the more minute level,
in the interview noted, Dr Denton observed that there are many components of
individual proteins, and they are very complex. Each one of the components is
part of a whole, "and the whole has an end and a meaning and a purpose."
He indeed notes, in trend rather like Sir Fred Hoyle of Cambridge fame in this,
that "a biological end or purpose is written throughout all the laws of
physics ... that in fact the entire cosmos bears evidence that biological
phenomena is the end of nature". (Cf. SMR
422H,L, 226,
224, and esp. Repent or Perish,
Ch.5, pp. 99ff.). The blatant and
patent error in magical Darwinism, which impressed its author far less than its
exponents, as has been shown before in this Site, leaves Dr Denton surmising
that perhaps even a "silent majority" of biologists do not find the
answer in any form of Darwinism. He notes further that a number of physicists
are of the view that the laws of nature seem to be arranged for an end."
Looking at Fictions
It is here that the lapse
in logic begins to appear, which formerly had looked more like a failure to
apply it. Speaking of "creation", Dr Denton is looking for something
other than the Creation of the Bible. Nevertheless, he considers it clear from
the evidence that the "world is optimised for
our existence". Overall, he appears to consider this: "I think there
is a general teleology which is behind nature and which has generated it."
He proceeds to what seems a caricature of Biblical truth: that Biblical
creationists believe in a "myriad of interventions by God in the history
of the Earth... they don't represent the theory of design really."*A
He
makes what is perhaps an even more obvious error in this assertion: that it is
in the English-speaking world (actually the interchanges make this a rather
imaginary conception), only in the last 100 years or so that the "strict
Biblical creationism" has become prominent, and this, in his own opinion,
as a reaction to the delusive errors of Darwinism.
First, we must notice that
the Bible produces NOT LESS, but much MORE than a design theory, to use Dr
Denton's phrase. It produces what is minimal for a design function: that is, a
sufficient cause. Whether with or without mediation, this must at last
incorporate the criteria required: brilliance of conception, execution and
contrivance. Unconceived conceptions are not design
at all, but contradictions in terms. Mental operations require a mental
operator, a mind in which they may occur, a milieu for which they
are appropriate.
This may be far in excess
of what we use; but it must at last incorporate the minimal conditions of
roving function, envisagement and actualisation.
Matter, as we have shown, has no such powers, does not make itself but makes
its making apparent by what it does. Science does not account for what might
have been, but for what is; and this is what is.
The whole bunch of
exceedingly UN-NOVEL views about making a system do it all, a somehow
interwoven, programmed, or meditatively musing interstices of
"things" have all the thoughts: this fancy is as old as it is
delusive. It is merely to seek the function without the functioner,
the cause without its criteria, the operation without
its means. The relationship between conception and creation, possibilities, the
putative and the real is well-known to us. (Cf. News 52.)
It could happen
differently, but it must happen, or the simple reality would be that we would
be "explaining" the combination in observable reality, creativity and
creation, without bothering to construct from observable reality what it is
that happens in such cases. If we failed to be empirical in this way, and it would not be science since the model, the
paradigm is both multitudinous in nature - our own, for example - and
intimately known as to its operation and mean: then of course even there, there
would need to be a limit.
The imaginary, non-natural
concept we would generate, about "what did it" would need to HAVE THE
POWERS AND FUNCTIONS to act logically, create brilliantly, conceive
efficiently, call into being in understanding what is to be instituted in
practicality and so on. What does this is already labelled
quite clearly: MIND. It need not be like ours in some ways; it could
outdistance them infinitely, and in fact the Bible teaches clearly that it
does! But ours are in some vital ways, of this, as modelled BY IT. THAT
explains how we can see the affinities between what IN FACT is instituted in
Nature, and what IN FACT, we do. The last is a point to which
We can of course - and some
do - talk airily about "principles" which will supposedly avoid
having a mind, an analyst and a contriver and a creator and a surveyor and
indeed, a person. We have already in various places noted the superficial
oversight of minimal, causative realities which this constitutes. Thus on p.
159, SMR, we note this, reproduced below, adapted and extended.
·
Thus creation alone stands before logical thought.
·
A PRINCIPLE! This however is merely a description of
a happening, not a cause of the happening. If there is a principle, the
causative sequence is to find its basis, what produced it. But what principle
creates! The "principle of creation" - what is that except a tag (to use
These are
the capacities of a person, or super-person if you like; but of someone who has
power of thought and action that in no way are less than our own, however much
greater they may - and must - be. But a principle ?
What then would this "principle" do!
·
This it must do. It must have power to institute law, to
constitute concepts in an immaterial (non-conditioned, SMR
Ch.1
) form and express them in a material one; to constrain, contain and
restrain, so that copies are made and errors are fought against in cells and
organs and organisms; it must rise like a phoenix from the ashes, equipped with
powers to conceptualise therefore, and to implement.
·
But wait! what do we say about ashes! We
are discussing institution not destitution. Our wars and judgments
make ashes too near; but in the institution phase, what was not instituted has
no ashes, or anything else destroyed; for destruction must first wait upon
construction. So, not after all like a phoenix from the ashes arising, but
rather arisen, without pile beneath, is what makes the piles, the foundations,
instituting and constituting the world of change in order
that it might change from beginnings to endings, from creation to desecration,
judgment or performance as the case may be.
·
And it must provide mind for man and spirit for him,
that he in turn (as factually is the case) might conceptualise
and implement in his own derivative and contained way. And for man, an 'image'
is needed so that he may do business with God and have ground for truth,
without which he is mere reactor and could not intelligently discuss what is
and what is not, or take any part in what we are now doing; nor, therefore, do
this - affirm or deny truth, such as is implicit
in all these presentations.
(See also The Wit and Wisdom of the Word
of God ... Chs. 2
and 7,
and Index Teleology.)
Looking at Fiascos and
Reverting to the Faith
·
It is here alone that the irrepressible human desire for truth, to
declare it or rebut what others think it to be, has its rational basis. Indeed,
the capacity to know God is the ground of the assurance that truth may be
known, and that we may logically assert it. Without absolute truth, the
possibility of finding it of course does not exist. Even where this knowledge
of God is lacking, it is the fact that He is,
which is the non-irrational basis of the assumption of availability of
truth, which is normally implicit. In a parallel way: the frustration so common in this
research of so many for so long about the nature of the universe and of
creation, results necessarily as well as being found actually, from the point
that the
truth is blindly rejected so that its teaching is not available.
·
That too is what the Bible teaches (Romans 1:18-32, Ephesians 4:18ff., moral and metaphysical consequences both being in the
line of flight, which can pass over varied terrains!). No one ever shows it up
by DOING THIS JOB without God; and this is just a fact of
philosophic history. On the other hand, it is all explained clearly when one
acts rationally, asserting truth on the basis that it is there, identifying it
and applying it, assessing and considering the entire felicity of the whole.
Freely and
frequently, it is by some other ground than what is logically possible,
by some rote or cultural obsession, that the predictable logically
untenable result comes for the renegade from reality. Buttressed with a refusal of truth, he builds as if obsessed over the
history of thought, the edifice of "explanation" which falls. THAT in
fact is what has made philosophy what it is: an endless search for what is,
with similar endlessness, not found, on the one hand; and a beautifully
amusing, but gravely sad, rebuttal, generation after generation, of what has
been asserted before, made in its due turn, by
what is now asserted, itself, shortly rejected likewise.
THAT is the fault of folly, the price of rejection. It is like
2+2=4 being ALONE rejected in advance, as diligent Ph.D.'s are written over
hundreds of years, in vain seeking to cover the case. In this case, this
scenario, what is right CANNOT be accepted, so what is WRONG MUST be put
forward, and this in turn, CANNOT work, so the work MUST be repeated. This goes
on ad nauseam, but not ad infinitum, for the Bible asserts
forthrightly that judgment is coming. It is not a game (cf. Acts
After all, if you reject that only thing that is true, frustration
in seeking truth HAS TO RESULT, and it DOES, as we
have abundantly shown, do just that and do it constantly, in the basics of
philosophy without God. The very simplicity of the coherent answers available
is looked at in crucial cases in
·
Biblically one finds, as in one's own pastoral experience,
that the underlying reason for that failure is that God lives; and many
do not want that life, whatever private gods they may create - cf. John
3:17-19.
·
It is here Bible gives the evidence... shown in
Chs.1-3. We need
not however recapitulate: it is the same. The movement from the conceptual
calamities of the organic evolution hypothesis is the same thing as movement
towards the God of the Bible. There are many red-herrings on the way, but
this is the immense, intense and inevitable thrust. As to organic evolution,
the circuit to avoid God is now in the re-entry phase. How shall it be formulated ? Where shall it be found
? Oh, just in the same place as always, in God, who from everlasting to
everlasting is God. (See Psalm 90:2; cf. Isaiah 29:13-
20, esp. v. 16 - "Shall the thing framed say of Him who framed it, He
has no understanding!")
Yet surely
there is a trip-wire provided ? But of course! It has
been there waiting a long time, and has often been used before (thrift on the
part of the devil, perhaps).
·
But what sort of a principle thinks and conceives and even constructs
conceptual apparatus in man ? Oh well, not quite
a principle. After all, a principle is a name for some thing
which is caused to operate in some way. It is the cause which
makes it do so which is needed. A principle is a description of an order and
procedure; and because of this, it needs its base, the force and
creative content which it describes so that it can be a
principle. You need the worker to make it work, the creator to allow it to
happen, the structure in which it is to work, the imagination to formulate it
so that it might work, the thinker for whom it is a thought, the functionary
for which this is a function. Something which is in order needs the orderer, if code then its commander, who has created and commandeered
it; and what operates needs the gear in which to operate, the power by which to
operate and the basis on which to act. (Cf. pp. 252B,
315B-316G, 348-353 infra.)
·
Very well, as always you need God: all we are seeing in modern
evolutionary gasping and panting after immediate 'creation' is a denial of the
cause and a clamour for the effect. It is always the
same: God is smuggled in and His name is smuggled out.
Actually,
as noted in regard to
Pinpointed in the passage about to
be quoted,
dealing with
"it", that is, with the creative, basic power and enterprise on which
the universe is based, on the one hand, and on the other, with the way
philosophers have acted as if to 'bury' it (we have this
abbreviated here),
the
fallacy is given the necessary exposure:
This was on Hoyle, and it is a fortiori applicable to many more!
For more detail
in this area, see Ch.3, SMR. For further accounts in Great Burials of the smuggling of the
reality of God in the words of man, far less successful than the boats of
immigrants, detectable on radar as they seek to enter a land illegally, see Ch.
4 Extension, with
Ch. 4 itself in SMR. Here the
less than beautiful and almost immutable fashion parading of philosophies which
seek to suppress God into a coffin of camouflaging words, which deny Him while
implying Him, over the centuries, is expose, and cases are listed.
It is one of the
most prodigious verifications*2 of the
Bible, that precisely this is stated in the diagnosis of
the rebellious heart of man, in the Bible in Romans 1:17ff. and
Ephesians
It is wonderful
that the love of God does not disdain the diseased, but only the disease, and
calls notwithstanding, to those who err. Proverbs 1 is one of the most poignant
cases, and although it shows the seething negation of the love of God, yet it
shows the earnestness of His desire to liberate from the woes of blindness.
What however of
the reported claim by Dr Denton that the strict, Biblical creationism is a
matter of the English speaking world in the last 100 years, or conceivably,
is there found in that time. At any rate, what of the idea that this is basically
a reaction, a post-Darwinian reaction, an unfortunate, too narrow conception... ? Is it factually correct ?
First, in my
mathematics, 1688 is not in the last 100 years. Merely as one (justly and
enormously famous) example, let me cite the commentator Matthew Poole. I have a
1688 copy of his work in my possession, passed on down the generations. In it,
I find in Genesis 1 that the days are 24 hour (or thereabout) days, and there
is intelligent discussion about the precise relationship of night and day
intended, but it is diurnal, daily routine. In 1710 or so, Matthew Henry's
commentary came forth, to a vast reception over time, one
still favourable to it. In this, we read that
the Lord worked the creation in a week partly so that the Sunday rest would be
illustrated. HE, God, says the author, COULD have done in an instant; but He
chose a longer time, a week, with out instruction in view, so that we could
follow the divine example.
That is
beautiful. We as parents can do just that: condescend to a mode in order to
give to the children what to them is not a mode, but a need! It is beautiful
but it is also clear. No reactionary teaching here, it is the simple reality
taught for thousands of years, without the compromising zeitgeist of an
abandoned generation, which tries ever new ways of avoiding the inevitable,
with inevitable suffering.
One might wish
to refer to my work on Cosmology, in SMR pp. S17-18, where further attestation is cited
from eminent authority, about the long period of time during which strong emphasis
was given on the straightforward meaning of evening
and morning, that is, light arrival and light departure according to a climate
of operation made famous: as in the Bible, so in Nature, as to its character
and cause. This, as there attested, is true both in the Jewish and the
Gentile worlds! In SMR pp.
171-197, discussion in given in some
detail on the contextual parameters of the Biblical exposition. It is
not a matter of foolishly merging the Bible and philosophies, as if some
combination of mutual opposites would produce an "interpretation". A
place for everything and everything in its place is not for the household only!
WHAT THE BIBLE
teaches is one thing, and this we discuss in detail. What man seeks, is another, and it is kaleidoscopic, though strangely
subject to inert fashions, often seen to be positively fatuous, 100 years or so
later, as is more and more happening to Darwinism, which is simply one of many
such cases in point. They do not work, they were logical casualties from the
start, and stout hearts that defied God, with or without a Bible in tow for the
escapade, have taken up these irrational options with all the proverbial desire
of a 'teenager for dad's car (though personally, I am grateful to have been
spared this phenomenon re cars!).
Words of the Faithful, and the Logic that
Requires the Lord
As shown in the
above reference to Cosmology, there was a whole school of theology, in the
early centuries of the Christian Church: the Alexandrian. It was strongly emphasising that God needed no more than an instant to
institute and complete creation. Clement affirmed that the world did not come
into creation IN time, since time was something created with the world. The
time may be what it was, is the emphasis of Augustine, and at ANY time, man
might ask,
Why
not sooner ?
But in the
infinitude of God's being, not limited, any time is insignificant compared with
all of ours: this is Augustine's stress. Always, in his City of
Anything further
from evolution, it would be hard to imagine. Non-processive
time is a good description of the time that scholar envisages. Augustine
himself could perhaps have spared himself some trouble if he had realised more clearly, that time is being brought into
existence with the other creation, so that the processes of creation, as now
known, are conceivably far removed from those aroused during the institution of
time, that is, of serial, progressive time, where you wait one moment for the
next to arrive, a wonderful novelty from eternity's all-embracive knowledge of
the Almighty (Acts 15, Isaiah 42:9, 46:9-10).
Time was being
manufactured with all else; and its processes were successively evoked, by
which its passage is often measured! Humphreys touches on this matter in a
practical manner, but it is there in necessary essence at all times! In
Augustine's City of God, we find numerous expressions of this fait
accompli character of creation, as far as
conception, knowledge and prior standards and certainties are concerned (e.g.
see pp. 373, 378, 364, 381, 393, 395, 397, 409).
In reality,
there is dominion and there is actuality which needs neither subject nor
situation. God can make, like an artist, ever so many pictures of times and
possibilities actualise. There is simply no limit.
Our type of time is to be understood as to its institution in only one way: the
way which the only One who knows, being there at the inception of this sort of
time, describes. The description is meticulously clear and decisive. There is
however nothing even approaching a problem; merely a
delight to the imagination to consider the other things that might have been.
In science, however, our concern is what is, something systematically
'forgotten' in the whole ludicrous episode of Darwinianism.
Yet let us not attack science; it is merely this parasitic philosophy in terms
of which many scientists have become preachers of illusion rather than
Indeed, many are the great scientists, and even ones
great in the history of science, who have been decisive in their insistence on
the fixity of the created kinds, with no concession to imagination and myth. Kepler, Robert Boyle, Sir Isaac Newton, Joule, Lord Kelvin,
Clerk Maxwell, Michael Faraday, all appear as clear on the majesty and
creatively definitive character of God's action. There is basic Biblical faith
that has not truck with evolution. Linnaeus, Cuvier
and Owen, are but three, noted for emphasis on fixity of kind.
·
In this connection, as to the assertion of Dr Denton that there are
multitudes of divine interventions asserted in the case of strict Biblical
teaching -
·
by which he is taken not least to waive a textually unimaginative -
because contextually constrained, construction of what is given in Genesis (see
references above in SMR),
·
to the point that Biblical teaching is not really a
'theory' of design:
·
the case is quite otherwise.
His reported words:
"myriad of interventions by God in the history of the Earth... they don't
represent the theory of design really."
In
fact, it is not that the Biblical presentation is contrary to any valid theory
of design as we know it, find it and use it in our own lives, but that the
whole concept of creation itself, in terms of "myriad interventions of God
in the history of the Earth" itself is contrary to the Biblical statement
on creation! Such a concept indeed appears as not even a parody of the word of
God written in the Bible in this domain. It is like attributing obesity to a
severe case of anorexia or slim lines to Gothic architecture.
If
we are to consult the Biblical text on creation, in dealing with creation, with
the mode of arrival and non-arrival into this world of the brilliant and
ultra-sophisticated designs, right down to their bio-chemical interstices,
which inhabit the earth like fruit on a tree, we must do better than this.
Indeed,
Dr Denton's erroneous attribution in the very context of creation, merely
highlights the felicity of the text of Bible on the topic of creation, as it is written. What then do we find in Genesis ? Co-ordinates, correlates, concepts, control for
each kind or category, all proceed from the mind and Spirit of God into this
world, by a word. The declarations are exceedingly economical as listed! It is
creation itself, the invisible as we all
experience it (cf. It Bubbles, It Howls, He Calls ... Ch. 9, SMR pp. 348ff.),
by a word conveying all of this into the explosive moment of actuality.
As the power is greater, so the word is more sure, certain
and immediate. God with all power has nothing interposed between the
word and the deed: He speaks and it is done is the RECORD OF THE TEXT. FEW are
the listed statement. Great is the attested result.
The
word of God transfers the creation, the understanding into the theatre of
operations. We CAN relate readily to this, since as having spirit, thus in the
image of God, we can in a subordinate role, relate to Him who IS Spirit, who
created matter, mind and spirit for man in one ingenious and spectacular
ensemble. So in our limits indeed, do we act, the concept may dazzle, the
thought invite, the coherence appear as in a dream, the flash of insight
spurts, thrusts itself with spurs into actuality and form, and this into the
world. As we are limited, it is harder; as we have more power or opportunity,
it becomes easier. With God, NOTHING is too hard. In creation, He speaks, and
it is done.
Indeed,
as Paul applies Genesis in II Corinthians 4:5-6:
"For we do not preach ourselves, but Christ
Jesus the Lord, and ourselves your bondservants for Jesus' sake. For it is the God who
commanded light to shine out of darkness who has shone in our hearts to give
the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus
Christ." There is
nothing fiddly about that. It is fiat not fiasco, command not intimation, the glorious power of dominion, not the puny pushy of
effort.
Again,
the apostle applies it: "Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation:
old things have passed away: behold, all things have become new" - II Cor.
The concept of myriad interventions in the field of creation, the
point at issue, then appears not even a burlesque of the Bible, of what is written. How important it is that
imagination should be used to investigate what is written, not invest it
however unconsciously, with one's own thoughts. When the word of God is
concerned, frequently is this error of intrusion found, and it is part of the
nature of the case, that man should be inclined so to err (Ephesians 4:17-19).
This is a matter of principle, not personality, of pathology according to the
word of God. When HE is concerned, the departures are almost like the lounge at
an airport! On Biblical analysis as in Ephesians 2 and 4, this is endemic to
the race apart from Christ as Saviour and Lord, and
manifests itself repeatedly, therefore. HE, biblically, is like the key to a
house. Outside, you wander.
It is scarcely then surprising that both before and after the delusive escapist
irrationalisms of Darwin, outstanding scientists of
massive stature remained untouched by the febrile fever of evolutionism; just
as some, as is natural and found in nearly all tests, succumbed, the mass of
propaganda and as later seen, deceit in various cases, being too great a test.
Yet in all this, the obvious has remained so, and it is merely the loudness of
the blasting loud-speakers which could produce even an impression of
difficulty.
Indeed,
The kinds which
the Creator is shown to create in Genesis 1-2, are vast in their scope. The
mechanisms increasingly now being found for a flexibility within the
fixity of kinds, a non-progressive but a precision engineered adaptability,
like that of a car equipped with variable springing and suspension for certain
types of road, are impressive. (Cf. Creation, March-May 1999, pp.
16-17, where from an interview with prize-winning CSIRO scientist, Ian Macredie, are listed a few of the ingenious capacities for
life to respond with fascinating variety, by intriguing built-in provisions,
WITHIN kind.) 'Kinds' is the word used as rendered, and the context is not in a
minute but a vast overall scope at this point. There could not be a more
obvious and ample provision of a basis for kind, in a world created to run in a
certain way, by the one who ordered and ordained the parameters and the
fixities, the mobilities and their limits.
In this
Things may be
switched on or off, response can be made to foods and environment situations
which in our limited mechanical way, we achieve by sub-systems as in a car, but
which in life are provided with the techniques apt and appropriate which give
what we see: variation within kind, precisely as attested; no variation beyond
kind, precisely as found. The case is that design theory is here met for
intelligence, cast into life as we into inert systems, so that what is created
is kept, and what is kept is able to respond without destruction through its
vital capacities. These are its enduements; what is
endued is its kind.
As shown above,
suppositions contrary to the intensive evidence on logical realities of creativity and creation, shown
within our own minds continually, in terms other and inadequate bases, are
neither scientific nor logically valid; nor are they Biblical. While God far
transcends our powers, and is in no way limited to our capacities, He has shown
in His own creations qualities in excelsis,
which we can understand in kind, through our kinship.
The real scope
for valid imagination is a sphere inclusive of our own observations
empirically, whether shown in the laboratory or elsewhere, and with due regard
to the available evidence in terms of the production displayed as, and in the
form of the universe. What we have in this, we continually find with all the
flair and magnificence fitting for our Maker, in the character of His creation,
both as Biblically attested in Genesis, and as empirically found in life.
Indeed, the more that is found, the more is the marvel of intelligence,
the thematic and the applied in combination, speaking to us not only in the
construction of our minds, but in such supremely superior yet categorically
comprehensible relationship to our thoughts, as to amaze. THIS is the area of
kinship. The material is but the butt.
With this,
should come an evaluation of the features of our minds
necessary as a minimum, and exploration as to maxima which transcend, but do
not evacuate these primary necessities. God is at LEAST such and such as the
functions require: spirit, with wisdom, intelligence and imagination all in
limitless provisions (cf. SMR pp. 23ff.,
Repent or Perish 7, A
Spiritual Potpourri 4, That
Magnificent Rock, Ch.1). To know precisely the nature of the
eternal being and wisdom of God, it is necessary, as with many, to hear from Him,
and to relate this to what we see of His works. It is then that the majestic
parallels, the precise exactitudes and the marvellous
additions, such as come in a personal interview, and are placed in the Bible,
become clear.
It is not
just that the Biblical teaching meets the case of
an observably ordered universe,
with divine interventions at will,
but never wilfully;
within His purposes but never to ruin the point and purpose of this pilgrimage:
but much more.
The Bible shows
us more and more from His words, the control He has over all His works.
Scientifically, it is the most remarkable of all the vast indications of truth;
and leaves the work of Einstein as very junior in its scope by comparison,
because of the limitless terrain which it covers. Logically, as shown in
SMR 1-3,10, it is
necessarily true; and of course, there is no truth without it, as shown in SMR
3. It is indeed a fascinatingly frustrating exercise for those who wish to
argue that their views are true, when their views in advance evacuate any
possibility of knowing it! That however is the constant and intense irony of
this case, where the ONLY wholly valid, and never
falsified account of things at the top level, which embraces the dimensions
below, is rejected.
But let us take
up the issue of time in the Biblical context.
Whether from the
Jew or the Gentile, the treatment of what is written in this regard has long
been inclusive of a vast store of simple exposition that when light is created,
and day and night follow, concerning the nature
of this world, what is meant is what is found. That is the stated parameter of
coverage, the observable character of which is seen, and this is the account of
its investment.
The creation ? day and night ? yes of course. This is how it happened. The terms relevant
are used in the context defined, and in that context, they are as delimited as
are the requirements for the use of equipment in any scientific experiment.
If someone else
wants to talk otherwise about some of these elements or concepts, so be it; but
let us not be fooled into imagining that this is in some way connected with the
Bible, or that those who interpret it to mean what the context depicts (unless
it were delusively obscure, imaginatively unintelligible, and a foul exercise
in mismanaged expression) are in some way 'literalists'. To be 'literal' in a
pejorative sense, it surely is something like this: to fail to follow the
flight of imagination which the daring and perhaps dashing author has in mind;
to be woodenly stolid before the iridescence of the mind of the wholly
superior
author; to be in fact, pedestrian, laypeople of platitudinous proportions in
the presence of genius.
But in this
case, for the reasons we have given (SMR loc.cit. and
cf. pp. 560-569 SMR), it is the
READER who rejects the explanation of what is before us in "heaven and
earth" as the ground and subject, and the language which is well-known in
this locale as meaning what is here found, who is being "brilliant"
but alas facile. Sadly, it is the 'interpreter' who here is making use indeed
of imagination, but in intrusive fiasco, deluded into inventing scenes and
scenarios unknown, in the face and light of those shown in the environment
first clearly defined in the text and context.
No, the idea that God meant what is stated in the environment
evoked by the context, by some brilliant alienation from his defining words,
events and scenario, to be something else: it is not really impressive in
literature or in life.
It is not really
so HISTORICALLY, in terms of the evidence of the actual literature concerned
and the teaching given in the past on Genesis, or the faith held by some of the
most eminent scientists of all time; or in other ways which fall short of the
design ground stated in the Bible. It is not supportable LOGICALLY (cf. e.g.
SMR Ch.1, including pp. 7-10,
23ff.,
107,
159, Ch.3, including,
298-310 ).
Nor is precise Bible teaching on this topic concerning the days of creation, a matter of reaction PSYCHOLOGICALLY to
the elephantine folly constructed by Darwin, since the clear Biblical
statements and their hosts of expositors in accord with this over thousands of
years attest clearly, as over hundreds do some of the best scientific minds,
what is in fact of logical necessity.
The
independently demonstrable necessity that the Bible is true and the word of the
Almighty God to mankind, the sole authorised such
word written, is another phase of the matter. Its provision of biological base
moreover is ineluctable (cf. SMR Ch.2, That
Magnificent Rock, Chs.1,8, A Spiritual Potpourri Chs.
1-9), however uncomfortable.
Nothing else
meets the case (cf. SMR Chs. 3, 5,10):
·
or the
declarative magnificence of what God has said, which is
NOTES
*1 We give
here an excerpt, enlarged and adapted, from Repent or Perish at
pp. 99ff., on this splendid frenzy of fuzzy thought,
which leaves magic concrete by comparison!
·
Self-proclaimed mirror of the meaningless universe, decked in this
hideous ideological tuxedo, sophisticated man-of-today,
·
often using the Universities as a hostel of power, place of
persuasion and intoxicatingly easy opportunity of influence,
·
while students are not always welcome who do not ... conform,
·
proceeds for his own part, to assert "meaning"
in all directions.
From
a (suitably) ghostly figure (or figurine of the imagination), Hoyle would have
the universe beckoned to brighter things (Evolution from Space, p. 150,
Hoyle and Wickramasinghe, 1981 - cf. W.R. Bird, The
Origin of Species Revisited). Man can even, as with Hoyle, have what he
calls a 'future', a spectral impetus-provider, beckoning and working in the
past (The Intelligent Universe, pp. 189, 214), without bothering to
establish the reality of the feature of the future which worked in the past, as
an entity equipped for all time, over time and sufficient for any time. The end
of self-sufficiency which requires no more beginning, and provides causal
consistency, is not met either by wearing out programs, or componential
beckoners.
There is nothing
'ghostly' about such brilliance - as Hoyle so well attests in the construction
of the created universe - as this! The correct, and
clearly definable term is 'spiritual', and the Being, Spirit: rather than the
confused imagery of 'spectral', as shown in SMR Ch.1.
This term, spirit, signifies an entity having power and personal gifts, but not
part of the material universe. The device of Hoyle, on the other hand, is
merely an imposition of an intermediary, without evidence, before coming to the
God who made both it and the power to create.
1) Drawing,
beckoning component plus
2) drawn, attracted components in a universe - these are what ?
What is it that is found here, on such a construction ?
It is merely a system, like any other, requiring logically its ground, basis
and sufficient cause, and in particular, that for the programmed components
like matter, and the imaginary active 'spectral' ingredient,
'incorporated' without evidence of further advance in creation, since
that was deposited in its initial sequence.
We do not,
however, need to account for what does not happen, but for what did.
·
It is in the end, God, blurrily signified but far from blurry in
what is done, who is the inevitable requirement! This sort of vague retreat is
so common, that one may advisedly repeat the false principle involved: Attributing to the
universe a facility it does not manifest, he ignores the demands of the
creative action it incorporates. (Italics added. Cf. pp.
80-88,
121,
131,
252C-N,
265,
293-299ff., 313ff..)
·
Hoyle also set up for action a universe in terms of a creative
facility which is not now seen to operate in the construction of the said
universe! Thus ignoring what is required, and requiring what is absent, he
innovates in one of the best contortions to be seen, leaving vagueness for the
essential specifications of minimal qualities required. It is a cover; but it
is both too broad, making account for what is not seen, and too short, leaving
out what attests itself munificently.
Others,
for the universe, would see its ground of being in nothing, while yet more make
the hard rationality of the universe to have sprung, perhaps in a moment of
absent-mindedness from the powers that are not there, from the resources that
are lacking. The term lunacy came from the concept of being moon-struck, and
spiritually the sheer profusion of authoritative statements about what it is
all about, from a basis which commences by knowing only that there is no truth,
seems to attest a moon-struck generation. So knowledgeable is it, that
knowledge is invented, where it is not found, discounted where it is, and man
rules the waves instead of Britannia.
In principle,
thus, depriving himself of meaning, in practice he asserts it, denotes it, promotes it - it is this! that! or the other! Often the sophisticate of today, to whom the
people listen as if it were some more succulent form of the rural loudspeakers
which were used to keep Chinese countrymen in the right thought patterns,
wallows in the concept of meaningless, only to assert it - IT IS meaningless!
So much meaning to be known by one so meaningless is like a fortune to a
beggar, who still insists for income tax purposes, that he has no fortune and
is indeed still a beggar. It HAS no meaning, he roundly declares, as though a
meaningless member, midget in a meaningless universe, could know it! This he
knows, or should know, and is responsible for knowing, that his foolish heart
is darkened with myths of his making, while he is far better at the making of
myth than the making of man! He has not even made a living cell!
His appalling
contradictions abort logic, and he even gives reasons for being irrational, as
if common sense had marred reason and fled! The rational necessity of God, he
flees from, the superabundant testimony of the divine, he despises, and the
more obvious it is made (cf The Biblical
Workman, Ch.4, pp. 60ff.),
the more he runs from it , saying to a stone, 'You are my father!', as
Jeremiah, both scathing and accurate, depicts it from his own time. The mental
miasma, idols of the mind, changes merely the outward form of this flight to
fancy, always in the rebellious heart.
Always seeking
life where it is not to be found (cf. A
Spiritual Potpourri, Chs.1, 7, 8, 9, 12, That Magnificent
Rock, Chs.
1 , 8 and Appendix 1), he frazzles his
resources in vain searches (as does the US re Mars and beyond, as do vast
efforts to find evidence of intelligent messages from 'space', while vast
arrays of intelligent messages in their billions, reside in the brain between
the listening ears of every man, in his delicately programmed DNA).