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NEWS 68

NOT A MAD-HOUSE FOR MARS
BUT A MARRED CREATION

Volume 13 (No.1), CREATION EX NIHILO, Technical Journal, 1999, pp.29-32
and recent news of the world record.

In this article, the view is presented that Jay Gould's book, Life's Grandeur, though fundamentally astray nevertheless has some telling points which should awake some of the old earth creationists to their position.

Now doubtless such creationists should be awakened, as seen in The Shadow of a Mighty Rock - SMR, Ch.2, That Magnificent Rock Chs.1,7 and elsewhere. Doubtless also, for reasons which teem on this site and are often referred to, Gould's book is fundamentally astray in its evolutionism. However, the link is the point. There seems little in the review of Gould's book which gives EVEN a plausible ring to its gullible seeming contentions at the level of progress. Gould is against the concept of evolutionary progress, in order, it appears, to foster the nice, religious position that atheism so likes these days, that it is meaningless and so forth (the rebuttal of which, logically, appears in SMR Ch.3 et al.).

It is pleasant and congenial, it seems for such as Gould to remove the hinterland idea of progress, so that a pleasant philosophical panorama of meaningless do-anythingism can appear on the surface of barren history, like meteorite craters (no doubt with a peculiar appeal to some!).

However EVEN THIS  - even on Gould's generic world-view where casuistry replaces causality - is not so. (As has been shown generically for this type of position in SMR.)
Let us examine the position here a little more closely.

According, then, to this critique in Creation, Technical Journal,  the wonderfully sophisticated seeming position is made by Gould*1 that there is not really a record of increase in complexity, no not even in size, from the past, as the message to the present.
 
 

FACTS, FICTIONS and ADDICTIONS

Really ? It is true that the single-cell is highly complex; it is also true, as Denton points out that there is not the slightest evidence of any cell evolution. They, the cell tribe, come starkly superb from the start and show no ways of variation upward by convenient (or even inconvenient)  increments. They are UP already. It is however true that multi-cellular creations have to possess not merely the singularity of their complex marvels, but the addition of team-work facilities.

It is true that whales and huge creations are in size splendid, and man is smaller; but size, though often for some reason, brought in as some evidence of the unevidenced process posited by evolutionism, is not the point. A child can make a huge paper aeroplane which is nothing compared with the work done on a silicon base in a micro-chip: it may be millions of times bigger, but that is not impressive WHEN and IF we are looking for something which could be called PROGRESS.

When a bevy of creations then appear, with various aids, such as consciousness,  reproductive facilities, or instincts embedded in programs which exhibit marvels of mathematics, which would take colossal efforts far beyond any known capacity, for man to duplicate even with the greatest teams of scientists, then there is obviously an array of new features which in team-work require ever more sophisticated, wise and ingenious provisions for their synthesis. Our constructive enterprise, ludicrously beneath this even with the splendid equipment we possess as humans, could not manage this; but IF we could, it would require FAR MORE to create.

When emotions also bedeck the scene, and rational thought, personality and the analytical capacity leading to prediction, verification and refinement, to the whole mass of integrated, cogitative, observation-related synthetics, called science, but really just a form of knowledge relating to a formula of method: then far more is needed again. The very creation of the freedom: freedom  to be aware of principles, to express them and to redress them, to perceive guilt in failing them and experience ecstasy of aesthetic thought in doing them justice, as we have often seen in this site, is of itself so far beyond anything merely programmable as to be stunning to conceive, at the creative level: that is, if one were to seek to create it. Man does not do this - that is create it, however much he may try. It is as far beyond him as the realities of his spirit are beyond the arts of psychiatry; and more.

There is - if one allows even a modicum of the concept that first there was the single cell, then multicellular bodies, then multi-functional models with ever-increasing total synthetic powers - undoubted progress. Now it is true, and this point is worthy of stressing, that the progress is not in all features. Thus cells are cells, however specialised they may become; enormous ingenuity is displayed in earlier phases. The Creator has always been wise (cf. SMR Ch.1, That Magnificent Rock, Chs.7-8). However the total synthesis of paradigms, the array of concerted capacities undoubtedly increases; what was not there, comes to be there, functionally, in dimension and depth; and what is moved into place is also moved into collaboration with other specifics (see here SMR pp. 329ff., and 140ff., with That Magnificent Rock, Chs. 6 and 7, and A Spiritual Potpourri, Ch.6).

What He is about - always brilliant in His compositions - is a gradation at once monumental in functionality, in abrupt advance, and a diversification, in principle ingenious in its plasticity, within kinds which produces the prototype stability and the ectype diversity, the latter buzzing like bees about the hive of the prototype. Not only so, He TEACHES with His principles as well as with His productions, for WE should also be exceedingly distinct in our obedience to basic principles, stable and fixed in kind, but very mobile in our applications of them.

Further He TEACHES even through the scope of His productions, some of the ugly walruses which lie bloated on their islands, with harems and bulk, indicative of the grosser possibilities for human settlement, while their skill in the waters reminds us that all is not always as it appears; the ants show their indefatigable diligence and attention to duty even at sacrifice, the bees their communicative splendours and team-work, the stag its nobility, and man ? He shows the incredible seeming scope of the human SPIRIT for squalor and delicacy, for service and selfishness, for sacrifice and sequestration, for wisdom and folly, for worship and idolatry: a production of a magnitude of brilliance which can in itself be brilliant with reflected light from the Lord, or tarnished like something hurt, harassed and humbled within.
This then teaches us a further element of direct relevance in our current survey.

Not merely are their functional diversifications, then, in the steps of abrupt creation; there are the overall results, the product type or calibre as ONE WHOLE.

Thus, the TOTAL, integral result is NOT ONLY this increase of FUNCTIONAL sophistication; it ALSO occurs in a unit of amazing and all but incredible capacity, as one whole. MAN, to return to our example,  pirouettes in precision, thinks in depth and envisages with wonder: the mere fact that he is so philosophically muddied and intellectually muddled about himself notwithstanding. If he is pathologically woven into the witlessness of sin, this does not diminish the calibre of the thing caught. He is like an accident with a Jaguar motor-car: climbing the lamp-post does not dignify the car, but the way it threw itself at it was impressive, as was the preliminary jaunt before it was caught. Now and again, when it is not at the panel-beaters for some particularly mad 'accident', like sharing World War II with Stalin, against Hitler, it produces tomes of extraordinary brilliance.

The point which really needs to be distinguished is simply this. IF there were sufficient cause for the thing you get in this world, namely in terms of observation and logical prerequisites, a result; and IF this basis or producer or productive facility were working away merrily (or sadly, I suppose, the emotion not necessarily being determinative of the functional powers) within something or other (not seen of course), where it took up abode incognito (for just as it is never seen, so works from it are never seen, but there you are, this is what 'science' for some is becoming!), then of course it might slip up and fail. It might similarly  take it into its head or cognitive apparatus or whatever other mystical site imagination might supply, to go backwards (from this or that point of view), or for pure contrariness. It might be regressivist in tenor, temper or trend. It could not be witless, since wit is what it invents. It could be perverse and annoy progressivists. That is prima facie, but in logical actuality, it is not a possibility (SMR Chs.1,10).


The idea of some hidden something doing it, when it is paralysed long since and never located or evidenced in any slightest way, is otiose, a sure contender for Occam's razor. It is an explanation with nothing to explain.

When we get back to what it takes, as demonstrated repeatedly and in particular in SMR Chs.1-3,10, then this is a Spirit called God. God made things in progressivist mode, not bandying about His terms in facile futilities, but in myriad abundance, as Genesis 1-3 indicates, and as to life, with decisive, non-manipulated fixity OF KIND. That is what we see of course, and those who do not like God as a being, or the idea of such a being, always tend to try to avoid the fact; but it - like its cause, the Creator, remain where logic has indicated and where works evince.
 

GOD WAS PROGRESSIVE in the creative stages, not in mere complexity, though that is involved in the synthesis of ever more advanced mental and spiritual specifications ending in man; and the evidence is of course just that. Oh it is true that He cursed the rebellious contraption called man - a marvel and a wonder when without sin, but a heaving disorientation when ruled by it, like a lost child with various penalties for the performance; it is true that THAT was not progressive; and we are not extrapolating, as if God HAD TO (He is necessarily free - SMR Ch.1, That Magnificent Rock, Ch.7) make things which went upwards in synthetic compilation. It is true that this was a FALL and indeed more, a DOWNFALL for man. Yet this merely in this context needs mentioning, since the issue is the advance in things made, not the corrections and penalties of their obsessions and regressions and rebellions, an operating matter, not a matter of creation per se. In this, the creation, then, God the Creator exhibited a certain progression.

MAN is not progressive, since in the muddled muddiness of his musings of this 20th century he has shown the utmost determination to run away from the obvious, the necessary and the essential. The world has whirled away and man's mind has whirled and whirred with it, a source of such confusion that it is all but unbelievable. Thus the USA, having looked after Taiwan for some time with eminent displays of force, and having, as it would seem, allowed China to grab sensitive technology of rocketry (very possibly in part by Presidential decision, in a commercial setting, according to report),  and likewise to acquire more sensitive technology of neat little atomic bombs (by the reports of some, through artful 'intelligence'), cute weaponry hard to detect and destroy, now finds what ? Indeed having protected  Taiwan rather dramatically as recently as 1996, US politics now seems more at home in the straits of Taiwan nautically, than those which occur politically.
 
 

AFFLICTIONS AND DIVORCES

July teems with the news of the confrontation, excitation, protestation and estimation of these things: not least,

NOW in this area,  it seems that the USA has a policy of stability. Perhaps, to judge by important officials speaking on a news-hour, it might run like this: Hence the policy must be NOT to talk about two nations, but about one nation with two political entities, which is about as far as you can get from reality when you consider that a Communist mob drove out a lot of Chinese people before killing perhaps tens of millions of them in simple slaughter, because they would not conform to mob rules, or for allied reasons (too rich, too able... ?), and
that Taiwan is the off-shore bit of the China that was, which those ideologically evicted, having been defeated on the mainland, elected to use, rather than become potential additions to the tens of millions who reportedly were eventually to be subtracted,  by the Communist regime. It seems reasonable. This of course is not in the least to judge between errors on the one side or the other, or to idealise any one side. Much un-ideal has happened.

It is however simply to note that when a totalitarian, mainland regime (more so than Taiwan now, by a very large measure indeed), with a diminished economic situation (compared with Taiwan, taking the income per person in each case) would like to co-opt a body of its nation which escaped its violence, it would not seem obvious that the two should be ONE NATION.  It would rather seem that anything less like one nation could only be sought in the case of Russia and the USA during the cold war.

If now Russia has said, 'Look US, we were together in the war, and hence we were really one people at bay, so let us stop calling each other two nations, but rather two political entities in one nation' : then that might be more ludicrous... But would it ? Perhaps not: for in that case, they really were on the one side at one time - in World War II; but now ? In the case of China (what was left on the mainland) and Taiwan (what escaped the atheistic butchery shop), they were ENEMIES before the separation! Let us be fair: the killing was perhaps in some cases ideological as well as atheistic, and history was in some mystic communist way perhaps deemed to sanction the slaughter. It is just that they died anyway, and those doing it were not at all gods... Moreover, one can rejoice with poor China that part at least of her has escaped the authoritarian scourge of man playing God, without the ability or the right, which is exemplified in communism. (Cf. SMR pp. 127, 656, 707-708, 750B, 849-850, 862, 925ff., 971-972, 1077.)

This distant attitude to Taiwan, the Communist aspirations there and the cost implied, merely illustrate the guise of disguise, the princely deceptions or self-deceptions, and the all but incredible efforts which seem to emit this principle: truth subordinated to convenience, whether biologically or politically, socially or academically.

It is there, where it hurts,  that the truth is frequently warped in ways so flamboyant that at times one can ALMOST sympathise with George Bernard Shaw's thought that the Earth is the mad-house for Mars. It is of course in fact the gloriously open abundance provided for sinners, to which is added the staggering liberality of the solution to sin in Jesus Christ*2. Nevertheless, it must be admitted that the latest thrust of astronomical billions - both literally and metaphorically - in the Mars race is not a little based on the imagination which wants to  INSIST that life be there.

After all, as we see in Joyful Jottings Preface, pp. 1-2, researcher Dr John Ashton notes the zealous preoccupation with philosophy in the area of evolution, despite refusal of the facts to co-operate; and indeed, in his article there noted, after referring to the Law of Biogenesis and its implications, he declares: "When I read this, I understood why many millions of dollars were being spent on search for life in outer space. Without making it too obvious, scientists knew that for the theory of evolution to survive, they had to find evidence that life had come to Earth from outer space. But this discovery still would not save the theory of evolution." Moreover, "this discovery" has not occurred! It is a 'discovery' which is mandatory for folly and exhibits its character. It is needs-based!
 

ADDENDUM:

From A Spiritual Potpourri, to our present topic...

The A-Grade and the F-Grade Schools - and Schools are not only for Children

It is good to be creative. The Maker of man was so, and hence we, in His likeness in mind, though abysmally less in power, are creative. We create theories, not all good.
 
 

The TOPIC OF TOPSY

One of these says that we 'just grew', like Topsy, amongst the wilds. However

1) when we look for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence units, or space-men, or XTs, what do we find? None. The expectation relates to the idea that others too, just grew...

2) when we look for Extra-Terrestrial Life, XTL, there is furore, but facts do not co-operate, no not when billions are spent in the search.

3) when we seek supermen, SM, on the ground that some might just grow better in the wilds of our 'cultures', we find disillusion, betrayal, pride wounded and nations destroyed. Hitleresque pictures do not work, any more than do Communist bee-sweat proletariat productions. They never have worked, and never began to work, whether based on race or ideas. What did work was slave labour and ultra-bestial violence in both cases, soon shed, as history goes. It improved nothing but the death rate.

4) when we look for laws by which such progress expectation might be justified, we find none, only the precise and direct opposite in the Law of Thermodynamics, the 2nd. which tells us that specificity tends to reduce, not increase, in a given system such as our universe comprises.

5) when we look for creativity, which alone would justify the expectation of such a law, we find our own tempered but impressive originality - which does not create life, or matter, or mind, as part of our parcel; but we do not find the MIND in the materials provided, which creates minds.

It is curtains and blinds when it comes to man making minds: only servile slaves occupied with man's visions and his dreams and his hopes, these arrive to attest his subordinate status, and sometimes to feed the insane pretences of many. Minds however? no. Spirits? Far from it. They do not come; they do not arrive. Thus is not the state of our case on this present earth.

6) when we look for a line of transitional objects, TOs, from major type to major type in the rich diversity of different kinds of living things, we do not find them. Variety is the order of the day, incredibly ingenious combinations; but no transitional sequences.

7) when we look for mutational episodes, MEs, even brought on by 40 years of X-ray bombardment as in the case of the famous fruit fly Drosophila, we find they do not provide the advances desired. Nul and void is the effort to make impact create design. Increased design specifications do not "arise" however much they are looked for. This is scarcely surprising; but surprising or not, it is certainly fact. Intelligent work and effort is needed.

8) when we look for means of variety production, we find them in abundance, precisely as scripture implies: both in its selection of the term, 'kinds', and its specification of variety, as in the case of giants. But variety is not kind; it does not advance vertically, merely spreading horizontally. Ingenious provisions for variation, as in skin colour and eye shape, are included; and the spice of individuality is as surely programmed into being, as is the basic type on which variation is made, like musical variations on a theme.

9) when we look for Upward Design Increments, UPIs, the 'arising' of superior kinds of things all out in the wild, by themselves, we do not find it. NEVER do we find it. NEVER have we found it, NEVER does law lead us to expect to find it, NEVER could the evidence, law and logic be clearer. UPIs are not there. They do not happen in cars, in Ph.D. theses, in things old or new, high or low. Design by its nature as by its practice, takes understanding, and this is not resident in 'Nature', that bogey-woman of imagination which is crowned, 'mother nature' by the superstitious.

10) when we look for Downward Design Decrements, DDDs, then on the contrary, we have no trouble at all in finding mutational descent, when things get damaged. We knew all this. It is not new and in many cases, not accepted because it is not desired. There is no other reason.

In fact, NOTHING is the result, wherever organic evolution is used. In what could be terms a wry humour, were it not that it is presented as sober physics, Paul Davies then apotheosizes nothing, and says, Well yes, it does seem that this is where it all began! (for details, see That Magnificent Rock, Ch.7, Models and Marvels). For what is not there, that is quite a leap, especially definitionally. Still, when there is nothing else to talk about, one supposes it can serve; though not of course logically.

Definitional dilemmas apart, and amusement aside, there is only one place where the answer is YES. In that place, ALL the answers are yes. In this place, there is NO answer which is 'No!', 'Nothing doing!' or, 'What are you talking about!', as is the case in this tedious prodigy of the nineteenth century, organic evolution.

By contrast, in this select place, whether it be a question of epistemology, of metaphysics, of general logical method, of scientific method, observational data, scientific law: there is only one result. What then is the answer in this place ? It is 'Yea and amen!' for God and the word of God, the Bible, at every point. Let us be clear about this thing. THAT is a FACT. It is verified everywhere, in ALL details as they come up for examination.

Nay and null! However, this is what occurs at every point for the atheist, the materialist, the agnostic who would have it all dashed to ruins in his convoluted thought, which admits no answer.