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In CEN Technical Journal, Vol. 13, No.2, late 1999, there appears an article by Jonathan Sarfati which it is good to consider, in conjunction with our earlier treatment of the efforts of the savanti to collect life from non-life, and make matter the midwife of life.

For your preliminary browsing, this topic is made a demolition site in The Shadow of a Mighty Rock pp. 128ff., 171ff., 220ff., 211ff., 118ff., 208ff., with 79ff., 87ff., 349ff..

It is relevant also in A Spiritual Potpourri Chs. 1-3, Barbs, Arrows and Balms 29, Scoop of the Universe 57, Joyful Jottings 3, That Magnificent Rock Ch.1, esp. pp. 200-205.

The CEN article is in a detailed response by Sarfati to one of the innumerable seeming foreclosures on the creation of life by imagination minus observation, systematic logic and plus intervention plus failure in any case to achieve it with intelligence.

Before we begin, let us warm-up by reading an excerpt from That Magnificent Rock, Ch.8, pp. 200ff., where, with the reference to the VACANT HOUSE OF NATURALISM as in the reference to A Spiritual Potpourri, and News 57, in particular, you encounter the situation bleakly.
 

• EXCERPT

As Denton notes in his Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, p. 353:

"Whatever the initial source of its appeal, the concept of continuity of nature has always suffered the enormous drawback in that at no time throughout the whole history of Western thought, from the first glimmerings... right up to its latest manifestation in twentieth century Darwinian thought, has it been possible to provide any direct observation or empirical evidence in its support...

The concept of the continuity of nature has existed in the mind of man, never in the facts of nature." (Emphasis added.)
 

• This naturalistic evolution is merely one of the parade of theories which start in the mind of man, not in the facts, looking for an upward grading self-hood in terms of principles never met, but treated as if they were old friends. It is evidently an exercise in delusion. (See also Mental Chiropractic, above.) As Professor W.R. Thompson F.R.S. (SMR p.200) put it : To establish the continuity required by theory, historical arguments are invoked, even though historical evidence is lacking."

 

 

Professor Fred Hoyle of Cambridge fame, looks for a universe, on a Big Bang model, dead almost at the start, unable to be born on the mesmeric model in vogue; while Jeffreys, speaking in terms of the assured results of modern science, appends the view that the "conclusion in the present state of the subject would be that the [solar] system cannot exist". Natural processes on earth are not relevant to life, says Hoyle. As to the astronomical contribution in modern theory, to the organic myth of evolution, Hoyle adds:

"Why should this be so against expectations which appear soundly based in all other aspects of physical experience."

On that base, there is "predicted inertness" - which is rather different from natural processes in fact set before our eyes. (See The Intelligent Universe, pp. 183-185.) "An affront to reason," says Denton (Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, p. 351), of that maestro of codified data, specifications and orders, the human body, if viewed as irrationally tossed out, though it is subservient to reason.

In such a perspective: For these results, you need an acute sort of visionary manufacturing apparatus enshrined in matter, in order to make the vital templates and encoded constructions, before matter is there: a proposition which is merely flattered by being called paradoxical. Even now that matter is here, biological life is on exhibition to our human eyes, alas such creative power lacks the decency to declare itself within it, in order newly to fashion the biological engines and acuities underlying biological life. They teem on, or grow less from time to time, wearing out or injured. In terms of evidenced capacities, they simply proceed, generically along their ordained lines, as since they were created.

Matter is dumb apart from orders given. The orderer is needed, the symboliser whose words are contained. Indeed: where is the parent of any hypothetical power, the supplier of such deciduous power-tools, the more sophisticated if they are to create so much, if such intra-material power were to exist ?

With these prescriptions for matter delivered, having inserted law without limit by chance, prescription by servility, symbolic apparatus by inadvertence, with no possible payload as likewise no relevant power... the (shall we say ? - ) 'facility' could start. Start on what? ...

Start on life where only total correlated accomplishment of directive, executive, technical functions could operate successfully, at a given technical level, envisaging the phases that left no trace; on life that the highest human intelligence has never invented, not even with a working model of life's only working language before it... yes , it has but one.

Ah! But there is a solecism. Our eminent but absent designer, law-maker, intelligence is left without a name quite as improperly as without a face and without a trace in the obedient servants called matter, and in biological life! Introductions please: GOD! Immaterial, not at work in creation either of life forms or of matter, no, neither in structure nor in function is this seen:

and He ? He is not to be 'visited' with creation as if it were a sub-unit of maintenance, or told that He IS creating
 

when the evidence concerning the creation of the universe

is this -


 

that like the 3 basic laws of physics -

it is finished,

over, non-continuous,achieved

(see Professor Barnes, infra).

Next we shall be calling the janitor the architect! And granting him a doctorate! Or claiming that legal action for breach of contract, this was the way he built the edifice he conserves!
God has delivered His creation with all its intricate diversities in only one biological language (biochemical code), as in one physical prescription; just as He has declared His mind to those far more fascinating and profound creations, the minds and spirits of mankind, spirit to spirit, life to derived life, authoritatively and definitively in just one place - as distinct and contradistinct as the human body, which is a mould, pattern and specific: but this, it is the body of His words, the form of sound words, delimited, definitive. (See SMR Ch.1 for that place; SMR pp. 328-333H, 348ff., 31, 71-72, 139, 158-159, 194-197, 264-265, 307, 313-316G, 424-431, 999-1002C, and pp. 1, 141-148 supra re human resources and spirit, with SMR pp. 140-145 re life in its forms.)

Reason demands for matter the immaterial base that it might be, and be possessed of what it does not perform (cf. SMR Chs.1,3,10). He, however, who has demonstrated Himself, not mirage but adequate and necessitated Maker of Nature, so that it might exist in each and every dimension, of its laws so that they might proceed, of its code so that it might order, of its system that it might be deployed, of its synthesis so that it might be correlated, of its commands, that its work might be done as specified and symbolised: He is not mute before the antics of man.

He provides unlimited testing to His own propositions, as we have discussed at length in SMR, where the Bible is logically identified and verified. Meanwhile, His works continue at the level of their institution, deliciously disinclined to create themselves, now as ever; but in the case of our race, creating what (such mini-, derivative) creators were created to create.

Another Professor from Cambridge University (Thorpe, a zoology professor there) has this to say: "I think it fair to say that all the facile speculations and discussions published during the last 10-15 years explaining the mode of origin of life have been shown to be far too simple-minded and to bear very little weight. The problem in fact seems as far from solution as it ever was... The origin of even the simplest cell poses a problem hardly less difficult... There is no real clue as to the way in which any of these riddles were solved."
For the references and quotations in this point 6, other than Thompson, see The Origin of Species Revisited, W.R. Bird - extensive citations from these authors appear to this effect in Vol 1, pp. 76-77, 72, 418, 462, 481, 374-5, and these are merely selections from the theme:

What we have for input, fails entirely for any such output^*1.

In other words:-

Nature does not - because it cannot - produce Nature.
The book of life was not written by the book.
 

• Power and proclivity are required of existence before it can produce; and it is really needful to have these before you produce yourself, in order to be there to do it. Nature producing Nature? ...Neither in power, purpose, principle nor procedure is this seen, may it be formulated, informed with laws, constructed with form, astronomical or genetic, garlanded with mind or articulated with freedom. Nature is insufferably obtuse to such suggestions, unseduced by such irrationalities, and gives a clean pair of heels to such performance criteria. What is required to be instituted, constituted and given existence, is what it has; and it does not have what it takes to supply it. Indeed, in the relevant realms, we have a whole choir of specialists declaring that as to creation in operation, it is not seen and from within what is seen, it cannot be construed.

Hebrews 11:3 said it thousands of years before; Isaiah long before that (40:13-28, 45:12, 44:24); and Genesis before that. (SMR & allied refs., pp. 175-180 infra.)
 
 
• Continuity is lacking, power is lacking, evidence is lacking: except of one thing, that what this world has is not what it can produce. What is not lacking, is educational oppression. It can produce this.

 
• Like shark jaws, the laws of Nature clamp like a garotte about the folly that they invented themselves in time or out of it. As shown (cf. Ch.1, Lectures on Creation, pp. 1-22 supra, & pp. 227-230ff. infra), the Bible pre-formulates not only the chief of these laws, but does so with an invariant knowledge that equally asserts ultimate discontinuity, such as so many distressed scientists attest in field after field, as earlier noted.


It did this long ago, it has for long done it, it has never varied its statements; while the knowledge of man, some of which is called science, undergoes its perpetual transformations, inspirations, reversions and restorations. Its statements have the inestimable privilege of meeting all the facts, correlating them on the grand scale, and as it were, watching cavort in keeping to what it says.
 
 

• END of EXCERPT

Sarfati's data in the purely technical realm may be investigated in detail, but his conclusions are precisely in line with what has been presented , with more generic logical issues, in the above references. They are as below, relative to the latest folie of hope proposed, that does not work, but which is imagined.

Naturally Sarfati is dealing with specific proposals which he refutes, and which have not had the grace to do the required (make life) even WITH intelligent participation; but with this, there are general considerations to be found in what follows.
 

• SARFATI'S CONCLUSIONS

• No plausible prebiotic synthesis of cytosine yet exist.
• Vital 'building blocks' including cytosine and ribose are too unstable to have existed on a hypothetical prebiotic earth for long.
• Even if cytosine and ribose could have existed, there is no known prebiotic way to combine them to form the nucleoside cytidine, even if we granted unacceptably  high levels of investigator interference.
• Building blocks would be too dilute to actually build anything, and would be subject to cross-reactions.
•  Even if the building blocks could have formed polymers, the polymers would readily hydrolyse.
• There is no tendency to form the high information polymers required for life as opposed to random ones.

 

In all these areas, there is this sad death in the bustle of the room of thought. Logic is dead! Yet she is still used, like some disgraceful slave trader, who having misused the poor lady to her death, now uses her corpse in pretence.

It is not merely what Wilder Smith (SMR pp. 208ff.) calls the "superimposition" of a "sequential code" in living genes and derived proteins, of conceptual considerations beyond the molecular composition and any isomeric spatial variables. This is a specific phase of the material before us. Its biogenesis is the point, in the larger realms of logic. In this, of course, we are not using that term in the obvious verbal sense, of production of life, in which case of course the concept of creation is not excluded, so that there would be no point in further discussion. Nor is it used to mean: life from life only. It is rather used to indicate LIFE FROM NON-LIFE, a secular, material biogenesis from within 'Nature' itself, + nothing; and of course of matter from ... well, not matter, and for the materialist, nothing + nothing. This, as has often been discussed is simply a contradiction in terms. That is one of the larger Webster usages, and the one in view here.

This clarified, we can proceed. There can be no question that biogenesis in THIS sense, the evocation of life from non-life, which of course must mean NOT from God since HE has life, is a lively topic but a dead issue. We NEVER see it; we never see it happen under the auspices of that variety of life known as mankind, with the utmost plethora of scurry and intervention by intelligence, in teams and with extraordinary facilities. We NEVER see it happen without him either, for that matter. We just never see it.

It is never shown HOW we could see it. It would be far more comportable with reason to have a volume of Shakespeare write itself, but this is not a little difficult (SMR pp. 15ff.), as is shown in detail, even to the point of getting ONE LINE! At that, as is also shown in the reference above, the case is far worse than the inadequate but powerful one made to expose this expedition into imagination, never found in fact, and for what is thus very good reason. This sort of accident-creation concept is met not merely by the mathematics which appalled Sir Fred Hoyle (SMR pp. 226ff.), so for convenience, an excerpt from thence will be placed now, before we proceed with our current corollary. (Cf. Delusive Drift or Divine Dynamic Ch. 2.)
 
 
 

• EXCERPT ON HOYLE et al.

ON THE FULL-STOP WHICH BEGINS A SENTENCE... PUNCTUATED EQUILIBRIUM AND PUNCTURED, POLLUTED YOUTH:

The Dynamics of Human Disequilibrium: A Summary Overview of the Philosophy Of Punctuated Equilibrium

Professor Fred Hoyle (see pp. 224-225 infra) in his New Scientist, 1981 article, p. 527, speaking of blind people with Rubic cubes (10 to the power 50 of them - 10 with 50 zeros), all simultaneously reaching the same and correct solution by random shuffling, to get "just one of the many biopolymers on which life depends"... is aghast. He had constructed this illustration to clarify what was in view in the making and building of life processes, regarded with so glazed a gaze by people ill conforming to the stringency of system; and he indicates the analytical result for the evolutionary theory which he so illustrated, referring to the latter as "evidently nonsense of a high order".

There are many such miracles needed, and simultaneously, together with the operating system, the code, which must infiltrate as well, to direct the materials, being on time, since it depends on them to act.

At that, as noted earlier, Hoyle comparatively has it made, in his case. First of all you have to invent the systematic groundwork which the cubes symbolise (both in form and law and order, and space and their correlation). System as a start in accounting for system is not a bad start, a fair advance since system is a good part of what is the issue! A highly schematised system is still better as a beginning; as if a shrewd businessman should tell us that in order to be a millionaire, it is good to start with a large capital base. No doubt it might help! It might not, however, be regarded as to the point by the recipients of this 'counsel'.

Hoyle then, despite starting where he does, has had more than enough, though he has hardly begun, to meet the stringency of the actual reality. Trying to get something out of nothing is always nonsense of a high order, whether taking it slowly and gradually or not. The case is only made worse when you also want to get the capacity to err out of the capacity to obey laws, the capacity to conceive out of the capacity to be positioned, and the capacity to will out of the capacity to be willed.

Fantasising about what is not seen to happen, on a magical basis of inadequate cause for progressing from nothing... is not science; and having a system which has what it takes in the beginning is merely begging the question - the only point being the particular way in which it is begged.

All this we have seen earlier, and recall it here for review and for convenience, before proceeding with the current topic. This topic 'takes off' from here, in a number of ways.

Aghast, too might the evolutionist be at the reckless refusal of the Cambrian "Age" (cf. pp. 159-161 supra, 234 infra, and Ch. 5 infra) to conform to what is expected of it... 'Doesn't the confounded thing know how to do its duty ?' an establishment, evolutionary Englishman might ask ... appalled by its sheer dynamic and exuberance, its diversity of type and style and form, its sheer luxury of well- developed varieties in situ, as by the similar eruptive creationism that also appears to occur at the juncture, in the 'record', of reptiles and mammals (cf. p. 235 infra).

What seems to have happened ? A deluge of creation is attested in time focus, flinging itself fearlessly across the material barriers with the seeming abandon, or at least disregard of the imaginative artist, carving up domains, manufacturing types jointly, in even on category, thrusting without escape, providing without tiring, constructing with prodigies of ingenuity, performance criteria of the most esoteric, logic of the most profound, as if energy were the least of considerations and the sheer prodigality of enterprise were blooming in a celestial Spring. It is like saying, 10 serious volumes from a theologian in 3 years and he was merely twiddling his thumbs, to ignore the actual output which is found from what are deemed the first ages of this earth!

To ignore this deposit of fact, what it is it like? It is a monumental thrust of impatience allied with impenitence for which this generation has reaped already in two world wars, continued in the Cold War (which incidentally may prove fatal to the globe per kindness of Communism in its radioactive deposits into the Northern oceans, and seas). It is continuing in a plague of unrest, disputes about sovereignty and rights, disregard of duty and all tenderness, till the globe is becoming as hot as the hotheadedness which wants results without cause, in its own creation, which would accept with scatter-brained  and thankless absent-mindedness, the prodigious provision of styles and fashions of results which require the operation of a Being minimally so equipped with facility of thought, abundance of logic and power to render matter plastic to the least desire as a mouldable container for designs and methodological tool for outpourings of multiplicities of life, as to render man an infant of thought by comparison. And that, it is merely a beginning: there is the towering triumph of thought per se, and the overarching splendour of spirit, imagination, creativity, even though one of its most profound current performances be in the wilful deposition of double-dealing irrationality which defiles all reason, sometimes directly defying it, while using it in order to make the defiance seem acceptable!

If this is not tyranny, what is; and it grasps and crushes this generation like some besotted ape, truly in New York, and tearing down buildings; yet alas, what it here is tearing is the corrupted heart of mankind, till his own deeds will render his planet uninhabitable, and the most patient judgments of God the Creator, will yet leave man's home a new contender for universal holocaust.

Let us however return to the Cambrian collection with its prodigality of form and effortless seeming arena of activity. It is merely one of the triumphs of modern thought, even when it is given its own way of looking at things; for there it is, even on its own model! Let us look further.

With, as Gish (p. 95, Evolution: The Challenge of the Fossil Record) puts it, "the 32 orders of mammals, all highly specialised so that they could be immediately classified," arriving, indeed "appearing abruptly" and ''fully formed'', for the evolutionary theorist, shock perhaps now occludes thought even more than desire did, at the first.

Seeing the disappearing dias of the Darwinian bias, what can he do ? Some proponent of the evolutionary magic might then become quite vexed and say within him/herself: "Ah yes, this is distressingly different from the implications of gradualistic evolution. Not only are the creatures numerous, but they are varied on the spot, no time for a bit of surviving and all that... it is as if time did not matter: but the theory is built on it. What a mess! Not only is there one type of suddenly sophisticated creature like the trilobite equipped, of all things, with eyes, or a mollusk with eyes complexly reminiscent of our own, but this is only one of the multitude, or these two of them! Mm! Ah well, if facts fail, use words."

"Let us see," he might continue. ''What about 'punctuated equilibrium' ? Excellent, for that stresses the stasis side, and the 'punctuation' feels, well, more buried that way in the delicious phrase-making. After all,'' he might ponder along, ''this is a literary exercise at keeping the thing going. This phrase manages to 'cover' it discretely without saying 'creation', which in any normal human usage meets the definition of what is actually happening, in terms of this rum show... this turn-out of up to half the wretched invertebrate action, in the sea around the start of biological life! What, and more life than in the modern sea, in the sea then! No, it really is necessary, and it's good stuff, this phrase: it doesn't actually say "creation"; and that is what I am against."

That is in the line, at least, of the sort of sense in which the "theory" carves out a niche. 'It' is not subject to the test of laws, of prediction, of falsification (if nothing continues to happen under any circumstances you like, that is fine) by observation; and because there is no known means anyway, let alone principle, no known observation, let alone sustainable and testable theory to explain it, it can hope to bask in undisturbable bliss.

It, quite simply - as Popper quite rightly claims - is not a scientific law, this evolution, whether indeed gradualistic, or this more recent and exotic model, we might add. Certainly it denies the principles of science and sufficient causation, and by implication does not arise to the forum for thought, but more of that anon. As to the gradualistic contradiction of logic and evidence alike, its scientific pretence has to yield to a better sleight of thought which, though it involves direct ... creation, at least deals better with the evidence. The orphaned creation at least is born quickly!

Normally, it is said: that theory is wrong; rationally, yes, but not here! Evolutionism is incredibly clung to by some, while others make the literary excursion (just outlined, or something such) into yet more horrible collision with the Edens and the Dentons and the mathematical, artificial intelligence testing Schützenbergers, the merely mathematical Hoyles and the like: violating not merely the deteriorative trend in terms of a self-constructive, auto-designer myth, but having it (not out of trend for the "instant generation"), at once!

Forget that it violates known processes in genetics such as a Kouznetsov bows to (pp. 218 ff. infra), in turning to the creation that it in fact evinces, on such a ground as that; or moves a Korochkin, with similar creationist commitment and comprehension taking up a professorship in Genetics at Yale ... and stirs an Eden of MIT to blast the language impasse, even before that flight of fancy to the creationist fact, without the creator- cause, is engaged in: this 'punctuated equilibrium'. Shall we have eating without an eater, drinking without a drinker, or even work without working, light without illumination and darkness while the light blazes ? How very odd!
 

• End of Excerpt on Hoyle et al.

 
 
 

A FEW PRELIMINARIES

The simple fact we may now consider is this: THE ONLY KNOWN PLACE IN THIS UNIVERSE, WHERE LIFE HAS EVER BEEN DERIVED FROM NON-LIFE PLUS NOTHING IS IN THE MIND OF MAN.

That is simply a fact, no more, no less.

The mind of man is able, in composition with the natural orders of things, laws, powers and other instituted organisational orders and specifications left, if you like, lying around for play or work: it is able to do this sort of thing. Normally, when this is engaged in, it is called dreaming. At times, there may seem a payload, but in the end, unless you are successfully selling a book of fairy tales, in which case there is a relationship to reality in terms of the desire of some youngsters for these often interesting but not very practical things, there has to be an engagement with reality.

Now reality, as we have shown in SMR Ch.1,3,10, is in fact inclusive of mind (which has any opinion on what it is, and is hence indispensable, for if it were invalid, so would be all else), matter (which is a theory we form) and spirit (which is evidenced in that roving, searching, will-equipped  capacity we have, including that to reject formulations independently of reason, or through it if we wish, and to capture at preference,  thoughts that do/do not have any systematic relationship of a known kind to the world that moves and operates about us).

Hence one COULD say that fairy tales ARE part of reality; and indeed in the non-interface engagement sense, they could be deemed so; but for purposes of definition, it is not the intention here to define reality in such a way that interfaces of practicality are missing, but to mean what systematically relates to its ground, as distinct from what flits into realms without this feature.

This enables us simply to make the point: these biogenetic thoughts, in the sense of NON-LIFE plus 0 making life, have this feature: fantasy not reality, because there is NO interface EVER discovered; and because there is NO PROCEDURE ever found, to enable it.

Nor is this so merely in practice (though the latter is a required additive to ... science). It is so equally in theory.

It is so EQUALLY AND QUITE EMPHATICALLY in CORRELATION with other scientific features, such as the necessity of a sufficient cause for a specifiable result (cf. SMR Chs.3,4 pp. 419ff., 5, That Magnificent Rock Ch.7 . Without this, as there shown, even the thought concerning it is excluded, and the procedure is systematically self-contradictory.
 
 

The point is necessary to be considered: the recent developments in code analysis in the DNA structures in cytological investigations, the discovery of literally the equivalent of maybe 1000 large volumes of information and direction and procedures (in copying) for correction, energy-supply and carrier chemical 'robots' to execute the orders, assemble the components, check the lists and so on, is not merely a matter of astonishment or amazement at its intricacy, passionate seeming dexterity and felicity (to conceive of people doing such things without being first marshalled): that much is sufficiently obvious.

We should be no less concerned with what it implies. This is dealt with in some detail in Repent or Perish Ch.7, especially Excursions 1 and 2 (cf. Wake Up World, Your Creator is Coming... Ch.2, Benevolence Brightness or Brothy Bane ? 81, End-Note 2;  82), where the staggering concentration of principial provisions in our situation is exposed; together with the fact that they ARE principles and not simple observations (though they related intimately to  this facet as well).

The entire mesh of considerations is there analysed.

However, at this point we come to our corollary.

It is not just that the DNA in humans is retreating in its refinements at a rate suggestive of extinction rather than creation as shown by recent tests (cf. Wake Up World! Your Creator is Coming...Ch.2). That is to be expected; it is the same in general with information in this, that it is not found naturally to increase (cf. SMR 252Aff., 252Hff.). That in turn is simply a practical expression of the general point on information; which in turn is a practical expression of the general principle that you need a sufficient cause for your desired or imagined consequences, if you are to break loose, like a rocket leaving earth's gravitational pull, into the space desired: except in this case, that is reality into which your theories have to break forth, and then your confirmatory, verificatory practice. It is, in short, the area and arena where imagination and occurrence MATCH that becomes important. Since we are looking at the origination of life, this IS and MUST BE our area of concern.

The derivation of symbols requires a systematic comprehension of them, in order to deploy them; the operation of executive figures or features or chemical robots, messenger DNA (call a rose by any other name, and its perfume is unchanged) requires a systematic apprehension of the totality, now arising before our eyes. Since the operatives are to operate in response to coded commands, there has therefore to be an interface, however intricately contrived, to enable this. Otherwise it would not happen. Science currently is busily engaged in finding the exact REASON why it DOES happen, and hence the NUMEROUS symbolic and practical features which ENABLE it to do so,  and ENSURE it.

But let us not lose sight of the wood for the trees.

Symbols are significations, indications, made not with total description (like - the house on the corner with the green roof and one mini-turret, build in a baroque style), but NAME-REALITY correlatives. They make the ONE to be indicated by (efficient and unambiguous) use of the OTHER. That at least is the case for what in stringent and demanding circumstances, actually WORKS! Thus these have to be given a way of COMMUNICATING what they entail, to what is to do what they are directed to direct. Direction is by meaningful units to uncomprehending servitors; or in other words, command is from the control centre to the operators, by symbols; and the operators lack intelligence with which to discern the meaning of the correlation: symbol-thing.

Now it is NOT necessary that they should. Robots are like that, whether physical or chemical in emphasis. They are exceedingly demanding, if one wishes to construct them, for one has to imitate without conscious input frorm the action unit, the robot, so that well-provided responses occur under a wide diversity of situations. It is demanding on the creator of the robot. If however he can meet that demand, then what ? Why, then, the knowledge,  does not need to repose in the non-brain of the servant, if such be the case. It is written into the construction instead. You do not need to shout, in the old style, IDIOT! because you lose your temper at the lowly aptitude of your paid (and in those days, perhaps ill-paid) servant. No, you MAKE a situation where the receptor RESPONDS to knowledge, without knowing it. It is a knowledge input, action output situation.

That is HIGHLY sophisticated. Thus the knowledge involved, and it is more but not less than data since it is a specific KIND of data with specialised characteristics which need careful understanding, is like a currency unit. It has power to secure the actualities, here clever artifices of commanded action. It is a knowledgeability about the mechanics of superimposed code, to use Wilder-Smith's term, or the functional operation of it, if you prefer the more abstract term of wider application. It has to be far GREATER than the 'mere' knowledge itself, which makes apposite the relationship of code to thing. The 'mere' understanding of the collation of data which constitutes the available ground for knowing and hence relating systematically to something, the knowledge of something is not at all, ALL. You could SPEAK to someone with that. But here the someone has no ears. It is the robot type of thing. You have to organise an agent by code.

The knowledge of the other things to which something is to be made to relate, this too, is not at all, ALL. The knowledge of the system in which these and many other things, to be guarded against or deployed, are to operate, this too is not at all, ALL. You can know all about these things, and yet not even BEGIN to secure the programmatic input which will make the object of your creation perform the complex task which your imagination desires it to do.

More is needed. Much more. It may be more than required, but it cannot be less.

What we have seen in its categorical singularity (SMR Ch.1) is also needed in its empirical multiplicity (cf. Repent or Perish Ch.7).

The WORLD of knowledge needs its SPECIAL aptitudes for operation as does any other with the ban of sufficient cause on short-cut imaginations. Knowledge is what it is; it is not another thing. Its modes and means are of their own type, with their own potential blemishes, crevasses of ignorance taking off the unwary, fatal mistakes and so on. The point we are making is this: that knowledge, vast and far-ranging as it must be in this case, is only a beginning. There is need likewise for the knowledgeability which DEPLOYS knowledge into symbol-thing signified relationship, so that the symbol can  operate in the recipient (if human, for example) or receptor (if not), in the way that knowledge requires.

In the latter case, the purpose is not only that it can, but that it can and will do so.

The knowledgeability for deployment of knowledge  NOT being in the receptor, necessary for the institution of this system, this symbol configuration in a (micro-) universe of practical action - the cell, or the cell configurations and organisation into organs and these in the body, depending on what level you desire to consider - requires an additional knowledge.

There is no room for cheating, imagining practicalities, sheering off whole elements of the etiological necessities, acting as if the deployment of thought required no functionality, operative adequacy: no agent of deployment able and willing to exercise this function. It does not exercise itself, as if data and deployment were words with no meaning; for in the real world, you have to have what it takes, not phrases. And what is this functionality to operated ?

That ? It is the knowledge of HOW to imprint, compound on what is material, the specification technology to enable it to respond AS IF IT WERE INTELLIGENT. This of course requires a vast intelligence to perform, a long way beyond what ANY team of high-resource scientists have EVER vaguely APPROACHED. Facts such as living tissue having ONLY left-handed protein, so well discoursed on by John Mackay in his justly famed ORIGIN OF LIFE video-tapes, and this never being unintelligently found to be produced, are mere illustrations of what is far beyond all examples: the principles implied in this or any such case; and beyond all such cases, in the micro-universe's design.

We have noted the meaning of this term and thus the propriety of its usage earlier (SMR pp. 211, 251ff. etc. - see Index, DESIGN, THOUGHT) and the impasse in its omission. It has been necessary in that exercise to remove the misconceptions of Kant, which is found in SMR 5, and in depth and detail, in Predestination and Freewill, Appendix on Kant. Without this strange mesmerism which for so long attracted philosophy, duly exporting to some in the field of science as preconceptions, the case would not have needed so much development. That however is the cultural fact, so it is dealt with in this way, to cover the actual - if you will - psychic case!

Design, then, for if our bodies do not exhibit it, then nothing could attain to the demands of the term. The human body exhibits it microscopically, spatially, operationally, cognitively;

• in the interface of cognition and action;
• in will enablement;
• in the interface between cognition, will^*2  and action;
• in reproductive pattern provision (births)  without principial knowledge of the specifications deployed for this being required, and so on. We do not create skyscrapers with this facility!

The knowledge of symbol-thing unambiguous specification, or word-item relationship, if you prefer: this is required. (Again, let us not be too concerned with the schools of definition, the point being to know what one refers to: thus, here 'word' means symbol specifying a thing to which it unambiguously relates - an operational refinement since we are dealing with this super-class of EFFECTIVE words, words that actually WORK, so that this is the relevant meaning for this case.)

Because this knowledge is NOT required of the operative units themselves, in the actual WORK being done, it is required in vast measure by the knowledge source, both concerning the materials themselves, and in our own case, as mankind units, or trilogy persons (mind-matter-spirit packages), these include mind and spirit: it is required both there, and in the mode of conveying such connotations by symbol. It must be done so that the transference of data WORKS; in a language not subject to significant distortion, far less to dispersal (as seen in the mutation rates reference, above). In the whole fabric of life, it would be important to prevent confusion, and a unitary language, entirely divorced from mere happening in its constant bending to impacts and occurrences.

That, of course, is what it is indicated that the DNA has, a unitary uniformity throughout, a compelled system.

As to its continuing to be effective because of relevant constraints and further programmatic aids to achieve this also ? This is maintenance; but the origin of what is not maintained for too long use in this present world, which has a rather high rate of deteriorative change, this is an a fortiori consideration, when you are looking at this side of the matter.
 

• Life not only requires a source logically, then, it is FAR MORE demanding than is matter in this respect. Kelvin is utterly correct in demanding physical law be not in abeyance but rather in operation in the materially related biological realm. The sweet mystery of life has higher requisites and not less, than does the physical reality: CAUSE ALWAYS ADEQUATE FOR EFFECT. Dimension on dimension is here; concept on concept; strategy within strategy, wheels within wheels, to use Ezekiel's symbol of the complexity of life, and any effort to disjoin either logic or practice from the situation is mere escapism.

The Wistar Conference of highly placed specialist scholars could find NO WAY for such procedures, language itself not being seen as non-inventable for coherent discourse or designations because of dispersive disruptions, before the question of knowledge enters at all (SMR pp. 132ff., and see also 128ff.). The DECAY which is a FACT is thus wedded to the NON-PERCEPTION of this arising of language in unintelligent bodies, and the theoretical constraints on its very arrival, even if the overlying feature of knowledge did not exist.

It is perhaps now time in our survey of this field, to consider the point that material items can be, and on all but innumerable occasions are manipulated by the means of intelligent superimposition of plan, purpose and contrived means, to secure a given result of which the agent knows nothing and the facilities of the agent, by themselves, are WHOLLY irrelevant. A tape recording has been used to illustrate (SMR pp. 316Dff.).

Thus if you construct a machine which transports items given to the relevant arrangement of parts and processive powers installed, then while it neither knows nor relates to such things in its own sphere at all, yet it transmits without knowledge, what is relevant TO knowledge, when the transmission is complete. No one would dream of confusing the performance, say of Madam Melba's artistry, with the facilities, capacities and natural relationship of the materials of the tape-recorder. They are wholly distinct. They are a servant, as is a wheel-barrow when you are transporting a fern by its means. They are entirely different things; but the one can serve through knowledge to move the other. If there were a code involved, then the further requirements which we have been considering would also be required.

It is not a matter of mere analogy; though analogy can help comprehension here: because the matter IS SO SIMPLE. THAT, the simple reality, it  is often the type of issue hardest to understand when cultural conformity with millions of TV and pseudo-scientific sermons acts so as to blind.

The PRINCIPLE is simply this: when what lacks power to perform, is made to perform, then the cause of this enablement lies in what does not lack this power; and where code is concerned in making automatic performers for one's task, to get it done, then the information concerned, though only known to decrease, and this for good reason, though a demanding requisition for the purpose to succeed, is only a minor part of the entire operation.

The causally necessary sufficiency of knowledge is now entailed not merely of the units, the working materials (the wheel barrow in our image), but in such a discerning way as to enable specifications which relate, hard and sure, strong and certain, to the things in view; and this in such a way, that the power is sufficient, destructive intrusion is normatively ruled out and an integral product (q.v. SMR pp.135, 252E-G) is ruled IN... a productive product: life.

• Logic requires comprehension. Comprehension involves mind. Mind includes imagination, and spirit provides resources for the use of will in order to so act as to institute the thing at all. The comprehension in this case is as far beyond that of any living mortal as the heavens above the earth. With the EXAMPLE long before him, man cannot EVEN imitate it - which would in itself require FAR less comprehension than was held by the CREATOR (for the formulator of a hat is called its creator, how much more that of life); for in general terms, it is RELATIVELY easy, and requires knowledge of a FAR lower order, just to imitate what is displayed, rather than work out the sort of thing to USE in order to DISPLAY and HAVE something which actually WORKED!

 
• The imposition of logic is not something  which matter is seen in principle, or in procedure, in practice to have power to do. It executes it, but does not institute it.

 
• The imposition of logic IS something it is seen to have imprinted on it, as is the case with life at a vastly more profound level. In NO case is the productive equipment, for the genesis of the laws of matter, mind, spirit, or indeed, for the law as a concept itself, found to exist, where ? Here:   IN and in terms of the operational powers OF MATTER. It does not appear in creative power, conceptual order or practical result. Matter is and does not fabricate itself into more highly contrived forms.

 
• It is not given to it to conceive and create at this level. The concept of a rational universe founded on irrationality is merely a contradiction in conceptual terms. It a folie of logic. It is a failure so profound that it is like children, unable to understand some question, suddenly as it were, breaking down with some weird thrust of imagination, in desperation. Why are your hands dirty Johnnie ? (He had been out where he was forbidden to go.) Oh ...I was washing them and the soap was dirty! comes the reply. We are however not interested in cartoons at this point, but the carriage of justice to truth.

 
• Thus the circle is complete. What is NECESSARY logically from the outset independently of special considerations of what MAY or MAY not happen in a particular scene (SMR Ch.1, 
  That Magnificent Rock 1, 7, 8), and this by formal logical constraint, is ALSO INELUDIBLE when the specifics are considered, and their interactions and requirements. In other words, the VERIFICATORY MODE is as insolent to the concepts of NATURALISM as is the principial mode. What is required to GET what we have, shows by the details of procedural necessity, as by the principles of logical validity alike, the same thing.

 
• Insolent ? The school-master term almost seems applicable, for the sermons of pseudo-science mentioned above are all but pervasive. What preacher preached more often, more assiduously, more pompously (in the very worst case), more irrelevantly than this! Heresy itself would have to compete hard to match what we get, outside of church.

 
• But really the matter stands entirely the other way. It is as insolent of naturalism to mentally make 'nature' without cause, as to imagine  life from what lacks it (Romans 1:17ff., II Peter 3:5). Nothing makes itself, and 'nature' is no exception. It won't do it in practice, and it has no power to do it in principle. It does not do it before it is there, in some ebullition of fantasy, nor does it change when it is produced.

 
• It is made. It does not make by the coherent comprehension of what it is about. It is not in general so equipped. The fact, in the case of life,  that this is the established LAW OF BIOGENESIS (in the sense that life-to-life is what is observed, not non-life to life) is merely icing on the cake. Matter doesn't do this sort of thing, however we prod it. Life does. It makes what it was, over again, within the limits assigned. It is filled with eyes, to use again Ezekiel's symbolism in Ch.1 - eyes everywhere, signifying the investment of intelligence. No doubt it signifies a good deal more also^*3 in that case, but this is the relevant point here. Moreover, as we have emphasised,  in the case of man, there is superadded a limited power to conceive and imagine, search and research, which lives and in this world, dies, when its potencies depart. Its destinies depend on its creator's will, of which anon.

 
• The other fact that this is in stringent line with the LAW of conservation of mass and energy, is merely almond icing under the other (though one does not see this so often, nowadays). If the whole seems over-nutritious, then that is because there is so much for the cake to cover, and the farce of naturalism is so denuded, that the change may seem overpowering to the gastrics of the mind!

 
• The empty house of naturalism is not merely so; it is a monument to irrationality, a ruin of reckless aspiration, and a lot of to-do about ... NOTHING! The imagination of man, alienated from God (Ephesians 4:17ff., 2:1ff.) , has created the anti-factual mirage of matter caused by nothing and life investing it with verbal directions, arising out of the air, very commanding for no known reason, with no known apparatus, but with the specifications of knowledgeable astuteness far surpassing the best endeavours of man. Biogenesis in THIS sense, is the ANTI-SCIENTIFIC-LAW variety, that where life is NOT the source  of biological life (Romans 1:17ff.).

 
• It is however LIFE which creates the extraneous IDEA represented in this - man’s life! In what way ? In this:  the concept is his production, unaided by fact, unlifted by observation, a sort of injection into ‘Nature’ of something potent by ‘nature’ where that second nature is someone else’s nature, unacknowledged! What better example of the transcendence of life over method, and law, in its spirit, than in this invention by the spirit of man! One does not mean that of life, for that is what is given and is not found, except given, as the LAW of BIOGENESIS determines. One's meaning is the rather the invention of the idea of ‘nature’ DOING IT, in the absence of the invention of life even by the inventors of the idea! … with or without ‘nature’! This is what the specialised nature of man is able to concoct. Imagination ? A marvel! What then of this idea he imagines in strong disjunction from the obedient conformities of matter ?

 
• That, it is some invention; only it does not go. By logic, he rejects logic, in one of the most daring strip-teases ever seen. The covering is removed to reveal ... actually, nothing at all. The model vanishes without residue. Speech is dissipated. Coherence is lost. Argument is disenabled. It is a kind of intellectual suicide.
• This demonstration of the magnificence in potential, the liberty of the injected life, the spirit of man, does not at all diminish, but rather establishes its quality in contradistinction to that other lawful creation, matter. It is necessary to consider the supra-natural source of these natures.

 

 The PRINCE OF LIFE, the speaker of the code, is referred to in Acts 3 (verses14-15), where the Gentile (with Pilate, Roman Governor), as likewise the JEW (priestly contingent and their ... operatives) contingents were embroiled in a murder, by defalcation and untrustworthiness in office in the first case, and  plot in the second.

There are a lot of murders. THIS one was different: when you murder your manufacturer, that is outstanding folly. But when you murder the visitor from BEYOND MATTER (and hence beyond space and time),

• One who has by will and choice irrupted into our realm,
• One whose powers are absolute over death, disease and all necessary for His task of meeting sin by a PERSONAL INTRUSION, so that its curse could come to crush Him, whom death could not conquer, and so remove the payment problem for sinful AND repentant MAN:
• then you are up to something very special.

• THAT is the way back to the PRINCE of life whose written and coded instructions alike are EXCEEDINGLY clear and EXCEEDINGLY deep! There is no ambiguity in either! There is no need to be lost: even pine logging teaches you where to look (as we see in the sequel), and God has ensured that there is absolutely no competition in the integrity of the place: ONLY ONE has reason and power and testability, and it responds to all trials. Furthermore, only one has the person, Jesus Christ, whose control of life was as total as that of the LORD of it, but whose serviceability and humility was as open as murder can make it, and did. Even that was turned to an exhibition of power of life, all over again, so that the way should be clear in power, precept and proposition alike; for He did as it was predicted He must, and when, as to date, and as to time in the grave (SMR Ch.6, pp. 886ff.; and see Christ on Earth, in Index). And He has heart! (Matthew 23:37, 15:22-28, Luke 19:42, John 21:15ff.).

Even when people, however, do NOT find their way back to the PRINCE OF LIFE, that same Jesus is in His own scenario, spiritually propounded for millenia, to return with a WORD to say to the world, a WORD OF JUDGMENT. To Him 1000 years are as a day, and this like a 2 day absence. The program as we have often shown (cf. Wake Up World! Your Creator is Coming... Ch.1) is to an exceedingly near point, completely fulfilled for His coming. If you do not come to Him, in any case He comes to you.

"THIS SAME JESUS SHALL RETURN AGAIN IN JUST THE SAME WAY AS YOU HAVE WATCHED HIM GO TO HEAVEN" - (Acts 1:11, NASV).
 

• "Him God raised up on the third day, and showed Him openly... and He commanded us to preach to the people, and to testify that it is He who was ordained by God to be Judge of the living and the dead. To Him all the prophet witness that, though His name, whoever believes in Him will receive remission of sins."

*1 This note has become so long that it forms Ch.5 of WAKE UP WORLD! YOUR CREATOR IS COMING...It thus forms a specialised sequel, and is entitled - THE PINE LOGGING EXCURSION.
 
 

*2 See Predestination and Freewill 1. Here these matters are given review in some depth. See also SMR Ch. 4, pp. 348ff., Ch.1 and Ch.5.
 

*3
Simply to pursue the prophetic intimation from the eyes: it could presumably also indicate the knowledgeable oversight of the living constructions envisaged by the prophet, by an inspectorial intelligence, a surveying mind, as when a child looks at his toy train set, or an engineer at his airliner, knowing what is there, watching it perform, alert to its ways.
 

*4
THE MYSTERY WHICH IS INDEED SWEET! MYSTERIOUS IN THIS,
THAT THE LOVE OF SUCH A BEING AS GOD,
SHOULD CONCERN ITSELF WITH SUCH AS WE ARE,
IN THE WAY HE DID IT!

The 1000 or so books of vast scope and integral arrangement, like encyclopedias, but with the difference that they are ACTION instructions, for growth, defence, work and repair, including what appears a death program to limit life's duration at this time (telomeres, discussed previously), are a distinctive for life. For man, this is an information, command, executive facility in every nucleated living cell.

Ah sweet mystery of life ? It IS wonderful, but it is not a special magical area, arena, sport field, where nothing is needed for specifiable and spectacular consequences - because it hs some sort of free pass!

Lord Kelvin, one of Britain's most outstanding physicists of the last century (Stepping Out for Christ 2) rightly stressed the application of the material realities to biological material. It does not evaporate because it is programmed. There are additional constraints, not excursions from rationality.

But in fact the conceptual apparatus and its codification for life, is not only FAR MORE demanding, than is the case for matter per se, since this is  INCLUDED in the coded material - the atoms do not die: though even MATTER has requisitions per logic to power to create that are ineluctable (SMR 1,  3, 4;  That Magnificent Rock 1). This DNA,

• this coded information
• command structure
• assemblage demarcation
• process specification
• interweaving action analysis and
• execution device :
• it brings us functionally, as we have shown, to the regions of mind and spirit, already demanding in the case of living and thinking, willing man himself,  a spiritual origin (SMR 1, as above).

• 1) as service agent for our wills, and
• 2) maintenance facility for what need not occupy them, the sections as it were, left on automatic pilot while the pilot devotes his own mind to what is necessary, so using someone else's mind's product (our written words, chemically coded in our cells ) to free his own mentality! We do not have to review the writing.
• 3) It is then and thus that we may apply our own minds.
• 4) Likewise we may apply our spirits with our minds, to achieve or seek out our will.

We can apply, then, our own minds to language, words, creations - within limits. Both application-site of mind, as receiver,  and applier of the same, as actor, the individuals of the race called man  have a dual function. Men sometimes forget those limits, imposed by their Creator, and rebel, aspiring to godlike powers which fall to earth, where alone they belong (cf. Isaiah 14:9-13).

In the case of those who have found the WORD which has WORKED to produce these facilities of communication, expression, logic and format, the great God even our Saviour, Jesus Christ, we seek the will of God, the mind of Christ as Paul puts it, knowing that Christ IN YOU is the hope of glory (Col. 1:27), He who by His Spirit then reinforces properly our own (Ephesians 3:16), who will in bodily format return as He went (Acts 1:11), being neither ashamed nor afraid of the world He created, to which He came, and which received Him NOT. For as many as received Him did He give the authority to become the children of God, as John 1 tells us.

In fact, He is interested in His people and will remove them, just as He comes for them; and He is interested in His world which He created, to judge its works (II Peter 3:7,10-13). These are the works which we are enabled to DO, as able in measure to subject things to himself. But as to man, whose subject is he ! By will, himself very often, but by faith and reason alike, God's subject in the case of the redeemed. THAT, redemption (Romans 3:23ff., Hebrews 8-10, Matthew 20:28, Galatians 3:1-13, 6:14), it is a crash course which by comparison makes panel-beating look superficial, heart transplant seem minor.

It is nothing less than an accomplishment of creation, by the power of God Himself who raised the dead, to change a dead spirit without the divine light of life, into one which is SPIRITUALLY as well as biologically alive (John 3, II Cor. 4:6-7). It is the spiritual and preliminary work of resurrection, the preparation for the resurrection of the body (II Cor. 5:1ff.), which is thus apt for such a spirit.

Cars that prefer (or would if they could) to remain a smash object, are fit for only one thing. With man, the case is not significantly different. If men PREFER darkness, says Christ, "THIS IS THEIR CONDEMNATION." What then ? That "LIGHT HAS COME INTO THE WORLD AND MEN LOVED DARKNESS RATHER THAN LIGHT" - John 3:19 (cf. SMR Appendix C, Index, Christ on Earth).  For that there is no further offer, opportunity and no other salvation; "for there is not other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved" (Acts 4:11-12). ALL THINGS are to be gathered up IN ONE in Christ (Ephesians 1:10), things in heaven and on earth: either for acceptance BY HIS WORD, or rejection according to it (John 12:48-50, Matthew 24:30ff.).

It is, in short, time to wake up! (cf. Ephesians 5:14, I Cor. 6:1-2, 15:34, Romans 13:11). It is time to act, walking in the light, as children of the light, in the Spirit, in the love of Christ, by faith which works by love in the interim (I Thessalonians 5:5, I John 1:7, Galatians 5:6).

The CREATOR is coming back; His appointed time is exceedingly near. It is operation repentance and renewal in His redemption by covenant in His blood, or it is ruin.