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CHAPTER 11

GRADE A AND GRADE F SCHOOLS

 

It is necessary to school oneself to the fact that thousands of schools are making April fools of their students in the realm of creation, by ludicrous lapses from scientific method, which is a lapse as culpable before logic as were the Greeks in their early days, centuries before Christ. Alas, Greece has been birthplace of myths and surrealism as well as of many other and far better things. It is useless to glory in this particular depravity which simply joins with those of many others who sought and fought and wrought to escape God with their cultural icons. It is not that then, as now, they always MEANT to do this. Often manslaughter is an unintended vexation of the victim. In this case however whatever the reason, the result is as surely a determined rejection of the answer and remedy of God as that of the Jews at Calvary. it is intolerant of truth. We shall see more of this matter in the Greek lair,  in Chapter 14 below.

That here is mere background. For the moment, our more recent follies are their own condemnation!

 

A Spiritual Potpourri Chs. 1-3

Chapter 1

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.

THE NEED TO SLIM

What therefore this race needs is a course of slimming, slimming of the spirit, in the mind. We do not, at long last, need more Hitlers and Mussolinis, more Stalins and Marxs, more political librettists, PLs, who tell us more wonderful dreams about supermen, super-processes against all reason, superb scenarios from developmental gods, whether or not they are frankly given that name.

All such, whether gods incognito or demi-gods direct, they turn out night-mares, just as they are shown contrary to logic and law, as to commonsense. These are the FAILURE schools, the F-Schools of the race. Be they secondary, tertiary, private or public, national or fashionable, it is one. We do not need any more of any of these acronymic marvels to which we have referred in purple, and which tend to make purple with shame, the increasingly apoplectic face of unbelieving humanity.

Far from it! We need instead to prize what we have been given, and which works because it has been given; and to understand that it was given from the source competent for the same, in mind, matter and spirit production, assemblage and synthesis, called God, and indeed, God Almighty, for the whole creation depends on Him.
 
 

THE NEED TO ENTER

Then we need another course, as it were, in entering where properly we belong.

Being slimmer, perhaps we could begin to enter through that narrow gate to which the Lord Jesus Christ referred. It means leaving illusions, illogical, presumptuous and bare-faced,however narcotic, and facing facts.

It means abandoning fraud and facing truth. It means repenting of sin, such as the above represents, against the Maker, and finding how He wants it to work. It entails appreciating the gospel of forgiveness for sin, without which there is no hope for such spiritual squalor as this race has represented, does represent and goes on representing. This is not to ignore the good parts; but when the Maker is disesteemed, these are not so significant overall any longer. A bomb under Parliament is not atoned for, by working hard.

The A-School is His; this is the divine university:

SPIRITUAL ATHLETES


Accordingly, we need Spiritual Athleticism. Paul speaks of the Christian life as an athletic work, and it requires that unthinkable for modern times - except of course for sport or profit and their ilk: self-discipline! We need to become not only rightly grounded, and sound in basis, but active in truth for God.

His love made us, His love offers redemption in Christ

who died according to divine plan, "the just for the unjust, to bring us to God",

Our puny atomic bombs of devastation are not fun. They defile the works, and the works are of limited size and regenerative ability! Not too wise! The power that matters is that of the God who made both us and matter, with its particular powers, which

The power of God is what it takes to make us, and for us to live godly lives (I Peter 1:1-5, II Peter 1). The love of God is what this power shows in favour of trust in Him, and the face of God as represented in flesh-format in Jesus Christ (to be sure, God is a Spirit, but His face is a human module of self-expression so that we may relate - and of course, God IS personal and comprehends and encompasses the concept in Himself, being the personal basis for man, so it is not anomalous to do it this way): this is where He is to be found. There is no excuse for so hating life that His remedy is slighted.

THIS, says the Bible, His text, this ...
is the condemnation that light has come into the world and men have loved darkness rather than light (John 3:16-19):

but again,

As many as received Him, to them He gave the power to become the sons of God, to those who believe in His name (John 1:12-14).

(Note: the detailed data behind these things may be found in such places as The Shadow of a Mighty Rock, esp. Chs.1-2, and That Magnificent Rock, Chs.1,7 etc.. Scriptures relevant here would include: John 3:15-18, Hebrews 11:1-3, 1:1-3, Matthew 7:13-14, John 10:9,27-28, Genesis 1:1,24,26-28, Isaiah 45:18-19, John 1:12, Philippians 2:1-13, Romans 5:1-11, Revelation 1:17, 2:8, 22:13-17, Colossians 1.)
 

It is assuredly a profound loss though all (tainted and twisted) knowledge be obtained, and the Lord be lost through blindness or distortion. Yet it  is not HE who is lost, however He be caricatured and 'nature' be filled with imagination, as if smashing ever created the stupendous: it is not He who is lost.

Lost ? Rather it is the heart and mind, the spirit and the future of the
bemused, befuddled idolators of
imaginary gods,  gods
which  cannot even attest themselves in word or deed;
or idolators of things,
those who would have
material things create their creativity,
encompass what they lack any evidence at all of power to do,
so becoming  recipients of a smuggled God ...
for the sake of the arrogance and folly of those who merely intellectually herniate in fruitless toil
that brings in no result but the testimony of fraud, duly passed on,
as if from mothers with AIDS bearing children with the infection, to the next generation.
 
 

Chapter 2

The Extrapolation of What does not Exist: or if you prefer,
The Magnification of What is
not there

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Notes

*1Special attention may be given to pp. 128-159, incl. 131.

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

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

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

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

Otherwise ? illusionist plans are many, from the side of man. As to God ? regimes of rebels simplistically try to demote Him, symbolically denote Him, conceptually connote Him, accuse Him, misuse Him, lampoon Him, kill, distil Him. Since the servant is not greater than his master, they also proceed to crush, curse or  revile His servants! They may even attribute God's creation immovable testimony to His power, to that operation divinely declared in the curse, seen untiringly at work: as if marvels of technology were made by spoilage. This they do  with ostentatious irrationality. (See SMR pp. 179ff., 252A-N, 591-592, S1-11, and That Magnificent Rock Ch. 6.) It is done on campus as well as in battle, in prisons as well as in the freedom that love has created and hate desecrated. These are the social and philosophic norms: corrupt and callow, self-aggrandising and logically impotent, while spiritually perverse.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This wonder of donated equipment, with which we live and by which we are able to work: it does not however create itself, nor is it radically changed to another design; it does not become another model. Its brand remains.

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

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

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

The Creator alone with the knowledge of reality to act, power to redeem, heart and propriety to be able to pardon, alone sufficient to ransom what He has made and forgive what it has done, focuses over millenia the only place in the universe or out of it, declares in writing, by numerous prophets and now by His Son, speaker and sacrifice alike, the way back to Him, on with Him at peace with Him: Christ and Him crucified, yes rather, risen (Romans Chs.5,8). The sublime reality of creation is matched perfectly by the solitary code on redemption. One singular code is for all the DNA, one Biblical script for the redemption, one Lord, one God, one Gospel (cf. Barbs, Arrows and Balms, Ch.17).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

a) the flood

b) the judgment it represented

c) the judgment to come

d) the actual coming of Christ to judge the world

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

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

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

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

Again in John 10:1:

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

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

CHAPTER  3.


MAGIC MOMENTS IN THE HISTORY OF THOUGHT


MARS BAR


WHAT WILL MARS SERVE UP ?
MARS...not Martians

The Advertiser, July 1, 1997

In an edition adorned with 'The Dawn of a New Life Style' (one would have hoped there were more than enough already), and 'Pong Report', nothing for a song and dance, we come to the old favourite, a twilight song: is there life on Mars ?

One almost wonders whether it could be put: Will we put life on Mars on then find it ? There are many ways to pollute inter-planetary space, and the face of planets. Export of earth's wonders could proceed either surreptitiously or openly. The possibility is not merely whimsical. Even Paul Davies remarked that what could leave Mars could arrive there from earth; and bacterial and other contamination is a very open possibility.
 
 

The News

The 'news' is this: On July 4, most fittingly, the US rocket ship is expected to land on a 'rock-strewn flood-plain near the Martian equator'.

Why ? Opening like flower petals (nice on Mars), the Pathfinder is to emit a 'little roving robot', 'Sojourner', with the object to explore the surface of Mars. Pictures back to earth in view, the Sojourner is conceived as a prelude to an earth expedition from NASA, with the ultimate goal ? "to find out whether living organisms once existed - or still exist - on or under the frosty surface of Mars" .

"Mars fascinates us," says a speaker to a scientific symposium here reported. Many efforts have not found life; scientists battle over whether things having a few resemblances to living products and to non-living ones are evidences of confused thought or of life, and cannot determine the issue by any scientific means. Nothing is precisely what has been established. It is a bleak effort. The usual plethora of presuppositions, suppositions, hopes and naive over-statement associated with the materialist dream abound. A nice balance of defenestration, decapitation of theories and simple facts about what the earth does anyway without any question of life: all this has long been around. Nobody finds anything; many seek something: it is like someone dissatisfied with his wife desperately surveying his office staff for the next wife source. Unfortunately t

he facts are not with him: his ways are known, and not appreciated.

LIFE ?

It is indeed a wonderful thing (see SMR pp. 140-145), but shows no signs of evolution of kinds, merely individualisation within them, which is the nature of 'kinds' and the sort of reason why we use such terms (SMR pp. 149ff., 252Aff, 329ff., That Magnificent Rock Ch.1 etc.). As these pages also show, it contains a marvel of macro-additions in design, in levels like a palace (cf. SMR pp. 332G-H, 422Eff., Chs.4-5), so that we go from bicycle to space-craft, to use engineering analogy, with all the normal introductions of system, concept, connotation, symbolisation and orders being executed on the basis of equipment specific to such purposes.

As we have often shown, God did this, created and concocted this many-moded skyscraper, and there is no other option (SMR Chs.1,10 esp. pp. 316D-G, 329-332H etc., That Magnificent Rock Ch.5).

Why then look on Mars ? It is an obsession which could hardly be called magnificent. It helps to stir the furnaces of freedom of thought which loves to mock at God, to be wiser than the Creator and to imagine that God is dispensable, man indispensable, the Creator is optional, the creature is central, and that one can really disregard Him for all practical purposes. It always tends to remind me of clever children whose busy dad is not often seen, who work out ways of running the establishment in his 'absence' in an unholy terror 'reign' in which they eventually convince themselves that - although admittedly they certainly did not create dad's estates, somehow they happened, and since they happened to be ON them, they really are theirs and they might as well take over from that point!

Such a thought is in accord with the Bible (Mark 12) and the parables of Jesus all too well. You recall the vineyard which being made, was leased to vinedressers who did not feel inclined to render the fruits to the boss's servants who called to collect or to listen to his words (prophets in real life). Instead, when he sent his son, they killed him, saying, Now the inheritance will be ours!

It is not pretty. Neither is Mars, except perhaps as a distant object. Actually, Psalm 115:16 says this: "The heaven, even the heavens, are the Lord's; but the earth has He given to the children of men." One should have thought that quite clear. There is a division where the kids can be and where it is not so assigned. Theirs is the earth. Not bad! They are of course responsible for it!

Again, in Genesis 2:2-4, we find that we have been reading about "the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens". Again, one would have conceived this as quite clear. The heavens and the earth are not up for grabs, a Show Bag, a varied cookie tin. God made them; He did it once. Now they continue on the parameters set, except for those times (called miracles, as in the day of Joshua, the Red Sea, the healings of Christ and so on), when He chooses to intervene, as an engineer might in a prodigy of mechanics, at his will and discretion.

Further, we find this in Colossians 1: "For it pleased the Father than in Him [that is, Jesus Christ] should all fulness dwell; and having made peace through the blood of His cross, by Him to reconcile all things unto Himself; by Him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven."

This means that there is ONE PLAN, ONE WAY, the way of Christ crucified and bodily risen showing His authenticity and the power of God from whom He came. It is the means of reconciliation between God and man, and requires this - God was pleased "having made peace through the blood of the cross, by Him to reconcile all things to Himself". Death for what deserves it; guilt expunged by what covers it: Christ the coverer. "As many as received Him, to them He gave the power to become the children of God" (John 1:12).

Hence there is only one way within the universe above, below or laterally; relatively, absolutely, dissolutely or meritoriously. Nothing stands, only Christ, for God purposes "in the dispensation of the fulness of times" that "He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth, even in Him" (Ephesians 1:10-11). WE who already know the Lord, "have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of Him who works all things after the counsel of His own will, that we should be to the praise of His glory, who first trusted in Christ."

No voluntary beings, rational beings, accountable beings are in view whose sin needs cover, except those whom God has created in the universe; and in His image being the method for man, this is the way for the case, whatever the external format. Christ became man to cover sin within the universe at the biological, image-bearing level.

What beyond that ? what of the sinless ? not on this earth (Romans 3:23). What about sinless beings elsewhere ? God did not make them on other universe components, having accounted for His creation statedly in Genesis. What of other life ? God again has declared what He has done. Why so much universe ? For this fascinating fact of God's magnitude in operations (not at all surprising - would you expect Einstein to teach kindergarten mathematics or Raphael to doodle only on pads!), see That Magnificent Rock, Ch.7, Part F.

What man needs is not abortive missions to the heavens in order to feed his imagination on godlessness; but to receive the mission of Christ who CO-CREATED, one God, one trinity, and who visited the place where we are.

Let us however look at the 'life control' hopes on the earth for a moment. Acting as if to snatch the glory of life from God who made it , man scurries sedulously in ever-increasing knowledgeable ignorance, like a high-tempered youth, throwing speed tantrums in his father's stolen sports care. The illicit moves are as instructive as tragi-comic.
 
 

MAGIC MOMENTS IN THE HISTORY
OF THOUGHT: around 1850-2000

What a to-do is this! For some 136 years there has been the inanity, the spiritual insanity of Darwinism.

As if the beautiful designs in flowers and on the earth were for philosopher insects, or ...

the amazing instincts and navigational gear in birds were for the benefit of those who did not have them, when they should have them, and arose through mistake;

as if the whole diverse coded marvel of particular triumphs of wisdom and creativity happened on the scene!

As if intelligence decided it would be advantageous to exist, and so set about it!

As if symbolic logic one day took a holiday from the routine activities of matter, or nothing, and decided to invent itself, complete with orders and connotations, assembled and remembered nowhere, since there was nowhere to put it, and no one to do the putting, for that matter.

Has the whole world gone insane! Not at all: Romans 1 in its declining verses spells it out. BECAUSE man did not see fit to acknowledge and worship God as he should, GOD GAVE HIM UP to foolish delusions. "Professing to be wise, they became fools." That is the way of it (Romans 1:21). This design called man has this surpassing wonder: he can make himself foolish to the point it is an exact parallel to his realisable brilliance. It is like any complex equipment: the worse you handle it and the better it is, the worse is the penalty for abuse of it! An atomic bomb might not appreciate one who would mess with it (cf. The Shadow of a Mighty Rock, Chs. 1, 10).

Morals too decided to invent themselves. One fine day, some bright spark had the idea of social intimidation, social indoctrination, social hypnosis, and began to act as if what he wanted was more than that: it had a divine beauty, a holy wonder, an obligation beyond mere use of power. People felt this was quite a thing and although men can resist the worst terrors of Russian communistic torture cells, these people were like putty, and began to believe this thing - this product of statecraft. It became GOOD, and not merely REQUIRED. How anyone can thrust this category of incredible stupidity onto earlier members of our race without the sort of arrogance which evolutionism breeds, is inconceivable! But then we do have evolutionism, so that we do have this sort of contra-evidential, illogical idea. (Cf. Romans 1:25: "Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, blessed for ever"; and Hebrews 11:1-4. Yet Jesus Christ, the expression of God, became man that He should lead us to the invisible God whose new creation is based in pardon through His blood: John 1-5.)

Something too invented itself. Nothing one day thought it would be good to forget its inhibitions about nothing being around, and resolved without delay to invent potential, and to make itself. Although it was nothing, not being there, it was the recipient of this great idea: although indeed, there was nothing to think it with...Scenario upon scenario is merely mirthful, rollicking fun.

Or this: one day matter, which happened by chance to be run by strict laws, decided to invent a few more and gradually, like some poor scholar, improved itself to the point it began to create other sorts of things for which it had neither capacity nor code! Wonderful. And this is science ? (Cf. Rest in Reality and in Redemption, in Biblical Blessings.)

How then is it that IN EVERY CASE a SUFFICIENT CAUSE for the postulated innovations is LACKING. Do we say: Because there is no such thing as magnetism, that is how we have a magnetic field. In other areas, do we ADMIT that we do NOT FIND what it takes to produce whatever it is we are trying to explain in our observations of natural things, and then happily, merrily go ahead and say:

"Well now, since there is absolutely nothing sufficient to do all this, my hypothesis, my own theory for my Ph.D. is this: BECAUSE we have nothing to account for it, THAT must be the reason!"

"But," says the supervisor, "my dear young student, you must be precisely out of your mind! YOU HAVE TO FIND what it takes, then suggest HOW it works to produce what is to come, and then TEST what you propose, and so VERIFY it. This business you have is the exact opposite of scientific method, and of common sense; as of all logic." To which you reply:

"Yes, but that is what they all do! and THEY ALSO EXPLAIN WHAT IS NOT HAPPENING WITH WHAT IS NOT THERE!"

"Not at all," says the scientific method oriented supervisor, "hundreds of Ph.D.s do NOT so act, and many denounce this fairy-tale-itis which makes a sort of intellectual romance. Leave romance till later when you marry; as for now, let's stick to the fact. Science is not a game but a discipline.

1) Where is the process observable which you wish to explain. When you find it, let me know.

2) Secondly, where is the procedure you wish to exemplify, exhibit, manifest by experiment to explain the thing you have not yet found happening.

3) Thirdly, where is the laboratory exhibition of this procedure which you use in explanation ?

" When you find the first, that will be a fine time to consider the second; after that, the third will be relevant. In the meantime, let's do some science. If you are getting Austudy, that is what you are paid for! If this were English literature or especially work for children, it could pass for fantasy; and perhaps your real talents lie there. If the case is otherwise, please show from your work, your scientific capabilities, so that I can assess them."

Small wonder Professors Goldschmidt, Løvtrup, Agassiz, Cuvier, Nilsson, Director W.R. Thompson and many more are appalled at the pure folly of the theory of gradualistic evolution, while others like Stephen Jay Gould invent new theories of sudden surges, the better to account for the facts; and Professor Hoyle of Cambridge calls gradualistic theory "evidently nonsense of a high order" mathematically, while he talks of "The Intelligent Universe".

Little marvel there is such a stew, a befuddled series of controversies and changes, a billowing of clouds of uncertainties and confrontations - as from Michael Denton who acknowledges Darwinism an incredible intrusion of unreality, evolutionism to be a theory in crisis. In fact, the whole area of theoretical biology in its interface with irrational forms of philosophy is becoming a mere heap, factless, fictionful - like the religions of illusion : of which it really a member.

The requirements of reason for each element in the tower of life is that the bricks required the builder in order to order them, and in the first place to make them, and then to assign them, like that great brickwork just made in England with simple bricks, a steam engine - from millions of most brilliantly placed bricks, though perhaps to become an English parallel to Great Pyramids! Each level of understanding, architectural, mathematical (and the designer had every brick placed in his theories to be assignable for the labourers, of whom one expressed himself thrilled by the privilege of participating in such an advent of skill and thought) is in need of an origin, a sufficient cause, and an interface by which the cause produces its consequences. (Cf. Jeremiah 2:27.*)

If you look at pp. 329ff. in The Shadow of a Mighty Rock, to which reference was made earlier, you will see a list, drawn up like a building, of some of the more obvious features built into man, such as creativity and formal logic, power to will and to err... and all that is required is to notice that NEVER is such made now; and that ONCE it was all made by sufficient cause. Normal name: GOD! Genesis has it.
 
 
 

* Endnote

Here the sheer blindness of deriving the skyscraper of man from the flat-earth with no engineer is derided justly (cf. SMR pp. 329-332H), is indeed mocked for all time.

These are the prophet Jeremiah's words -

"Saying to a tree, 'You are my father,' and to a stone, 'You gave birth to me' ... For they have turned their back to Me, and not their face. But in the time of their trouble, They will say, 'Arise and save us,' "

match well those of earlier Isaiah in 29:14-16, where we find this:

"Therefore, behold, I am proceeding to do a marvellous work among this people, a marvellous work and a wonder: For the wisdom, of their wise men shall perish, and the understanding of their prudent men shall be hidden.

"Woe to those who seek deeply to hide their counsel from the Lord, and their works are in the dark. They say, 'Who sees us ? and who knows us ?' Surely you have things turned around!

Shall the potter be esteemed as the clay, for shall the thing made say of him who made it, 'He did not make me'?

Or shall the thing formed say of him who formed it, 'He has no understanding' ?"

Each to his taste, the twentieth century blues of angst, anxiety, desperation and violence - a couple of world wars for a foretaste - have landed 'scholarship' in this area, where even its own unbelieving devotees have to raise their hands in horror at the sheer inanity of what is taught. What is NOT new is the direction of things, the taste of it was just the same in ancient Israel whose presence with us to this day is a wonder indeed, another wonder, also predicted.

The highmindedness of the Gentile nations is specifically a matter of warning by Paul (Romans 11) in his picture of the olive tree where Gentiles were grafted in, while temporarily the Jewish people a a whole become unbelievers. Do not be highminded, he warns the peoples of the world, lest you also be torn out. The time of the Jewish return to their Saviour is coming, says Paul in this chapter. In terms of the whole blossoming picture, it is near (Matthew 24).

God did not forget to speak

1) TO the creation, man, to whom He had given

2) the fascinating power to USE language,

3) WITH language of His own.

The body

which was originated BY symbolic language in its cells and structure, a biological book,

He wrote in symbolic logic man's body; spoke with facilitating speech the faculties for the operation of man's mind, including natural intelligence; erected with direct creative assignment, man's spirit, relating it to His own, and then wrote in linguistic speech, as man speaks, to man direct, in His book, the Bible.

Such a performance has in all history, whether in biology, the intellect, the spirit, the book, the man, Jesus Christ: NEVER been duplicated, nor is duplication within the scope of man's spirit or capacity. The devil is always trying to duplicate the powers and performances of God without the ability or the understanding, and his failures cost the earth. Meanwhile, let us review this wonder of God.

Indeed, He both wrote there TO man what was to be, through His prophets, and sent His own Son, Jesus Christ, AS man, to show in each case, the power and the presence of God, for which there is no parallel evidenced in all history (SMR Chs.6-9). Without God, man's mere reactions would be meaningless for truth, and so none could come from him (SMR Ch.3). By Christ, and Christ alone, it all makes sense and needs repentance with faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour, God's only answer to man's mazes and crazes.