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Chapter 7

 

 

 Wake Up World! Your Creator is Coming Ch. 5

THE PINE LOGGING EXCURSION

Sequel to Ch.4 - on one aspect


SOMETIMES A LITTLE COMMON-SENSE ALLIED WITH WORKING KNOWLEDGE OF WHAT HAPPENS, CAN HELP ONE TO DEAL WITH WHAT IS, RATHER THAN WHAT IS NOT.
THIS IS ONE OF THE FUNDAMENTALS OF SCIENCE, AS IS THE TESTING OF WHAT IS DEEMED TO BE, BY CHECKING THAT WHAT IS ASCRIBED TO IT IN THEORY, HAPPENS IN VERIFYING PRACTICE.

In these regards of course, evolution is NEVER validated in principle and law, NEVER exhibited at the progressive and hence only relevant level, to questions of origins, and never induced by intelligence, though if it were, that would merely confirm the point. This too however is lacking in the world of current observation, with only one exception: divine miracles of healing. That figures.

Secondly, with organic evolution, the testing of the hypothesis to check that what it prescribes is what transpires, is NEVER verified.

By contrast, the Biblical creationism which STATES that creation is finished (in terms of the constituent members of the universe, down to kinds) IS ALWAYS VERIFIED. This is simply the obverse of the total scientific failure of evolutionism; but the Bible COULD have said this or that: WHAT it HAS said is what is in fact continually verified.

Its PRINCIPLES are constantly validated, and as shown in references above, are mirrored in the three chief laws of basic physics.

BOTH phases are validated scientifically, for Biblical creationism, principle and practice. BOTH are NEGATED for evolutionism. There is no contest. The Biblical statement is not to be rejected because some people do not like God or the Bible: the SOLE question scientifically is what is fulfilled in practice and correlates in principle with other laws, knowledge and verified theories.
The longer science continues its course the MORE such integrations occur, and the FURTHER the confirmation and triumph continue.

This is an alternative approach to that of pure logic, such as has been taken; but it is also a complementary one. Like the two jaws of a nut-cracker, they move on the nut of the universe and as they are followed to their demonstrated logical conclusion (SMR), they reveal the word of the Creator of these things, LIKEWISE validated in logic and verified in practice, in ALL points, and that in a situation where there is once AGAIN, NO COMPETITION, for science CRITICISES itself in a few decades; but the Bible is not liable to demonstrable correction these three millenia.

But it is time to make a little trip into the country. We will look at things from yet one more perspective, which will merely, but with much interest, confirm all the others.
 
 

WE SET OUT ON OUR EXCURSION
IN THE PINE WOODS

It is not the usage even of current well-constructed, settled and developed natures - amongst that assemblage of natures called by some 'Nature', for certain obvious features or characteristics to "arise".

Probabilities cease even to be relevant on an atom by atom basis, or on some yet further fragmented counter condition, even though their mathematical testimony of a self-made 'Nature' is an indictment on its own (cf. Hoyle SMR pp. 226ff., 15ff.), of the very concept (if this were necessary, since on logical grounds it is already shown excluded - SMR 1,3, That Magnificent Rock 1, 7, 8, A Spiritual Potpourri 1-9). .

This ARISING syndrome, the use of words in place or works, hope instead of experiment, dream in place of principle, is as fallacious in mind as its reverse is true at the simplest of levels. Things do not just arise. THAT was one of the pet insistences of our chemistry teacher, who insisted that we speak scientifically and instead of waving a verbal wand, exhibit well-based testimony from the integral conclusions and practical paradigms of science.

Let us stroll into the country: we see a pile of pine logs, neat, attractive, beautiful in aroma, crisp in newness. Here is the fresh (and hence undulled) surface of pine wood, with the smell and savour of pine, the slightly roughened edges, the exact uniformity of piling, the bark texture with just that lack of sag, and the small pieces at the edges of the bark, with just that degree of serration, particularly precise since the sawing is recent; here is the bark wood interface, the tree's grandeur subdued but the result still brittle and sharp in edge, with the occasional oddment of sawdust clinging to the rough cut edges at the end. This does not happen by chance. Seeing this, we do not wonder how it could have happened; and the more exact our knowledge of wood and process, experience of results and understanding of principles of materials, the more secure is our conclusion.

To assume this by chance would be a mathematical calamity, but far more importantly, it is a contradiction of USAGE.
 
 

COLLATION OF CHARACTERISTICS

It is not only that the collation of characteristics which we merely commenced to list, and list in such a way that the integrity of the whole was featured, those diagnostic of recent sawing and piling and pine-tree origin, of intelligent intervention in 'nature' by the special, intelligent, purposively directed will of such as or greater than man, does not happen in 'nature' on its own. It is a non-occurrence. It is just that there is no room for imagination. Now there are reasons for this; and experience is only one of them, as we have indicated above; but it is an important member, and its depths move into many related fields as knowledge is assimilated, constructed in understanding, and then applied. Science merely refines the process; its office is not to move from all this as if refinement were contradiction.

Fairies, giants, lunatics, hoax perpetrators ? all have a certain degree of will and intelligence however, with the capacity to exercise them in unison with some measure of patience. NO other possibility, man or greater in relevant power, would rationally in practice be maintained.

If you like imagery: the co-ordinates of this work location are not duplicable by what cannot comprehend co-ordinates. This 'sum' is not available to the mindless, the purposively inert, that which is free of intelligence.

In principle, therefore, there are reasons for this: usage has its own basis.

The deterioration alteration, the dis-assemblage of ALL these diagnostic characteristics, of the fresh-cut wood pile, the aromatic-edge-quality, the crispness of bark, colour of bark, relative uniformity of bark freshness etc. - is predictable.

There is evaporation, time for its occurrence, rate of same, indentation on bark, style of edge of indentation, blowing of natural deterioration agents like wind or sand, shine of warmth - a multitude of, let's face it, natural processes that forbid exception. Natural processes do their stuff. The results are their for a reason.

That is the way it is, and the Second Law of Thermodynamics is quite clear. Although the pile is in a forest and this is in a region, which is in the world, and fixed stars glow away, none of these things has an interface within the bounds of its nature, which relates to the precise, intelligent counter-measures which would preserve our wood-pile with what we have called its diagnostic qualities. Vague arisings, in the arising syndrome, are not acceptable because a wand  of irrelevant words is used to indicate a realm of irrelevant non-interface IN THE STYLE REQUIRED.
 
 

THE SUPER-PROGRAMMATIC UNIVERSE OF IMAGINATION MUST COME DOWN TO EARTH!

That is where we are.

IN ANOTHER UNIVERSE, programmatic, purpose-built devices might indeed conceivably so control weather, and compensate by subtle chemistries, built into molecules (as subtle information is built on chemical bases in DNA) and formed code in botanical DNA, that they would alter and counteract, compensate for all these intricate developments of rotting, to a 't':  in time, order and sequential correlation, so that each stage would in exact synchronisation of command and sequence, schematic point of application and overall coherence of plan,  be kept precisely in its relationship to the other.

That is not impossible. Severely controlled deterioration agents, to allow some hope of counteraction of the entirely predictable, might in such a universe achieve such a result, provided the control, programs and intelligence were sufficient;  and provided also that these provisions did not contradict other features of the alternative universe which might be desired, such as a certain measure of natural freedom allowing developments of sunsets in an artistic liberty that resulted from the free movement of NON purposively directed elements, merely executing their own lower level track performance.

In such a universe, product of intense thought and imagination, with such intelligence, such programming, the creator of it with such foresight and insight and aptitude,  could conceivably prevent the decay on the wood pile, and its way-stations,  by such counter-measures... There, in THAT universe, such wood piles, for THAT reason, might indeed stay to meet the fresh-cut qualities for years, or even centuries, though exposed freely to the elements, or whatever in that universe you might wish to call what was left of them.

The control of the chemistry and whole environment., however, at whatever cost, together with the superabundant programmatic inserts, and their bug-free correlation with existing programs actually IN DNA, might compensate for each rot, downward movement. This would put into this corner of 'nature' or more broadly into more of it, as the case might require, much data, and in fact constitute it in relatively much or little, one large anti-rot system - for NOTHING for this result, that has any relationship at the appropriate level, is allowed to vary from the astutely configured anti-rot specifications. That is imagination and it would require a prodigious creative performance.

In OUR universe, DNA has specific editorial features to diminish copying errors when new cells are formulated and formed; but in THAT universe, a NEW NORM of STABILITY would be needed in a very different 'nature', so constructed that nothing was ALIEN TO IT!

That then is the imaginary universe.

We however are not living in that particular one.

Science is looking or should be looking at the evidence of what happens in our own.

It is important in finding out its features and characteristics, to find for what it is apt, and what not, and why, or why not. It is really a serious business, and not a matter for dreams; imagination is highly relevant, but in terms of actuality, facts and fashions, not in terms of dispensing with these things. It is a matter of seeking theoretically to dispense ascertain data, and construct theories FOR reality, not to dispense WITH reality.

Children's stories are a different universe, of thought and imagination specifically freed, liberated from bothersome things like factual reality; and this is itself a realm of creation such as man constantly sees in his own midst, which precedes the creative productions known as children's stories. All these things have an adequate cause, each in its own world, each in worlds integrated synthetically, each requiring IN that creative action, that forge of thought, that construction of spirit, what is necessary for action in the realm  it puts OUT.

Have we lived in this world so long and do not realise these things. The Second Law of Thermo-dynamics merely formulates one facet of the reality. Programs and automated systems within a realm of construction, purpose-driven designs, in fact get what they can to work, if they've astute enough formulators (to protect, restore, renew) to make things work in that sphere; but even these programs of conservation themselves, they have no adequate in-built natural protection. Protective programs themselves are subject to deterioration.

The case here is OPPOSITE to THAT imaginary universe;  its ways are not APPOSITE for our universe, which requires protection of constructions, or decay; and has decay of the protections.

It is not only a breach of this basic scientific law which is made in some simple a thought as a pile of fresh-cut logs, if you seek to imagine a contrary case: it is a different universe, where a huge insertion of governing intelligence changes its verbiage, nature, disposition, to a sort of programmatic police-state.

In this, "Nature" would be dead, its very vitalities surrounded and encased in unnatural specifications.
 
 

NATURE ?

No such are these, our natures, or if you prefer  "Nature"! This world is not such a place.

With exquisitely sure grounds, it deteriorates, the grounds themselves for such action interlocking tested laws in the intellectual objects according to which the results duly accrue (when the former are accurate) in the practical realm. Thus the  thought world that RELATES to practical realities, and the latter itself are interlocked as in a beautiful marriage, where disharmony is in only one direction, and is to be removed at once, by adjusting or removing negatively verified hypotheses.

Reason and reality cohere; like brother and sister. We see THAT it happens, work out why, in thousands of multiplied phases and facets, with multiple expressions of the whole substance, structure form and nature of the matters in hand.
 

·       Now if a fresh-cut pile of pine logs, a system so simple as to be entirely ludicrous in comparison with one cell of living tissue,

·       a system ex-will, ex-life, ex-thought in process, and of limited - indeed, vitally defunct results, ready to accrue - one severed from its relatively simple vital botanical source (i.e. its trees were cut) :

·       if this clashes entirely with expectations, contrary to reality, and would require suspension of law, laws, customs, usage, cosmos construction, to "ARISE" on its own, so that it was stable as such:- then how entirely lordly is the lore that has life thus "arise"! deploying forces in the imagination, not available in the world that stands.


All its specialties need simultaneous protection (the cell membrane to protect its instability being one) from contrary processes, and every part in the evidential cell that is always high grade in design, showing NO development in ANY series at ANY time in ANY creature, wherever found, must be right. As Stephen Jay Gould put it*1, in one of his admissive moments, adding to Denton's work on individual cells, and their non-gradational character in all known cases:

"Instead of a narrow beginning and a constantly expanding upward range, multicellular life reaches it maximal scope at the start, while later decimation leaves only a few surviving designs" - Wonderful Life, p. 233 (cf. 212).

This of course relates to his personal findings in the Burgess shale. "The main burst" [of vital activity] occurred well done in the Lower Cambrian" - p. 227. He puts it again, "the Burgess maximum in organic disparity" . Again, he says, p. 277, "I just can't accept that if organisms always have the potential for diversification of this kind - while only the odd ecology of the Lower Cambrian ever permitted its realization - never, not even once, has a new phylum arisen since Burgess items." This ? It is said of "the Cambrian explosion" which was "too big, too different, and too exclusive." It relates to the SCALE of the occurrence in which so vast a proportion of all life is suddenly deposited with such enormous variation of structural design, suffusion of varieties, architectural assemblages and the like.

SINCE the rock strata repeatedly give contrary results to fact (like trees standing more or less upright, in multiplied strata, through them, though it is supposed to take millions of years for them to be deposited - something for some other world, perhaps, not this one); contrary dates by different methods; and since the construction of the COLUMN is in vast proportion, in the mind, not with the eye, but rather TRENDS to columnar results are found without explanation for differences, and huge translocations appear, which show no signs of overlay, and the like, and this in vast areas of the earth's surface; and since dating methods give vast differences from assumed rate predictions as shown in SMR (Index Dating), and in That Magnificent Rock, Ch.7;  and since there is so much inexplicable material on the huge degree of sedimentary rock throughout the earth, and the mass graves of fossils such as biologist Nilsson documented with such appalled horror, abandoning Darwinianism on the spot, and all gradualism: it is not surprising if SOME materials are hinted at now, in the pre-Cambrian.

After all, it is ONLY on the gradualistic approach that the column appears to be a dating procedure. In fact, the geological hydraulics would be expected to have a massive TREND in deposition, but one with significant VARIATION for local reasons from place to place, and it is THIS which is found; so much so that it is indicated that in only a small fraction of cases on the earth's surface can the full "column" found (CEN Technical Journal -  Vol. 13, No.2, 1999). Missing is normative; overlay is vast; a trend is all that can be found, with edges often found not easy to relate to gradualism.

One would therefore EXPECT that there might well be exceptions, though perhaps not numerous, where multicellular creations could be found 'low' or simply deeper than the pre-Cambrian norm. The norm however is as spectacular no doubt, as the observer Gould maintains, and it is this point, in the arena of the evolutionary mode of dealing with findings, which has to be accounted for. Gradualism does not do so*1A; it is aborted on the spot by these findings. They are a MOCKERY of it; it is a child in a school where SILENCE has just been commanded, who instead of complying, has succeeded in bringing out his rock-n'-roll band complete with trumpets, drummers and percussion, and equipped with high-sound broadcasting, while placing the speaker within one inch of the teacher's ear. It is not mere disobedience; it is comedy.

In our own terms, in the case before us, it is the most monstrous exposure, that is not merely an anti-verification: it is a flood! The constructions on earth laugh uproariously at the fallacious constructions in mind, in the little, quaint oddity of organic evolution.

Again from Gould (op.cit. 236-237) "But the mere pattern of life and death offers no evidence that survivors directly vanquished the losers. The sources of victory are as varied and mysterious as the four phenomena proclaimed so wonderful that we know them not (Proverbs 30:19) ... But if we  face the Burgess fauna honestly, we must admit that we have no evidence whatsoever - not a shred - that losers in the great decimation were systematically inferior in adaptive design to those that survived." Indeed, p. 273, he explodes: "Darwin, making his characteristic (and invalid) conflation  of leisurely, gradual evolution and change by natural selection, rejected the fast transition theory out of hand."

THAT, of course, on Darwin's part, is the exact opposite of scientific method. You reject out of hand what is contrary to your imagination, and admit that the needs of your imagination are so lacking in the facts, that the latter may suffice to remove your theory: and THAT, it is perhaps the truest thing he ever said on the topic.

Gould indicates this point on p. 271: "Darwin ... had publicly fretted that "the case at present must remain inexplicable, and may be truly urged as a valid argument against the views here entertained." We have noted Director W.R. Thompson's authoritative declaration that the case has not significantly changed SINCE that day (SMR p. 200); and this of course, despite immense and intensive searching by many in many places with many aids! As Parker puts it in this regard (Creation: The Facts of Life, p. 210):
 

He adds, as a scientist:

Later and rather aptly, Gould notes what is the real problem, in its practical and psychological manifestation: "... the most important message taught by the history of science: the subtle and inevitable hold that theory exerts upon data and observation." The word "inevitable" is too strong: it is sometimes normative, but at times there is that keen edge of untainted desire which is not anti-God, disposed to resist what is, and which hence faces facts with willing glee. It is nevertheless true that the danger is real and to be resisted; and is exhibited nowhere more than in this ludicrously HOLD which gradualism has had on the philosophy of science, leading experts to speak of one another, in their various distresses, with a disparagement or amazement, as if they were school children. Such is the message: INSIST on the irrational and your bedfellows may well include fleas. They bite.

Incidentally, Gould  - p. 226 - speaks of a Chinese parallel to the extreme case of the Burgess shale, and declares: "The Chinese fauna is half a world away from British Columbia - thus establishing the global nature of the Burgess phenomenon. Even more crucially, the new finds seem well dated to a time DEEP in the Lower Cambrian." Of the absent but transitional beings, he indicates it difficult even to IMAGINE what they could be, and that variation is to be seen in twigs*2, rather than branches of the tree of life. It is a strange map of a country that has minor country lanes, but no highways. It would lead to the conclusion that only the local was understood! *3
 Let us then reflect on these things.
 
 

THE WORLD'S GREATEST NON-CONTEST -
for THE BOOK OF RECORDS ?

Thus NOT ONLY, in FACT, is the record of INSTANT cells of sophistication impact, but SUDDEN VARIETY in multicellular records, with a DECREASING information resultant, and a DECREASING variety effect over time;  while there is a massive total contribution of types and stages in an assemblage as if the Headmaster was calling the roll. This is not mere negation: it is mockery.

Clearly we are in the presence of something other than students coming by chance! Let us further review the imagination of transition for major groups:
 

There is still the little point should the imagination work feverishly for hours and invent mythical marvels of design manipulation (which call for greater than ever specifications to enable this highly complex and exceptionally demanding work), and then find a museum for parts storage, you also have to HAVE those parts. Imagination baulks; storage facilities are not found, nor yet caretakers for them; parts lack.

Then again, as to all the "experiments" (to use Gould's term) which would have been made, on the organic evolutionary hypothesis, made of course without an experimenter,  but that is the way with magic, the happenings in code and integral brilliance of ingenuity: these  failures lack. They should sprinkle the surface of the earth, like the beginnings of a snow-storm. They should be present in prodigious numbers, like the work of a Latin student in a stiff exam, when he had neglected his work, only far, far worse. He has SOME intelligence! They lack. For that student whose work so manifested itself, one would rather think SCHOLAR, than DUNCE, let alone, inert!

And the myriads of progressive, made in America, biological success stories ? They should vastly adorn the ancient landscapes. What should ? Things which despite fundamental faults and incredible clumsiness, and being produced without ANY imagination, SOMEHOW or other, chiefly other, managed so much as to exist in the most bizarre and unimaginable sequential modes - not a triumphant posture for SUCCESS  in acrid competition!

As to these, TO SUCCEED, NEVERTHELESS,  IN BEING FOR LONG ENOUGH FOR THE NEXT STAGE, they would HAVE to live for LONG TIMES, and hence have highly stable and visible modes of living. The FACT that these transitions of KIND are NEVER found is merely the requirement of logic, as always, duly found or certainly not contradicted, in the honest laboratory of time. Gould engages in choice language on the lack.

On any level as on all levels, the CAUSE is not present in nature, for it is manifested operationally, neither empirically nor validly at all in logic, at this level (SMR Ch.1,3). The cause ? It is not exhibited in time; it is Biblically stated to be beyond time, and to inject into time, as we onto paper when we write. That is the claim. Paper does not make words, not being equipped for that; it is a receptor. So are we, as may be seen by an examination of our products and powers. We live, we die, we age, our cells have it made, and unmake when their time comes. We are recipients. Matter is so at a much lower level. We have spirit; it doesn't. If it resented something, it couldn't express its displeasure; provoke it and it proceeds as to constructed facilities. The cognition for resentment is not present! It is all here, matter, mind and spirit, in its various natures.

That specific Biblical depiction is what is in PRECISE conformity with the facts, in every respect.
It is verified.  Gradualistic evolution is not. Let us not merely talk of creationism, since


a) the word is being currently increasingly prostituted into ambiguity, and
b) the real issue is the real source, who as such, is not without power.

Let us speak of Biblical Creationism, for that is where ALL the answers ENTIRELY meet ALL the facts, and hence is the preferred procedure, MERELY from a scientific method point of view, just as it is required in the further domains of logic as noted above.

The situation is delightfully simple. The theory of evolutionary naturalism is not relevant to science. Transitions of BASIC TYPE lack. Experiments of ANY kind lack. Logic forbids. Now scientific method precludes, and this multiply: as has been shown. Chaos frowns; logic laughs.
 
 

SPECIAL EFFECTS DIVISION

Very well: special effects are NOT evidenced as BEING manufactured, or as EVER having been manufactured BY nature and within nature. Imaginative needs for a play, however long you wait, and clear your patient throat, will not arise by waiting.

The system is not built that way. You need imagination for imaginative things. That is the quality which is back of it. Even a slight deficiency in this quality, in a child, is noted sometimes with appalled expectations of dismal fruits. Its entire absence is another thing, especially as the basis for the MOST imaginative engineering constructions ever seen, in the MOST apt and intelligent combinations and presentations ever known; especially when linked with a personal analysis instrument for self-inspection and repair, and many other imaginative purposes, called mind; especially when linked to the capacity to breach mind and body, with an even more liberated instrument called spirit (or any other name you want to give to the functions so often noted in this site).

Let us dwell on the now clear absentee from the play, this special effects division. Yet we have its results.

What is the source of the special effects division, then, with its specialist provisions in such milli-second beauty of motion, all in order, sequence, setting and coded ? It is no junk yard.
 

The highly specialised parts are not suitable for on-the-spot engineering refashioning to the specifications desired, to match other specialised parts. A junk yard has only so much value.
You need an engineering intelligence to get anyway in this field. It is not Nature, which is endued with the museums of diligence to store the work for which it has no power of thought, strategy or scenario writing. It is written. It is not a writer. That is ALL the facts show.

For intensive, multiplied, synthetic schema, with extensive precise manufactured parts, together of course with the machine tools to make more machine tools when these ones wear out, and the programs to tell them how to do it anyway: the whole world systems of logic, thought and practical agencies, are needed, in concert and speaking the same language.

The  preliminaries for any one "stage" on the way to any creature, do not CREATE the structural schema for the next thought-world production, when the wrappings are removed. On the other hand, the final practical world production does not GET the design tools for its needs from the last one, the new design construction from some earlier one; but rather it must have extensive re-design at each operative level. This is so in little things, in much; but when there is a total construction alteration in principle or purpose, then of course the case is of prodigious proportions. Novelty of design means in large measure, novelty of specification, and hence of construction methods for what is to meet these. The world does not go crazy because life is there. Life is there because the reason back of it was adequate, the facilities of thought sufficient, the will apt and appropriate.

In fact all this special effects division is not found, nor any of it; and in theory, it is far more difficult to invent systems to suppress the deteriorative forces while you keep in hand the special things you need when the system is at length constructed, so that it can use the things which you kept awaiting the moment when you could put it all together. This implies, as noted, a STOP ROT program as well as an IMAGINATION IN PUT program. It is more complex than the needs and evidence of creation exhibit. Awaiting the moment ? If you could wait; and that would be difficult, because of course, you would not be there, in the naturalistic reductionist prison system, in order to get knowledgeably to work on what is then to hand.

As to that: There would undoubtedly be LESS intervention in MAKING IT ALL AT ONCE. That of course is what the biological trend is, but the only program left, is HOW DOES IT DO THIS ?

The answer, "it arises", as the reader will by now know, if not before, is not relevant.

That is the unscientific one. HOW and BY WHAT MEANS and in WHAT INTER-CONNECTED TISSUE of law verified and seen to be operative do you account for this ? Those are apt for science.

The SPECIAL EFFECTS division is interested in this once it looks for the right, and rightly programmed players.

Before that, there is the far more basic question, by what logic is anything; and is its legal structure formed, its mind and matter, its spirit and their interconnection ? Laws galore and integrated structures of living thought, where is their source ? Imaginative constructions, what is their propulsion ? certainly not needs that would be there if the imagination arose to match them.
 

As to these exhibits, at times of almost frolicsome imagination, THEY are objectively evidenced; for the work seen is precisely that of such a world of originative function and capacity.

The opposite, naturalistic reductionism, has not constructed a ramp. There is no way to go up. Nature is not equipped to make itself. Its abilities are non-progressive: just watch it act, and investigate it properties and powers.

It has not acted EVER in ANY time place, visible or implied by collateral evidence; and as Gould says, there has even been a reduction in the variety available, as we proceed in time. That too is what in general was the point made by Polish geneticist, Giertych (SMR p. 252H). Gould has merely intensified the point by the garlanded drama of the DEGREE of the disparity. VAST stores of sudden information; large losses since.

We have not to ponder reduction for creation, since it is opposite. This is not an interesting procedure to achieve this aim. It happens to be the exact opposite. It would not commend itself to relevance. We do need to ponder production for creation, and hence what has productive powers, as equipment.
 
 

THE SOURCE OF PLAY AND STAGE,
WORDS AND ... ALL BUT SIN
(cf. last section,  below)

As this necessity  leads to the adequate source, God Almighty, so naturalism leads to the inadequate postulations.

By WHATEVER MEANS and in WHATEVER TIME, what lacks has to produce what it does not have. That is the essence of organic evolutionism (and it is high time this word was used in parallel with creationism, and the more so since the latter only meets the test of scientific method; for my part, and for this reason not least, I prefer creation and evolutionism).

It has to invent systems of law, by chance, and use non-existent chance to invent systems in the first place, so that there could be any chance. From nowhere (since nothing does not have any 'where'), it makes what is; what is, being simple and limited in power; from this by any method, it arises with all that it lacked, making partial prodigies with what it does not have. This ? Is it because we USE some simple things like matter (relatively speaking) that people crassly tend to imagine that it is not persons but the properties, invisible to all investigation, those of matter which are REALLY making the things ? Does matter purpose things ? Does it try ? Does it think ? Does it make laws ? Does it have equipment to command and symbolise commands to order itself to be what it is not ?

No. Naturalism of any variety and Biblical creationism are two presentations that have nothing in common: one has all the answers to every point in the whole gamut of logic, evidential reality, scientific method, prediction, both natural and historical. The other collides, collapsing on  EVERY POINT. In this excursion our chief concern has been empirical, since the logical has been so fully treated earlier. But that, it is the way the matter stands.

It is not merely that organic evolutionism fails; and creationism succeeds. Nor simply that the one fails on all fronts, and the other succeeds on all, where either is testable.

In fact, the one positively entails; the other negatively fails, so that there is complete harmony everywhere, except in the minds of the professional unbeliever. Now THIS question is merely one well down the line! There is not only LAW, there are thousands of these things, laws galore of this and that kind in a tartan of grand design, integrated and executed in one systematic whole, subject to causal enquiry, rational investigation and repaying the same.
 
 

TAKING STEPS

IT WOULD HOWEVER PERHAPS DISAPPOINT OUR READERS IF WE DID NOT LOOK MORE INTIMATELY AT TAKING STEPS, AS A PRINCIPAL MIGHT SAY TO A STUDENT, IN OUR WAY TO THE DESIRED RESULTS: "I shall have to take steps..."

Steps however are irrelevant in our own case, as they are absent from view, and nature lacks what it takes, in any naturalistic theory, in the time when these things were done, to do it. WE humans, for example were not there (and precious long it would take us to do anything anyway, for we lack the power to make spirits, and cannot EVEN NOW make life).

The total programmatic direction, with its library bulk miniaturised - the one we have - and the relevant multi-formatted resources , must BE in place for the cell to "arise" in the way it is seen, open to investigation from any corner of the globe (no, this does not mean one believes in a flat earth: it is a simple metaphor!).

Now we do not need to consider how the most devastated cripple climbs Mount Everest. It does not happen. The capacity lacks. If we FOUND one do so, we would realise we had been ignorant of the nature of mountains, or cripples or both. THAT however is not the problem. We do NOT find the 'cripple' of chance mimicking the rollickings of imagination, the productive dimensions of intelligence. It does not happen. Deficiency is no substitute for efficiency. Effectiveness is not found in the inoperative.


But let us proceed with our detail.

·       Mini-programs - even to GO to a step, without legs - these do not create multi-programs. That is simply not the way they work. In fact, they tend to break down and create enormous problems, the more so the more complex and multi-phased and ambitious they are, for resolution as they face this and that situation, and are overcome by power-spikes or misadventures of this type or that, through intrusion or otherwise.

·       To ALTER a Volkswagen to a Boeing 707 being far harder than to make either, merely accentuates the problem of intelligent products from utter dumb resources. Steps make the thing worse, and have a far greater call on the resources which, in naturalism, are not there.

·       It is not a very intelligent idea, therefore, propounded in opposition to the facts; and it gets what it deserves in "successful" creation, which does not show any such thing, but rather the precise opposite:


For all such steps, you lack the mainspring. They are rather steppes, vast and dry, cold and waste, than steps.

The rational faculties needed are those of mind. The design features those of purpose! They have their sources and characterisable resources, no less than the fresh-cut pine log situation, which we considered in Chapter 4. Whatever vast and overpowering superiority to need is in the Creator, reason indicates, there can be nothing less than these minimal necessities, and as He says, His divine nature and eternal godhead are obvious (Romans 1:17ff.). It is as we have shown in Ch.1. of SMR, and touched in this volume, also NECESSARY that He should be always there, always the same, yet wholly sufficient to deal at the personal level. C.S. Lewis was perfectly right in stressing the idea of MINIMAL NECESSITY. The results demand it. THAT OF COURSE has nothing in the world (or out of it) to do with compulsion acting ON the Creator; quite the contrary. It is logical COMPULSION acting to exhibit basic features attested irreducibly.

What is absent, does not act.

This fallacy then of organic evolution  is simply one more example of reductionistic error. Because implements can be relatively simple, like electrons, though even these have their marvels - in the "hands" of those who like man, inhabit other 'worlds' - those of logical initiative, symbolic discernment, imaginative envisagement: it appears to be imagined that as if fascinated and agog, 'Nature' somehow does it. No, personification does not create proficiency.

The imagery helps, some think. Such theories of 'Nature', however, the goddess lose their bearings  when 'she' is dismembered into total inertia in the mental realm, far beyond mere stupidity. What is not there, does not act.

Because each electron in each atom, in each molecule (those structures, laws, formats) is in fact moved or deployed differently when purpose and intelligence operate, becoming a tool of the productive agency: therefore,  the nature of the merely material operation per se  is annulled, and the displacements and disposition of particles are excluded as natural, when the evidences and testimony of such interference are not merely existent, but pervasive. If now a Downes' syndrome child, limited by affliction,  is asked to write a Shakespearean play, with no mentally active helper, or purpose driven keeper, the answer is soon found: THE CHILD CAN NOT DO THIS THING.

Why ? He/she lacks the capacity. What capacity ? that which includes knowledge, understanding of high level experience and refined analysis, planning capacity, dramatic understanding and a sense of its application for discerning minds, and so on, almost ad infinitum. Pages could be written in a preliminary survey of what would be needed.

Above all, a different PERSON would be  REQUIRED. The child's NATURE would be wholly irrelevant to such a production. Playwrighting at that level does not exist as a possibility in this case, short of divine intervention: since the array of letters, strokes of pen are merely ONE MINOR feature, or result of the understanding, perceptions and thoughts. THEY deploy them to convey these things. They are merely a MEANS. What they MEAN is entirely another thing, in domain and requirement.

Their governance for such a result is entirely at the disposition of a mind of the right proportions, experience, intelligence, imagination, dramatic feeling. The system of the Downes' syndrome child's mind is not equipped with features wholly necessary for the result. Probability is wholly irrelevant, for the arrangement of letters which is the same as a play of Shakespeare (a swamp mathematically - SMR p. 15) is the least of the need. The play is equipped with MEANING, as its chief characteristic. The assemblage of letters would fail to impart this. They must be SO arranged in SUCH a situation that their CHIEF purpose, exhibited by their MAIN result, is CONVEYED. They transmit. Only receptors at the correlative level can receive. Arrangement is merely a medium. Symbolic signification is the purpose, the product in its integral and effective form.
 
 

THE MEANING STEP

What is meaning ? It is the conveyance of person-to-person information, at the personal level, actual or implied. It has range of purpose, emotion, thought, spirit and imagination. The play is chiefly in this field. Its excellence is the HUGE extent  to which it KEEPS things at that level, integrated, developmental, coherent, reaching the message, the moral, the thrust, the perspective, touching it here and there, with irony adorning it, with wit sharpening it, with depth of feeling illustrating it.

It is true that this is mere analogy. However it brings out the point that we are instruments, ourselves, of meaning. We are continually conveying it, desiring it, exchanging it - and it is a main feature of our living. What is not there, does not create. What is created requires what is adequate. We constantly reach the same result in looking at things minute, as in looking in the vaster realms of necessities.

What cannot be done is SO because it lacks the ingredients of the production of such things. Matter per se has no meaning. It does not use it. It expresses it without participation. We can read it. It cannot.

All these things CANNOT be done without a base adequate. Matter is a comparatively trivial, no-purpose entity, internally,  and hence it is a no-error object. You cannot be wrong when there is only law to follow, without option (SMR Ch. 4, pp. 429ff.). Matter's arrangements are the work of children's parties by comparison with the injection of meaning, of plan, of expertise, of imagination, such as is seen in life in profusion, not confusion. It is formed in the execution of DNA command via symbolism in chemical message servants. It is seen in our own discussions of that very thing. It is present in automation; it is even more obviously present in cogitation. The fact seems to be, as one delves into these byways, that the aghast human is so sure that GOD is not loving, that he/she will NOT believe (one of the most famous biologists SAID this) what is taught in Sunday School! NOT THAT! OH NO! A mother in law would be an angel compared with that, to invoke the popular mythology on mothers in law!

HOW, they say,  can any one be REALLY loving and intelligent, whatever his technical expertise who has invented a 'nature' which bashes itself so!

That is an absurd question if made without introduction. It obviously presumes greatly. HOW could anyone kill a man! It is atrocity! and so on: one may say. But when the general discussion is over, the answer  may on occasion be  simple: He threatened my life, and I defended myself, and in the struggle he died. THAT is how. It is not so atrocious. Generalising here is mere illusion.

MAN has sinned. NATURE is his domain. GOD has brought it into more harmony with his sin.
It reflects man's own vanity in its own (cf. Beyond the Curse, Biblical Blessings Ch.7, News 74). Evolution is merely a way to try to make it look as if these divine disciplines were misdirected, and we are responsible for NOTHING, but rather, if anything (ask Hitler concerning his OWN race if you could!), to be congratulated on our own UNDOUBTED success in still being alive! It is very susceptible to pride of race, of individual, of nation. The pride routinely falls, if not in one way, then in another.

GOD, says Paul in Romans 8, has SUBJECTED NATURE TO VANITY, to modes inclusive of FUTILITY, because of the sin which man exploited. Man is awry; so then is nature. Man is aggressive, insulting, and abuses; so then does nature. Man creates; nature does not. There comes the beginning of the end. Man's creativity which goes to the point of making new worlds and new gods that are not (at least in imagination), new men, and so forth, is marvellous in innovation; but it is equally a failure in all attempts to dispense with the intelligence, wisdom, imagination and power of God. Man ? he is like a deaf-mute next to Shakespeare by comparison. Yet there is some resemblance, in this, that with proper methods, communication with God is indeed possible.

GOD HAS SAID. It is written in our cells, in the book of life, the Bible, in the utility which DOES NOT ever SHOW improvement in design, in 'nature', but only diversification and deterioration. His CONSTRUCTIONS HAVE UTILITY: HIS JUDGMENTS CAN STRIKE WITH FUTILITY. You shall be filled with the fruit of your own ways, is one of the most extraordinarily simple and yet crushing forms of divine rebuke (Isaiah 3:10, Jeremiah 6:19, Proverbs 1:31 cf. Romans 8:19-22). The Proverbs passage reads:


That is the way of it. This is a pilgrimage and our end is co-ordinate with our beginning. Offering insult to the intelligence of God is only one way of showing the aptitude of the frustration visited on our environment, Nature, for our cause. We are left, in this respect, to stew in our own juice. And that juice is leaking now, across the world, as the return of Christ draws near. War, terrorism, mass weapons of destruction in small cases to enable vast evils which contaminate the world and make life a miracle if it so much as survives.

God is not impressed with prevarication. If you want proof, we have given it many times on this page, and none has so much as touched its validity. Truth is easier to defend than fiction, and all the evidence is on its side, just as reason wrestles with error.

The word of God states that the requirements for the Creator's return are indeed near. It itemises the requirements, and little remains; the whole thrust is present, as for some rare disease where 100 qualities attest its presence (cf. SMR 8-9). There are not only items; there is the patient's overall condition, and this too is prophetically attested in multiple dimensions, as has been shown.

Even pine-logs, noted in Chapter 4, of which this is the sequel, even these positively require DIMENSIONS of activity to preserve them as they were seen to be. There is simply no alternative. THIS system so works.

Let us return to our playwrighting. This, at the level of Shakespeare, simply does not exist as a possibility since the array of letters, open strokes is merely ONE SMALL result of understanding and thought. Reproduce these and still you have done almost nothing. They must, to be what they are, be SUSCEPTIBLE to understanding BY a suitable receptor, and OPERATE at that level.
The arrangement is  trivial; the communication is realms ahead of it. The letters, indeed, have significance of brilliance ONLY because of what they convey. In an extreme, and perhaps alerting illustration, one might say they are slaves carrying the communication of their master to someone.

The slaves convey, and without this, this means would not work at all; to that extent they are important in the process; but WHAT they convey is not at all their domain. They are simply instrumental for something wholly beyond them, clever enough to use them to transmit the realities of that domain, to one able either 1) to understand them or 2) being a thing, able to execute them so that the thing planned and planted, actually occurs. The latter is the hard case when symbols go beyond expression and have to incorporate AS WELL the means for construction and reproduction on site, of the imagination involved.

Each word has its own rules, laws, required facilities and functional co-operation reservoir in OUR play, our own construction that we walk about with, and may not dispense with, except at departure from this earth;  and its genetic stabiliser-implementer provisions. It is all so integrated that all possibilities have to be in view so that the whole works in a coherent, brilliant system, effectively. If it is subjected to vanity, to corruption, to decay, to tribulation in some cases, it yet has extraordinary resilience.

THAT is why it works. Deprive it, and it does not work; let it deteriorate and it works less. Try to start even with it assumed, but without the coherence scenario provision, and it does not work.
It does not work because it lacks what it needs. It can be IMAGINED easily, provided it is intelligent imagination. But then, imagination is not the issue, in MAKING the thing. It is a necessary cause in the ONE WHO MAKES IT, but of itself it is entirely inadequate. You need power, relevant power, and contrivance. In us, at this point of discussion, imagination is merely a substitute for the necessary action which accordingly, we do not DO. We are not the creator. Nor were we there to do it.

It, imagination, however,  is here. It is indeed ONE of our OWN features. The meaning is conveyed in even much of our equipment with which birth endowed us, and as it is implemented past symbols into actuality, we gain means of expressing ...meaning ourselves.
 
 

ROSES AND STAR-THISTLES

Roses do not grow on star-thistles, no, and nor do figs, as Christ said. It is for a very good reason. They have as ONE of their facets, a programmatic nexus ot vast ramifications and unitary character. You could still have roses if the programmer used the power directly and made them without the multiple generation provision our roses in fact possess. But this programming, it requires a MORE complex working of intelligence. It attests yet more than seeing it suddenly happen in front of you.

Work ? for it to work at the level of thought, it must be invested with it. As to work, it can, in certain circumstances, transcend the materials it uses, because they are like logo-building blocks (which in that case are not even alive!), able to be transformed beyond their inherent conformity, by imagination's realm.  Work can use symbols, logic, data, knowledge, understanding, imagination of what does not as yet exist in the unpurposeful material realm, and systematically deploy, dictate to, direct the system it creates, so that the wisdom of the maker and his/her power may be seen.
It functions because it is there.

System however is merely the integral assemblage whose powers and levels are as instituted by the systematiser. Time enables it to display what that system is; its levels of facility because of this, are to be discerned. It is not something else which it displays; for it is not something else which deploys. What it has, it shows; and the longer you give it, the more assuredly it shows just that. If it were not so, that would not be the nature of the system. Matter does its bit; mind; spirit. None substitutes. All vary. Each has its indications. None can act for the other.

Cadillacs do not soar into clouds; for that is not the nature of their systems. Aged university professors, verging on antiquity,  do not print at record levels, their fingers racing over the keys. Their systems, however complex, lack this feature, and hence they do not possess this facility.

Even freshly cut piles of pine logs teach us these things. Reluctant nature deification merely smuggles into one system, the exalted ingredients of another; and ultimately of the systematiser, whose understanding made each and every system, the strategy and concept of systems, in their supervision, their natures, limits and laws, in which as subordinated systems, they obediently abide. That is why it is idolatry, so much warned against in Old Testament times, in New Testament times, and in epidemic proportions in our own. We noted more than once the prediction of the situation in detail in II Peter 3, and considered this in detail.

Man ? he is different in one thing. For in him, system has its overseer who can dispose thought to assault structure of mind, spirit or body, and of God if such were reachable, so that the character of excellence is marred. Man has gone astray. His freedom is open to abuse, and he has abused it. He is an ACTIVE systematiser, inside a systematic series of procedures, invented for his beck and call: or perhaps to be used for the purpose of his rebuke and reproof, as  he finds in some of his saner, or humbler moments, when he is not dully murdering by the million, starving children by countless thousands, dismembering youth,  blasting bodies with land mines, or spreading radioactivity, and living by it, in so small an earth as this one, so vulnerable.

But then, we merely pass beyond (but not without) system, to an illustration of the NATURE of an ACTIVE sub-systematiser, such as man. That is a very profound creation, and creature; but it too has its laws, facilities, qualities, calibre and results as it uses the sub-systems at  its finger tips (in some cases literally). Often it does this with sublime foolishness and arrogance, like an adolescent wrecking his dad's car. It is theft. It is unauthorised. It is dangerous. It will have results.

God made man and man made sin. It is amazing enduement that enables it; it is his folly that does it (cf. Romans 5)..

Matter, mind, spirit, and sub-sections, each shows what it is, by what it does. Imagining systems to be other than their structure displays is mere confusion. It alters nothing but the rationality of the thinker who thinks in this manner, and in the end, denies reason itself, making nothing the mother of something (or else magic, which is much the same) and system the offspring of disorder.

The minimal cause for what we have, a self-existent, eternal, intelligent Being of understanding which has no directive implant, this remains. His qualities include entire sufficiency for the products of His activity, from the first. If HE 'improved',  then as a system-component in which this was achieved, he would be a product, in turn. This would change the mode, merely calling for the creator of this proposed intermediary agent, for HIS creator;  but it would not affect the logical need, necessity.  Whatever subordinate angels there are, these are not the series, system, total environment and occupancy figure, the creator.

More or less is wholly irrelevant to the logical requirement. In the end, there is One without beginning, who was also adequate for what He did. That is basic to its happening. We are expressive of it. HOW He did it is His affair; that He needed what it takes, is our affair; and that the evidence indicates His method to be one of total creation of types, as His word, the Bible,  indicates, is also our affair, since this too is the evidence of the world that it gives to us. They match, these things. It is also our affair to notice that. In the case of the Bible, such matching is the name of the game: which game ? That of God's explicit challenge (Isaiah 48). When an enemy aircraft is about to shoot you down, it is time to less to your Squadron Leader, watching above. It is time to heed reality. Disease and death are merely two of the elements of this subjection to vanity, of which the Bible speaks. DELIVERANCE from vanity is the other side (II Corinthians 5:17- 6:1, and see That Magnificent Rock Chs. 2, 3).

Overall, then, God is always the same, not progressing as a sub-unit, always adequate, just as the propounders of unreason are not: but are without Him, disastrously embraced in system: like a child with her hand caught in a car door, they are dragged along. At times, they stand in old-fashioned cars, on the running board, but that is their position. It is not at all admirable. With that, they should not ... proceed.

It is as if she were screaming, our figurative child, uttering  irrational gibberish. She must be still long enough to hear what is to be done. It is always a miracle when she stops and listens. Sometimes she pretends she is not hurting but this does not alter her position. She needs to be still and know that the Lord is God. He has been at great pains to let her know...
 
 

End- Notes
and Excursions

*1 There is an extension of the following end-note in
Answers to Questions Ch. 5, Appendix.

Parallel in kind, and in the same vein, is this complementary admission from Gould:

"The absence of fossil evidence for intermediate stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution" - 'Is a new and general theory of evolution emerging?', from Paleobiology, vol. 6(1), January 1980, p. 127.
 

*1A and 1B
 
 

A MATTER OF METHOD
in CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS

 

1

a) A CAMBRIAN CONCEPT  
 

The Cambrian
The Bang
The Demonstration


cf. That Magnificent Rock Ch. 7, Section E

It is not to be desired, that the righteous should bow before the wicked, says the Proverb.  Nor is it, when as ambassador for truth, he/she is on commission.

Thus the FACT of the Cambrian "Age" (admittedly a philosophical construct, but then, we are showing on THEIR territory, their prodigious failure, no righteous holds barred) is evidencing an explosion so vast that Gould wallows in it, glories in it, expostulates in it, admonishes concerning it, uses public address systems to embrace the ear concerning it, details it, lists it, loves it: this has to be faced level-headedly.

It is everything that Gould says, and more, in the dimension of novelty, innovation, prodigious spread of engineering design impact, streams of PHYLA not now around, EARLY rock profusion leaving current biotic levels LESS! How can one say this ? Simply because the innovations back of the innovations, those of constructive thought and executive means require MORE than what appears. This is merely the aircraft, as it were, in motion, watched by the buyers. BEFORE THAT, the thing has to be ENVISAGED, and put together in mind, in thought, in the domains which, like it or not, are the necessary field of activities which are their specialty.

Hence the suggestion one has recently read, that the astute Christian Apologist no more really STRESSES the Cambrian situation is not to the point. This is to yield to propaganda, to go with the flow of frothy philosophy. Gould's endeavour to philosophise with irrational modes, on the basis of his actual scientific observations have no more validity than the expositions in this volume attest. It is what he has SEEN that is important. His exuberance in attestation of the facts is delightful.

That is not to be countermanded by philosophy, far less acceptable philosophy.

On the basic premiss that the rock record and its piles, strata, modes and manners, IS a RECORD in a TIME dimension BASICALLY and one with supreme importance in DATING, which has NOT AT ALL ceased to play this pirate's role, then the RESULTS of the CAMBRIAN explosion, which on Gould's attestation is in effect in the atomic dimension, after using merely conventional explosives, MUST be stressed ALL THE MORE, by those for whom evidence is critical, vital, crucial, and not merely a prelude to tiresome philosophy.

IF the rock strata are to be abandoned in the above role; well. Let us hear it. If not, very well, let us draw conclusions in terms of the philosophical parameters imposed by the organic evolutionists.

On those bases, it is all that has been said. It is outrageous, as incredible as to Nilsson, were the flood evidences (see SMR Index Nilsson), or the mutational NON-PROGRESS to LØvtrup; and indeed with these senses of profound outrage, that of the paleontological, the fossil gaping and unredeemed gaps to Director W.R. Thompson (Index, Thompson) . These with Gould are protesting in a furore of disgust, a clamour of incredulity at the REALLY VAST GAP, the one between two precipices, those of theory and evidence. What they do is one thing; that they have been outraged is another. Folly is at the helm in these philosophic substitutes for theories relating to data, for the most simple reason that they not merely lack finesse in adroitly handling the data for an explanation, they would NEVER BE THOUGHT OF, to use Gould's masterpiece of phrasing. Further one should indeed go: they are the OPPOSITE of apt theories for the evidence. They are philosophically propelled like warships against the tide of evidence. There mission is not scientific AT ALL!

Hence all these outrages are justified. They ALL hit gradualism. Various as are the suggestions for 'resolution' in reform and change of theory, NONE has been acceptable to all, for the very good reason that NONE is really based on fact and indications and known laws or logic any more than the original! With ONE exception: that of W.R. Thompson, who justly and clearly adduces the fields of evidence and those them all utterly devastated by the alien theory superimposed on them, whereas one, which is neither new nor at all difficult, creationism merely IS VERIFIED; and in THIS, it is WHOLLY UNIQUE.

By no means, therefore, let us supinely , or indeed in any other way, accept the concept that the Cambrian excursion is no longer on the tourist guide list for travellers to these realms, in Christian Apologetics. It is as devastating as ever; and Gould's desire to distance himself from its clear cut impact, with an immersion in detail is just what he said it was at the outset in WONDERFUL LIFE, an alternative to addressing the real issue of HOW did it happen. In the end he seems to return rather shame-facedly, or at least almost surreptitiously, with some reference to some particular corpus of characteristics found, like so very many others, in an interesting combination of the same. Novelty is almost the name of the game. Its sheer profusion SCIENTIFICALLY ADDRESSED in terms of known phenomena, known laws and causal stringency REQUIRES innovative capacity correlative, and that is FAR more, and not at all less, than that of any man, or indeed, than that of the ENTIRE human race for SEVERAL generations, working in the growing tip of its super-abundant research!
 
 

1

b) The CONFORMITY CONCEPT

The Grotesqueries of Unreason, and
Drying out from the Drugs Drunk
at that
Blind DATE,
from the Cup of Continuity...

or

CONQUERING THE EARTH WITHOUT GUNS - IN ORDER TO LOSE IT

OVERVIEW concerning TIME, RATES, SPATES, DATES
and the APPROPRIATE CHRISTIAN APOLOGETIC APPROACH


At the heart of the discordant deviations from reality inherent in the reconstruction of time

·       by what after all, is geologically not least a vast array of sedimentary rock with all the earmarks of catastrophe, violence and tumult, covering much of the globe,

·       with the presumption of unobserved changes in ludicrous extensions of time which would even have fossil DNA kept contrary to reality, for millions of years past its due date:

·       there is a simple assumption.

·       It is this:

All things go on as they have since the foundation of the world... from the "beginning of creation" as we saw in  Benevolent Brightness or Brothy Bane 74, pp. 103ff., from II Peter 3:3-4. Indeed, the very term 'creation' as there noted, is modishly used of what is not creation but mere permutation and combination,

The unthinkable does the unverbalisable with what is not there.
It is quite a roar, as of a drunken party, uproarious, hilarious and irreverent, irrational, inveterate.

 Even though a start of what is here, is inherent in limited supplies and rates of usage, it is normally deemed, nowadays, not nice to think of it in any real way, since this is disruptive of continuity, conformity to the present, peace of mind and power over all things. It deals a death blow to the delusive desire to manage without ... interruption, interference or direction from the Maker. It is therefore psychologically mandatory, spiritually compulsive and socially necessary to get rid of God and replace Him with various fictions, depending on the fiction and faction desired, all inadequate, none observably operational in the least degree, and to fall on one's knees and start building.

It was the same at Babel (Genesis 11). The results linger. The more recent results are not fond of departing, in their immoral mayhem, irrational destruction of youth by armour piercing propaganda, delivered with the baby's milk, and political props, which normally result in massive murder, as in Communism, Survival-of-the-Fittestism, Nazism, One World-ism and other idiotic ideologies, shorn of evidence, bereft of reason, but mighty in blood.

Thus we proceed with the dogmas of nothing (nihilism is not different except in name) leading to something which is very apt, but rather witless in wisdom, which has by a superb strategy, decided to invest itself in us, though it is not there. So is the twenty first century race of man filled to the brim with madness, like a deprived youth suddenly winning Tatts, or a cow re-united with its calf. WE WILL NOT HAVE THIS MAN TO RULE OVER US, resounds with the new cathedral bells, as in terms of the new Anglican moves in the hierarchical eminences of its Australian settings, where Christ is fitted into the pantheon of possibilities, and God is smudged into unrecognisability, rather the way it was done to Jesus Christ. You recall ?

"Behold My servant shall deal prudently;
He shall be exalted and extolled and be very high.
Just as many were astonished at you,
So his visage was marred more than any man,
And His form more than the sons of men:
So shall He sprinkle many nations.
Kings shall shut their mouths at Him ..." (from Isaiah 52:13-15).

Many kings have been converted, but as in Psalm 2, there is an inveterate confederacy to "cast their bonds asunder" and its end is rule by a Majesty which having created, and provided for redemption with the utmost humility and attestation, institutes a judgment as realistic as creation, and as detailed as salvation (as in John 3:15-36).

So the century looks from its dismal doom of contemporary disaster, mounting to no very distant climax (as in Matthew 24:22), to its night life of the spirit. Dressed with nothing, built by nothing, it has far from nothing to say; and having pilloried Christ in contempt, it bypasses Him as if exempt.

This nihilistic crusade for nothing and its ghostly counterparts in oblivion: It may not seem that this is a very rational ground for life, but how often is reason consulted in these things! The mere fact that actuality requires reality to propound it in thought as in visible format, is of no consequence. Why be scientific ? It is more fun to talk in the mathematics of science and the jargon of the nursery, because it has that dashing, erratic air of importance. Again, it has nothing to do with reason; it is merely rationalised desire.

·       As Denton points out, DISCONTINUITY is what is found in Nature; CONTINUITY is what is found in the mind of man (That Magnificent Rock, Ch. 8, pp. 257ff.), in abstraction from the attestation of what in fact is there.

·        (That is, it is a frequent product of the poseurs of this world, the philosophers and their Mars Hill - Acts 17 - ponderers, for whom every new thing ALONE is desirable. Some even try to dignify their delinquency from reason by styling their new thing 'anti-philosophy' and duly arguing for it by reason, while in breach of it.)

·       Facts are fictions in this realm, where the impossible is the only coin of value. Nothing must produce something, or nothing in particular anyway, and above all, nothing adequate. THIS is the necessary conscript for creation. Then for nothing of reason, and from nothing of reason, it must diversify and create itself in the most wonderful of ways. It is, as Shakespeare penetratingly put it in an allied area of human life, much ado about nothing.

The something however remains. The much ado about nothing has nothing to do with it.

As to the date of its formulation, the exact date of the creation of the material realm from the immaterial, the visible from the invisible (after the manner of poetry and all vast conceptions), that is unknowable, for it is lost in the form of God, for whom OUR serial, event by event limitations of 'time' are a mere invention (Romans 8:38-39). It is meaningless in the best sense, since it assumes what is not so, and then asks questions of what it would be if it were so. It is all a question of when God invented creation-style time. Creation-style time is a result, not a cause, of that. It does not trace its origins any more than does a baby, but rather less, since its beginning is absolute.

As to the events of its formation, this universe, when matter poured forth from the cauldron of creation in the will of God, instituting its domain and thrusting it into being: they are found in inference and in the Bible, as logically demonstrated to be the word of the God of truth (SMR Chs. 1-3,10). As to the scientific formulations which are justly to be made concerning the evidence, these are teased out in That Magnificent Rock Ch.1, in just and precise format.

As to the dates of these initiating events, they are scientifically not obtainable. Many essentially concordant data imply a short history of the earth (cf. Professor E. H. Andrews, God, Science and Evolution pp. 115ff., Dr John Morris, Scientific Creationism pp. 149ff., Dr Harold Slusher as in SMR pp. 243ff.), and no known method can harmonise these with vast ages. These things are dealt with in some detail in places which would be wise to use as preliminary reading in this case. They are: SMR pp.159-179,  235ff., 246-250, That Magnificent Rock Ch. 7E. , and perhaps Spiritual Refreshings in the Digital Millenium Ch. 13. Methods do not exist for their conquest. The ONLY way is to make assumptions and see what happens.

What happens is not too good. As Snelling points out in Creation, Technical Journal, Vol. Nine, Part 1, in considerable detail, many of the results even of the isochron methods of dating are meaningless.


Professor E.H. Andrews (op.cit. p. 122) likewise indicates after review of discordant dating results liberally attested, from radio-isochron methods: "All the examples cited above, where ages were obtained exceeding the supposed age of the earth, were deduced from Rb-Sr isochrons and it appears that isochrons are just as likely to give geologically meaningnless ages as are straightforward calculations."


By their fruits you shall know them!

They do not accord with confirmatory events, verificatory happenings. They appear like will-o'-the-wisp happenings, elusive, illusory. As the distinguished Professor E.H. Andrews similarly insists, they do not find confirmation in uniformity of result, or result agreeable to confirmatory considerations. Snelling even goes further and brings up dating horrors of such magnitude that one wonders almost if one is seeing Gilbert and Sullivan in HMS Pinafore, where not the British establishment of that day, but the Evolutionary Establishment of this one, is being pilloried! Events within LIVING MEMORY get dates of billions of years. Time has very little meaning in the wake of such expansiveness: dreams appear as realities, and realities as dreams; pantomime rules and drama displaced discipline.

Moreover, the appearance of these dating resultants, from the diverse but philosophically concordant assumptions, is so antagonistic to unity, as in the trunk of a tree from which the branches sprout, that it rather resembles an uprooted tree, set on its head. This is essentially the parallel image given in Grand Canyon, Monument to Catastrophe pp. 148-149. Instead, it is noted there of apparent entry of species of life: instead of a family tree of diversifying creatures, coming from a basal stock which transforms itself into major diversity, as is philosophically postulated, the actual evidence is the opposite. It is of the branches starting, and the trunk gradually growing. "It would seem the 'family tree' of life gets wider toward the base!" It would seem that this obsessive philosophy creates a prodigy of fun, like Comic Home Videos aired on national TV; but in this case, fun is not the aim!

·       Again, from Grand Canyon, we read -  "The pattern of geological succession predicted by evolution is from bottom to top: species to genera; genera to families; families to orders; orders to classes; classes to phyla.

·       "The dominant pattern of geological succession, as evidenced by the fossils, especially those of Grand Canyon, is in contradiction to evolutionary theory.  Disparity precedes diversity! The initial appearance of virtually all phyla occurs with very low species diversity."

·       "Scientists are beginning to recognise that the order of appearances is backwards... It appears that the living world is in a state of decay, rather than in a metamorphosis of evolutionary progression. As a result animals have become, and continue to become extinct."

In other words, the idea of the theory was for little things (whether fussed up slowly or miraculously created by 'nature') to grow in bulk and form, until total systems were devised, and then diversified. You would get the main structures in due course, after the little fiddlings, whether bigger or smaller in dimension; the new species would cluster into families and so in, IN DUE COURSE.

Those larger segmentations would come later, following much fussing about, or fishing about,  and after biological efforts made by what, of course, was not there to make it, but still made, for so the theory says. In fact, however, and in view of such logic, not surprisingly, you get the main structures (on the geological dating theory in vogue) evidentially at once, and the little fiddlings follow with them. It then all decreases in disparity as Gould so vigorously points out (cf. SMR p. 234), in terms of his 'decimation' which brings the initial prodigies of brilliance of design disparity, into happy contrast with the later declines and decreases. Professor Giertych, Head of the Genetics Department of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Kornik, stresses just this point.

It is then striking that the error of evolutionary theory (both Gould's and Darwinian, as Austin's work points out - op.cit.) relative to fossil reality in its mode of apparent occurrence, in REVERSING the entry scenario of new life forms, resembles so closely the DATING FIASCO, which likewise reverses the proper  expectation for any sound theory, in this area of chronology. It would be expected that the many concordant dates, mathematically determined from data,  would point back to an initial unity, harmoniously indicative of actual, decoded events. In fact, however, the many datings from our one present time result in many discordant and branching oddities and sometimes seeming idiocies of clangour and clash, for beginnings. The branches so determined in vacuo, appear to spread out for the beginning, while  the only root that is one remains ... the present, which not being subject to naturalistic manipulation, is indeed ... one! It is essentially a philosophy in reverse, whether in its biota, or chronological conception, and this turning of things upon their head is indeed to give head to that racy filly, mankind; but alas, it is not all so placed, and the generations to come are drafted to pay for their pleasure, as are all who sideswipe and act to invert truth must find, except they find mercy where it IS to be found.

Generation to come ? Indeed, this one is not doing too badly in that domain; and the very potential for that which remains is already a stress setting for many! They fear what they see, envisage as in process of coming, fraught with peril. If that, then,  is the thought, what then is the reality, when it comes! Unlike evolving self-generated marvels of myriad concepts unified into action, which do NOT come, cannot be COAXED to come, but must recede into the creative canyons of the past, THIS THING WILL COME. It always has come, always does, and the word of God is NEVER falsified. What it says, is what happens with the same prolific constancy, indeed consistency, with which what evolutionary naturalism and its implications, fail to appear. But let us proceed to further illustration of the shame of sham. Alas as for so many in so much, sham is not the name by which it goes, even in the minds of many of those caught in its sphere of influence.

We noted above Professor Andrews' stricture of the abysmal performance so readily found in dating by presumption. The gifted geologist, Dr Steven Austin in his GRAND CANYON: Monument to Disaster goes better. He points out that some of the materials  taken for test, are dated as older (6 billion years) than the assumption-girt idea that the material universe is around 4 billion years old! (p. 128).  This is perhaps the ultimate in scientific El Greco elongation, where fire meets fire, and imagination runs dissatisfied away, from its own mother! If necessity were the mother of invention, the 'necessity' to avoid the times and orders of the creation would seem here indicated; and as with many other personal relations, the last thing that may enter the minds of some, is that they have 'family' problems. In this case, however, it is the families of mankind, derivatives from God, but no part of Him, which in their created protrusions, seek ? or act as if to invest the very heavens by making them descend, to a more manipulable level.

But what! We find also from Austin's very detailed, and heuristic Grand Canyon presentation, this:

What a further upside down cake is this!

Indeed, the careful and heavily field-backed presentation, in a select screening of hypotheses on the Grand Canyon, that grand spectacular of action, delivers the cohesive conclusion that vast lakes in a catastrophic situation managed the erosion, which sits still now in the form of the Canyon, leaving the relicts and providing the scenes frequently comparable with other such catastrophes that have been documented - except in scale.

More generally, as we have seen, where catastrophe and creation, or vast upheavals and changes are in view, the very concept of deploying the smooth assumptions of simple extrapolation backwards (cf. A Spiritual Potpourri Chs. 1-3), easy-going assurances that all things have gone on as now, is as precipitous as the walls of the rocks of many of the canyons, and as eroded as they by the force of reality. It is rather like imagining you are sitting down to a well-prepared lunch, when you are in the midst of a tangled litter of remains of those who have already eaten. Not merely the processes of devastation, but the provisions of what could BE devastated, in the creation of the world, these are the necessities to be faced; and not with such means as these of nihilism, naturalism and gradualism either should, or logically and experimentally, CAN these be met.

a) meaningless

b) irrational

c) discordant with results from other methods as Austin, Snelling and Andrews point out, even to the point that numbers of specialists in the field are cited as being satisfied that the only safe dating method is that of fossil bent thoughts (which are based on dating assumptions for their stratification in time),
we would not be attracted to them.


When the ASSUMPTIONS THEMSELVES are grounded on concepts of continuity, whereas nature provides discontinuity and continuity of discontinuity as its manifest thrust and genius, then we would be somewhat repelled.

When however the ASSUMPTIONS are UNIFORMITARIAN in concept, and the very issue is the nature of things early (cf. Professor Harold Slusher, Critique of Radiometric Dating pp. 22-23, Dr John Morris, The Genesis Flood pp. 354ff.); when indeed the whole question is where did they come from, then this is simple arguing in a circle. If it does not make your head go round, then regrettably, and indeed in some ways poignantly, it appears you are dizzy. Circular argument NEEDS to be detected, and if it is not, you are deluded. If this is your condition,  it is not entirely your own fault; for culture and society and establishment are in a huge propaganda putsch to subdue your intellect; and even then, pitifully, many of these are similarly subdued by other and earlier thrusts, which, in the end have only the Prince of this world for its base, and as to him, as Christ noted, he is a liar and a murderer (John 8:44ff., 14:30).

Rich you say ? Murderer. Liar, to be sure, but murderer ? Do you then not realise the full EXTENT of Hitler enslavement to the concept of organic evolution, survival of the fittest, the master race to be evolution's masterpiece, and the god of forces ? Or Communism's worship at the same shrine of forces moving to their sure-footed prey ? Or the whole concept of SURVIVAL as God being planted in the minds of the young who, likewise, are shown the wonders of self-esteem, self-advancement, self-regard, self-fulfilment ? The essence of the philosophy of Nietzsche (who of course went literally mad), tastable in his Thus Spake Zarathrusta,  is very much dominant today, and the concept of force, even in sport, power as the plenitude of admiration, continues way past any thought of law and order, grace and beauty, nobility and the admirable.

Some dating accordingly simply makes the assumption that we RULE OUT the creation, or any of its COMPONENTS in our thinking, in working out age. That is rather like saying,

I do not know where this youth has come from, he is obviously a high-tech production; but one thing we can rule out when thinking about the way he has arrived, is any concept of a beginning. That is ridiculous. He just grew out of ... well nothing in the beginning, and oh! yes, of course there wasn't one.


IF we are right, then we are right, comes to be the logical status of this mode of 'dating'. It has no scientific validity at all. Its gruesome horrors of discordant results from different such methods, irrational results and meaningless ones, are not at all surprising. It must be so; and it is; and that, it is verification of the analysis and the error. What happens thus, is just the fuss one would expect to happen when means so arbitrary and irrational are its bases. It is not the technical procedures, fundamentally which are awry, but the principles they are set, like cruise control, to maintain!

ASSUME that THIS was the BEGINNING amount of this or that radio-active material, and these were the BEGINNING RATIOS, and then ? Why not assume the date direct ? It is all the negativing of logic,  and the mere fulfilment of philosophical postulates on which no science can be built. It is simply the weary and wearisome religion of irrational negativity (see Repent or Perish Ch. 7), having a status with 'science', and in this case, necessarily, science not properly so-called
(I Timothy 6:20 cf. II Peter 3:4-7).

Ah! but, some say, you mistake. Our isochron method of dating is wonderful, truly marvellous.
Why we simply take various amounts of daughter product of radioactive action (like argon) and mother material (like potassium) and we find that there is some degree of relationship of these amounts, so that they mirror a decline from state A to state B, with production of gas. The bigger the amount, the more the gas. We can even graph some of it, and show that they point back to an initial state in which the gas at the start and the mother amount, are both known. From there we simply work down the line to the present, and we know without guessing at all. Steve Austin's work (op.cit.) presents the procedure in mathematical detail, just as it presents, as did Professor Slusher of Texas University, other grounds for the occurrence of such correlations (Austin, op.cit. pp. 127-128 cf. SMR p. 239).

ASSUMING that

·       1) the rate of decay is known, is constant, is not violated, manipulated, transmuted in any way by any force, astral, cosmic, chemical or physical (multiply violated cf. Morris, The Genesis Flood, pp. 346-355, Slusher op.cit. pp. 18ff., SMR 78 - including the implied variation of rate in terms of pleochroic haloes made by particles emitted in certain rock formations, radioactively, and the implications of Tom Barnes's finding on magnetic field decrease over time, and its rate)

·       2) the initial conditions are known in all necessary ratios (as seen Andrews, op. cit. p. 122, violated cf. Morris, The Genesis Flood pp. 366ff., Slusher op. cit., p. 22, 31ff., SMR pp. 169-171)

·       3) the initial dispersion of the argon is uniform (unknown)

·       4) there is no addition or subtraction of mother or daughter material in the (billions ? of ) years from the 'beginning' (exceedingly improbable over such venues and conditions, with such variabilities of permeability and diffusion, leaching and transmigration - cf. Andrews op. cit. pp. 118ff.)

·       5) no unknown processes or procedures intervened or were initially operative (unknown)

·       6) the rock is one unit, and not a composite from different sources (may appear so when in fact there have been various interactions)

·       7) we have a closed system (a brilliant imagination - Andrews op.cit. pp. 120-122, Austin, Ed. op.cit., Ch.6, Slusher pp. 22ff.)

·       8) energic impulses or procedures (p. 6, Creation Technical Journal, Vol. 9, Part 1, 1995, were not active at any stage of which we have no knowledge, either at the start or in the (billions of unchartered years of ) time in-between... (an assumption shocking to the meekness of science),

·       9) the ratios of relevant materials taken from the field are in fact derivative from radioactivity in toto! not from other sources (contra, Austin op.cit. pp. 127ff., Slusher, op.cit. pp. 33-34):

we can then arrive at a date, which has only the irrational, meaningless and discordant problems to face!

If we say, But of course there have to be errors! yet we are not really in the arena of "the limits of normal procedural error", such as normally lead to approximation with the + and - symbol to indicate the limits of accuracy. We are dealing with a batch of unknowns not dissimilar to this imaginary pep talk:

"I am sure that your bank account will swell by something of the order of magnitude of 50% in 50 years, says the Bank Manager, on the basis of the market activities of the last 41/2 years, the existing commercial law structure, the inflationary movements and their known and current dynamics, the Bank rate internationally in its relationship to Tokyo, Washington and Europe, the trade cycle and international wars which may break out!"

 

THANKS! you say. This is marvellous! OR do you smile inwardly at the excessively pompous pronouncement of figures obviously ludicrous even to contemplate in such a series of unknowns, dependent on considerations beyond the highest discernment, immersed in a sea of troubles which make mathematics a mere henchman, reflecting principles to which it does not relate, but merely quantifies if they occur!

This is not a matter of errors! It is a matter of a multitude of forces and realities of unknown kind, whether in principle or in practice, piling up like snow in a blasting storm, along the drive-way.
Will we be able to drive out ? It all depends on ...

When again, we now find that

·       the velocity of light is PRECISELY what depends on the STATUS QUO (cf. p. 6, Creation Technical Journal, Vol. 9, Part 1, 1995,Barbs, Arrows and Balms 15), and

·       the status quo is precisely the question in relation to the origin of things; that

·       neutrino impact on atoms can alter their rate of decay (Morris, Scientific Creationism pp. 142ff.), and precisely such impacts are of the very fabric of commencement, even now in the maintenance phase of the universe being variable, and that

·       rates of decay can indeed vary with (even currently observable) pressures and environmental forces (Creation, Technical Journal Volume 14, No. 1, 2000, pp. 4ff. - Dr Tas Walker), then the circularity of the reasoning, the pomposity of the pronouncements and the discord of the results are all of one piece. Presumption has begotten irrationality, and irrationality has begotten discord and discord has begotten expensive ignorance.

Certainly nearer events have more opportunity to relate accurately to assumptions which are well within current menus of events; but even then, the simple fact that there is not yet even an equilibrium as between C12 and C14 (SMR p. 164, 238, Scientific Studies in Special Creation, article on radiometric dating, by Melvin Cook, pp. 79ff.) - this in itself strongly suggesting other things equal, 10,000 years as the maximal age - in agreement with another maximum index, the magnetic SMR p. 171), and the other simple fact that this C02 disequilibrium was DISREGARDED in many applications of the carbon dating method, is warning enough of the philosophic character of ignorance, inventing too much with the mind, too little with the observations for which science is properly, but not always actually, justly famous.

Indeed, the fact that Dr Cook can make an adjustment through reasonings based on the divergence between atmospheric nitrogen and that in compounds, relative to the N14/N15 ratio, such that it "effectively wipes out all geological time", (SMR p. 236) when that factor is presented to the chronological equations, speaks more than enough. The factor concerns cosmic ray penetration and alteration of nuclei, and such causes, whether affected by magnetic or atmospheric, solar or diluvial (and hence atmospheric and associated) causes, or indeed supernova explosions, provide as Morris in no small part cites (Scientific Creationism pp. 142-143 and  The Genesis Flood pp. 352-3.). Such is the magnification, stressed by Professor Andrews, inherent in the nature of the equations, that results of millions of years is a natural correlative of their use, at all (God, Science and Evolution, p. 119). Hence these absurdities - billions, thousands, occur as freely as the presumption of the assumptions would suggest in theory, in practice also! (Cf. Let there be Light, Barbs, Arrows and Balms 15).

As inchoate as are the dreams in the air of the imagination, in principle, so when it comes to practice, and if possible the more obviously, there is exposed the more rampancy of assumptions made concerning what is frankly in various significant aspects, quite unknown, subject to intrusions not witnessed, prone to occur in the dimensions of past events, let alone in the immediate succession of events, from the institution of matter itself. In expanding rims of the vortex, force on force, the dragging swirl of suggestion has replaced the contrite concepts of patient science.
The results are as docile as a bull on speed drugs.
 

Thus Morris in Scientific Creationism cites (p. 143), a Russian case of uranium ages of over one billion years being accorded to known materials of living memory production.

Snelling has by his own research in co-operation with separate laboratories, shown similarly that materials taken from a new New South Wales site, assigned a fossil date of some 250 myrs, was found by radio carbon methods, to be around 34,000 years (That Magnificent Rock, Ch. 7, Section E, End-note 2 cf. ). Both methods being so ill-founded in objectivity, and so rich in the subjectivity of preferred assumptions, their discordance with one another is scarcely surprising, but the richness of such discord as attested by Andrews, Snelling and Morris in detail, is of the normal scientific anti-verification dimension. As soon as the systematic enters into things, beyond odd casual errors, the assumptions are presumptions, one or all, and fallen.  Sources of living memory production, is scaled into hundreds of thousands of years of age, by radiometric method, even when carefully checked (see Let there be Light, in Barbs, Arrows and Balms 15).

As noted in That Magnificent Rock, Ch. 7 E, able and original geologist, Dr Andrew Snelling, refers to Mt Ngauruhoe as New Zealand's newest volcano - and one of the most active. The case is somewhat scenic and of use in exemplifying further the much attested point of dilemmas, confusion and inordinate errors based on fanciful assumptions, not subjected to the rigours of reality, as should occur in science.

Rising to some 7500 feet, the volcano noted erupted in 1948, with a lava flow proceeding thereafter down the north-western slopes, in 1949. About 20 million cubic feet was the estimated volume of lava. In 1954 an eruption hurling blocks with ash, occurred with some 8 million cubic metres of lava. Further activity occurred in 1974, with an ash column soaring into the atmosphere. Blocks of some 1000 tons were hurled hundreds of metres. Then in 1975, a huge violence occurred, with blocks up to 100 ft across catapulted almost 2 miles.

11 samples were collected from the five recent and conspicuous lava flows during field work in
1996 - from the flows of 1954, 1975 and 1954. All with maps were clearly identified. Various
carefully checked samples were sent to an eminent laboratory for dating. The dates for the age of
the ROCKS were of the order of millions of years. The laboratory manager re-checked his
equipment and tested again.  The results were similar.

Since the rocks are KNOWN to be of the order of 50 years old, the apparent 'age' is assumed to
have come from 'excess' argon, radiogenic inclusion, in the lava, before the rocks formed. This
sort of failure is "also known to occur in many other rocks, including both recent volcanics and
ancient crustal rocks," Snelling adds, giving references.

Here the INITIAL SITUATION assumptions are wrong, but confidently made (cf. SMR pp. .240ff),
just as the VARIABLE RATE can be merely a theory based on philosophical preference,
abstracting from the ages to the present, or to the ages from concepts of choice.

Similarly the lead factor for neutrino allowance, as devised by Cook, makes enormous inroads on time. Such things are OBVIOUSLY of the matrix of the matter, and while assumption is the answer to actuality, the reality of the result MUST be as ludicrous. What is NOT at all unknown is the rate question in much simpler situations which abound, such as noted in SMR pp. 235ff., 246-250, That Magnificent Rock Ch. 7E;  and these are not merely discordant with the results of our philosophic assumptions as noted above, but wholly diverse.

The comparative concordance of the rates noted (as in 1) in assumptions made, above) on the contrary is neither illusory nor irrational, but balanced work moving to minimal consequences of current rates, providing a time frame far more congenial to residual DNA still being found, despite its limited life span, and limited erosion on the surface of the earth in terms EVEN of current mild procedures and precedents (as distinct from an eroded an humbled earth surface, given time), non-equilibrium of C12 and C14 in the earth's atmosphere, the cooling rate of the earth's surface, the reformation rate of moon rocks, and such various matters as have been noted above, or in the references to other works on this site, above. This composure of comprehensive concord on the one hand, and this dissolute seeming diversity of self-contradictory and even irrational results found on the radiometric array of mere assumptions, begging the question in the process, leaves no option for the steely face of verificatory procedure. The earth is young or reason is odd! If reason were odd, we could not validly assert the earth to be young OR old. If we are to reason, THIS is the reasonable result. The earth is young, but presumption is not.

What then ? Dates ? Commencements ? If you know all the answers, then you can set out the elements in your mathematics, and these will reflect the accuracy of your knowledge. If, however, your ignorance of these things is the problem, mathematics will not because it cannot help you. It is the servant of knowledge, indicating what it implies. It cannot supply the knowledge, when its own derivation is one of the questions. It is necessary to subject one's thought not to the discipline of mathematical consequences of self-defeating assumptions, but to the unexotic and assessable, making for proper maxima. The area of 10,000 years is suggestive; realms far beyond it run into problems which have all the countenance of the insuperable. As with the expectation of aliens in space, life on Mars, missing links on earth, information increase in forthcoming generations and the like, however, these things are still taught, because it is the desire that it be so. Rationally, they are indefensible as a preferred option.

For more detail on dating see SMR  and That Magnificent Rock 7 as cited above,  with Let there be Light (Barbs, Arrows and Balms 15).
 
 
 

2

 BANGERS FOR BREAKFAST ? HOW BIG ?

Much the same could be said of the Big Bang. This ludicrous, simplistic, reductionist substitution of philosophy of fantasy for adventures in reality, is as zany and counter-evidential on manifest grounds ever being extended, as one could wish (see e.g. That Magnificent Rock Ch.7 E, End-Notes 2 and 3). Accordingly it produces a sense of outrage in various exponents. It is the sort of thing, in a more sanctified seeming FORM, that Descartes so simplistically produced from the mills of impractical thought long ago. It all happens so nicely because it HAS to, for reasons never made apparent.

Nevertheless, the concept of an attested BEGINNING is not at all the same thing as the weirdly irrational endeavour to make it create what follows minus necessary power. A baby too begins; THAT if attested at a hospital, says nothing about why it grows, the DNA and the devices of destiny implanted. It says even less about the institution of nascency in general, and of child-carriage as functions. If someone loosely connects things, as if proximity were causality, so be it. WE do not need to follow what is fraudulent and false, because some do; nor do we need to throw out the beginning as if it were unclean, because it is so abused so thoughtlessly by so many. What however IS it which is begun ? Let us see some of the absurdities which can accrue.

In this the emphasis of Gould, noted in this site (News 68), that the concept of PROGRESS is in some way needed in the mystic malady called organic evolution (he does not employ that designation for it, being a devotee), is relevant. It has been pointed out that it NEEDS to be relevant to get what we got; but on the philosophic basis used, it IS not relevant. It is just that it explodes on that basis like an atomic bomb. NOT ONLY, on the gradualistic basis, did the thing go up, it did it with a sort of exuberant, almost frolicsome innovative glee, pouring out designs and architecture with the freedom of genius expanded into an eternity of ability, compressed into a scope of time like that of an examinee waxing eloquent under pressure of time!

Not only was order invented; invention was invented! Not only was invention invented, its proliferation like mould in bread, was originated. The evidence, on that basis, was as eloquent as it COULD be. Einstein was still a junior clerk looking at what was happening, compared with this incredible-seeming lustre of PURE and UNDAUNTED, DYNAMIC and DEVASTATING BRILLIANCE. It made comparison ludicrous. It DID the thing, not merely TALKING about it. It was in practice, not still studying! The idea (as noted in News 68) that some WALL or any OTHER device which becomes a phrase or series of phrases which are mere imaginations, or words to reflect some MINOR component in the MAJESTIC whole REQUIRED and LOGICALLY REQUISITIONED for the RESULT (cf. SMR pp. , 1-50, 329-332H, A Spiritual Potpourri Ch. 4, pp. 33-86, Repent or Perish 7, Excursions 1, 2, 3)  - and part of this, is ourselves, of course: is merely phraseological creation, and like other fairy stories, it does not do in science.

All this is so. Yet the concept that THEREFORE we OUGHT not in Christian Apologetic Method REALLY to speak of this thing, is to yield too far. IF there is evidence CONSISTENT with - if not indeed diagnostic of - a vast and momentous beginning, THAT is FAR removed from the ludicrous self-invention phases of philosophy which want the FACT of a beginning to become a METHOD of automation of matter, to invent itself and then everything else besides. That it has no such powers is as clear as its inspection, and its behaviour and its history under all investigatory conditions which can isolate this.

THAT there appears evidence of a beginning, however, THIS is an ENTIRELY different thing. Is it in some way monistic to have a beginning of paper, when you are writing a book ?

A noise is not creation; and the use of it to mimic it is mere buffoonery. Nevertheless it MAY be indicative of the EVENT, without creating it! An explosion may indicate an air-liner crashing it. It does not build the thing. We do not need to palaver with the latter concept because we hear the former (if indeed, this be the testimony of the sound).
 
 
 

3

DEMONSTRATION!
    Yes, it is valid and it is not in collision with FAITH!

The same again, applies in the unhappy concept that Christian Apologetic Method should AVOID any thought of DEMONSTRATING the existence of the Almighty; and that in giving a 'reason for the faith', it should not speak with no uncertain sound, but should move like a drinks waiter amid the customers. Not so is the "casting down of imaginations" and "bringing every thought into captivity to Christ" of which the apostle Paul, who puts himself to us as an example (I Cor. 11:1, II Cor. 10:5ff. ).

The logical buffoonery of imagining that BECAUSE God may be DEMONSTRATED to be there, HE cannot be free, has been exposed in depth and in detail (That Magnificent Rock Ch.7, Part D), such a concept showing a failure to know the realm of predestination, like a year 7 science student speaking of quantum physics. You see, there is some need to know the field before you demonstrate things in it, at least in some measure of fidelity to its outline. The EVIDENCE and the CAUSAL requisites for it, are one thing. The WAY IN WHICH the all-sufficient basis comports Himself is not even relevant to that! What He is, He is; and the evidence for His existence does not pre-determine that as if the action of anyone powerful prove Him without liberty!

It has however been shown in the sense of Romans 1:17ff., what must be acknowledged rationally concerning His divine nature, in SMR Ch. 1, in terms of a necessity that He be free. Logic does not control what it attests; but it must attest what it finds.

Articulated logic, not sensationalistic bizarre grotesqueries of phrasing is the requisite, when reason is invoked, in giving a reason for something.

Indeed, more generally, reason as we have shown repeatedly from SMR on, has requirements for its validity (cf. SMR Ch. 3, That Magnificent Rock Ch. 5), which irrationality does not serve; so that those who wish to dispense with its kindly ministrations in their construction of a world view, are not able to argue, or even formulate thought, in terms of logical consistency.

The INVALIDATION of reason prevents argument; but its DUE USE is comportable with argument, and this we do. WHEN we so use it, THEN the VERIFICATION confirms the validity at the outset, when God is found; but when it is dismissed at the outset, then the invalidity suffers no rule of rationality, and gains nothing, as would be predictable, the attainments of modern philosophy in this regard, being  foreseeable as to results as they unhappily accrue.

Logic is invalidated when the world-view accepted does not accept its rule in the matrix of things.
It then becomes a subjective invention or empirical sequence without reality, or capacity to affirm what is the case. Kant is an example of such an approach, and he is utterly unable to avoid its self-invalidation (Predestination and Freewill, Appendix on Kant). There is far more for subjectivity to contend with, however, than is found in the  special features of his work. Let us pass from this case to a wider one.

In general, when the world view EXCLUDES absolute truth in this way, by having no possessor who is beyond the influence of time and tide, psychic and other limitations, and hence no way of KNOWING such a possessor in view of the imagined absence of the same, then the truth is DOUBLY EXCLUDED from such a person in such a procedure. It is excluded both as to method and as to result.

It is excluded in such a case,  once for the explicit irrationalism or deficiency of procedure - the method in exclusion of truth as a procedure,  or both; and once for the putative failure of a destination, even if it were rational. It is a two-edged and bizarre exercise in confusion, in such a case, nothing more.

In other words, knowledge of absolute truth is not necessary for awareness of the requirements of logical validity, and willingness to follow these; but if one REFUSES these, then one is excluded at the outset from rational argument. If one REJECTS by world-view, objective validity of logic (either directly or by implication, because of rupture of one's assumptions), and ANY possessor of absolute truth, then one excludes its being found, so that all one's verbiage is self-condemned in advance. It is slant, perspective, thought moving in a vanity of exclusion, self-imposed.

What then ? If one DOES NOT refuse them, however, then one is NOT excluded at the outset. One is being rational and logical. Whether this leads to absolute truth is to be seen, if it is found where reason directs; while the effectual self-destruction of the mind as an instrument of directed thought is the price if one declines so to act. If one does not so decline, then such thought can be valid logically, so that one is in perfect logical order. It is only when one so finds the Bible, which is shown to be  the only rationally possible and likewise necessary word of God written to this race, that absolute truth is opened as such (SMR Ch.1,3,10). Thus it is FOUND, and logic is FOLLOWED. It - and indeed the Saviour of whom it speaks - may be found directly by faith; but we are considering logical validity in Christian Apologetics, not conversion per se. The response to the Biblical message is not the same thing as its existence and status.

What however of the alternate mode, the world-view a priori rejection dilemma ?

Here logic is NOT followed, by subjectivistic dismissal in a chosen system, or other systematic subjectivisation; or reality is necessarily excluded in any consequence (by a sort of intellectual fiat), or both: so that whatever is found (and nothing is ever found on that basis, as the history and profound disagreements of secular philosophy with stylish eloquence confirms), is an irrationality to commence with, irrelevant to argumentation, and a non-existent object to end with, by a priori legislation of the mind. The PROCEDURE likewise, in absence of objective truth, is rationally defective, aspiring BY what it by definition lacks, to find what it needs, which by definition in this case and scenario, CANNOT be found, in any case, since it is not there!

Absolute truth, then, and logical validity should not be confused; but in the absence, express or implied,  of the latter, reason and argument fold. In the presumed absence of the former, they are excluded from viable results at the outset. It is like travelling along two precipices, one on one's right, and one on one's left, and insisting on walking ONLY where the edge crumbles, and ONLY where it CANNOT stand. It would be better not to walk at all, than to do this.

When however we follow reason, we have studied the results many times.

What we in fact find, is just what the Bible indicates in Romans 1:17ff. is to be found: absolute truth. In fact, this is found only because it is a self-revelation, psychic distance work on the Almighty and infinite God, being excluded as pompous presumption! It is not however any part of presumption to seek the truth with the reason given, and finding it, to acclaim it; and finding it on all sides verified, in perfect and consistent validity, to attest this. It IS humbling; but it is also VALID, and EXCLUSIVELY SO! (cf. SMR pp. 100-101, 316Aff., Barbs, Arrows and Balms 6, 7, 29).
For absolute truth to speak is scarcely surprising, and certainly nothing invalid; for its speech, independently to verify what logic entailed, is surpassingly magnificent for any pursuit.

If as is the case demonstrated in SMR,  in addition it is demonstrable that speech, revelation,  was called for in such a world as this with such a one as was MINIMALLY attested, then that is a still further attestation of truth, validation and verification, in a cumulative fashion. That it is found with all the indicia of divine majesty, as minimally and independently shown, is a third dimension of its attestation.

When we realise that the ONLY way to avoid this SOLE viable reality, for thought, and this SOLE attested reality for evidence, is to un-create our intellects, so that they are assumed invalid, and so uncreate speech, and uncreate argument, since it too would be the same: then it is clear. As existent functional beings, we go to God, the God of the Bible, or - if you like, go to hell. However, really, that is the work of the TRUTH to declare. In reality, all we would have shown was this, that such persons would be self-consigned to inoperative, dysfunctionality, whilst still functioning, and so would be liars in essence. Their destiny, as one would expect, is not to be found where truth lies (Mark 9). That is what the divine revelation attests.

What then has reason shown ? That GOD IS, that HE HAS SPOKEN, and that HE IS ALMIGHTY; and WHERE AND WHAT HE SPOKE DEFINITIVELY TO THE HUMAN RACE. The task is one of reason; and as a task of reason, it is a demonstration. Retrospective attestation of objective logical validity is obtained; and prospective willingness for this is attained, by procedure is in total harmony with this in the overall enterprise.

Thus, there is simply no impasse, no problem, no conflict; whereas all other approaches are lost either 1) in the preliminary assumptions or 2) in the failure competitively to conform to minimal evidential necessities of divine speech. As noted, in the latter respect,  there are only 3 contestants (SMR Chs. 1,10), and the other two are not evidentially relevant. Indeed, the Bible is so grand in its superabundant fulfilments of all that might be expected, that its certainty is like all reality, when enough is known in the end:  without parallel or contest. It is like comparing an ardent lover with an emotional Philistine; or a research scientist with a dead person (e.g. SMR Chs. 2,5,6,8,9,10).

Again, some may feel that one SHOULD not demonstrate that the Bible is true, since that pre-empts faith! Does it ?

Does deadness in trespasses and in sins in some self-contradictory way enable the mind to become alive to reality (Ephesians 2) ? And does it in a fashion in flat contradiction of the Bible, allow the natural and unconverted mind to CEASE to be alienated from the life of God, while still in the flesh ? (Ephesians 4:17ff.; Romans 8:1-12) ? And while it is at it, does it MAKE the NATURAL man in some way that collides with the Bible, NOT find these spiritual things to be foolishness (I Cor. 2:14) ?

This the he Bible does not teach us. This transformation is not wrought by logic working on a free and untainted will, sovereign of its affairs and in control of its rational and spiritual destiny. It is wrought by the Spirit of God; and as for us who act in this field for the Lord (I Peter 3:21), we are ploughers of soil; it is the seed which is needed, and the divine planter, for the change.

We do not cease to furrow our rows, because the seed of the word of God itself, must be sown; and if in THIS method, which has in this site been employed, that divine  seed MUST (by logical sequence) be SOWN, incidentally to the demonstration, that is an advantage. It is the Lord Himself who proceeds in His own irresistible way to find His Pauls and His Peters, His Johns and all; and as He said, "Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven" - Matthew 16:17. Again, Matthew 11:27 prevents any such concept being imported into the Bible:

"All things have been delivered to Me by My Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father. Nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and he to whom the Son wills to reveal Him."

The Authorised Version translation does not make that last point clear: it is statedly in this text, an act of WILL on the part of the Son so to reveal (as shown in the New King James Version, and indisputable in the Greek).  An act of WILL on the part of the SON is not an act of reason on the part of some disciple or other!

Why then do we present reason for the faith, casting down imaginations and bringing thoughts into captivity to Christ, as per Paul's noted example ?

It is just a matter of obedience. In this vast battle for the souls of men, there are requirements and standing orders. One does not philosophise away the word of God; one simply does what one is told. It is also delightful so to do, for the casting down of imaginations being required, has a certain therapeutic effect available on the one hand, a rescuing from confusion, while on the other, a staining of the pride of all glory (Isaiah 23:9 cf. I Corinthians 1:25-31), a salutary preliminary to the realisation of the glory of the Lord.

This glory, it is not in two places, sited autonomous man on the one hand,  and in the Saviour on the other; and these form no disparate partnership as Saviour. HE ALONE is that, and He is able to keep what is committed to Him against that day, working in us who are His, both to will and to do. In fact: THERE IS NO OTHER NAME GIVEN TO MAN - and that UNDER HEAVEN - BY WHICH WE MUST BE SAVED.

Neither pope nor philosophy, pedant nor pundit, guru nor grit, good works nor kindly disposition are that name, or any part of it. It is HIS! HE, He is God and He is sinless (John 8:58, Hebrews 7:25-26, 10:10,14, 6:19-20, 9:12-15).

Many things are good, results of salvation (Ephesians 2:10, Titus 3:1-7, with v.8 in its place). They do not, however, save, institute adoption by the Lord, gather to Him, nor gain His pardon, place and inheritance (Ephesians 1:11). It is donation or exclusion (Romans 6:23, 5:15, 3:23ff.). There are simply no other options. The thing given is as far beyond ANY part of flesh, as the heavens above the earth; and as to that, that is a mere beginning. They are far beyond any space to comport or receive: they are as far apart as God and man (cf. Isaiah 51:6).

The realities of the love of God and the authority, and shown in some detail from the Bible in areas such as Predestination and Freewill, SMR Appendix B, and The Kingdom of Heaven ... Ch.4. It is the love which would yield His only begotten Son to shield sinners who come to Him, as Saviour and Lord, for SO did He love the world (John 3:16, I John 2:1-2, 4:7-11).
 
 
 

*2

PASSING FROM VIEWS TO NEWS

From such beginnings as this, and noted in *1 above, an end is not surprising: "But how could a division of the organic world into discrete entities be justified by an evolutionary theory that proclaimed ceaseless change as the fundamental fact of nature ?" - asks Gould, in
A quahog is a quahog, Natural History, vol. LXXXVIII (7), August-September 1979, p. 18.

The 'new' view which is rationally emerging is the one which preceded this long term and highly variable, because undisciplined, concept of organic evolutionism, which from the first, millenia ago, has been a prodigal son away from the father's house of the facts (cf. SMR pp. 1026ff., 1031C, 422Eff.) . It is that of Biblical creationism, because quite simply, empirically NOTHING is even close to its prodigious accuracy of validation and confirmation. The facts of fixity are not the offspring of disorder, far less of nothing. (For irrational efforts, see for example SMR pp. 226ff., 419ff., 422Eff. and cf. S1ff.. Irrationalism in science, philosophy and religion always plays a big role, because reason is unseducible; it is only words which can be manoeuvred. In the mind of fallen man, EFFORTS at reasoning are a SPECIAL territory of logical calamity; but that is an entirely different consideration.)

First the source sufficient must be found, then the modus operandi found, and if it is not lying around from some other work of intelligent design, it must be MADE, whether at the chemical, physical, biological or personal level - and all the ingredients of these various domains likewise (cf. Repent or Perish 7, Excursions 1, 2); and what is found in matter and in life IS a modus operandi, or rather a plethora of the same. The 'problem' for those who like no gears, is this:  that in practice biological aspects of life are geared to variation WITHIN kind, with NO provision found or seen otherwise. This gearing is highly visible, technically expert, marvellously contrived and well protected. The other one, that nothing becomes something or other somehow or other, despite all logic, and once it is something or other, in some way or other it makes laws of stringent accuracy and marvellous synthetic inter-relation: this is invisible to thought, eye and history. It is indeed a 'problem' to invent it. When it is invented (by imagination in man), it is philosophy, and is an alternative to nature. Of course it does not work, since reality is contrary to it. That is precisely why it is never seen.

Anyone, however,  who would like to make this happen would have a following in science. Excuses for not making a different universe with different modes, do not constitute a law-breaking, logic annulling ground for the assertion that this is the way it goes. Lacking capacity, it simply does not show that this is the way it would go. Lacking logic, the plan has only one cry to make: excuses. But when was science founded on excuses, when blind to action, law and logic!

This problem, then, it is so only for those who want to invent what


a) is not found,
b) is not seen in any way, in principle, to be provided for
c) contradicts laws of science and
d) invents invention as though it were nothing, and tosses it around as though the means for doing so need not exist.

In such a way, a war could easily be won, for troops could be IMAGINED to be in one place, when most clearly they were in another - but their transport happily just 'arises'; and weapons which were after all, relatively slight advances on some of the hardware available, certainly with different designs but with MUCH in common, could come like fluting music direct from the silent concourses of the imagination into the rowdy world of fact.

Wars however are not so won, but rather lost in this way; for the nature of reality is one of the things with which it is necessary to deal. Its sources and resources require the workability, practicability and functional sufficiency of the objects, which an imagination, intelligence and empirical power and flair can demonstrate by work.

The idea that work is merely work, when that is merely  ONE facet of its activities in man, in creation, in production of whatever it is that is produced; when in fact,  OTHER facets are involved in ANY ONE of the SPECIAL effects which may be desired, or require accounting: this is an example of the false, reductionist fantasies in which some physicists or biologists, for example, may feel free to engage. Work however needs as does a surgeon, the additions of the relevant skills to think, to create, to plan, to co-ordinate, to implement, or it is mere noise and bravado. Those are not the assignable ingredients of success in the production of anything, but noise and bravado, and their derelict devices.

While it is indeed true that much noise and bravado are to be seen in this sphere, these are not the whole production of man! When they begin to approximate a description of his activities at any one time, the results are not found to be progressive in character!

Character ? Chevrolet factories have a variety, but the products are characteristically Chevs. The automobiles of that company, its lines have a variety, but they are divisions. Ford would not be deemed to have  merged its factories, in some - to follow Gould for one second - unimaginable manner, because the cars of the two bodies, at some points, may on occasion have some similarity. The tools, styles, gearings and idiosyncrasies relate to different design models, with specifications that while sometimes very close, are in overall reality in much, differently conceived.

The MEANS to IMPLEMENT the varied conceptions are GEARED to those conceptions. Ford Capris are not going to merge with Chevrolet Impalas because both are rather sporty, cover ground, and suggest a certain sense of liquid mobility, so that the larger species of Capri may, with much head scratching be found on the whole, to tend towards some degree of refined movement towards the Impala. We  might in some newspaper of a supposed distant future see thoughts of a new 'find' which of course, would never be confirmed, but continually belaboured with more such 'finds', each produced in vapidity of understanding and waste of time.

Space stations and bicycles would be still more resistant to this sharing; and the trouble of gearing together, if it be desired by two companies,  is solved by PLANNING and MATCHING so as to reduce the EXPENSE which is called for by the ENGINEERING of fastidious changes or the bringing in of unitary areas in both camps, by agreement and ... WORK. Then companies can merge by decision, design and unifying thought. Otherwise, it is not so, and co-ordination of thought to any one area is the point. It is for the designer to determine the nature of His inventions, and the mobility permitted to each.

Life, while marvellous, is not exhibitive of any marvel in invading matter with the necessary qualities of new design, or the means to do so; but is exquisitely expressive of the modes of handling existing designs with a markedly conservative concern for their retention. It is fastidiously engineered, and makes in principle, only much more protection against change than a mere system might possess. It is not only what it is, and not another thing; it exhibits a high degree of pains to preserve itself about its nodes. Specialised design and its conceptual equipment has this nature; thoughts do not spill over into other thoughts except in the mind of the thinker. If they are to do so, the thinker has to think, and ... work.

Design and specification, code and conception, rigidity and command, these  are not inventions; they are necessities for their respective products. Commands are not the ordinances of chaos. They are not even the ordinances of what is ordered.

Reductionism or rationality is what confronts any thinker at this level. Ignore what is to be accounted for by desegregating components of reality, and inventing in thought what is not so produced in nature, either in principle or practice; or construct what accounts for it.

In practical reality, however, we do not need to construct it: it is already manifesting itself on its - His own grounds. It is just that what we NEED in reason to account for the prodigious reality of pervasive design and contrivance, order and construction gradually dissipating, is found in specialised reality in the Biblical record. The record then asserts itself with magnificent verificatory ability, on all sides. If we follow facts, we need go no further. There is, at this scientific level in its modesty of aim, nevertheless a security of result. Nothing else is verified; and this is verified altogether.

Man, visible creation's masterpiece, needs a little more modesty about the gifts given him, in life. Neither he nor 'nature' 'arise': they are not to be knighted by the fires of pride and obfuscatory confusion. By these things, only one thing is certain: they fall.

Rationality must face the facts and not allow its philosophic dreams to construct capricious, ungrounded, mobilities for a real world of engineering specifications and design modules, as if air and not earth were below our feet.

Let one hasten to add that this situation is not true of all men: some have come to the facts, found the faith and operate with the Intelligence which speaks not only in written code but written word and has expressed Himself in biological format, long announced and dated beforehand, as Jesus Christ, who in turn has announced the pillars of history which were to come, and have come (SMR Ch.8).

Many have mauled the realities of the faith, and become heresy producers, a marvellous capacity being aborted by erratic imagination, and some of these infections have trailed into the repositories of many minds which at times in history seek to take over culture, mauling the minds of the young with simplistic, reductionist theories which account for what is not the case. South Australia gives a hideous example of this false flurry of authoritarian dictatorship to government schools; and while it is far from alone, its religious intrusions are a comic masterpiece of presumption without grounds, a sort of irrationalist impertinence (That Magnificent Rock, Ch.8).

Its verbal assaults on religion (which, believe it or not is vastly wide-ranging in kind and needs CARE in description in generalities) are the very spice of confusion, unscholarly diffusion of thought, an undocumented wasteland of verbiage. This, and various other prodigies of man, is not at all what the Bible teaches, or logic allows. While people sometimes allow policy to mask their own personal convictions, the abuse of basic liberty of others, is no place to do it, even if it were right so to do. The Christian faith is written in clear words in this as in other areas (cf. SMR pp. 179ff., 482ff., That Magnificent Rock Ch.8).

However many more have found the faith in the One who has what it takes, shows it in what He has done, and where He takes one is part of the REAL sweet mystery of life, and the essential ingredient of its sweetness. When you move with the Maker, your every need and your whole meaning and purpose being clear, life is a delight. The mini-midget man is no longer divorced from his source. Morose mumblings and grumblings are not really relevant for those who forsake that part of what the Creator has provided, which is personal, as we are. Salvation is of the Lord (Jonah 2:9, Ephesians 2:1-10), and it is to creation as air to water in one biosphere.

It is moreover necessary to follow the other road as well. NOT ONLY does God alone make wonders in the final analysis, but He does it by actually HAVING what it takes, and not least in this domain is KNOWLEDGE, wisdom, understanding, analytical power, observation, all the things poor Aristotle failed to realise were intrepid IN ACTION in the world, to address it into being, with what it takes to make it: to make it, and to sustain it. It is not only the rather elementary matter of God doing it all to make it exist and happen, as designer and matrix institutor: it is what He does with His knowledge NOW! THAT is not mere maintenance of the ageing 'car', if you like, the receding youth of the universe and of man's genes in particular. It is for some not 'nice' to reflect that not only is EVERY human reader of this page a creation, but is AGEING and losing as an individual the sheer structural time left for usage of the design; but that the RACE is ageing in a way less obvious, but not less sure.

Not only however does God do the work, maintain it, then; but He KNOWS NOW what He is DOING NOW! He has finished His creation as He says, and all verifies (cf. That Magnificent Rock Chs. 1,8, SMR Ch.2). Yet He who has definitive knowledge, has not finished yet WITH His creation! Far from it. The destinies of the finished creation relate greatly to mercies and covenant of God. HE KNOWS.

"He who planted the ear, shall He not hear ?
He who formed the eye, shall he not see ?
He who chastises the heathen, shall He not correct ?
He who teaches man knowledge, shall He not
know ?" (Psalm 94:9-10).

Indeed, "The Lord knows the thoughts of man, that they are vanity," declares the following verse.

When, then,  you pass from the spiritual kindergarten of being aware of your Creator's existence to the next step of doing something about it, and when in particular you reflect, there is, for sin, the chilling thought that there is nothing hidden that is not manifest, and for the expert in rationalisation and prevarication, in excuse and extenuation, there is the simple fact that God is not subject to orators, but works according to TRUTH! He can receive pleading, but not what is logically termed 'special pleading' which is mere abuse of reality. It is mercy not muddle which is His delight! When it says that "the LORD knows the thoughts of man, that they are vanity," it indicates the solemnity and purity of His KNOWLEDGE, in the face of godless contentions, and even conniving pretensions. Isaiah 1 shows His opinion... on that! Matthew 23 shows Christ's approach in no small measure, to that topic!
 

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The formulator of the nature of the thing called in the domain of man,  knowledge,
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with its symbols of semantics, its codes of logic, its procedures and forms, its correlation with worlds made and its relationship to the Maker of the worlds, in its vast overview and interview capacity, which is not known without the One who of necessity, alone has it in Himself, since all else is circumscribed, derivative and conditioned by error, limit or lack of perspective, insight or overview, equipment or equity in truth:
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HE IS NOT MOCKED! HE KNOWS.


The ONE WHO MADE KNOWLEDGE is not without it! It is like saying that the automotive designer and expert who made your car, is not without knowledge of your car. If you were to imagine you know it all, then his knowledge would rather smile at your self-assurance if he were in possession of the plans, designs and parameters to which you merely sought access, made intuitive guesses or sought to reproduce. If however he were of an infinity of power and creativity and you were a recipient of the same, the case would be still more smile-worthy, if you imagined he were some system that astonishingly invented itself before it was there to have that satisfaction! THAT would be not a smile but a guffaw. The risible becomes the derisive. The thoughts of man are indeed vanity, and the only cure is Christ (cf. Romans 5). This cure is as specific and singular as is the creation, called man, himself. Not only is it a KIND of salvation, but a SPECIFIC!
 

The Bible is the divine declaration of design and desire, of truth written and required, mercy available and presented. According to its word, and to the eventuations of history, Christ who CAME TO ACT, is the cure because here, and here ONLY, in all religion and all reality, has the Creator seen fit to show His face, to declare His knowledge in a way which is sufficiently practical, intensely operational and intensively comprehensive, to allow YOU to have knowledge of truth, instead of mere relationship to occurrence, stabs in the dark, without even the dagger of truth in your hand. In Him, who knows how to make His word contradistinctive from all else (SMR Chs. 1, 2) is the only answer. It alone is valid, verifiable and sustained (That Magnificent Rock Chs.1,  5, 7, above, End-note 1 (A) 3, SMR Chs. 3.,  10). Knowledge is then shown sufficient to expose sin, require satisfaction, supply it and dispense with it, giving a new sovereignty of the living God, with KNOWLEDGE, in the heart of the Christian, then indwelt by the Holy Spirit whom Christ sends (John 15:26). The knowledge of God is not the 'knowledge' of man, and He is not to be instructed by ignorance. What He is, He is, and as He acts, so also, as He speaks, as He requires.

God Almighty is not LESS knowledgeable, LESS personal, LESS particular than YOU, reader: whoever you may be, you speak, if with any species of knowledge, then through the knowledge function which He has CREATED; but if without Him, then it is WITHOUT the knowledgeability which is HIS ALONE, of necessity. He is very willing to share, AS GOD, but not as plasticine for His apprentice! SO when next anyone says 'God knows,' remember this: "He who teaches man knowledge, shall He not know!" From WHAT He knows He is willing to teach; usually man is not willing to learn. Perhaps you would like to turn to SMR pp. 620ff..
 
 

*3

The opportunity and need presenting itself for some analysis of Gould's contributions in this specifically causative, creative area, as some of his contributions are made, this will be reserved for the next chapter, to which the reader is direct - Ch.6.

Gould's suggestions to resolve the 'problem' he rather valiantly proposed, in that it was more related to facts than is often the case, are of the order of Nilsson's: tinged with desperation, and void of scientific stature in

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a) being untestable;
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b) being contrary to what tests reveal;
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c) being irrational in overview and
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d) being without either physical, biological or specifiable interface for the proposed activities to be infused into the system which does not evidence this type of power; and even if it did, without even an assignable matrix for its expression in reality, as distinct from mind.


Now see Chapter 6, below.