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Paul Ackerman reviews some cf these developments in his: It's A Young World After All, and Dr Henry M. Morris, long Head cf Civil Engineering at Virginia Polytechnic has presented many treatments in the area. (Cf. EXTENSION D, pp. 159-179 infra.)
A solution seems to appear for those so cramped by evidence. No, they say, we want many explosive (or other) bounces about in the universe, a sort of banging-about universe. For us, there must be great swellings and contractions... (the sort that no evidence could contradict in terms of any assertion we might care to make about the age of the earth, they might add). Now Popper might agree on the wisdom of such an approach, to defend a philosophy (if all else fails): but he would certainly condemn it as unscientific, simply because it is so drafted that no test could well determine the matter... if we apply what he asserts in his books. It is then, after all, philosophy and not a scientific approach on that basis.
We must go further, for there is much more to say on this. First, the evidence is rather usually applied, in questions of science. When this appears helpful, it seems, some turn to it. Then what of the case when it does not appear helpful, as frankly it well may not, to any concept of the 'long age of earth' proponents now ? Is it then to be dismissed in favour of mere mental meanderings, the evidence for which does not have the helpfulness to exist. In fact, this evidence must be faced, the sort that is; and as such, scientific theories must rest on it. The massive universe 'breathings' concept, in this respect is per se irrelevant.
As already noted, moreover, it does nothing in reality, even to help, when it comes to the matter of the institution of matter; for the necessity of a non-material source remains as unmoved as ever, by what may recklessly be imagined as having happened, after its institution. (See also EXTENSION on BIOLOGY AND BUILDING, pp. 81-88.)
What we do know, is that the wound-up, the springy or energy-available nature of the universe is running down, and that no method of reversing the trend has ever appeared outside miracles, which being a direct interposition of personal power, do not instruct us as to the natural dimensions of power, but rather as to the creative power of God; which in turn is the only available way for the creation to occur. You do not create the things by just talking about them. You need what it takes: power, precision and penetration, construction, constraints and contrivances.
To hypothesise that at one time, matter, duly first created according to the necessities shown, may have had different, divergent, indeed contradictory properties, so that it actually wound itself up, increased its available energy, fought off its entropy, increased specialisation and so on, drafted advantageous design programs, instituted means for their retention, homogenised the whole (and far worse to imagine - it started off by inventing itself when it was not there, the brain child of nothing): this is simply to perform a feat of ignoring.
It reminds one of the way parents may sometimes affect to ignore naughty children; and for those who do not want God, the world is a very naughty world!
It ignores, this sort of hypothesis:
i) the evidence that matter does not possess this quality;
ii) that indications that it ever did possess it are lacking;
iii) that means by which, if it did, it could have done so, are lacking;
iv) that such a postulation contradicts all that is known of matter.
It equally aborts the laws of logic and sufficient conditions, by (implicitly) assuming the means necessary without acknowledging them; or it smuggles them in by semantic athletics and sputterings. If however it aborts these laws of life, logic and language - then its proponents thereby forfeit the power, in consistency, to use them in argument, indeed, so much as to present the... viewpoint at all! (Cf. Ch.'s 3 and 10 infra, 'anti-philosophy' in the Glossary, p. 321 infra, and pp. 348-350.)
These hideous exercises in inconsistency, question begging, in denying the conditions of one's own discourse, in a word, of vanity, need not detain us. They do however review for us, a procedure for subtracting myths even when they are multiplied. For those mathematically inclined, it may remind of the laws for subtracting and multiplying matrices.
Returning from this misdirected metaphysical contortion, we come back to the laws of logic, to the evidence, to the application of relevant scientific principles on the evidence, to verificatory tests; and find that the age of the earth is not known. It is not available outside revelation, but many indications suggest, as Paul Ackerman so well shows, that anything other than a young earth must fly in the face of oppressive evidence to the contrary.
This does not at all alter the fact that the possibility is by no means removed, that the pervasive seeming radiation which dealt so severely with the constant creation dream, like so much other waking evidence, may after all relate to a birth pang of the universe situation. The 'child' may simply have left this physical deposit of its creation, its full-formed arrival, however young it assuredly appears to be; such may be part of the universe's swaddling clothes. This is so even though any naturalistic follow-through has been righty and severely dealt with, not only in this work, but in numbers of areas, such as the excellent, specialised and technical monograph of Dr Harold S. Slusher, The Origin of the Universe.
In this monograph, considerations such as those of the 'missing mass', and the galactic cohesion and spiralling anomalies appear, as earlier noted; while the 'great galaxy wall' of recent discovery also opposes as does so much else, the concept of automated self-development, without a developer. (Cf. Extension O pp. 252G ff..)
And this self-development ? It reminds one of children who have learned to play with 'magic' drawings which are so marvellous that you need only to put water on blank pages and there! a beautiful picture appears. While the child may be excused for not reflecting on origins, this is scarcely so when we come to those who have discovered cause and effect!
In general, the fascination with process seems to have joined with the desire to have the Creator 'get lost' to the point that what is needed for creation, something we know in our own ardours and work all too well, is wilfully set aside. From nothing you get nothing, and for what you have, you need what it takes... from yourself or whomever else has it. Otherwise, it simply doesn't come, in thought, in fact, in matter or in mind. Argument with mind to deny mind is perhaps the best nursery myth of all.
Reverting to the evidence of material things: all the evidence merely confronts those who are weary of their Creator, and this at every turn. It is merciless, unyielding.
Only by yielding to this confrontation does man have hope of finding the Creator who is merciful, and able to redeem.
14 With our minds - an obvious contradiction.
15 See FREEDOM AND LIMITS pp. 30 ff. supra and Chapters 3, 4 and 5 infra .
17 That is here, a physical void.
18 EXTENSION on Biology and Building
The matter might be put in much more detail. Just to extend it to the next phase, we might set it as follows.
Let the Empire State Building construct a program for having Baby Empire State Buildings 'who' all, in turn, have baby buildings (grand-children) growing intelligently, oh yes, intelligently, logically (together with the facility to gain and use logic consciously through understanding and discipline), silently, systematically, sequentially in their parts..
Imagine all this happily happening to and through them, together with the provision of a self-repair system.
Now make further remember to make each building out of unit bricks which, in their billions are also in themselves, each one 'cities' of superb, even supreme technology, exquisite architecture (see Chapter 2 infra, on recent micro- biological discoveries and developments).
Let these 'bricks' have enormous internal activity, duplicating themselves as required through a... clay code, placing themselves, aligning themselves, grouping themselves according to kind and sub-category, with every ornamental contrivance and adjustment 'thrown in'; and let them do this while higher and higher levels of co-ordination continue to deal with communications and the more general needs of floors, air-conditioning, telephone connections, inter-com and outgoing calls, all coded and inter-connected according to each special and specific requirement.
While all this occurs, let there arise the further flourishes of providing specialised services from photo- (or in this case rather geno-) copying equipment, and the like, with due provision for lighting (of course), heating and movable wings to the structure, these dextrously made available, thereby facilitating different dispositions of the plan, according to need, from time to time. Let all this appear, all involving organisation and co-ordination on an ordering device, for successive waves of inter-departmental construction, utilising the while proper serial-construction without blockages, stoppages or disruption, while providing, energising and securing maintenance, singly and in floors, on wings and for synthetic totals, severally and jointly, by automatic processes.
Further - for we have not yet covered the human body, through familiarity so readily dismissed by the conventionally blind: now have myriads of these 'brick-units' contain the plans for the entire building - each one (via the genome - which is in fact in each living cell, outside blood cells, in man).
Yes, let each of the billions upon billions of bricks contain plans for all the other bricks as units and for the whole; and then make agreeable mixtures from merging plans to form macro-'cities' from within (populations), these 'arising'... as larger buildings with varied exterior in multiple phases (the buildings have a limited but fascinating variation among themselves)... occur, buildings which appeal to each other.
Perhaps you would rather try to accomplish all this yourself ? After all, matter does not have the mind it needs. Then you do it all. Having done it, give next to each of these buildings the scope to select, each one, its own, for the formation of new buildings by a joint sharing of the plans, you having thoughtfully made the buildings delightfully different, although substantially similar. Now finally give to each building the power to tell you that you do not exist.
If you do this, it would show you how intelligent you are. It might do more: it help you to see some inkling of the patience of God and the provocation of man, to perceive that the phrase 'grace of God' is not a sanctimonious expression but a practical reality.
Work participation can do wonders for a sense of reality; actually doing things at times can make a person realise what is being done! But as you sought to constitute a sufficient cause for these consequences, it would indicate clearly that these bricks... they require not intelligence merely, but genius at work in the provision of such plans with such consistency and such continuity, demonstrating such conceptual acuity in their perspicuity and functionality: and how much more in their multiplied, co-ordinated language, their inter-brick intercom!
Using the image of bricks, we have brought to the fore some of the intimate realities of life which are too easily taken without analysis, simply for granted. That is precisely what science and intelligence and logic may not do. Logic does not permit such an indulgence, a luxury. Life involves a summation, a series, an integration, a totality, an adaptability within programmed limits of body, a consciousness at our level, a power of discrimination, of analysis, of imagination and a power of disposition of the will. These are disposable within a body, and the body for its part is composed, structurally, of cells.
Let us reflect more directly concerning them. Of these, each cell that lives (except, as we have noted, the blood cells) has a complete plan of the necessary designated units (a design) for all the parts, all their inter-relations, all their operations, all their co-operations, all their synthesising, all their self-repair services, all the sequences of auto-repair between parts, phases; and this while the whole continues to function (like a car with mechanic on the running board, snooping within, as you flow on). The plan also has provision for all their growth series (for, to continue the new image, these cars grow - same make, but a larger scale - as they travel), for all their correlations with myriads of components, and all their programs for reproduction with another such design in operation.
The total cells of all kinds are around 100 trillion per body; the code units per cell, run into the billions. You could multiply the code units per living cell by the living cell population to get an idea of the scope of the total, integrated operation. Each cell has the plans, to use Dr Denton's analogy, as if for 'the city of New York': energy production, entries, co-ordination. Your body, sir!
Language too must be created, operated and maintained, and as Professor Murray Eden of MIT points out: this is beyond anything conceived or known or perceived, even to maintain such a language by chance. (See also Chapter 1, pp. 3-10, and Chapter 3, pp. 270-294.) Each cell is estimated to require the equivalent of hundreds of volumes of Encyclopedia Britannica for its data; and this is duplicated billions of times in the cell assemblage; while the whole is co-ordinated and operated by invisible means, and that over thousands of years, being provided with strong editorial correction and adjustment for conservation of characteristics. This also, is included...
Easily explainable, given a language creator, operator, maintainer who is also an engineer, mathematician, organic-chemist-cum-code-contriver and matter-maker. Not so with a sequence buster, chance, but with a sequence maintainer, intelligence; not with a code disperser, chance, but with a code creator, imagination; not with a cause that is amorphous, inarticulate, insensitive to code-engineering, to language and assembly line work, to computer concepts; but with an inventor of these things... this is the call of the evidence and of logic. (For further development, see Chapter 3, and 1 loc. cit., and the FIRST EXTENSION, Chapter 1 on The Language of the Matter.)
You may ask computer operators, for any disenchantment you may need, to reinforce you for Professor Eden's point on the nature of language. The slightest forgetfulness is apt to produce the greatest 'bug', and failure in mental application can become the bugbear of your life. These little 'bugs', imperfections in code, inadvertencies, slips, inconsistencies, omissions, seemingly at times utterly trivial, may devastate all operation. The nature of code is concept-in-action, and concept requires thought. (See pp. 132 ff. infra for analysis and observation studies on code.)
Two more points could usefully be here addressed. The first is this. Let a number of upgrading, interweaving programs be indeed constructed by a sufficient cause, divinely. Then why not simply have this work ? In theory, by all means, it could be conceived. In practice, it would merely magnify the requirements for creation: you would have need for a series of programs which 'unfold' over time, with changing members, merely developing the greater input. You would also need of course, if we are doing more than developing romantic interest in novel-making, to have some evidence of the enfolding systems of programs relating to things to be, but not yet in operation.
In short, just as a baby must have programs for its stage, phase and development, programs which are to be encoded, and conserved for future babies when they come, and just as these programs will not be operative, to the extent they are baby-specific, for the adult, so there are series, sequences and inter-relations of age-specific programs or their equivalent. (The operation of the tonsils may be a case in point, relative to developmental needs of a baby or very young child. Its glandular contribution may later cease; but each phase needs governing, stage by stage.)
Growth of the child and youth similarly requires provisions for a balanced and symmetrical inter-relation of the engineering of limbs, as they grow, so that the various proportionalities adjust to the altering size, bone, sinew, form, configuration, while there is also maintained a reasonable operational efficiency. For all these multitudinous and delicate tasks, you need what is hidden to be stored against coming need.
If now, there is imagined some super-coded container for many sorts of things, developing across barriers into each other, this would merely vastly augment the patterning, designing, the hiding of designs, the storing of innumerable potentials against times thousands of years hence: all this bearing no advantage, merely the functional burden of carrying it about for future generations. What is wholly amazing and marvellous in design storage for the same one child during his / her growth into adulthood: this would now, in this surrealistic imagination, have to be multiplied ad nauseam in all sorts of containerisation, in a manner so inefficient conceptually, so lacking in thought as to be yet more amazing. It would be as if a Volkswagen had jumbo-jet specifications on board, while carrying momma to market.
If we had evidence of such programs for other types of things, on an A becoming a B, then that would become a fact. In the lack of fact, it is idle speculation. It is not merely so, but as we have indicated, it is gross imposition on the facts.
Thus, if this were the case, it would simply greatly complicate the initial need for intelligent input at a yet more complex level. If we also had evidence that A's in fact turn into B's, then we should have reason to look for such programs. As neither of these cases is actually observed, this mythical case is merely useful in showing that such a concept merely complicates the requirements: enhancing the necessity for the operation of the Creator, but of no other logical relevance.
The other point worthy here of note is this. Someone might argue, saying: 'You are picturing buildings in your exhibition of the enormity , the magnitude, the magnificence, the intelligence operative in creation." But that is analogy! Of course, it is so with buildings. Naturally, if we merely saw steel girders swinging day by day, an utterly and ridiculously simple thing compared with the construction of the body from the gene-to-genius level, from the babe to adult level: we should at once look for a cause; and if we saw these being placed, day by day, in right structural order, floor by floor, we would not require education to know it was not chance. 'If we saw the code of an eletrical system cunningly being contrived and concepts implemented the-while, in ways surpassing our best finesse and concepts, and then noticed demisting devices for certain wings of the building where conditions rendered these helpful for viewing (the view being good in these places), and astonished, then saw computer networks being inbuilt, with electronic wizardry all integrated between the offices of this (say government) building... if I saw all that, what then ? Then you would be wasting your time trying to convince me that someone of intelligence and purpose was back of it. That would be wholly superfluous. But this is so with buildings. At the moment, we are dealing with life. What then ?'
Now of course this is not, in terms of our presentation, even like arguing by analogy; for the principles have been exhibited over and over again, and this is merely an illustration. In principle, we are noting a generic fact that the nature of logic and work and construction and energy, and of the second law of thermodynamics, is in every case such that this happens, this non-magical causative necessity. Research is rewarded by it, theory is based on it, interfaces between instrumentalities rely on it, inter-connecting workable theories act on it, logic proceeds with it. This is simply the case. Life means organisation and drafting, integrative components of functional design - not a holiday from reason, reality or causation. It is merely irrational to confuse the two.
You get out of the order of what you put in, or what was put in and what was an earlier input. A sufficient cause is needed for each result. When it comes to buildings, we need no education, because we do it, and know it, and the sort of thing Schützenberger put so well in the Wistar international symposium on mathematical and biological sciences, obviously applies. Systems do not naturally inter-connect with fruitful advance, if they actually are wholly chaotic, unprogrammed, unsystematised in their inter-connections.
That is what he found; and small wonder, in his computer work with artificial intelligence that he did find it. The genetic base does not gain from the consequences to the adults who precede. There is removal not gain. The two systems of coming-to-be and departing this life are not inter-connected systematically, any more than the removal of building demolition by-products is systematically connected to the arrival of new bricks.
In the case of buildings, this realisation is stimulated by the ludicrous anti-nature character of any hypothesis to the contrary. It is not hard to see that even if you got the steel girders, suitably made of stainless steel, or steel appropriate to endurance, and even if you had them keep that way while you 'managed' without system to have the cement come and mix itself, and the wiring 'arrive' and untangle itself, and so on, you would not in fact keep things in this inter-relatable condition for long, because of the wear-and-tear, the dissipative effects of natural forces.
Intelligence, effort, thought and purpose are all needed, with knowledge and planning of rather a high order, to keep these miraculously arrived things in condition to be used and so forth. We dismiss as magical nonsense unsystematic systems, indeed as a contradiction in terms.
Such however is the mystique, the sense of the nebulous invented by generations of misty thought, wishful thinking, vague philosophising and other inventions of escapist imagination, that the application of such general principles to the particular area of life, is treated as if it could somehow be avoided...
These principles are however of general application in every phase of observable reality, part of human affairs, ramification of logic (see Chapter 3 infra, and chapter ten, for development here in more detail; also Chapter 4).
To imagine that logic lapses in biology, that reason departs in physiology, that causation suffers accident and expires in genetics, that mind is irrelevant in microbiology is not merely contrary to the way scientists actually are obliged to act, always using mind... even philosophers employing the same in all their squirmings (you can't invalidate mind with the assumption that yours is quite sound as it seeks to do so!): this is a species of magic.
Certainly it is the very stuff of much evolutionary 'thought'. (A modish example occurs in (*28) of Ch. 2 infra.) Yet this modish trend does less than nothing to alter the fact. This is mere breach of thought, observation and of scientific method, which starts which the observation (however it may be found - by movement from one observation through instrumental means, or more directly) and proceeds to the accounting process, seeking to discover its ground.
Thus when we come to vital things, to biological things, to physiological affairs, to genetic structures, we are merely moving into a field with its own special features, but not into something which gives something for nothing, any more (or less) than is the case with any other field. Nor are we such babes in physiology that it resembles an advance to the surface of the moon (which, incidentally, keeps just the same laws as is the case elsewhere, such that, for example, the extremely thin layer of moon dust, contrary to some evolutionary time-measured concepts, is at variance with projections some had held for so 'old' a body in such circumstances).
Physiology has for generations been studied like any other field and the existence of magic is not observable, the suspension of reason is not a subject of accredited research, the dismissal of causation is not found here any more (or less) than is the case anywhere.
The use of a building analogy for the general and indeed generic principles of thought, observation and inter-relation of events and objects in this world is not at all an argument from analogy. On the contrary, it is an application to one field, of irrational contrivances being seriously considered, or implicitly assumed (both illogically and contrary to observation) in another. It shocks by legitimate application and exposure. It is a stimulus to erratic thought to return to self-discipline, to novelists not to masquerade as scientists and to scientists not to engage in day-dreaming in the name of science. As Pierre Grassé put it, in the special case of mutations: There is no law against day dreaming, but science must not indulge in it (Evolution of Living Organisms, p. 103. Grassé is a past-president of the French Academy of Sciences.)
We may indeed go significantly further. This is because, as we shall see in more detail (e.g. Chapter 2 infra), the cells are the subject of intricate, linguistic codes, their chemistry, as Dr Wilder Smith points out in his work, The Creation of Life, involving a series of dimensions of order and programs. These indeed run into billions of units of data, per cell, as Time adds (pp. 64 ff., August 7, 1989). What follows is this. The analogy to buildings is simplistic in that it grossly under-rates the actual difficulties, complexities, challenges and character of the situation in biological life... in cells, in organic operating systems! In that sense, the challenge is useful, for it merely underscores the a fortiori element of the case. If in a simple, non-code type operation in building, certain imagined doings are Disneyland spectaculars, having no logical force in reality: how much more so is this, when the case in fact brings in areas enormously surpassing the the building illustration, yet still in our consistently vindicated etiological system, our causal universe!
This is no work of professional appearance for the crowds; it is a component in the crowds; it is reality, but it is treated with all the sleight of hand of a conjuror, as if appearances, here words, could atone for the fact that this is mere mystification with symbols, contrary to all law, causation and interface requirements, all observation and all coherent, rational thought which relates to it. An expedition into contra-factual fancy, it deserves only the contempt kept for other regressive debasements, into which adults sometimes fall, mistaking romancing for reality.
If a simple building operation makes decisive impact, what should the actual and far more impressive facts do! It is time to look at reality, and to follow Him.
Wilder Smith (see (*22) Chapter 2 infra) brings out the interesting point that it is no mere matter of order, even of the spatially variable order. You can put atoms in a given arrangement, but there are still variations in their spatial relationship, three-dimensionally, which can have significance. Beyond that dimension, there is a fourth - the super-imposition of code specificity. There is, he notes a code-conveying specificity superimposed on the "macro-molecular stereospecificity".
The chemistry is not only variable in the spatial configurations, but on top of that, there is code significance, another dimension of meaning exhibited by the formations provided. There is economy in that there is multi-purpose function; there is compression. We also seek our own form of compression, for example, in the field of computing, in modems, where by using symbols in more than one way, we impose additional significance on the situation, and achieve faster results by preparing more intellectual forethought about our symbols.
This language phenomenon which (see Ch. 1, Section 1, Part B and EXTENSION) implies rationality, requires thought and exhibits conception; it is an added constraint on the reality of life processes, compared with our imaginary building example. The irrational case of the building having 'babies', as an exposure of misplaced ideas in the more exotic areas, is a dream of simplicity compared with a coded program for having literal children, able to have children and so on, self-repairing and creative!
A tribute to system is found in an additional point exhibited in the Time article noted. The interconnective elements between the genes in the chromosomal structure, once thought not to be so systematic relative to code, now appear more likely to enshrine in themselves, yet further coding about elements of the total systematic structuring of what is to be 'made' from these genetic 'factories'. There is a sense in which, just as an energy output section of the cell-city is now localised in the picture, as an editorial section deals with copying and the editing of copy errors, so there is a department concerned with macro-structuring, genetic interconnection.
We are, then, in one cell, seeing a cytological city which Denton compares say, with New York, miniaturised. Indeed, as Dr Denton points out in his Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (p. 250), cell cities always come only in sophisticated models; there are no signs of upgradings in a series, in the cells of life, wherever found, in whatever, or as whatever. All are marvels of magnificent technology and codal communication.
Our building analogy, as an expression of basic principles in a form more customary to our experience, has therefore greatly increased our awareness of just how much more sophisticated the actual case is than that in the analogy. We have, in fact, a systematic partial equivalent of the builder on site, silently, compartmentalised, like so many computers in a multi-processor function, exercising provisions for this and that error, development, contingency. It has everything but his intelligence, but as a construction, it requires concepts greatly surpassing the best he can contribute, be he never so good!
Thus the pursuit of the analogy provides an entirely additional dimension to challenge the mind and incite reason to do her duty and see not mere serial construction, but in effect, coded programs of exquisite sensitivity and inter-connective conceptual continuity, in one language, the language of life, emitting instructions.
What do we in fact find? Not the mere construction but the language, and its programming; nor this alone, but provision for the continuity of those programs; nor only this, but a brick-by brick, that is cell by cell containment of this program in its whole draft in an information sequence which has been compared to hundreds of volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica, per cell, with provision for pro-creative procedures issuing in more such biological and intellectual buildings : This is what we in fact find.
The code which directs the erection of such a series of self-replicating buildings is, moreover, so to construct in its task, that the final buildings are fit for the exercise of a free spirit, rendering equipment for the executive who is to make use of the utilities supplied. (Cf. earlier references noted under 'freedom'-index.) Man is given a sophisticated maze of ultra-cultural utilities, in which to deploy his creative imagination, ask his questions, assign his desires and consider his position. In strict causality, what is its basis - this magnificence and this magnitude for man ?
What is operating here then, in the construction of this provision ? What minimally is required ? Required for this result is a profoundly integrative intelligence, apt for sequential operations enshrining conceptual design, of which these are the implements. We ourselves do something similar, though profoundly less complicated, when we use, say, letters (one element), punctuation (another, two integrating systems of symbols) and paper (first to be made, in another system with its own sources, resources and requirements, and delivered at the right place and time), and ink, to make this visible (which requires others sources, resources and system, where it is needed in the right flow, amount, consistency and so on); and design, using our imaginations.
Together with this, when we write a book, we create it in the first place, use thought re the purpose and design, concepts by which to make into expressive executable format those design criteria, and formatting by which to render all this suitable for implementation by the executive wing. Here - say, it would be the publisher who, of course, has his own sources and resources, which are in turn to be integrated with the needs for the ultimate arrival of the formatted, conceptualised, verbalised design. Indeed, materialists routinely confuse the paper, letters, symbols, or the transmission with the concepts, the product transmitted . . . and its production (cf. p. 999 infra).
The various means and implements are co-ordinated by strongly creative intelligence such that there is, if you like, a superimposition of purpose and design on means and order, a selection and a constraint. The order does not constitute the design, but is a method base, with many others, for its implementation. We know the existence of the features by their fruits, the activity of the ingredients/participants by their codal/creative interplay and their education by their ability to use the one code (here, say English), which it takes intelligence to learn and thought to operate.
Our use of computers is increasingly highlighting, through the thoroughly exacting and minutely insistent requirements of programming, what is really involved in the semi-automation of such constructions, and in the mental constraints required for multi-processing. These are the ingredients, staggeringly wonderful in the creation, but wholly understandable in principle, for even we continually act in mini-kind, with creative enterprise; and it is impossible to pretend we do not know what is required. Each species of action and agency, when automated, merely the more exacts the concepts to encode it, which, systematically integrated with added directive symbols and contrived power, proceed to perform each action, all actions, and the synthesis of actions.
19 The concept of an infinite series of material universes, whether they be deemed successive over time, or spread over space, is perfectly irrelevant to these reasonings. They lack ingredients for their causation; and if 'they' had the self-sufficiency of God, being spirit, then we would have simply a manipulation of terms. The facts would be unchanged, as would God. (Parallel efforts to abort or thwart or escape from God, in a similar way, have already been considered under FREEDOM AND LIMITS supra. Necessities are not altered by proliferations or contrivances; necessities, when met, remain as they were, and we end where we have done.)
20 An era held to be next to the very earliest base in the long sequence of ages drawn up by hopeful theorists for the earth.
21 You need equally the cause of space. For further on causation, see e.g. pp. 2-16 supra and Chapters 3; 5, 1; 9 Section 4, pp. 836-884; and pp. 255-292, all infra.
22 SUMMARY TREATMENT (esp. relating to 'what He is'). God is in no way or sense intra-systematic; for any system depends on the self-sufficient and necessary cause that comprehends not merely its existence, but the thought behind it. It is by virtue of this that it is able to become a 'system', in practice expressing the conceptions which a self-sufficient mind would have as an output. God, the Creator has none thus to stand behind Him, contriving His 'system'.
Hence, there can be no question of internal squirmings or writhings such as are the case with sick men and women, seeking for this or that frustrated desire through quirkish means, having words and deeds at variance, in expression of conflict. There can be no conflict internally in God, for if there were, He would be at war with Himself, in some or other degree, and that portends a constitutive limit of one constructed thing versus another, which is another name for a constitution. (Cf. pp. 580ff., 592 infra, and pp. 30ff. supra.)
But who made that ? At once, you have implicitly demeaned God into a creature by such concepts and considerations, to that which is within what-is-beyond... it. You are speaking of a creature, something poured into specifications, taking what is 'given'.
Hence whatever God says and wills is the expression of an almighty being, not afflicted with a divided heart or will, contrary to itself, or contrary to the creation He has made, since He made it for His all-knowing will, a will itself subject to no 'maturing', since He has no potentiating system to mature; for that exists in a deployed system.
What He may be, and Biblically is, is contrary to what, in His creation, is contrary to Him. If He were not, then He would be at war with part of Himself, contrary to His self-sufficient, unimpedable self. Because He is contrary to this, in particular the injustice, lies, fraud, caricatures of Himself, as to the voiding or avoidance of His donations in the form of talents and so on, therefore, we saw: there must be removal or remedy. There is not yet at least the former, and on looking for the latter, we have found it abundantly confirmed in practice, as it is also logically required.
It is important to realise that truth is what God has pronounced and performed, there being no other absolute marking point, or criterion, or perspective. Justice is the fitting relationship between God and each, and each other, of the rational beings He has made.
Both the truth and the justice of God are offended against multitudinously in man's war with God. As remedy for the offence, an act of pure grace, explicit divine communication is the only source in such a world. The only supernaturally provided, publicly accessible, enduringly presented, utterable testable, amply verified exhibit is, and remains: the Bible. Elsewhere in this work, the historical necessities relating to Jesus Christ, whom in any case the Bible depicts, predicts and exhibits, are presented, a separate study. (For example, see Chapter 6, cf. Appendix C.)
An ultimate failure to accept this person, the sole Saviour, carries the burden of an an implicit blasphemy against the integrity of God, or an explicit rebellion against Him; or both: just as blasphemy itself constitutes rebellion of heart, head or both.
Neither constitutive requirements of Him, nor immature, premature nor wistful vagrancies by His all-knowing spirit (He makes the paths) can exist in His beyond-Time knowledge and free preference for what He is, and what all must be. Creation does not add to His completeness, and in nothing is He dependent on it psychologically, emotionally, socially, morally or personally, having analytically and actually conferred on it all its components, its compositional synthesis, its potential, significance and setting; similarly sustaining them. Exhaustively His product, creation has nothing to contribute to His completeness in any sense; on the contrary, it is complete in Him, and incomplete, without Him.
For such a Being, then, nothing given can exist, for the simple reason there is no one to give it! All depends on Him who for all time and beyond time (cf. pp. 21-35, 38-42 supra) knows all. Even internal constituents are not data for investigation; for nothing is given, nothing develops, since there is no extraneous program; beyond time, He is what He is. The self-declaration is not by means of inherited or manufactured or dowered constraints. The scriptural designation is so magnificent: "I am that which I am" or "I am" ( Exodus 3:14, John 8:58). There is not system reference or limiting space or time reference. Autonomous existence is His necessarily monopolised prerogative.
Man is far otherwise; and this not merely by reason of that unique eternity of God. Without being thus, man nevertheless does contrast with and contradict by the use of his spirit, the very nature of God. God does not worry; but man in common forms does his, even specialising in it. God does not lie (pp. 29-35 supra, cf. pp. 43-46, 313-315, 380-386, and 578-585 infra); while this man does, to astonishing degrees, even moving in advanced stages into self-deception, a marvellous expression of the profound spiritual (if here debased) character of a person. God makes justice (cf. pp. 41-47 supra) what it is; man deforms and defiles it, even knowingly, and at times he performs injustice with gloating arrogance, glorying in himself as he does it. God does not make war on Himself; man does. This is not to condemn war per se. It passes no judgment on a particular war (possibly defensive to protect vulnerable persons)... given the state of the world; merely on the state of the world, given war.
This riotously and calamitously clashing world is clashing not merely with itself - in collision with itself and its justices - but with the entire character of God. It takes, most frequently, without asking (from God) what is given; and it gives what it will, often without asking God or man. It clashes with the peace, righteousness, truth and justice of God, spoiling itself, misusing itself, frequently despising its designs (from God), and designing ways of distorting its designs of body, mind and spirit. And for this ?
Destruction is the easy divine option apparent. Of course, it has not been used, though many partial destructions have met the race. On the other hand, remedy is not too hard... and destruction being withheld, remedy must demonstrably be present in the case of derivative dependents, having no power to force their Creator to deny Himself.
Wholly unimplicated in the His contradiction, utterly unforced of necessity by His creatures, God who makes freedom possible and meaningful for His creation, for man: by remedy thus expresses the alternative to destruction. Certainly it shows patience and ingenuity; and so indeed does much else in His works.
Not destruction (not as yet total destruction for the race on earth), but remedy is in this way provided; and God's standards are maintained with freedom, however marred by sin, it may be. It is defective, but not rescinded. What cover then is there for the unspeakable gap between God's standards and this fallen race, systematically in violation ? Christ's atoning sacrifice allays just anger, implements purity, placards remedy pending judgment - gives mercy a path towards all (cf. Romans 5:15-18).
Invading and investing the human scene of such contrary calamities as freedom permits (and which, being of such great value, freedom is permitted to bring): God meets the liberty He allowed, without aborting it (John 3:16-17).
Ordered, organised and now confronted, without evacuation of his meaning, man in his measure of limited freedom (he is free to rebel against his Creator who is the ultimate basis for freedom for man as pseudo-autonomous): man, then, as a race meets divinely expressed remedy instead of mere earthly destruction. There is a personal meeting of a personal matter. (See Index also- 'Apologetics'.)
It is thus that the divine program proceeds, with the unimaginable but readily communicable deposition called revelation. (See pp. 44-47 supra.)
Chosen by God, therefore, and necessarily so, revelation is to be studied to discover His mind and will in the matter... of man. Wholly unavailable to philosophy, it is inspectable by the eyes, it is heard with the ears, and response is made to it by the human reader within the plan and scope of the sovereign God... who knows full well how to implement even that masterful magnitude called freedom. (See also Chapter 5 infra, and a more formal treatment on pp. 44-47 supra; and Ch. 8, Predestination before Prophecy, 634-643, *(27), p. 92 and Appendix D, pp. 1165 ff., infra.)
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