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Intelligent language and the genetic linguistics

CODIFICATION, AUTHORISATION, DECLARATION - THAT IS WHAT A LANGUAGE HAS; IT IS CODED, AUTHORISED AND DECLARED... but by whom is the gene code, with these its commands, declared ?

It is by what is adequate, sufficient to speak in a unitary language in code into life to make it happen and continue and function in segments, in compartments, with processive separations and designations... allowing non-destruction. That is just what we do in our manufacturing. We should be used to it by now as we follow it all again, in the exquisite delicacies Denton shows so well: in our own bodies, in our cells.

This is simply to argue from the nature of a case and the nature of a definition. To define an item one way, and refuse it when it appears: this is a most eloquent testimony to an irrationalism, an inconsistency which the Bible so aptly describes, defines, and sets in place analytically and historically, as we have seen.

The language of life

One might explore at length the same message in the Old Testament, starting with such examples as: Jeremiah 2:11-13, 21, 23, 27, 28, 23, 31, 5:20-25, 8:7, 9:9; Proverbs 1:20-28, Isaiah 1:3, 2:10, 2:22, 5:19-21, 40:21, 28-29, 41:21-23. Now in this last instance, the case is very close, for God is here challenging a people to: "Bring forth your strong reasons... Let them bring them forth and show us what will happen; let them show the former things, what they were, that we may consider them, and know the latter end of them; or declare to us things to come. Show the things that are to come hereafter, that we may know that you are gods."

It is just the same, in whatever cultural or cultic substitute for God man seeks to follow, endeavouring to prevail for himself, to hold himself by himself, or even to come into being... by the thoughts he projects from the mind God created.

All these devices are merely different kinds of mentally cultivated substitutes for God, idols; and one of the beastly and weak things about all idols is this: they don't work, they are fantasies. They can't do what God does, they can't create, they can't securely make long-range and precise predictions that characterise an era and specify what is to be done in it, with all the accuracy of present-day science (when it keeps to its business). They can't reliably predict or in final and ultimate essence retrodict. They don't, because they can't hold the universe in their hands; and when it comes to doing more than projecting from laws, that God has instituted for His good pleasure and at His will: they simply cannot do it. Man's mind is not God's mind.

This fits to perfection in the systematic inabilities of this beyond-his-sphere-and-abilities theory of organic evolution. Man cannot by this or any other theory beyond God's working model, predict or cover future or past. These things going beyond what is the material working of what God has fabricated, and entering into the divine assessments of God's spirit, they are as far beyond man as is the panoply of space, beyond a fly. For what is at God's level, man needs God. The passion to bypass Him in priestly, cultic or other contrivances, without His authority, is just the same now as hitherto. Means change in form; the fantasy and the folly changes not at all.

It requires the speech of God, not mere programs in cells or anything indeed of that order, for man to know such things. To the speaker of code man must go, logically, for the knowledge of this order, and the depths of His will.

This brings us to the utterly delightful part of the Symposium. One of the professors having given unbending, and perhaps even masterful rebuttal of contemporary Darwinism with considerable expertise, was asked if, then, he was proposing creation. 'NO!' What then ? It is not known... he could not tell. Could not the gentlemen possibly provide him with an answer... some principle, some quiddity, some rational explanation in the area so frustratingly inadequate, inept and just plain wrong in Darwinism ? Here was a 'true believer' in non-Creation; but for him, no creed, no rational creed was available to cover his unbelief, and in particular, to support Darwinism.

Now this situation is truly remarkable: world-leaders from major Universities and M.I.T. confer on the mathematical and allied aspects of Darwinism and consider that there is a basic failure in the whole hypothesis, even though they reject the creation of God. One of them begs the others for a solution to the problem - which in fact is that of unbelief unable to match the facts on its own hypothesis. The intellectual structure simply wasn't there and they acknowledged it.

So Professor Schützenberger of Paris appealed for help in terms of being a non-creationist who could not find any rational ground for Darwinistic structure, to others like himself, not believing in creation. He pled in vain; and was trenchant on their failure to meet the test. Could unbelief offer no more than total estrangement from reality ? Why ? what was happening?

He brought to their attention (and he was not the only one in this necessary negating role) facts; and they could not contain them within the theory. He brought to them findings and they had no answer in terms of the theory. No, on this aspect of logical answer, they were as silent as the tomb, leaving the aching emptiness that had been so well framed, so intelligently fashioned, the emptiness of wilful irrationality, one which cannot be filled except through the Creator.

Doubtless many more would accept the facts and findings freely, and follow them to a perspective that works, the divine perspective, the one exclusively proficient to answer the challenges of the facts... if only there was not the additional point that the creator, being a person, is not approached like dead fish; but as a former who has been ignored, and a maker who has had his equipment misused; as One who needs placation and as we have seen: a kind Creator who has sent the answer in protoplasm to cover the cost to truth, justice and righteousness of... sin. There, Jesus Christ, is the practical answer, the Cross added to the Creator, as God declares it, in the only coverage of the case of this world which rationally works.

Thus this strange, so entirely strange and in one way, because of its frankness, beautiful symposium, as it were, play-acted the matter and showed it up well.

This illustrates the history of modern science in its poignancy. Its trend is to reject the impossible, if reluctantly, after millions have been hurt by its errors; and then, still rejecting God, to find only a frustrating questing, a frustrated quest, and some new game of hide-and-seek in which to lose God.

It is not perhaps often entirely intentional; but with the specifications of God so well spelt out - the symposium for example practically filling in by the absence of answer precisely what the answer was, like a cast from a face - then the denial of God becomes merely a verbal substitute for thought (*25).

The name given to the One displaying this series of functions, vested in the careful exposure of revelation, is God. Just as intelligence is seen but not freely acknowledged (yet it begins to be noticed at last in the natural scene, more broadly), so God who provides it and uses it in the correlative product - that is in creation, begins to be discerned by many who would have it otherwise: for it seems to them as an enemy battleship on the horizon, like one it is better to elude with speed before its guns render its presence even more inescapable than it is.

The pity of it is this: this denial of God, despite the careful exposing of His operation in His unique mode - which nothing mimics or secures in experimental practice or logical scope - lies in the fearful face of the fact that it does not remove Him from the horizon. The horizon grows nearer as each life passes.

The greater pity is this: that the Remedy has been stated as clearly in revelation to man, as is the creation, in the language of the cells of man... and it is summed in and as Jesus Christ. It is the language of love; and it meets the requirements of law, and it requires the grace of repentance and a simple trust in the crucified Redeemer, manifesting His governance of life in the language of the resurrection of His body.

Returning from the useful destructions in the sypmosium
to the relish of reality

Let us return then to what the evidence requires as always, not putting will into the place of reason, but willingly following it where we have found it is constrained to go..

This series of conceptual-products-without-a-conceiver; these assemblages integrated in their inter-relations in consistent universal laws involving logic and language; each cell micro-integrated in its sub-universe; each organ mini-integrated in its mini-universe; all systems correlated in their own horizons beyond: these things require a conceiver, manufacturer, designer. (Kant's cant has been decanted elsewhere -see (*21), p. 208 infra for references.) Men limp to discover His programs, even while they are being computed out on their very own premises (body-wise) in a way to which, in substance, Professors Murray Eden and Schützenberger trenchantly refer, in chomping on chance.

It is therefore now, all the more, time that, so confronted and exposed, men should worship their Conceiver, even while His programs are being worked out in their own bosoms... including the great meta-program of will, by which they can deny with their determination, what they gain with their observation, and see with their information... nowadays storing it with still further intelligence, sometimes artificial.

The mini-creators create. There is no mystery in this; they are created by a Creator - even of creativity. Creation in life is a datum; just as it is for life, a necessity.

There is a speaker, of the language that is found, bound in cells; there is a logician, of the inter-sectional processes that have been discovered; there is a Creator of the non-self-discovering systems to which mathematicians bear such telling witness, in despair at the ludicrous nature of such a chance theory. (Cf. pp. 252A-N infra; 15, 133-134 supra.) There is not an impossible non-correlation of the genes and the real life creatures, yielding the world of living things: because there is an actual agent of life who made it a going concern, a protected and processive phenomenon, which did not allow from the first the lethal admixture of working and waste to destroy each other. The garbage was kept away from the food by structure, plan, segmentalisation, compartmentalisation, by the phenomenon known as design. We are not strangers to it ourselves; made by it, we work and make with it.

The liberty of love and the love of liberty

Without this practical, factual, operational and originative meaning, it is absurd for man - as well verified by the anguished acknowledgements (not intended no doubt that way!), of so very many philosophers, in their arid atheism. The lairs of irrationalism, at which we shall look, more closely, provide no rest. There is no rest in wrestling with the truth (Romans 1:18-20).

Amongst the greatest of all creations, is precisely that one given to man. It is that non-programmed liberty to laugh at programs, even good ones, even to destroy them and for man to destroy himself, by the arrogance of using the workmanship he did not and could not create, and which he cannot even logically conceive in any consistent way, except from God. (Freedom: see 23 ff., 30 ff., supra, 313 ff., infra, Index, Appendix B infra, my Predestination and Freewill, and its Extension, The Father of Freedom.)

This freedom, in its natural scope, is the wonder beyond all circuitries, sublimely beyond all mere programs of operation, wholly diverse in kind from all the material sub-structure, towering in the sunshine of correlation, not with the ingredients but - with the Conceiver. Just as man's refusal of the Originating Conceiver leads to the frustrated search for reason behind the concepts, so the freedom to do well, or fail both God and oneself, as well as one's fellows, leads by its abuse to the chronically frustrated search for meaning, when both the course and the source of Freedom is denied.

Put differently, God is not mocked. Philosophy, of which evolution is one part, is a progressive verification, amongst verifications, of that! Man's potential correlation with this Being - for man is not per se devoid of freedom - is also fraught with potential debarring. Hope misused can appear as hell attained. That result is a permanent shame of which current systematic human frustration (logical, philosophic, cultural, political) is merely an intimate suggestion! Confusion and hopelessness, or false hope, is neither normal, natural nor necessary; but pathologically common.

As to this frustration, its intensity relates not merely - and justly - to the immensity of the Majesty of this Intelligence, but to the revealed Redeemer, whose speech is not merely directed in cells to circuits, but directed to the minds of circuit-breakers (John 15:21-23). One result of the illegitimate exercise of this freedom, in the meantime, is the illogical and anti-evidential theory of organic evolution, these propositional premises of a philosophical putsch that can find no logical leader. Wishing to be rid of the designer, whether in his autograph, the Bible, or altogether, the design denies the conceiver... (Cf. *46, pp. 252E - G infra.) The impudence is - if it were not tragic - uproarious; and is it any wonder that its own alternative concepts, chosen by will and not available for observation, will not work ? This too is verification.

Scientific method points to God; logic makes Him inescapable; rebellion resents it; while revelation, as we have seen, reaches out to meet man with the intimate indications of the mind, heart and will of God, which could be known in no other way.

It is to be shown, relative to Kant, that it is logically impossible to divorce the concept of design systematically from this world, by means of any type of philosophic postulate enshrining the concept that We, our minds, create this... that it is we ourselves who constitute the cause of our concept of causality and all it implies. (See Ch.'s 3 and 5.)

However, it needs for now merely to be noted that if anything caused such a concept in our minds, this presupposes the existence of a perfectly normal and happy causal system, before we could operate. We cannot create it. It has to be there for any rational argumentation about its 'origin'.

How would you, would the human mind, be the cause, the rose-coloured glasses cause of the very existence of causation, unless it were already there! You cannot use what is not there, in order to create it. Even question begging does have limits. This fantasy is here, as well, a contradiction in terms. You would be using what, it is alleged, is not there, in order to put it there.

Since however causality is there, and cannot be the creation of our minds, it operates; and since it operates, we need the adequate cause for its resultants, one of which is this lawful world of matter; and others of which are the qualitative worlds of mind and spirit, will and creativity. (See also supra Chapter 1, Section 1, Part B for any needing this initial decontamination unit!... esp. pp. 3-10.)

The concept then of 'as if' relative to the evidence is irrelevant. All endeavours by Kant or others to distance reality by making imposing compartments of 'knowledge', varying from what you have, to what you supposedly cannot know - the world beyond 'causation', are self-contradictory. They are so from the moment you tell us what they are like and why they are there and how they relate to what we are, and have - to the point at which you submit, as here: namely the implements of grappling to achieve the commerce of communication by which you can so blithely inform us of all these things, hot from the unknowable. You cannot account for causality on the assumption it is not there; you can account for it on the operation of letting it lead you to what is there, not denying but utilising its validity, without which you can neither think nor speak logically, with consistency; and from there, you may validate.

Not merely, then, is this Kantian (q.v.) concept of 'as if', a logically void endeavour to distance reality, making all things quiddities that are basic; but this Kantian night has been but smog, philosophic vapours from the blast furnaces of misled mind, trying to bypass the very ground on which it stands. On the contrary, what-is, what is present quite simply needs an adequate support, basis and background; and the endeavour to supply it by removing the objective validity of the connection - of this connection of cause of which what-is is the consequent - invalidates its own thought first, but nothing else afterwards.

What is present implicitly in terms of the native powers of any given arena of action, such as that of matter considered by itself, has its own parameters. It does not become, per se, equipped with mind, or spirit. What things it has, it uses, and uses according to its power. For matter, ability to initiate design is not one of these; the operation of whatever design components are already fitted to it, however, this is in order. Nor is intelligence one of these available fittings, for matter; and hence intelligent design is not one of the products of matter. It evidences its definitional components however within matter; and its source is accordingly sought elsewhere than in matter, in an appropriate design source, equipped immaterially, as shown in an earlier chapter. What then ?

As Jesus Christ so beautifully said, You do not get figs from star thistles. It is not a matter of chance; the functional action of a component does not occur without that component; and if it did, it would merely show that that component was present. That of design initiator however is not evidenced in matter.

In mind, however, it is; just as with the spirit of man, you also see evidenced the power to counter the counsels of mind, through pure will, hate or what you will. Man can confront in this way concepts and analysis of his own mind, of other people and - though finding the attempt deadly - those of his Creator, by that masterpiece of liberty, granted man, which he can if he will, turn to a maelstrom of licence, to the entropy of indulgence or to the vacuity of personal pride.

Now in life formatted on earth we see, when we dispense with philosophic and unscientific fantasy, the existence of several fascinating features. In this chapter, we have considered some of them, but now let us seek to define life and consider its increments, for simpler awareness of the topic which we are facing.

Looking at what is to be seen, in life (cf. A Spiritual Potpourri, Ch.6)

It might be initially defined as a correlation of functional organs and integrally disposable results, capable of initiation and cessation as a co-operative whole.

Even one cell, as we have seen, has conferred on it such powers; thus it conforms to this definition.

Then there are overlays, design extras. It is like the movement from a push-bike to a Volkswagen, to a Jaguar, to an aeroplane, to a Boeing 747, to a spacecraft. Each has, especially near the beginning of the series, some clear correlation with the other. Even the first and the last have decidedly distinctive ingredients in common: travel, movement through space, responsiveness to humanly directed impetus and so on. Yet, for each rising member, there are, more or less depending on the case, provisions of greater conceptual power, made for greater travelling power. There are successive rises in the input of

i) intellectual power
ii) conceptual finesse
iii) knowledge
iv) correlation of concepts
v) higher, decidedly and definably higher objectives.

With life, there are similarly, though they are effected with the biological finesse which is a specific and quite special craft, many layers.

There is the cell layer of micro-organs, such as the energy producing organ which, whatever else it does, does that: the mitochondria. This has its power to be commenced and terminated; to act with correlation of organs; to achieve certain objectives. Then there is the tissue area, where strata of cells may interact with some overall perspective not seen by them, but relating to their operation. It is what we call a design, when components do not know at all what they do, but nevertheless are constrained to do it, in terms of relatable concepts, which are discernible in the interstices of the components, overarching them and operative through them.

Then there are organs, such as the kidney. Here layers of different tissues are closely related to each other and to other (sometimes distant) layers of tissue, which in turn have their own internal organic totality of function as well as individuality of operation; and these exhibit conceptual correlation, inter-organic as well as intra-organic. Then there is the correlation of systems, such as all the internal organs and their net product; and of others, such as skeletal musculature and locomotion as the outcome, or manipulation; and then again, there is the power to observe, relating to the senses, to categorise, relating to the brain, and to will, relating to the spirit, and to imagine likewise.

We have built up here on the basis of the world's greatest evidenced design, the human body. However we could as well have chosen a different route.

We could well have considered

the animate cell, and then
the instinctive creature, and then
the conscious creature,
the emotional and motivationally conceiving creature and
the analytically purposive creature, and then
the morally aware creature,
the code-creating imaginative creature and
the spiritually perceptive and innovative creature and so on...

coming thereby to the spirit of man, to the powers for which the body is implement, and indeed, ultimately to that God who made it, for which the spirit is 'hands' for ready grasping: that is, the immediate basis of communication. But let us revert.

There are layers which it is as futile to seek to reduce, the one to the other, as it is to ignore, in their inter- relations. It is quite similar to the case of a space-sensing, automatically reacting space-probe and a humanly directed bike; or the case of a humanly directed space-sensing probe. None is the same; all are related; and with us, the relation is especially the inventive mind of man.

You can of course say, to return to the mechanical analogy, that there is much the same sort of mental ability involved in constructing this system for the bike, and that for the spacecraft; but the point is that the one involves whole further layers of conceptual thought, for its institution, at different levels of creative imagination and with divergent purposes involving different mathematics and constructional features and so on. It is mere confusion to imagine that because they are all creative and conceptual that therefore the creative thought and the conceptual engineering for their construction is homogenisable and in one plane. That would be mere analytical blindness, contrary to fact. Thus there are these similarly placed conceptual levels, and there is no magic whereby life ceases to require their operation; logically there is no difference. The only difference is that this process is unimaginably more complex and demanding because the programming and correlation is so immense and intense. More is required therefore.

Now before we summarise, let us extend a little on the topic of instinct. It is not merely something automatic. It can have access to and in part be an accessory of intelligence. This is well illustrated in the painstaking observations of Dr William J. Long in his fascinating work, The Spirit of the Wild.

At times, for example, a beaver would respond automatically to the thwack of the tail, the distress signal of another beaver, the time-to-disappear symbol. At others, it might be given as a test to see what would happen; and at times it would be discerned by some beaver, that this was so; or again, it might be given by some animal not as yet appreciating the finesse of the situation: for example, that the author, Dr Long, was perfectly harmless, despite his deceptive appearance. Variations relative to an assessment of a situation could occur in some complexity. Again Garth Christian in his meticulous Down the Long Wind ponders (pp. 38, 43-44) how a bird in vast migration routes can pin-point a return to the same garden, or young without parents can enter such return routes: citing experiment and positing brilliant, celestial navigation facility in the birds.

It can, this instinct, have access to conscious awareness and discrimination. It need not be so judiciously disposable. It depends. Again, you could call the automatic part, instinct, and the other intelligence. It is merely a matter of words: we are interested in the facts to which the words refer. Certainly some instinctive behaviour is non-decisive, merely suggestive, and the presence of guile in parts of the animal kingdom, the arresting of 'normal' and sometimes highly complex patterns, is a matter of observation. Beyond this, however, acknowledging the variable impact of intelligence in some animals, there is the underlying directive quality which attaches to so much of the behaviour of many animals, like that of the spider which lays its eggs on a leaf, sews the silken cord to nearby attachments aloft, and then, on the drying out of the web cord, has the eggs lifted comparatively safely aloft also.

Sometimes, as with the bombardier beetle, elaborately considered by Dr Gary Parker in his Creation The Facts of Life, there is an engineering device of great complexity and sophistication which is simply
built into the creature; sometimes it is
a behavioural device, sometimes a constructive or at times
a defensive 'module'; and at times, these are
capable of override,
as with our own automatic gears where the manual may be chosen instead,
to achieve the purposes of a (relatively) discriminating intelligence.

The engineering objectivisation of thought, frozen construction, and the conduct form of it, frozen thought, allied with the variable input of intelligence and imagination on occasion, a contrived over-ride: these are elements of a complexity of life which has one very simple basis.

The point is this: He, the basis, is pre-eminently intelligent, so intelligent that He has made us with our powers (machine tools with personality and capacity for analysis- this is only one component of our construction of intelligence). He has even provided for the mockery of our pretensions, the challenge to our follies and the exhortation to our industry or lack of it: as in the ant and the sloth, the peacock and the pouter pigeon, for example, the weasel, the bulldog and the rabbit. God has done this so well and wisely that a fascinating and detailed treatment is given to this topic. This is seen in the keen observation of character sketches, animal studies in a well-drafted book from the Institute in Basic Youth Conflicts.

The divine mind has a library of works, as it were, for ready learners and for the thoughtful. It has an array of elements of consciousness, thought and analysis, of imagination and discernment expounded in flesh, until He presents a being with what has in many ways a minimum of the frozen in thought, and a maximum (for a derivative being of this kind) of disposability of mind and spirit: that is, man... God has done this work with such magnificence that man can be quite insanely inept, despite much intelligence, if he will, through sheer, arrant or even arrogant pretension.

Let us return from this little excursion to its point: a convenient, initial definition of

TERRESTRIAL LIFE, so that our thinking might be helped thereby. We saw it as:
 

A CONSISTENT CORRELATION OF FUNCTIONAL CELLS, ORGANS AND INTEGRALLY DISPOSABLE RESULTS, CAPABLE OF INITIATION AND CESSATION AS A CO-OPERATIVE WHOLE . . . We could now add this:

LIFE OCCURS IN LAYERS OR STRATA OF COMPLEXITY, RENDERED IN SEPARATE ENTITIES AND COMPONENTS, WITH CONCEPTUAL LEAPS APPARENT IN THE PURPOSES, PROGRAMS AND PROCEDURES,
TOGETHER WITH CROSS-REFERENCE OF AN IMAGINATIVE AND UNPREDICTABLE KIND
FOR THE VARIOUS TECHNIQUES USED, AND THEIR STYLES.
THESE ARE NOT MERELY TECHNICAL, BUT PURPOSIVELY DIRECTED IN TERMS OF ULTIMATE LIFE-RESULTANTS, BOTH INTEGRALLY AND FOR EACH BODILY MEMBER.
THEY INCLUDE ORGANIC INTERACTION, APPLICATION OF EQUIPMENT TO VARIED PURPOSES,
AND PROVISION OF SUCH INSTINCTIVE (frozen thought), EMOTIONAL, CONSCIOUS, CONCEPTUAL, ANALYTICAL, MORAL AND SPIRITUAL FACILITIES (with various operational correlates),
AS MAY BEFIT THE DIFFERENT CATEGORIES OF LIFE.

FOR MAN, CONCEPTUAL, PURPOSIVE AND IMAGINATIVE INITIATIVES, BASED ON SPIRITUAL REALITIES,
ARE CONTRADISTINCT FROM, AND INIMITABLE BY THE CONTROLLED CAPACITIES OF COMPUTERS,
JUST AS THEY ARE ALSO CLEFT FROM THE UNDERIVATIVE AUTONOMY OF GOD. IN GENERAL:

THE SINGLE MICRO-BIOLOGICAL PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE NORMATIVELY EMPLOYED,
WITH ITS PROFOUND DIVERSITY OF RESULTS,
IS WHOLLY SIMILAR TO MAN'S SYMBOLIC LOGIC AND EXPRESSION,
AS IS THE CORRELATION OF THOUGHT, DESIGN AND EQUIPMENT,
AND ITS ADAPTATION AND VARIATION IN TERMS OF PURPOSE.
INDEED, AS TO MAN WHO SPEAKS, HIS LIFE POSSESSES LANGUAGE HE DID NOT SPEAK,
INTIMATELY AND INEXTRICABLY INTERWOVEN WITH THE VERY CELLS OF HIS BODY.

Since man is made in the image of God, this is merely what one would expect; though as we are consistently finding, it reflects an exuberance which is beyond meagre imaginings, but instead, fulfilling to the vastest hopes. It is as if, constantly, we check to see if there is money in the bank; there is - but there are billions. This of course is in itself a verification of the transcendent magnificence of God, who while not less than wonderful, may evidence Himself as far past all expectation, as He pleases. It is verification forte! (See also p. 88 supra, pp. 252 B-C, 349A ff. infra).

Since man is, though marvellously endowed, far lesser than God, the sheer brilliance of method, discernible when sought out, even in the simpler forms of creation, is again in full verificatory agreement and concord in particular, with the Genesis statements and indications of:

1) Who made it all; and 2) How man relates to Him. Man, the conscious communicative, rational and spiritual creation, can seek understanding of the scene, conscious participation in the scenario and to learn as creature from the Creator, of His works; as reader, of His will; as servant of His directions and as friend, of His friendship. It is indeed a categorical change to look to his source rather than to His other works, about him; but failure to do this is to have a car that is never put on the road, loitering in the showroom which, indeed, has many fascinating vehicles; but their observation merely is not the purpose of the production of the car.

Human life that stops at this point is justly deemed, in the Bible, dead, an oxymoron in one sense, for yet it lives; but a reality in another, for the life of such a tired and retired retrenchment, is dysfunctional in its main facility. And that? it is its capacity (given the divinely ordained means) to communicate, co-operate and have comradeship with its Creator. (Cf. p. 316G infra.)

This was of course epitomised in the incarnation, an advent from the Creator, establishing the pattern, exhibiting the perfection and enabling the ground of such fellowship in a world of sin, which like grit, left alone merely abrases the surfaces until the sheer weariness of humanity without God becomes both pathetic and ludicrous, in the face of the gift from above. This, stupendous as is the gift of creation at all, rises in the scale towards infinity, for it is from there that it comes (cf. Micah 5:3, John 8:58).
 

Thus: Marvellous and astounding as are our gifts in creation, for communication, aspiration and spiritual fellowship, these have been consummated from the Creator in a wonderful way by His taking the step once again from above, in the incarnation of His eternal word in the form of a man, giving opportunity for the dismissal of the guilt of sin, of the oppression of its results and the chasm created in place of comradeship with the Creator which its dark devices have occasioned. As example, pattern, testimony of perfection and exhibition of the sublime in the very place of the malign, basis for pardon and channel for all needed blessing, the Messiah, Jesus Christ, has come in this, our very form, yet without sin .

How well chosen, therefore,  is the rejoicing at such an issue from such a past for this race, enabling for those who come, a future as blessed as the present is outrageous, grave and fit for death! It is seen found within Isaiah 9, set to music by Handel, in his Messiah, a glorious singing which starts with with a prelude from Isaiah 60, a chapter which fitly likewise leads into further prophecy of the Messiah in Ch.61. Indeed, it is one cited by Christ of Himself (Luke 4).
 

Creation and catastrophe, in the form of collision of alien concepts with observable reality... with special reference to the Cambrian 'Age'.

This represents:

A startling illustration of scientific method... by its omission, and an illuminating example of: methodological vagrancy.

Karl Popper, Professor in London University, and of world fame in this area, makes this statement in his work, The Poverty of Historicism, pp. 197-8:

Can there be a law of evolution ?... I believe the answer to this question must be 'no'.

Neither Darwin nor any Darwinist has so far given an actual causal explanation of the adaptive evolution of any single organism or any single organ.

In physics or chemistry laws are expected to perform! There can be no exception here if scientific method is to be followed. If it is not to be followed, let us cease to pretend the matter is science. If it is, let us start predicting and getting results. Surely the request is both simple and legitimate; but it is not followed. No, evolutionary practitioners do follow this request! so we do not use the term 'science'. The reason is simple. It would be misleading.

Jill : Why not? I do not doubt that 'nothing made matter and matter made me' is a lot
more ridiculous than saying, 'these delicious cinnamon and apple sponge cakes
came because of no reason - it was just a nice Spring day.'

Bill : Why not say that!

Jill : Because - by the way, I want mine crisp - things never happen that way. You need
directed intelligence for radical results. We don't bake because it's possible we will
need to; it's because we have to. Intelligence directs ingredients to get intelligible
results.

Bill : You reason too much. You don't need reason, and I can prove it!

Jill : You'll need reason to do the proving! By the way, since you want to be rational
- or show you need it - why not find a reason for thinking your reason is rational?

Bill : It works.

Jill : Not in producing crisp, complex cream cakes out of thin air... or, for that matter,
in producing life even when you use it, except as a product of a life that is already
made; and certainly not design advance for living things by sitting around waiting.
Look Bill, if you can't create life out of non-life, why expect thoughtless matter to
produce it - and if you really want to be reasonable, forget about making laws by
chance! Murdered reason is lifeless. Existential angst isn't the logical reason
for things. Irrational desire doesn't produce things, even if people queue! God-
fleeing philosophers have been queuing for centuries, and all they create - is confusion.

Bill : The girl that I marry will be highly irrational.

Jill : Good match! Even she however may realise this - Queues Don't Create Buses.

The fact that many who cannot produce the goods, do use the term with all its appalling pretension in this case, is merely evidence of their extreme desire to have things the way they are not; and of their inability to perform, in the case of this hypothesis, this dream of organic evolution.

In this Popper is the more interesting because he admits that evolution is a kind of religion to him; but it is not science.

As has been presented to you (see e.g. Chapter 1, Section 1, Part B supra): whether it be religion, or science or anything else, a failure to stand up to reason is scarcely an asset. Reason is a gift which it IS unwise and dangerous to cast away. Of course it can be misused; but carefully used, it is a test of no small value. It is of course ridiculous to disparage it, and then use it to attack someone else's position. (See cartoon on page facing.)

Evolution, it is also pointed out, does not even enable retrodiction. It is not even possible to get agreement among evolutionists on the way in which some one 'stage' is supposed eventually to have turned into the latest, the present. This term means simply the power, practice or process of looking back and seeing, in terms of the 'law', why things worked out as they did. 'Of course,' you might say, 'now that I understand the law, I can see just why, just precisely why things happened as they did. It had to be so.'

Not at all! Even with the advantage of knowing the results of the 'experiment', evolutionists cannot and do not look back and agree on the basis of law, or any other basis for that matter, just how, in what steps, things came, 'arrived' on this earth, as they are supposed to have done. This of course is the height of failure, if science is in view: not even with knowledge of what in fact happened (that is, man is here, simpler things are there), is there a way to tell why it happened this way! If that were a law in a different scientific discipline, it would approach the point of comedy...

Dr Duane T. Gish, famed university campus debater and Ph. D. in Biology, notes (pp. 245-7 of his Evolution: The Challenge of the Fossil Record) a comment of Professor Derek Agar, Professor of Geology at Swansea, Wales:

It must be significant that nearly all the evolutionary stories I learned as a student, from Trueman's Ostrea/Gryphea to Carruther's Zaphrentis delanouei have now been "debunked". Similarly, my own experience of more than twenty years looking for evolutionary lineages among the Mesozoic Brachipoda has proved them equally elusive.

Popper is further citing 'evolution' as not a scientific law in stating that it is not verifiable (*26).

It is of the essence of science that others, in principle, may use your statements and repeat your findings, thus giving to them an air of public availability and respectability. Without this, science would also, to a very large degree, be without its reputation. It is rather like a sportsman who being challenged, turns around and defeats his opponents in a regular way. He becomes a champion. So verification champions a theory. True, it does not at once prove it true; more is needed. Yet its absence in the face of a proper prediction based on the theory, is the sentence of death on the theory, as stated.

One such absence, duly and properly found, is sufficient to terminate the scientific existence of a theory (often called an hypothesis, to stress its provisional nature).

Why ? It is because the statement of a law is thus shown not to cover the area of facts to which it is addressed. If a law can be found to cover those in view, this therefore is not it. Thus you reasonably look for another, and save time.

The theory of evolution has failed not only once. First the Cambrian (*27) era containing a large proportion of types of living creatures, is near to the very first alleged geological age; and it included a wide variety of complex organs. Each of these points is an anti-verification of the concept of movement slowly up from below, to our great day! Even if you use 'creation' in fact but keep the term 'evolution', and have sudden arrivals of prodigiously complex and brilliant designs, you still have a lot of them at an advanced stage coming together. As Denton points out in studying the microbiological technical marvels and their constant correlation with and frequent surpassing of our technical efforts - the concept of chance is irrelevant. The verification of the theory is not fulfilled, and strictly, that should be the end of it.

Only a new formulation which systematically allows for such a vast and complex array of multiplied creations, over a wide range, with much variation within groups... could meet this case (cf. Genesis 1:21-22, 6:4). But that is of course precisely what creationists, on the Biblical model in this case, said, with self-consistent and rationally competent grounds provided.

That prediction, if you like, that result of the concept of the Creation, is fulfilled. The number and complexity and so forth, is what one would expect. At the level of verification, what creation provides for, is there; what 'evolution' provides for... is not.

Popper of course says evolution is not even verifiable (*28). One can see his point: if it is alleged that things happen so slowly, then we would not be able to see them. However, the fruit fly Drosophila was a great indication of what could be. This fruit fly was found to be changing (*29) in the most extraordinary ways concerning its wings and body. Was this then evolution ?

Found absent was the relevant change (*30), into increase of design complexity, such as would be needed if things happened as evolution so long propagandised - or its proponents! Loss of fertility, or of vitality, or of performance, this instead was the rule, as the changes were observed. There has never been sustained any case where the relevant change has been traced. Yet there surely could have been. If change can and does happen so quickly, as in this case, why not some relevant change ? Some evolutionists, apparently in desperation, have the idea of quantum evolution - a sudden massive integrated step (another name, really, for what we call a 'creation'). Why not then let us see one! We cannot, fortunately, invent what we are to see. It does not happen: that is the epitaph of this unfounded expectation, when it meets, rather reluctantly, with the facts, the evidence, the observations.

Failure in prediction, retrodiction, disagreement on what happened, lack of verification and anti-verification - these are the death sentence on the theory. If it can be changed, let it be. In any case, it has fallen. This raises the last essential point in method: for we are simply taking a fascinating example of the violation of scientific method by a theory oddly referred to by some (but not, as we see, by all) of its followers as scientific.

As to method, you would be expected to start with what you observe, and then try to explain it. Here, we start with what is hoped (*31) to be seen, with theories about what may have happened, and then look for facts. These refuse to arrive in the very area of observation of what is happening - the crux of any science. Darwin himself acknowledged that there simply was not the verification and confirmation of his theory in the evidence (i. e. for transmutation); and, better oriented than many Darwinists, he also admitted that to try to derive the 'eye' by his methods bore the marks of being ridiculous.

Work in micro-biology as shown by Denton, in his Evolution: A Theory In Crisis, merely underlines the complexity, the control, the programming (*32), the language employed in the cells and the billions of co-ordinated elements, complete with editorial correction facilities for reproduction of genes. For one cell it is so; let alone millions of them in some super-integrated series of such cells. RELEVANT OBSERVATION WAS NOT THE START OF THE THEORY. METHOD HAS HERE ALSO BEEN VIOLATED. FAILURE TO FIND SUCH OBSERVATION MERELY EXPOSES THE METHOD MORE.

What we are observing merely makes the unscientific also uproarious.

Making it simple

Organic evolution fails:

i) to be based on relevant observation (cf. pp. 161, 234, 251-252G infra).

ii) in having no citable law available for normal scientific testing.

iii) in not being verified in terms of prediction from a scientific law.

iv) to provide sound agreement, even in retrodiction.

v) to agree with current observation of what does happen, even in broadest terms.

vi) as contrary in tenor to known scientific law, such as entropy, equally to common sense.

vii) to have the discipline of science, either in past imaginings or present happenings.

viii) more monumentally the more microbiology reveals the human body as the design paragon.

ix) in confronting the intricate patterns of a profound language as a contribution from chaos (the language of life, which is one, in cells) ... Professor Murray Eden relates here.

x) in having two systems (genetic and behavioural-surviving and so on), not systematically related, yet expected to construct what is here (Schützenberger).
 

Creation Prevails.

CREATION, LIKE EVOLUTION, IS NOT A SCIENTIFIC STATEMENT. AS WITH EVOLUTION, IT IS NOT BASED ON OBSERVATION OF EVENTS HAPPENING. BROADER TREATMENT OF BOTH IS THUS NEEDED. HOWEVER, UNLIKE THE CASE WITH EVOLUTION, WHEN THIS IS DONE, CREATION DOES MEET ALL THE LOGICAL CRITERIA (cf. p. 161 infra).

i) It does not claim that the process is continuing. In this, it is confirmed by all available means. That is verification.

ii) It is susceptible to disproof ( in its Biblical formulation) by simply showing that the process from which creatures have come in fact is continuing. In this, it is verified, for this is not seen.


iii) It does provide logical ground for the language of life.

iv) It avoids the non-systematic relationship of two systems as a ground.

v) Its clear cut retrodiction is not met with contradiction, and it could have been. This too is verification.

vi) It is in precise accord with known scientific law, such as the second law of thermodynamics; and entropy is another formulation of what the Bible SAYS, ( e.g. Isaiah 51:6), and implies ( Romans 
8:20-22 ) in that area of formulation!

vii) The nature of mutation verifies it - variation but not transmutation (kinds).

viii) The numerous evolutionary theories (provided to meet even distant facts) by their disagreement, the one with the other, and by their incredible character - creation arriving incognito as in 'quantum' evolution, or the so-called 'hopeful monster' concept - are in a predictable situation. These unsatisfactory theories show what one would expect: multiplication without solution. This is verification of the creation concept, Biblically invariant. That is, it is unchanging because it is Biblically defined; and because what is Biblically defined, does not need to be confined or refined. It stays in the form, function and rightness given. This case simply verifies that. That is what it had to be; that is what it is.

ix) In the Biblical formulation, this situation is also explained psychologically, and indeed spiritually. There it is declared that man is alienated from the life of God and is systematically dimensionally ignorant (Ephesians 4:18-19). Romans 1 even traces the process. This ability to account for the activity of the evolutionary thrust, personally, is also verification.

x) What contains in its ambit most areas, covers them most categorically and elegantly is deemed the desideratum: this is verification at its acme. In general, the more broadly a presentation covers all known facts, explains all relevant data and the more readily it does so, the more it is deemed to confirm itself.

This excursion into scientific theory and its nature, scientific method and its formulation, and current controversy and its analysis is presented to stimulate you into thought. Culture is not a sufficient condition for thought and acute analysis is always in order. It is what can make certain responses more incisive, sharp, clear and arresting. It helps remove confusion. Further, discoveries can the more readily be made when the cult of the forbidden is not followed. Evidence must be pondered and conclusions subjected to the discipline of reality in such a sphere.

The wrong-headed trend to reject culturally, as at one tertiary institution in this State, at which I taught, because it is not convenient, and not because it is wrong, without indeed giving it due rational interaction with those who present it, is in essence a form of cult. Is not what is culturally dictated in the dereliction of duty towards reason and evidence, a cult ? And in how many universities does one find evidence from Staff or students, of this deplorable cultic phenomenon: creation, or the grand issues of reality are forbidden.

What however is the 'cult of the forbidden' ? It is that cultural negativity, fear or subtlety (depending on motive) whereby certain matters are (ostensibly) ruled in advance of all evidence, 'out of court' - the court of culture. Whether it be deemed to be politics, religion or other field, the result is a mental crimping that too readily becomes downright dishonesty if not, indeed, hypocrisy. Certain things are out of cultural bounds, being inconsistent with desire, ethos, illusion or delusion; irrespective of their truth.

With religion, it may involve the detestable folly of pretending that evidential procedures are irrelevant, and, worse still, that it is illegal to be logical and alert with evidence and reason, lest emotions be roused. This subordinates truth to convenience and not for long may one justifiably expect the continuance of such folly, or of any society where it distinctively rules.

Reality is a dangerous enemy with whom to trifle by such policy and contempt. By this means, irrelevant irrationalities and absurdities - such as is organic evolution in terms of scientific method - may be 'allowed', in that by a mythical oversight, their merely mythical powers are ignored; whereas the more scientifically oriented view of creation is 'excluded' as 'religious'. (Cf. pp. 211-222, 226-234, 330-334 infra.) Christianity with open heart and incisive mind is quite freely availab1e for 'inspection' - and meets any intelligently administered critical test with overwhelming results, that are as unified as they are unique; and it alone systematically meets logical requirements of consistency and rationality (Refer Chapters 1, 3 and 10).

Thus this cult of the forbidden has become an anti-logical discriminatory device, protective of irrationalisms and, in educational circles, often excluding the only logical answer even from consideration!

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