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Getting down to practical terms: (an application to the student level)

The author once attended at Sydney University a Class, for a very short time, in which a Lecturer advised students that if they did not believe in evolution, they could jump in the lake. Pleasant, depending on the lake (N.Z. has nice thermal waters) as such an experience and destination might otherwise be, it is unlikely to be conducive to passing the subject.

To speak restrainedly, the academic thrust of the University of Sydney, in this instance, left something to be desired. Hence, in view of this and such things, another course was taken. In the mercy of God, the new Lecturer was co-operation and courtesy itself, it seemed, lending me his only copy of his lecture notes, to aid me in catching up for the lectures fruitlessly attended in the other subject, now discriminated as an oppressive, and unacceptable substitute for learning.

Lecturers can be forbidden to touch on creation at the tertiary level, as they are to deal with it in science in the desecrated atmosphere of South Australian State secondary schools. Thus many may be academically limping in this domain, at both secondary and tertiary levels.

At the tertiary college in S.A., already mentioned, the author was told not to teach or present creation, though it was an excellent example of the misapplication of scientific method, which had been brought into the syllabus. Why ? Why! - came the query ... surely organic evolution is taught without differentiating grounds, with no adequate rationale, without reference to creation though the grounds for the latter are impeccable: why then not creation ?

The answer would surely echo down the halls of time: it is not convenient. That was the answer. Christ was not convenient. Truth is not convenient. Muddled myths and miasmas like the hypothesis of organic evolution become convulsive academic exercises, compulsive psychological extravaganzas, required philosophies of obeisance; but the truth is not convenient. Now we move to another Campus.

In honour of the thousands of students mentally molested by their tutors, (some perhaps not merely immersed in such studies, but drowned during the baptism), there is now to follow an actual case. Here a lecturer taught that man came from bacteria, and did not even retract this statement as if of a fact, when urged that this was a mere viewpoint. "No!" came the answer. Later, the Dean came forward with the view that after all, if to the Lecturer it appeared as a fact, that was really for him to feel, say and teach.

Gone the fact that scientific method knows facts as data and theories as constructions; gone the fact that the laws of Sir Isaac Newton, even these have been subjected to review in the light (or partial darkness) of Einstein (q.v. index). These were laws, and they were tested in many circumstances and routinely (in 'normal' circumstances) verified.

Even they, however, have not entirely made it to the realm of 'fact'. Yet here, dabbling like so many in the miasma of the evolutionary myth, non-verified to perfection, properly therefore to be sent down from College, what do we find ? This obstructive evolutionary squatter, fresh from the domain of fantasy, is now elevated to the domain of fact, and the lecturer or tutor is a protected species.

It is not our purpose to pursue this incident more than an exhibiting, at the outset the fever in which the spirit of the Age has subdued many. It is our purpose now simply to indicate the sort of treatment that was given to this situation, so that students might take heart and consider that blasé seeming assumptions do not constitute a ground for fear; but merely material for dismissal. Men in the past have known courage; it is needed now to tell the emperor that he is naked. Accordingly, the following section is so written as to be substantially an independent piece.

As such, it can serve two purposes: it can form a convenient, brief review of some of the preceding points; and it can form a semi-independent coverage for student purposes... and these, after all, are among the chief for this work.

Freedom from propaganda and facing scientific method: how the
second helps the first

Upon challenge that this was merely an opinion, a viewpoint, the tutor rejected the point, ostensibly at least making this statement one of fact!

Such a statement, however, is not based on observation, not formulated within the confines of a verifiable law, is not subject to verification, and as Karl Popper argues well, is (as a type of view) not a scientific theory, therefore. Such a theory gives, in particular, neither predictive power nor retrodictive competence, there being many efforts to 'account' for the sequence of 'steps' by which things 'came to be': and these accounts, objectively differ with almost the ease of fairy stories, the one from the other... as indeed, do the various theories of evolution itself.

On the specific topic of gradualistic evolution, further, it is to be noted that this can be (and is) anti-verified by the fact that (1991) Stephen Jay Gould (*33) has recently so highlighted in examining Canadian shale deposits, bearing on the 'Cambrian Age': namely that so many many complex life forms appear at this early stage, as it is deemed to be, at once. Not merely are there any highly specialised creatures, but many; not merely are there many, but they cover many of the major types. Long known, this point has been intensified in its impact through Gould's sifting of the evidence, even further.

The fact that he finds evidence of partial suppression of these extraordinary facts by earlier research, is of no small interest, in view of the fact that this is a straight anti- verification of the gradualistic theory of organic evolution. Science has a name partly because it has standards; and when any theory is anti-verified by an appropriate test of its implications, that is the end of that theory. A totally new one may be needed, or adjustment; but the theory has died, not survived the scrutiny of facts.

Thus while the necessary grounds for a scientific theory are not found in this case, predictive power and the appropriate formulation for it, what can be evidentially tested in the field of necessary implications, is negative and that is fatal to the theory. It is in this context that the Wistar Symposium results are so important, concerning the non-viability of the theory on other grounds. The cold collation of these considerations is a deadly one indeed, the co- ordination being the exact requirement for a false theory, and the exact opposite of what a living one requires, as to method.

Therefore, if the tutor's public rejection of the protest that this statement, the amazingly brave one that man came from bacteria, was merely a viewpoint, meant that it was not even a (scientific) viewpoint, one could agree with him: that is, it is indeed not a viewpoint... occasioned by the due use of scientific method... Sadly, investigation showed later that this was not the case.

Since Professor W.R. Thompson's pungent and sharp review (*34) in splendidly objective manner, of the evidential situation for the gradualistic evolution theory, Dr Michael Denton has, in his Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, shown very recently the total failure of any rationally defensible ground for any theory of evolution proposed. This failure, to have even the formulation of a testable law, makes it the more inappropriate for a student to have to hear - in this case, in order to be a nurse - something which sounds like a statement of faith, but which appears in form as if a statement of fact (as was the case when the tutor first made the claim).

If one were forced to hear such things provided freely, then it would appear to amount to discrimination, and that not on academic grounds. It is not of course suggested that this was the purpose; but that it would be the result appears quite certain. In any topic, rational review of all the evidence, in a scientific method background subject, may well be in order. Statements of faith, however, where lacking rational justification, without dealing with patent disqualifications, one conceives, are not so... except perhaps at times in a science class, when prefaced by an acknowledgement of what they are. If a tutor wishes to share a thought, fine: but its status must be established.

How very far such a statement as that made on bacteria, differs from science, is apparent, not merely from the above. It is not only its systematic disqualifications which exclude it; it is further exposed by a review of a case in point in physics. This positive example of scientific method, also helps... by contrast.

Here the discretionary care, the reserve, the constraint of facts, quantifiability in this case, verifiability, reserve even with partial verification available, the looking with care for ways of resolving clear inadequacies: all this is in the most marked contrast to the action so often met in the field of organic evolution. There - action without review of evidence, of recent relevant developments, of critiques, without proper assessment in terms of scientific method, without acknowledgement of anti-verification are sometimes like a plague of viruses, or bacteria...

Organic evolution, verification and creation: a matter of method

While cultural conditions may change, the method of science does not in this, that falsifiability is the obverse of reliability. A potent pair, these considerations indict organic evolution, except in this, in the opposite sense, that it is reliably found to fail evidential, methodological and logical tests. That sort of reliability, however, is not the one intended!

Now then, take the illustration of physics, a science well-endowed with mathematical methods and quantification, formulations which normatively are falsifiable. We take the case, as example, of Yukawa, the noted Japanese scientist who in 1935 did a little work in the field of analogy.

From a creationist standpoint, this would not be particularly unlikely to be fruitful, since the same mind made all things. Now Yukawa postulated (whatever might have been his own personal viewpoint) that just as there were in the electrical field, electrical charges which held an attraction towards each other, such that the product of the charge quantities divided by the square of the distance between them was the index to the amount of it - so a similar situation might apply in his own field. Put differently, this attraction varied directly as the product of the charges and inversely as the distance squared, which was between them. Would the analogy help ?

Using also the concept of photons as relating to this force of attraction, and the question being the capacity of the charges to emit and to absorb photons, Yukawa had the basis for the view that nuclear forces might also have such attractions between them, likewise relative to capacity to transmit and to absorb quanta, energy packets of some sort. Yukawa predicted, in view of quantitative data available in the nuclear field, a nuclear particle which would be about 200 times 'heavier' than electrons.

His desire appears to have been stirred by the unanswered question of how the nuclear particles cohered in the atom.

So far we note:

i) His view is based on various theoretical and testable concepts which jointly yielded, in terms of a postulated analogy relative to a) particle interaction and b) particle existence and c) known law in one of the two fields, a verifiable or non-verifiable result. ii) This postulation is expressed in a form which permits prediction. iii) It is not considered acceptable until the required verification occurs, being a mere postulation.

Later, there were found difficulties when a particle observed in cosmic rays via a cloud chamber experiment, around the right size, did not interact with nuclei. Despite the size success, the failure to cover the case in the known constraints, excluded the 'answer'.

Then various particles were found, and a chain of derivation, one from the other. When then, a particle of around the right size was found which also did interact with the nuclei, then there was verification such that the theory might be true.

Even then, however, as Collier's Encyclopedia of 1985 advises us, there were problems, because this structure of theory still made it difficult to predict correctly detailed phenomena such as the "saturation of nuclear forces", the "binding energies" and the "nuclear energy levels". Hence, as various new theories and discoveries and conceptions proceeded, with schools of thought on the unverified, the conclusion of one writer in the encyclopedia was that without actual verification in specifiable ways for some of the later theories, the issue was that the reality was not really known for them. The nuclear realities were not actually understood.

Let us contrast this with the organic evolution situation, in METHOD.

l) It is not based on analogy of other laws and inter-relations,
but on their contradiction.

2) It is not so formulated that prediction is appropriate.

3) Hence it is not able to have any verification by predictive methods.

4) In fact, it is contradicted in many ways where implications may be checked: by the Cambrian era; the mathematical models; the language structure - its arrival and survival; the failure of fast mutations - as in Drosophila - to yield relevant results; the diversity of highly contrary theories by evolutionists; the failure for tests to differentiate theories from each other, evidence avoiding all, or indeed from metaphysics; the artificial intelligence model of Schützenberger, with its practical experimentation; the failure to find mutations of indisputably more complex design - the only relevant type; the unbridged gaps in design series in paleontology, on which Professor Thompson placed so much emphasis... By all this it is contradicted, and more.

Now on the other hand, we survey the scene with another approach, one which does make a prediction, the case of creation; and this does find available corroboration here. Thus, there are no new naturally produced incontestable design increments, whether in the flurries of any Drosophila breeding or otherwise; there is no evidence of the gradual production of superman or super-anything else (in design complexity). We find no bridging of basic gaps between basic types of biota on a gradualistic basis (and Gould goes further, finding them baulking even to the imagination to conceive); nor is there available evidence of any quantum leap based on observation or even analogy... and so on, and on.

We shall not re-write the chapter or recapitulate the bases and evidences, merely note that everything found is allied to that to which Creation would direct the mind; whilst contradiction of expectation is the forte of organic evolution, and with this, contradiction of scientific method.

In short, as to the predictive element that scientific method requires for scientific law: this, organic evolution violates with a cavalier, if not bombastic innocence or insolence... or both ? In any case, it is violated; and its implications are not reconciled with fact. Yet the applications of scientific procedures so far as they are relevant, in every case harmonise with or actively validate the position of creation.

This does not ensure that either position is a scientific one. It does however (without reference to the other logical elements involved, determinative considerations to which we have referred and shall refer in their place), make it clear that scientific method, to the extent that it is applicable, leaves no room for choice. The die is cast. Observable data, like known theory, fit only the 'slender foot' of creation.

One non-verification successfully disestablishes a scientific theory. Organic evolution, contrary in kind to scientific law (where constraints, analogies and data constrain to a theory, not against it!), is disestablished quite categorically. It is so, not merely on the gradual model, but on the sudden or saltation model, all the more obviously; and one example of this, of course, is 'punctuated equilibrium' (q.v., and also EXTENSION on this, *35, infra). Even the former, gradualism, Hoyle ridicules mathematically, just as Schützenberger (shortly to follow) is constrained to reject it systematically and experimentally, in terms indeed of all known analogy, any known consideration, and because of what is known.

Similarly, Professor Murray Eden of M.I.T. is forced on the basis of all known linguistic phenomena that relate, to do the same. In this connection, indeed in addition, fascinating (as we see from Pulgrum - *22 infra and pp. 13-15 supra) is the fact that there are no linguistic 'fossils'. By this is meant that historically, we do not find a graded ascent in language, but technical complexity and depth from the beginning, in the middle and on all sides. Antiquity is certainly no guide to simplicity in cells or language. That, relative to cells, of course is precisely the same emphasis as that of Denton, who states categorically, in his specialist field, that there is absolutely no primitive cell, no hint of evolutionary sequence in cells (Denton op. cit. p. 250, see p. 120 supra).

With cells, the functional biological base, and language, the functional communication: evolution is left like an irrelevant bystander. Its chief relevance is, without doubt, on the evidence, its misuse to manipulate the gullible minds of misled mortals.

Forced by evidence out of the gradual mode, on all sides, the theory of organic evolution wanders into areas of farce in mathematics (*35), which already had found it an imposition, an invitation to meaninglessness: for after all, laws never did and never could come from an insufficient condition, so long as logic, the world and reason remain in force: we have yet to find magic outside children's books and their ilk, and if we did, it would merely betoken a series of fantasising forces and/or beings outside our ken; not any cessation of the necessity of adequate means for specifiable results. The fact that it is only at such points that organic evolution even becomes rationally thinkable, is its scientific epitaph.

Its logical epitaph is this: that only when logic is abandoned, can it be rationally considered; but then, as to that, it is already a contradiction in terms.

A lot of trouble

This outstanding biochemist and the mathematical professor have much in agreement at this point, though Schützenberger, while admitting total inability to construct any theory or view (with special reference to experimentation in artificial intelligence) which would tolerate organic evolution, is not a creationist. He is merely registering the inability of mathematical science to cover the theories, as of course does Sir Fred Hoyle, who has mounted a continuing crusade against this evolutionary theory, calling it 'nonsense of a high order', in terms of his mathematical analyses.

Professor Murray Eden of M.I.T. asserts, despite being an evolutionist, that no concepts and knowledge are available in terms of which rationally to present organic evolution.

For his part, Dr Dmitri Kouznetsov (cf. pp. 218 ff. infra) found he had to abandon organic evolution because of the evidence, years before becoming a Christian. Starting from that time, he turned into a creationist, specialising in the field he finds so hostile to evolution, neural microbiology; and like Dr Wilder Smith, he has pursued researches resulting in several doctorates, in his own case, medicine, science and philosophy. In the lecture noted (loc. cit. infra), he stressed his absorption in and insistence on experiment. Dr Michael Denton, also a microbiologist, in his work Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, in a profound and extensive biochemical, genetic and morphological presentation comes to a similar conclusion to that of Eden, declaring the Darwinian theory in particular to be profoundly awry and amiss, chance considerations mere folly, and a conceptual void the way ahead.

Such is the price of folly. In this setting, Professor Karl Popper's systematic and methodological strictures on this sort of theory, though he too is an evolutionist, are something of a rescue mission for the good name of science at that point: for he argues extensively that evolution is without the necessary ingredients to satisfy scientific method, to enable it to be called a scientific law. This we have noted.

It is of course true that non-scientific pieces of splendid imagination have tended to obsess many scientists in the past, as in the case of the notorious phlogiston theory, held with a tenacity and rigour that no facts legitimised, when actually oxygen was combining in the case in point, not (the imaginary) phlogiston gas departing. It was not a lighter than air hypothetical gas which departed, in what we now call oxidation, but oxygen which was added. The doctrinaire claims to the contrary, nevertheless, were pressed with assured, intemperate and doctrinaire rigidity, until Lavoisier with experiment, so rightly dear to the heart of science and far from the theory of evolution, finally despatched the phlogiston theory.

The theory of evolution, however, is so misaligned with any scientific bases in terms of due system and method, that the example of phlogiston, in that case not incited by anti-religious sentiment, but merely held with improper tenacity, appears benign by comparison.

In such a matter, it is refreshing to find so eminent a specialist as Professor W.R. Thompson, systematically and evidentially exposing the Darwinian and gradualistic theory of evolution, step by step in his Everyman introduction to The Origin of Species: a theory not helped by calling for miracles more quickly (see the affair of 'punctuated equilibrium' and saltation, pp. 112 ff. supra, and *22 with Glossary for p. 156, infra). That is as if evolutionists, disillusioned with time as a substitute for system, would now demand instaneity (fitting for the 'instant generation' of today), as if system might come at the thunder-clap of desire, like a genie from a bottle.

This rejection of reason however, even given time, is not advanced by the loss of that facility. In the end, biology in this erratic and unproductive mode of evolution is returning to the FACT of creation, without the name: sic semper tyrannus!

A little thought...

This it must do. It must have power to institute law, to constitute concepts in material form, to constrain, contain and restrain, so that copies are made and errors are fought against in cells and organs and organisms; it must rise like a phoenix from the ashes, equipped with powers to conceptualise therefore, and to implement. But wait! what do we say about ashes! We are discussing institution not destitution. Our wars and judgments make ashes too near; but in the institution phase, what was not instituted has no ashes, or anything else destroyed, for destruction must first wait upon construction. So, not after all like a phoenix from the ashes arising, but rather arisen, without pile beneath, is what makes the piles, the foundations, instituting and constituting the world of change in order that it might change from beginnings to endings, from creation to desecration, judgment or performance as the case may be.

And it must provide mind for man and spirit for him, that he might conceptualise and implement in his own derivative and contained way. And for man, an 'image' is needed so that he may do business with God and have ground for truth, without which he is mere reactor and could not intelligently discuss what is and what is not; nor, therefore, this, to affirm or deny.

It is here alone that the irrepressible human desire for truth, to declare it or rebut what others think it to be, has its rational basis. (Indeed, the capacity to know God is the ground of the assurance, and even where this knowledge is lacking, of the assumption of availability normally implicit; while the frustration so common in this, is the result for the renegade from reality, for refusal of truth. The underlying reason for that is that God lives; and many do not want that life, whatever private gods they may create - cf. John 3:17-19.)

It is here Bible gives the evidence... shown in Ch.1. We need not however recapitulate: it is the same. The movement from the conceptual calamities of the organic evolution hypothesis is the same thing as movement towards the God of the Bible. The circuit to avoid God is now in the re-entry phase. How shall it be formulated ? Where shall it be found ? Oh, just in the same place as always, in God, who from everlasting to everlasting is God. (See Psalm 90:2; cf. Isaiah 29:13- 20, esp. v. 16 - "Shall the thing framed say of Him who framed it, He has no understanding!")

What sort of a principle thinks and conceives and even constructs conceptual apparatus in man ? Oh well, not quite a principle. After all, a principle is a name for some thing which is caused to operate in some way. It is the cause which makes it do so which is needed. A principle is a description of an order and procedure; and because of this, it needs its base, the force and creative content which it describes so that it can be a principle. You need the worker to make it work, the creator to allow it to happen, the structure in which it is to work, the imagination to formulate it so that it might work, the thinker for whom it is a thought, the functionary for which this is a function. Something which is in order needs the orderer, if code then its commander; and what operates needs the gear in which to operate, the power by which to operate and the basis on which to act. (Cf. pp. 252B, 315B-316G, 348-353 infra.)

Very well, as always you need God: all we are seeing in modern evolutionary gasping and panting after immediate 'creation' is a denial of the cause and a clamour for the effect. It is always the same: God is smuggled in and His name is smuggled out.

For update on dating, see companion volume, That Magnificent Rock, esp. Ch. 7 as marked. In particular, see progressive further updating in endnotes to that Chapter, especially *4, which is extensive, and the latest sector, 2008.

Thus Dr Duane Gish in his Evolution: The Challenge of the Fossil Record, p. 55 notes the following, of this allegedly near to first step in life:

In Cambrian rocks are found fossils of trilobites, sponges, brachiopods, worms, jellyfish, sea urchins, sea cucumbers, swimming crustaceans, sea lilies, and other complex invertebrates. The appearance of this great variety of complex creatures is so startlingly sudden-that it is commonly referred to as the "Cambrian explosion" in geological literature.

Of the 'prior' products which processive evolution would postulate, Gish declares:

Ever since Darwin the rocks have been intensely searched for this record, but to evolutionists the results have been agonizingly disappointing. Nowhere on earth - neither on any continent nor on the bottom of any ocean have we been able to find the intermediates between single-celled organisms and the complex invertebrates. Wherever or whenever we find them, right from the start jellyfish are jellyfish, trilobites are trilobites and sea urchins are sea urchins.

As Gary Parker puts it (p. 91, Creation The Facts of Life):

The simplest fossil community, the "Trilobite Seas" (Cambrian system) contains almost all the major groups of animals, including the most complex invertebrates, the nautiloids, the highly complex trilobites... and showing a trilobite inset on p. 91, Parker notes: Many trilobites such as the one pictured... had extremely complex eyes- the math to understand the lens was not even worked out until the middle of the last century. (It. added.)

A more glamorous crash dive for a test plane... it would be difficult even to imagine. Far from verification, this is justly called anti-verification. The theory is defunct in theory, by scientific method; though very well in psychological practice. Such is the fall of man, that when a desired theory falls, he can let it stand, by falling himself!

But of what order is this anti-verification ? Let us consider the ingredients of the matter. It involves and includes:

a) failure to find what is predicted.

b) failure to find anything like what is predicted.

c) success in finding the exact opposite of what is predicted.

d) success in finding multiplicity, complexity, variety and an extraordinarily wide coverage of living systems, coming both suddenly and 'early' at the very gates... of biological life... a testimony radically and ruinously contrary to all but magical and wholly unscientific auto-creation, in scope and character.

Indeed, the evidence smiles with a quiet and demure disdain on all the bustle of evolutionary theory.

Whatever may be imagined to have come in the earliest stages, steps or phases, and wherever, as Gish points out (pp. 53-57, op.cit.), no transitions are available from single-celled to multicellular creatures.

To suggest that the failure (a deadly anti-verification, evidentially speaking) is, in fact, comically in collision with the concept of non-creation, of evolutionary development of any kind, what would it be ? This would be an understatement verging on a 'brief' for the defence, delivered in desperation, of the arrogant antics of evolution.

The facts are rather like a visual presentation to go with a lecture on the topic of creation to which, except in name, evolution is now plummeting (as is the USSR - another proud failed system- towards the US). The lecturer, advisedly might say something like this:

'Now students, I want you to observe what is here. There is the suddenness normal to creation; there is the multiplicity and variety appropriate to a great mind with enormous powers of performance. There is a seeming total disregard to all organisational barriers which might try a lesser mind. Indeed, there is that element of exuberance and magnitude which is awesome in the creative side, just as is the hydrogen bomb at the destructive. And all this is not to mention, without any thought at all to the marvels of microbiology, which show that even a 'mere' single cell is a work of such acuteness of performance that it tries our best intelligences simply to follow up on it, and see how in the world it was all done ! What is present is that magnitude of mentality that even to mirror it (in our later and limping concepts, even in a simple cell, when all the detail is considered ) is a humbling occupation, as of an apprentice painter before the mind of the master. When one sees the escalation to such heights as these: one finds all the criteria of creation are present while none of those based on any (quasi-) rational alternative formulation is present. Further, the evidence is present pre-eminently, in the sort of way which, ideally, one would expect when dealing with the Creator of one's own mind.'

The Cambrian 'Age', for its part, appears as an education so compelling that even the famous Cambridge might envy its... thoroughness.

If the popular geological conception of rock strata and time were followed, then, there is a repudiation of the evolutionary concept here, by simple failure of prediction. What needs constantly to be repeated in this drowsy atmosphere, though now it be a little awakened, with 'creation-by-phrases', like 'punctuated equilibrium' replacing the more logical and sufficient kind, by God, is this.

All this negative verification (one negative, where the test is rightly administered, ends a scientific theory, whereas this one merely sticks around by what has been called 'dogmatic slumber', aided by dogmatic desire) is actually positive verification for creation. What it indicates is found; what it denies is not found!

In all the heart-break that produces an Eldredge (Parker, op. cit. p. 106) meeting 'problems' within such a scenario as some 'hopeful monster' or prodigy 'arising' only to lack, alas a mate, by saying that in a sense he was forced to 'punctuated equilibrium' because in all his searching "no one has found any evidence of such in-between creatures" as gradual evolution surmises: there is yet comfort!

The remedy for his anguished dilemma is found when one looks at this evidence to which Eldredge in this, looks well; and then looks, not for a phrase, but for a function, a power, an operator equal to the task of designing. Man is in many areas, able to create; and it is observable then, from within, and with the results, that 'creation' occurs in and about human life. That is, in the mind and spirit of man, there is a creative function on the basis of given equipment. Current observations deny that the status quo in matter and cells produces creation. Rather does it show that man, given his equipment, can create. Thus we have visible the process of creation, as also the product, in man. In cells, we have neither observable. We do it. The cell does not. It is just that we cannot do it enough; but the function is there.

As Parker puts it (op. cit. p. 210) of the punctuated equilibrium desperation attempt to face the facts, while avoiding the issue of what is equal to the results:

This new concept of evolution is based on the fossils we don't find and on genetic mechanisms that have never been observed. The case for creation is based on thousands of tons of fossils that we have found and on genetic mechanisms (variation within kind) that we do observe and put into practice every day.

The failure to verify, in evolutionary approaches, is the success in verifying in creation approaches, in the essence. This Success is often avoided, rather than voided, by wistful, or wishful longings (as in punctuated equilibrium, really splashes of creation followed by pauses, which Genesis first noted, long ago), and by frustrated out-pourings. These are increasingly evident in evolutionists, thinking and dreaming, whilst frayed and frustrated.

In due reaction, Dr Colin Patterson, Senior Palaeontologist, British Museum of Natural History, related in his keynote address at the American Museum in 1981, "one morning I woke up and something had happened in the night, and it struck me that I had been working on this stuff for twenty years and there was not one thing I knew about it."

He then proceeded to put to prestigious bodies... this question, concerning evolution: Can you tell "any one thing which is true ?". In answer, he gained only... silence... and this: "I do know one thing - it ought not to be taught in high school." What then of South Australia (q.v.) where evolution alone is taught as science at High School! Woe to the land!

The power of the evidence, however, is not limited to the great gaps in fossil evidence, in such beautiful accord with Biblical requirements, or to the sheer prodigality of the evidence there, or to the sudden appearance of advanced creation, even on evolutionary premises, as if to destroy its very self were its dream; nor is it limited to the nature of genetic processes, complexity and language; or to the failure of language to cope with chance disorientative processes, and the complex language in the cells; to the natural downward trend on created apparatus (whoever created it) in this world, the second law of thermodynamics merely summarising this fact; or to the nature of logic in production of genres and categories of things, and what this requires. There is another field of great interest relative to the very rocks. Let us attend to this now.

The power of flood waters to mimic many of the findings of the rocks is also highly pertinent for anyone interested in what really happened instead, as Professor E.H. Andrews notes (in his God, Science & Evolution, pp. 114-122, and in From Nothing to Nature, pp. 68 ff.) of merely assuming a picture and then deducing it.

This happens when certain original conditions and applicable rates of change are taken for granted, the common practice, with varying degrees of invention, in this case. Not merely is a 'model' in this area of 'science', a mere guess, relative to the original status quo of various materials, mixtures and so on... if the world is as the worker imagines it was at the first. The assumed rate of change, so that this is how long it would take from that (assumed) first stage to become this ( observed ) stage, is largely in the same category. We have noted this earlier (pp. 75 ff. supra) and to it will shortly return (pp. 166 ff. infra).

So common is deterioration of rates in many cases (and research is extending the cases in view) that there is the same, natural decay curve, given to a suitable graph of some of the instances. In general, it is not logically necessary to assume the world always had conditions (*37) like those in our own time, always had structures in operation like these, far less ones identical to it; or that it always went on a (relatively) assured basis as far as guesswork from this 'downstream' position is concerned; far less that it never suffered catastrophes naturally affecting both the results and the rates drastically.

This catastrophic emphasis is something which great geologists of the past, such as Agassiz and Cuvier made clear. Indeed, they considered that the evidence required them to make it clear. Assumptions on uniformitarianism are contra-factual at worst, presumptuous at best. (That is, the concept that all things go on as they were, went on as they do: a sort of placatory picture of the past. Those very words, of scorning, scoffing uniformitarianism incidentally, are what the Bible predicts for the advanced follies of the advanced times of this age - II Peter 3:1-8: another independent verification, based on observation...!)

It is best to keep to the evidence in scientific studies of such things, and to proceed therefrom, rather than to base everything firmly on imagination, and then to use sophisticated mathematics to deduce what is... needed, desired, acceptable, in this way or that.

If you assume certain invariability - contrary to increasing evidence (*38,*39) - of certain rates, even under pressure and in highly divergent circumstances (even the velocity of light has become a most credibly and creditably and indeed increasingly widely argued candidate for lowering over time, rather than being simply constant): what then ? If you simply assume all these things, why not assume what you will!

If you assume certain initial ratios of certain chemicals, as well, why not write your own book and make it a novel! when you observe that the ratio of radioactive to stable carbon atoms appearing in our atmosphere (in CO2) is currently unstable, not having yet reached equilibrium, while still assuming the constancy of such a ratio for carbon dating over time, then you begin not merely to imagine what is not evidenced, but to ignore what is.

That is the next step in divorce from science, and devotion to fantasy; and it has already been made.

Morris (Scientific Creationism, p. 164) quotes researcher Lingenfelter to the effect that evidence indicated strongly that 'present natural production rate exceeds the natural decay rate by as much as 25%' so that radiocarbon is apparently increasing its ratio. World expert on the topic, Dr Melvin Cook 'has reviewed the relevant data' and 'derives a non-equilibrium equation for this process and then calculates back to the initial boundary conditions when radiocarbon assay was zero.' On such a work from evidence, if a person wishes to follow a concept of uniform actions, the initial time calculated, Morris notes, is around 10,000 years ago... that is, for the process to have started to have reached its present disequilibrium condition.

What makes all this the more interesting and suggests need for far more reticence in the area of philosophy from those scientists who may wish to indulge in it (as least QUA scientists... lest there be any confusion), is a fascinating study by Dr Steve Austin. This geologist has prepared a TV production incorporating picture evidence (again... preferred in science) of his findings on years of observation of a fact. And this ? It is the eruption of Mt St Helens.

While earlier evidence had made clear that coal can be produced in a short¹ time by chemical means, under pressure, exploding the myth that it 'takes much time' to make it, as a necessity, Dr Austin has shown many more elements of what can be done in fast motion, to the point. Mt St Helens, he points out, is the greatest documented earth work of its kind. It might indeed be added that our study, not least, is the earth...

Here at last we can see some of the events, not on mere or contra-factual assumptions, but in terms of what is, the forces that operate: the results they provide. This does not prove per se how this or that happened; what it does prove is how it could, and on occasion, it does happen, exhibiting the actual works of nature for the evidentially... inclined. It is far superior, as a method, to the production of theories in opposition to laws, and in composition indeed with assumptions frequently not even acknowledged.

Noting that Mt St Helens, 9677 feet high, lost 1300 feet of summit elevation, that half of one cubic mile slid away, and that the nearby Spirit Lake displaced water, when 'invaded' by this fill to the extent of 860 feet above the earlier level: he makes the point that we are here at last in the presence of massive forces such as the flood would dwarf indeed, but which might at least give some small index to its thrust and results on the Biblical scope.

This is the scope which, worldwide, is so vastly attested in so many ways and in the testimony of so many races as Velikovsky and others have shown, for the flood; and by so much sedimentary rock in such vast and altitudinous places, where evidence of upthrust should be vast if the rock were simply lifted (rather than the sea rising to get there); but where such evidence of upthrust simply is not present. Morris gave much detail here in his Genesis Flood production, co-authored with John Whitcomb.

What then is observed in this actual, recent mini-flood situation in terms of recent evidence ? What has Mt St Helens to show us ?

Steam blasting out funnels, channels in which water flowed, rather than water eroding solid rock: this was the observation. Cataclysmic forces acted dynamically with startling and exceedingly quick results. Similarity to Yellowstone National Park rock formations and layering was noted, and the time for this ? It was days, not millions of years. It is in some ways, perhaps, like an atomic bomb used to excavate, as against men with shovels. It is rather quicker, being an entirely different method.

CATASTROPHE CAN (and does) CARVE IN MINUTES WHAT 'NORMAL' PROCESS SCARCELY TOUCHES IN HUNDREDS OF YEARS. This is what Dr Austin, at Mt St Helens, showed.

Page 166 continued in the next section

Footnotes:

1. The pleochroic 'halos', shapes often like circles or ellipses and so on, are discussed on p. 250 infra. These shapes (which may be found in coal), made by rock- embedded radio-active particles such as those from uranium or such derivatives as polonium... constitute another brand of evidence of speed - and of its variation in radiation.
From those for polonium in the 'pre-Cambrian' granite rocks investigated by Dr Robert Gentry, indeed, comes evidence (loc. cit.) which appears to point to creation in a remarkably explicit manner. Considering the lack of observability of creation (because it is statedly finished, a confirmation) and of gradualistic 'creative' mechanisms for increasing design complexity and functionality and efficacy in life (because it does not happen- this is the song of evidence and sight, as illustrated so dramatically with the fruitfly Drosophila q.v., a sharp rebuff to evolutionary expectations): this evidence has staggering impact. It adds to an already overwhelming attestation of creation, by logical means.
Not only however is there evidence of speed - and the degree of speed is noted on p. 250 infra! - but there is evidence of pleochroic halos derived from uranium-plutonium decay processes in coal formations.
These, depending on the shape of the halo and the nature of the medium (here coal deposits in the Colorado Plateau) as the halo is forming, have world specialist, Dr Robert Gentry presenting evidence of a spectacular kind for two outstanding points. The first is the natural confirmation of what has already been shown experimentally: that coal can be formed in laboratory style conditions, in a short time. The value of this is simply that it demonstrates that such conditions may indeed occur in nature (and they relate of course to catastrophes for which famed geologists Cuvier and Agassiz reasoned for so long). The second point made is this. There is strong attestation not only that coal formed here, naturally, in a non-gradualistic scenario, but that it actually formed in a maximum of 25-50 years, and quite probably in less (Paul Ackerman, citing Dr Robert Gentry, pp. 106 ff., It's A Young World After All). The use of the relevant rate computations leads to such a conclusion in this specialised environment! ( Cf. Gentry's Creation's Tiny Mystery, p. 57)
Relative to Gentry's work, Dr Slusher notes (p. 19 of his Critique of Radiometric Dating), that... "Studies have been made by Robert V. Gentry. Gentry also finds a variation in the haloes leading him to conclude that the decay constants have not been constant in time," citing Gentry's Cosmological Implications of Extinct Radioactivity from Pleochroic Halos, appearing in the Creation Science Research Quarterly 3:2, pp. 17-20, 1966.

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