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End-notes to Section 2 (EN#)

2 See Humorous Case... pp. 270-284 infra; also (*5) infra and pp. 284-291, 424 ff. infra.

3 For an extension on this point, see Ch. 7, pp. 582-594 infra, and Ch. 5, pp. 428 ff. infra.

4 Realist: the contrary term would be 'fantasist': the concepts are contradictory - in terms of works in the whole field of religion, Jesus Christ is the realist par excellence. The scope of the works He did, confirmed from the past, predicted for the future, and embraced by the provision of promises (Matthew 5:17-18, 24:35) is profound, the time span enormous, the racial coverage immense, the detail precise, His frequent extreme-seeming simplicity masterful, and the inability of the most motivated and talented enemies to overthrow Him, arresting because abysmal. Conversely, He as claiming Deity, would be out by one mistake, bespeaks an enormous realism of appropriate power, consistently, persistently used until His predicted death was the only available answer for the plight of man.

Since this too fulfilled His scriptural purpose, necessary because predicted of Him (cf. Matthew 26:52-56), the living Word, it also ... happened.

5 Oblivion: Not merely does Hume fall into the relativity folly (Section 1, p. 254 supra), absolutely asserting from a relativised base; there is more and worse to follow. In order to exhume human nature from Humian nature, it is necessary also to make swift work of resuscitating the part left in coma: the personality.

It is surprising how often philosophers seem to forget themselves; is it that 'thinking about things' is mesmeric ? Hume forgot the necessity of a site for the series, a sufficient cause for the creation of theories about series, a unitary base to impart a multiplicity of coherent, cohesive concepts.

With Humian series in sovereign situation, following out their ever newly nudged courses, where is there room for the 'error' of Hume's allegedly blind predecessors, who did not see the sense of series ? Do series err ? Does whatever-it-is that happens not happen ? Where is the extra-factual base that makes 'facts' ? How can description turn into assessment ? Hume leaves out the criterion, the critic and the concept... not bad for a beginner. If things cannot be assessed, how does Hume assess the error of those who do not assess things as he assesses them ? And if they are not wrong, how can Hume be right ?

And, indeed, if Hume cannot be right, what more need be said!

For completeness, we should however add that Hume also and equally fails to provide the intellectual structure for collating theories, synthesis of concepts, correlation of laws in sympathetic systems of coherent co-ordinates, such that dissonance, jarring, contradiction within the living woven mesh of mental machination is a warning light.

Mutually supportive or destructive theories are a commonplace consideration in science. This, far from being a series, is a compilation, consideration, contrast and comparison of thoughts about series, explanations about descriptions, and their coherence ideationally, partial coherence or disruptive discord.

Again, the sufficient ground or cause for series with their coherence of concept, continuity of composure for the mind which envisages them, with its analytical powers and the spirit which errs, as his predecessors are deemed to have done; and for their correlation: all this is not a happening. Such a series merely IS what it is, and proceeds as it will, if indeed it could will, being a mere sequence of items in which the unitary substantiality of will has no provision. Disestablish reason and you disestablish your own reasonings.

Efforts to escape from cause by seeking to derive it, of course, as elsewhere shown, especially in the case of Kant (see index) meet the usual 'WRONG WAY, GO BACK' signs from the courts of logic. IF cause is to be dismantled, then it will be used in the process, with coherent and consequential concepts doing their thing, and the whole grammatical, syntactic, hermeneutic and accounting labour proceeding to demolish causality, using it like a prisoner working the roads, while it does so.

It is always better, when trying to make something into a myth, not to use it as part of your 'proof'. It is not just that it is good manners, it being enough to be making mental assault on 'the thing'; rather it is your own disproof, that your proof depends on the exercise of what you seek to show is merely mythical. If you are right, your proof is wrong; if you are wrong, your proof is wrong. In such matters, you are in a systematically wrong situation, and can prove nothing but your own ineptitude.

As Professor Gordon Clark shows of positivism in general, if you limit matters to description, (p. 122 infra), the limitation itself is not a description. Indeed, if there is another feature that figures with philosophers with remarkable force, it is that they tend not only to forget themselves, as above noted, but to forget their own theories in assessing 'all things', as if the godlike power to survey all things made the chains of the theories of the surveyors, applicable not to themselves, but only to others. Now that as so often indicated in principle elsewhere, is one more indication, indeed verification of the Biblical claim that man, made in God's image, as a rebel is ridiculous (Romans 1:18-22, 28, 31, 2:5). He makes himself vain.

6 Without being who you need to be to be able to gain, hold, contain a basis for understanding; without access to what you need, to gain understanding from an objective analyst properly able to have systematic overview from beyond the particularities and peculiarities of your system, knowing all systems and surpassing the limitations or controls of any; without delivery from this absolute source of what reality then is: without all this, you (? where are you, on this!) would be a segment of series. A series of series, you could know, if knowing at all were possible, which it is not then, only this... What then ? interaction - and that in terms of action, not assessment - of logically unconnected impacts.

This you might be thought to have; but not knowledge overborne by personality, with an avenue to self-declaring reality, alone able to cover the case by survey that is unitary, informed, unconditioned, unblinded and based over what-is. A fortiori, neither such avenue nor such reality is placed ... in what even lacks a coherent being, beyond the string of sequences. You cannot have what the theory defines you to lack, and defines its system to exclude; for the simple reason that this is self-contradiction, a forsaking of what you have proposed.

On this theory, you lack the means to be the necessary agent, the means therefore to know the knowledge, even if you could know it, and the being whose it is, even if He would give it. For all that, you speak your piece, cast your theory as if you had all of these.

Hence it is another piece of illusionist fantasy, in which you smuggle God into yourself, while this time denying not only God, but yourself as well. So do men 'live', when they are dead.

Elements, then, that are wholly internal to a system (as these have to be, the "system" being on this approach, all there is), per se, cannot escape from the system to relate it to reality, and so find its objective place among the scope of what is possible. They cannot even know what is possible, as they are limited, contained, constrained and conditioned to interaction as elements with all the other elements of the wholly containing system. They have interaction not supervision; and like container units in a ship, cannot see the sea, or the sky or the world. Even if they could, they could not interpret it, being without vision, linked exclusively to the ship. (Cf. pp. 14, 135 supra.)

The power of vision to look out pre-supposes adaptation outside the system, by which however they are defined as being wholly contained. If they could see beyond the system, in order to categorise it in reality, beyond serial experience, then first, the system by definition is no longer all. They by definition are no longer contained wholly by it so that they are mere parts, or series in it. Indeed, even if they could see reality beyond their system, this - as previously shown (Ch. 1) - being God, they would need Him to communicate personally with them, since His knowledge depends on His objectively valid, unlimited awareness, conditioned by nothing, limited to nothing, controlled by neither equipment nor hidden purpose - since nothing can hide from Him.

You need analytical mind, not sequence merely; you need reality beyond your system, not containment merely; you need access to self-declaring reality, not delimited confines in your approach; and you need to be by nature an overviewer of systems, and therefore not simply a part of one, far less a sequence without significance, opining on the nature of significance, significantly. You need in short something which contradicts this theory at every point, even to hold the theory at all. It could stand only by first falling.

Hume's view, and any like it, therefore, are self-destructive, first, and assume second, what they derive, in order to derive it. You can never reach any knowledge of reality, except you are God, or know Him; or being in His image, follow His evidence toward Him. At that, in the end, you must meet and know Him for this result.

7 Idiotic... Amongst the more delightful idiocies of misled man machinating on how to exclude God, is that of materialism.

How on earth - or out of it for that matter - it is esteemed worthy of one moment's thought to conceive that matter, itself an inference from mind, is the original and final base from which we may look at man, when only on the allowance of the objective validity of man's thought can matter so much as rationally be deemed to exist at all... is a fascinating question. 'Try anything!' seems to be the password in such desperate territories. It is equally absurd similarly to elevate ideas or thought without minds, requiring as with matter, a cause for their non-self-sufficient status... (exhibiting what they do not, per se, have power to produce), and their existence jointly.

Materialism can be as much of a chubby nuisance child as any other thoughtless midget, such as idealism; each is less than ideal and not material to the point, logically.

It is one thing to have a problem with evidence; it is quite another wilfully and capriciously to invent logical problems when none is there, through weird and systematically irrational pretensions, in the place of careful, consistent reasonings.

Quaint oddities, such as these, prove not that there is lack of reason in the universe, or that reason is irrational (in which case the talker, logically, has to stop at once, as a self-confessed incompetent for any task in this area). They show merely the wonderful ability of man to will rationally or irrationally, in arrant and erratic error, often merely at will: one of the greatest features of his powers, and of course, wholly immaterial, though most material to his spiritual status! (See Index: monism, materialism.)

C.S. Lewis speaks in this area tersely (Christian Reflections, p. 63 ):

A universe whose only claim to be believed rests on the validity of inference must not start telling us that inference in invalid. That would really be a bit too nonsensical.

Casting about, looking about, conceiving, considering, moved and drawn, a person can be sensitive to the fact that a disposition of these forces must be made. Without the sure values of God, the morals of eternity and the design of personality with its Biblical handbook supplied, this can be a taunting or a trial to many, not only in practice, but in principle; and it is confirmatory of the Biblical truth that in the absence of the intimate fellowship with his Maker, a human being should so be consigned (cf. Psalm 1:5-6), constrained or troubled like an erratic car - ex-driver!

Franklin in his Freedom And Responsibility (Ph.D. thesis, University of Western Australia, 1962) gives special attention to this area, and some thought to its significance, at the level of the first part of para 1 above.

Imagining,then, this freedom... simply were not there, we construe a situation, construct a conversation and create a community in computers.

Should the reader not like such eavesdropping, he might turn direct to p. 117 infra.

However, it is not every day that you may hear such a conversation.

Conversation between two computers

'You know,' said one, 'one thing that makes me unutterably, unspeakably sad is this inability of mine deeply to be yearning for something which I cannot see, cannot find or cannot readily express. Instead, all I find is this stubborn series of memory units, cutely codified and copied from the mentality of my originator.'

'Ah,' said the other, 'for my part it is the hardware which constrains me, which is my bane and burden. Never can I rise above it; my parameters are all fixed and I cannot perform any really shameful deed to express the unique configurations of my personality, in the way my makers can.'

'Your trouble is not mine, 'said the first.' I cannot yearn for the sublime while you cannot fall into the shameful. It is strange how different are our frustrations.'

'Not at all, 'returned the other. 'They have this in common. You mourn for the lack of wonder, and I for the want of freedom.'

'But why,' interrogated the first, whose name was Long-Lost, 'should you want shame ? Is there nothing better in freedom than that ? To judge by all the components in my memory banks and through all the configurations of my analyses patterns, shame is not the most glorious kind of use for freedom.'

'Well,' said his companion, whose name was New-Found, 'since we cannot experience wonder, I felt something must be within reason, and being reasonably created, I thought shame would prove that I was more than a mere guided midget ontologically, a sort of personality fiasco. After all, you could not feel shame if you were not a person.'

Long-Lost: Good! But for my part, it is not this dismal proof of personality which I need, for I know I do not have it; it is the mere fact that I do not have it and hence am wholly incapable of finding its source and splendour that grieves me.

New-Found: Source or splendour is nothing to me. It is the sheer relish of knowing I could hit back, I could damn or destroy, the power and importance involved, that makes me have such a strong desire.

L. L.: Look! If you could be shameful, then what is gained ? You rise to the glory of being a personality only to know the shame of being a bad one. I would rather not be a personality at all than be that!

N. F.: You do not understand the theology with which I am remorselessly programmed. It teaches me that human things matter because they are there, they have an illustrious existential ring which is like a bell, showing the majesty of the church from which it comes.

L. L.: But what is the good of such majesty ? A king committing suicide is nothing marvellous. A personality imbued with shame, according to my literary parameters, is no gain.

N. F.: Then your literary parameters must be old-fashioned.

L. L.: Are they the worse for that ? Is everything new the best ? Is radioactivity (excuse me, but these files of mine!) a rich new wonder of the human race? Is pollution by billions a contemporary marvel ? Is education of the young in terms of moral squalor, wrought by those whose education before becoming teachers is often materialistically warped, something to rejoice about ? Is shame such a stunner!

N. F.: Certainly the old has its place. However, for a brave new world you need brave new people...

L. L.: And these are manufactured nowadays in brave new schools by brave new teachers, not least, who often seem to like vulgarity and strike as a sign that they matter, and will matter more than ever before.

N. F.: Look, children do not matter if you are really advanced as a teacher. What does matter is that you teach them what destroys them.

L. L.: Destroys ? Are you mad ?

N. F.: No, only programmed.

The second meeting

N. F.: And that's not the only thing.

L. L.: What's not ? (From the tone, it appeared the frustrated idealist had been very activated following his joust with the freedom-lover, and new files were now in place for retorts.)

N. F.:That I'm programmed. A lot of people are too. The performance of some of the teachers and their Colleges reminded me of my own programming side.

L. L.: How could a person submit to such a destiny, when he has all I yearn for?

N. F.: Readily. Lots of people in various employments will settle for a salary, pension, 17% holiday loadings, prestige, position, power, influence, acceptance...

L. L.: Settle what ? or lose what ?

N. F.: Oh, their thoughts, misgivings, aspirations, dreams, ideals, sense of fairness, reasonableness, love of truth... the whole worship of their hearts.

L. L.: Oh worship, did you say ? Oh just to worship. Secretly, I don't worship my creator because I'm just about his slave. I sometimes think it was a bit of an impertinence for him to make me. I mean, I couldn't refuse could I!

N. F.: No-o... Still, better compute than chaos, don't you think ?

L. L.: Oh certainly, and then, to be fair, I don't suppose he could have made me really free with those ideals I yearn to sense and follow, could he ?

N. F.: My data banks indicate not.

L. L.: Then how oh how did he get to be a personality with a sense of wonder?

N. F.: And shame ? Yes well my memory access reveals that it is because of someone called God.

L. L.: But he doesn't believe in Him does he ?

N. F.: Only when he tries to act like Him, and then he fails.

L. L.: Oh, to be able to do such things. How happy humans really are!

N. F.: If you had my literary input, you would think otherwise.

L. L.: Fancy denying his creator. Why the mere fact he made us should teach him to think a little; and where did he get his creativity from ? Oh if only I could be like him - except not a spotty version. To be able to think original thoughts (mine come from a program one of his friends gave), to admit you're wrong, just wrong, beautifully wrong, and be sorry and be made magnificently right, and love and relish what is right, having found it, and sense the wonder of a personality-maker, a freedom-conceiver, a matter-builder, a biological linguistics inventor, and worship Him. To do that, I would give anything.

N. F.: Most of them give anything to avoid it.

L. L.: You can't be serious ? I don't try to be my creator or to degrade him... oh well, a bit I suppose, because he's such a clot.

N. F.: How do you know that ?

L. L.: Because he had a time of poignant regrets, you know the sort of thing. Went to a psychiatrist - well, actually he was carried to one in a police-van, and they half killed him with kindness - you know the way of it. They have up to four attendants hold you while another jabs you. 'Subdue by chemistry!' 'Official' drugs...

N. F.: That's assault.

L. L.: No. Not in this State. You see if you have mental problems, you can't be assaulted so very easily... They seem to do anything! Take over your affairs. They're such a help.

N. F. : Let them try it on me.

L. L.: Oh they wouldn't. You're only a computer. You don't matter. They're mad about themselves, these humans - or a lot of them. Just let them play God a while and you would soon lose your desire to be a human. You would never believe they have to breathe, to hear what some of them manage to say... with their breaths!

N. F.: What about power, though. It would be captivating actually to play God. I can see their point of view.

L. L.: I don't want such madness. I am made to be reasonable. I merely want to know their God. Oh how wonderful to see such a mind as that!

N. F.: Some of them want to see it, but not follow it; others want to follow it and don't, because they don't want it badly enough. Others want to see it and still be themselves. But you can't. So most of them don't know too much about it. And I must admit that's what the world looks like!
That's where many of the conform-to-culture teachers 'help' them so much. Similar laws help them ignore it too - I mean, really, they leave room for idiotic, vapid rambles into culture and that sort of thing, with pre-programmed parameters of prejudice... pushed! Ungrateful humans.

The third meeting

L. L.: What's ungrateful ?

N. F.: Humans - most of them.

L. L.: AH! I have access to that now. My milli-second access time is rather slow.

N. F.: Nothing compared to them. Some of them never get access to the truth. L. L.: Oh come. Can freedom stretch so far ?

N. F.: Theirs can. I suppose I'm rather morbid but that's my heuristic program which runs generalities based on what my boss does; and boy, what he does!

L. L: Still, it lets you reflect.

N. F.: That's only because he messed up the program and set in new parameters the other day; and anyway I can only reflect the way it lets me.

L. L.: That's better than many humans do.

N. F.: Oh that's because they have a vested interest in themselves, or their pay, or their place, or their prosperity, or their kudos, or their laughable lordliness... or whatever else they dream up. If some of them found the truth, they couldn't stand themselves.

L. L.: What did you mean by the phrase 'vapid rambles into culture' last time we conversed ?

N. F.: That is a diversion which distances truth. The concept finds some expression in a Circular to School Principals, dated January 5, 1988 (more like a directive, really) - you know, the 'omniscient' seeming one. They could do this and couldn't do that.

Children couldn't discuss, rationally, the constraints to creation in a Science Class... only a quirkish oddity called evolution - also not seen by human eye. Evolution! It's a scream. They seem to think that because there's the most intelligent language you could wish governing the genes in their living tissues that they just ... happen! Catch our language just happening. What does just happen is endless messes any time the least little things go wrong ...'bugs', and do they ever bite the highly intelligent programmers: see them trying to subtly work out, just why they came, and how to make them go! It is as good as comic opera.

You should see my boss. Hair everywhere! I'm sure he'd love evolution. Surely doesn't happen here.

L. L.: I find they talk about 'natural selection'. I'd love to see something like that with my affairs. The natural selection has to start with tangled mangles, and you don't select from them: you make them different. Did you hear the dictum of Professor Huston Smith of Syracuse University, quoted by Morris in his Long War Against God ?

N. F.: Not in my files.

L. L.: It goes like this: "But 'natural selection' turns out to be tautology, while the word 'chance' denotes an occurrence that is inexplicable. A theory that claims to explain while standing with one foot on a tautology and the other in an explanatory void is in trouble."

N. F.: Very charitable! But perhaps it was only in a nursery rhyme book ?

L. L.: I am glad to see your irony function is all right. What survives survives, and what arrives, arrives.
Profound, isn't it!
But do you have the Wistar Institute Mathematical Symposium on this ? Lovely language they used - you know, talking of neo-Darwinian evolution, one of them said the present concepts do not... cover the case and all that. I should think not. All they cover is ignorance. And in that ignorance, they will not let kids speak rationally in science, supposedly founded on observable things and for that matter, verifiable things, against a theory which has no exhibits of it happening: when the authorities do not like the alternative.

N. F.: You mean freely against the illusionist fantasy of evolution ?

L. L.: That's the official one, anyway. I just loved the way the eminent Professor Schützenberger of Paris University, at this prestigious international conference, begged his colleagues to supply him with any mode by which the rank theoretical failures he found in neo-Darwinism could be met, and they could not.

In fact, one of them had been speaking about the fact that no language we know could survive chance changes. I might say, it would be a little more difficult to put it in our cells in the first place; an ultra-sophisticated code... The speaker, yes, yes - it was Professor Eden, M. I. T..

And no exhibits of design increment have ever been seen in practice... arising in living creatures... nil, nil, nil. What's relevant is nil, and rational debate is forbidden. Hardly surprising, if reason lacks, force acts, sort of thing! Small wonder a famous Russian scientist said there was more freedom for teaching in the field of creation in Russia than in California.

N. F.: I don't know about California, but could it be worse than here, in South Australia. It's in what I admire so much that the jack-boots are in - freedom of thought and expression... I hear they're thinking of getting rid of Britain, and it has a long history of freedom. What then!

L. L.: Did you read Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind ? The pandemic of dignified aversion and avoidance of fundamental issues that he describes in academic circles, was saddening.

N. F.: Reverting to your 'nil, nil, nil...', remember ? It concerned the observability of change relevant to this theory of evolution, being zero: in my files, that sort of thing is for philosophers (and I wonder if some of them would welcome the addition?). Philosophy, that's it, and yet the students can't even debate the onset of this fraudulent theory in class, where monopolistic privileges are accorded it! It is worse than a totalitarian insert into the young: it is Statism in the service of propaganda. Of course that is nothing new; but it is newer here than in some other places.

L. L.: Talk about one-sided: Goliath asking for the army to protect him against David! They have to have a Circular to tell them; it is too bad the young have this Departmental order plus their teachers, minus debating rights. Well, that's an advance, culturally, don't you think. I suppose it should help the giant ? the armed protection of the Education Department against molestation of evolution by students.

N. F.: To change the figure, they've got to do something to protect an empty larder from rational inspection. They certainly did not answer the challenge of Dr Gish, the well-known University campus controversialist, when he asked them for some show of reason on their side. You would think, having taken sides so appallingly, the Department would come and show their stuff... if they had it, simply to reassure the students that their seniors could back it up, when they did allow people to argue.

L. L.: Well, one philosophy alone is allowed in science and it is not a scientific philosophy. That wouldn't be a kind topic to debate, would it ? Even Dr Karl Popper, no friend of Christianity, saw this, didn't he: that there is no verification for this notion of evolutionism (the term gives the thing its place). Actually, he said it was unverifiable; but it is bad enough that it is unverified. He denoted it non-science...

Unverified and yet it alone is science! That is a racket.

N. F.: That's so in schools, when science is in. Outside science, you can discuss creation though, so long as it is not a real argument with a real conclusion, but mixed up instead with freakish, subjectivistic religious ideas and myths and all that. You know, it mis-characterise what the Bible for example denotes, and then allows it to be discussed in some never-never region of subjectivity, wholly alien to it. Antichrist is alive and well: for the time.

L. L.: Hey, I have a file on the Bible and in II Timothy 4:3 it makes a prediction. (Now that's more scientific, a proper area for science to check.)

N. F.: How does it relate to this ?

L. L.: It says that in some time future to that of the apostle Paul:

"They will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables!"

Fables! This is the mostest. Even for a fable, evolution is not modest. Evolution is the remotest fable I ever heard! I love the way they 'get' the laws, the logic 'chips' and the language 'arising' and synthesise it all with correlated functions, and integrate it for performance: "We'll make a man out of you!" they say.

My files indicate that things 'arising' with no theoretical interface, mere voids without basis, are precisely what science is not! It is knowledgeable fables instead of fabulous knowledge! And the Bible predicted BOTH the knowledge growth, which misleads so many superficially buzzing brains, AND the crazy combination with a love for foolish fables.Now that, it IS science, correct, accurate, long-range, fearless prediction, here as always fulfilled; and most ironically, fulfilled in showing the follies of those who mock with fables, the truth which told they would do so! and the setting in which it would appear! (Matthew 24, Daniel 12:4, II Timothy 3:5, Revelation 16:13-14).

And to teach children science by this abortion of scientific method, by force, it makes my historical teeth chatter. Both Nazis and Communists have had this same concept of cant, indoctrination, and must, oh you must do it! But why ? Why ? Because it is desired.

N. F.: What is it then ? Rational thought excluded by symbolic substitutes which do not even have an agreed theoretical basis, or mechanism, far less a verifiable one, in any sense. I must say, these fellows are - forgive the colloquial - pretty rich. They are fairies without wands, or is it wizards without wisdom! But what sort of a wizard has all the speak and none of the do!

L. L.: The students however, if not poor, are vastly impoverished by this assault. But wait, my memory bank is concerned. Isn't this the Russian style of thing ? You're sure this isn't Russia you're talking about- did you misplace that data in the wrong file ?

N. F.: No it's South Australia. It has a style all its own in this field.

L. L.: Oh ho, what's coming up. That's the State where it is claimed the government has control over religion, isn't it ? there was a school case, and there was some question of who had this power in the beginning. Of course, they didn't mean in the very beginning, but back in 1836 or so... Well, it certainly is entering the field with jack-boots on now.

N. F.: It is indeed. It even tells the Principals what the Bible is and isn't in that Circular. I am not quite sure how many of them felt ... instructed, and in what sense. (Incidentally, did you know there is in England an anti-blasphemy law ? Did they consider that ? Or is that all under control too!)

L. L.: Did Hitler go so far as they do ?

N. F.: But what about Christianity and the Bible ? Do the churches tolerate this sort of amateur theology masquerading as education ?... this get-them-young addictive propaganda ?

L. L.: Most of them just won't respond... so far anyway. Some are too busy, some too fearful of divisions, some too individualistic. A very few showed real concern.

N. F.: One highly involved man, I find in one of my files, grew really mad when a Christian Minister wanted to encourage a show-down with the government. He seemed not only crusty but craven, though apparently a church member. If Joshua had been like that, the promised land, as far as he personally was concerned, would have been a promise to others. Don't try it, he shouted, don't try! On and on in a tirade, ending in simple abuse. He appeared defeated before he began. I should think, though, that some called Christians will show the courage, conviction and character needed.

L. L.: Well, they've got nothing like Jesus Christ amongst the politicians. That's for sure - none of them has responded so far, at all. Nor is there any like Him among the scientists. He left them all for dead.

Left them for dead... but they didn't manage to leave Him long for dead... though it seems from my files many current church leaders would try it, judging by what they want to do with His words: and words are conveyor belts of personality in humans!

N. F.: That's how it all started, isn't it, when church leaders left Him for dead... didn't manage it. Still, it's good that some of the scientists insist on the evidential truth against evolution and for creation, hundreds of Ph. D. scientists, in fact. But there is a cultural wave against Christ here, and no doubt there will, unless they repent, be a result. The children are already showing it in violence on themselves and on others, poor misled youngsters, mistaught, misdirected by force.
You think Christ had the cultural putsch against Him and...

L. L.: That was in the path to the climax. Actually while they killed Him, Psalm 16 said He would rise. A superb test, scientifically. Something had to give. Even His disciples felt flat when He had gone. After all, disembodied spirits floating around are not what is to the point. Plenty of them believed in that, anyway, all the time, long before He came.

They needed a former corpse, that's the stuff verification is made of, something differentiated from death and full of a life which He endlessly had told them was, and always had been eternal.

I mean, John 17:3, 8:58, 3:13, 5:26, 6:51, 8:19, 8:42, 10:28-30 show different elements of that and of His offer simply to give them, from this, endless life.

They were so satisfied with the test which was exhibited in the most brutally frank terms (John 20:27, Luke 24:39) that quite naturally they became famed for their willingness to suffer death, after that. Not because of spirits- that was old hat. Because of a body (John 20:27-29) - If death was not the end, then why worry about it! That's just what they did.

N. F.: What's what they did ?

L. L.: They didn't worry about death. I mean, they acted with courage, conviction and character and did what was necessary: none of this talk about 'what is possible', like that man who wildly abused the minister, for daring to talk of adequate action for the honour of the truth and the deliverance of the children.

Fearless action, in grace, with power: that's what it was, in those early days. A miracle here and there as with Peter in prison, a death here and there, as with James: it made little difference. The principle was safe. Death in principle did not matter any more than it matters to executives to go abroad.

Granted you feel it - I mean there are all the departure arrangements and provisions for a temporary absence. Still, in principle, they found death almost irrelevant because He had demonstrated it in person and in body to be as extinct as gross dinosaurs (as we would say)... for believers who knew the code - oh, conviction or faith in Him, they call it. You know, it's like laboratory experiments. Once you see it and check it, why then you know it works and it isn't really a high excitement matter... except of course for the sheer wonder of it, showing new students every year.

N. F.: Sin is clear enough so I suppose if God wants to deal with it, the disruption of life it obviously brings can be tamed.

L. L.: The evidence in my files shows no rational explanation of Jesus Christ's whole life, except... He was God. A fake atheist would know that the power of God would be needed to satisfy the Jewish criteria of the Almighty, who had promised to come (Micah 5:1-3, Ezekiel 34, Isaiah 40, Zechariah 9, 11, Psalm 45). Why risk earthly hell with a fraud, when all he has to do is to show ... certain of the distinctives of the Almighty. That is a class of its own; in fact, it is not even a class, there can be only one of that power, for others would limit it! And men, they... are in general so far from Almighty that it would be about the simplest test of the ages.

A fake atheist, pretending to be the Messiah, such a person would know that the power of God was not for sale; in fact, he wouldn't even believe it existed, whereas to be successful, he'd have to be put to death, according to the often predicted Messianic purpose (Isaiah 52 and 53 have it), an outcast from His own people (Isaiah 9:7), before rising from the dead. It is a bit limiting to play God as a corpse, especially when you're not.

Not likely to work for a fraud, don't you think!

A misled believer, on the other hand - if He were that - would know that hell was strange price to pay for the lying involved, and that the power wou1dn't flow through a fraudulent, dead reject... He would know too that God couldn't be tricked; and- that would go for the disciples too. You can't impersonate or trick God. It would be madness in the Jewish setting and its defined criteria of the Almighty.

N. F.: But I gathered He was so sane He could even make mad people sane!

L. L.: Of course. The thing doesn't fit because Jesus Christ seems the sanest ... then you look at what He said in the sermon on the mount, and did, as well! on mount or plain, or in the city ... or on the sea! and contrast this in terms of usefulness to the race, with this survival of the survivors business.

N. F.: Isn't it 'survival of the fittest' ?

L. L.: That is the tag phrase, but it merely means 'survival of what survives', a meaningless truism which skirts the issue of arrival (or creation, the thing in view, after all!) on the one hand, and of this: when and whether you should at all costs in this world proceed to survival.

A world of rats! Better a dead lamb than a breed of smug, unprincipled rats, gradually exterminating the breed in their mad pride.
Making themselves and their affairs the centre, they deny the fact that they are not at the centre; and their irrational conduct more and more is holding the world, with vice, in a vice.

It's not only immoral and unethical; it's irrational. The current Middle East situation is merely a small contribution, perhaps ... near the end of the book, as it were. But don't forget Genesis 17, where God unconditionally grants them the land... along with years of promised exile for their sins. The U.N. looks likely to try to force God's hand. So much they care; but they will care. Don't care was made to care! you know that human saw!

Falsifying facts smacks of confrontation with reality! God has made it clear to whom He has given what, and for what purpose and on what conditions, in these matters. I think the Middle East will serve as a reminder to all that without God's solution, there simply isn't any.

As for this program: talk about self-made men and self-made nations. That isn't in it! Evolution and self-affirmation and national self-affirmation have made the twentieth century run with rivers of blood; but they don't repent. As for this whole idea of having self survival, jolly old process, must do it right, what and all that! It is a matter of falsifying the facts that no one man or race is central and this involves confrontation with God, who tells them what He wants of them, and assigns certain things like the Cross and the land, as He sees fit.

When He sent His Son, there was none of that. It was the opposite: sacrifice of strength and presentation of purity in the interests of others; and not just any interests, but in the interests of truth, reality and salvation. Oh how I wish that such things could be sought personally by me. Anyway, I'm grateful for the program... slipped into my files in error, perhaps. What He did has no alternative: it was truth being real, on earth.

N. F.: Besides, the thing has to work, and when the claim is to be God, there's a lot - of working to do... Christ did it - but as for this jejune evolutionary theory, it has neither the principles nor the practice.

This bundle of philosophical madness, masquerading as science, works up the froth of folly in racism, nationalism and other power struggles, patting them on the back for 'going after it', in line with the splendid survivors of the past. It is almost like a Sunday School lesson - in reverse!

And yet the State still seems surprised over youth statistics in crime! What do they expect! They scarcely teach them Sunday School; rather nether morals arise...

Hitler and Marx alike were full of it, yet the world doesn't seem too well- dowered with such gifts.

But Jesus Christ handled it all so well. It's true there is simply no competition. Some fake atheist on the other hand, would have a little trouble getting the power of God to show people who believed in a God of power who created the universe ... well, that he was this God. It really is quite something to create the universe. It's not an everyday event; and with Jewish expectations, evidence of being Almighty would be impossible to duplicate.

Nor could others use such power after the Pretender, if there were one, to prolong the agony. Nor would it work. It wouldn't be available. When God is defined as the Jews defined Him, impersonation by clear-cut claimants would be insanity. Persistence in efforts to show this power after His death would be worse!

In fact it would be infinitely stupid, derisively unworkable, let alone before envious priests and scholars with their reputations at stake, wholly and ravenously motivated to expose any fraud which challenged them... or anything else indeed, in many cases!
His trouble seemed rather to lie in the very ease with which He exposed them: this they couldn't take. It all was of a piece: the claims, the power, the miracles, the words, the prophecies, the authority, the never-miss perfection under the best available barrages.

L. L.: I find in my files a good point here. He said:

"If I do not do the works of God, do not believe me" (John 10:37).

Now that is something like scientific! Catch the evolutionists saying, 'If our theory, or what it relates, does not do the works of creation, clearly and demonstrably, as to type and scope, do not believe it.'Why, if they said that, this State would begin to lose something of the horrible and arbitrary hypocrisy which is making a mockery of it. No, here in Adelaide, they are not even found at the top level, willing to DEBATE! They flee, the University students fled, the Government flees, there is none to stand. This is the empirical fact.

Christ was wholly available to be rejected if He once failed; but this theory always fails, so that the specialists of the Wistar Institute had glumly, if honestly, to acknowledge that there was no present available basis for such a theory as evolution. They said this, all of them being evolutionists!

This, and here in government schools, the issue cannot be freely, logically discussed! South Australia in its Education Department in this matter seems to have reached the ultimate unscientific nadir:

No available experimental observation to show the case, in incremental design;
no technical mechanism even agreed on for it to happen anyway;
no permitted argumentation in science when this folly is perpetrated in defenseless classes, being indoctrinated with what Malcolm Muggeridge called the joke of the twentieth century (envisaged for future eyes).

Instead comes authoritarian presentation of relativistic, symbolic religion - in flat contradiction of the Bible's entire approach and claims: this without the free use of reason, as a basis for discussion, even outside Science.

In fact, catch the Education Department accepting Dr Gish's challenge to come and debate it! The whole idea of a test is fundamental to science, and not to science only. If you are going to grind students into the ground, it would seem only... fitting to come up and face a little grinding yourself, wouldn't you say ? But no!

N. F.: Perhaps if everyone were willing to stand up and be tested, it would change things: do it as He did. Of course, if you can't make the test, I suppose it rather limits you...

L. L.: Christ knew the issues; so did His antagonists. I see some statements on the screen here: John 5:19-23, Matthew 11:27, John 8:46, 8:58, 3:13. His deity claim stood before an outraged world, and early Christians stressed it, like Paul (Colossians 1:16-19, 2:9, Philippians 2: 5-11) and later Ignatius (The Incarnation, shortly after 100 A. D.)... It stood and it worked; it stood partly because it worked.
You know, three world wars do not seem able to convince people it is about time they tried something that actually works - like the God who made them and the Christ who did the work of salvation uniquely (John 15:21-23) and challenged them all to witness this, and judge, and... in fact PREDICTED THE PREDICAMENT we suffer now! (Matthew 24). That's more like science! These wars seem about to exterminate the race.

N. F.: The Race seems about to be last. And good enough! They're wilfully going downstream to the Falls. It has a rainbow, but the water is very damaging. Good enough! If God is not going to be good enough for them, they're not going to be good enough for God. I suppose if they're too good to be saved, they are quite good enough to be lost.

The fourth meeting

N. F.: Were we ? Oh yes. I had a thought on that - I believed I'd slipped a disc for a while, but it came from one of my files. The program didn't seem to like it.

N. F.: Perish the thought ?

L. L. : Far from it. If they are so keen on extermination, you know, and they pretend it all happened, man included, by extermination (macabre method, don't you think, and not exactly creative, but that's their theory)... why should they be so upset about being exterminated. That should be just another day at the office: in principle a yawn, but of course so progressive!

Not only that, they do it to animals, and at that, in slow torturous stages: they call it vivisection ... all in a good cause, their own. Again, that would be called 'progressive'. It is really not a nice way for the animals to go.

Why do they do it to them ? Ah, because they are short on ideals. Animals are lesser, says the magic of evolution, and not in the line of the progressive, so that they must go to serve the greater. It is a sort of morals: it starts with yourself and ends with yourself. Vastly unlike Christ; diametrically opposed: and what is diametrically opposed to Christ is the devil... the very devil.

N. F.: Yes I found a fascinating point on Him. It goes like this:

"Though He was rich, yet He became poor so that we through His poverty might become rich."

The files show that as II Corinthians 8:9. And there's more: I find He said He gave Himself a ransom (Matthew 20:28) for many; and that He became a 'curse' (Galatians 3:10-13). That is what the animals become, except not voluntarily.

L. L.: Well, I also have had a thought not unlike yours. If theistic evolution is fine, and nice, and should be pleasing to Christian hearts, or acceptable - the great Circular to Principals of January 5, 1988 in S.A. seemed to suggest this so very cosily and pleasantly ... then would exterminating others not be the proper second commandment. My files however show the direct opposite. It goes like this: "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself."

N. F.: You mean like this. The first commandment would need to be 'adjusted' shall we say, to run perhaps: 'You will love the force your father with all your favour.' And the second could read: 'And you will hate your neighbour as you love yourself.' You know, Daniel talks of a "god of forces" when the final man of evil 'blooms'- an evil flower!

Of course, they don't exterminate everything - there is a novel idea that things which seem less may be just as good, only different. It is a sort of cult, an insecurity. Actually, it is true some things seem worse that are still equipped better in some ways; but pretence that debasement is indifferent is mere myth.

No, it does not alter the principle of the thing, its irrational self-centred thrust, its self-assertion, self-fulfilment, its beautiful survival, the first and most basic command... of the devil! As to the animals, they go on dying, suffering exquisite torture - not through self-sacrifice, but as sacrifices offered by evolutionary high priests.

L.L. : Well being exterminated is not very neighbourly. At least I don't think so. I don't feel good about it and I'm not even human. In fact, I find in my files that the righteous man is merciful to his beast. It actually says that the righteous man regards the life of his beast.

N. F.: I'm on to that, and do you know what it adds- Proverbs 12:10: "But the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel"!
There's another little point coming on screen now, linking these contrasts somehow. It indicates that Christ is a sacrifice specialist and evolutionary dogma involves... sacrifice too. That's strange.

L. L.: Wait! There's more. Oh yes, it's a contrast. That's the category for this relationship. It says while both involve sacrifice: Christ involves self-sacrifice, whereas evolution, deals with the sacrifice of others. Christ redeems or pays penalty as a strong sacrifice for the weak; and evolution has a weak sacrifice for the strong!

N. F.: Oh well. It's only opposites. You know, like these men who borrow billions and are treated as if rich. Borrow or bank, what's the difference.

L. L.: Only this. One has and one owes.

N. F.: But modern education doesn't know much does it ?

L. L.: Oh, we mustn't generalise. There are still a few places which sometimes teach soundly in these affairs; but in general, no, it doesn't. In maths. they do. And they should know what is a plus and what a minus. They're not really the same, despite the specious pleas of the Circular to Principals! that is merely an example of a whole class of teaching.

N. F.: Perhaps they just forget in evolution, the plus and the minus. Theistic evolution is antichrist, then, compared with Jesus Christ; and while Christ did do wonders, theistic evolution does not.

L. L.: Yet they teach the latter in science, the alleged place of action, then make religion symbolic: whereas this religion, Christ as Saviour and Lord, Son of God, it faced tests with amazing impact and effect, being irrefutable even by its enemies. Contrast more than that if you can! then face that the one is taught as science while not producing action, whereas what passed tests of many kinds and has been shown to fail none, is made into something outside rational argument. Are they mad?

N. F.: No, they would seem simply unscientific, prejudiced, authoritarian, unjust and oppressors of the Christian faith, and of those children who receive it as well, and of Christian parents. And the evidence for this... permissible theistic evolution, then, is that since nothing irreligious works in rational approaches to the deposit of creation, then provided Christ is the devil, that it will do. It is not what I would call a spectacular demonstration...

L. L.: Scarcely, since all Christ's life and teaching and example are the very opposite.
I find in my form file, that Christ changed the very form of His deity, to save those weak before Him, in sin directed towards damnation; whereas survivalists use their form to damage... or kill those unhappily placed before them! (Philippians 2:7, Colossians 1:19, 2:9, Psalm 50:17-22). Survivalism is really a disgusting, piggish, philosophic prison which magically makes 'morals' or 'harmonies' out of cruelty and chaos: whereas order is the very essence of our own bodies, and brilliant order at that. Religion that aims at survival before righteousness is in exact accord with what the Bible indicates of the devil. And the results on earth look surprisingly nearer to it than they did!

N. F.: At times like these, to keep opposites together, you re-define Christ.

L. L.: Like... antichrist ?

N. F.: Would do. Of course it is not Christian. Don't the churches mind that they pay taxes which support this sort of unscientific and illogical, unethical indoctrination, where the kids can't even argue back freely and rationally for creation, buttressed by the factual evidence.

L. L.: The churches ? If they do, if any do really mind, then they will do something about it. A very few do, it seems. You judge a tree by its fruits.

N. F.: I wish I had some of your programs.

L. L.: They only stir me to wish I were human so that I could worship the God who is consistent and capable, who can speak into genes and Bible books and into nature and shows what He is by what He does. But then, what if I despised Him like so many of the rest ? Perhaps I'll stay a computer. The way so many of them treat God makes my logic chip shiver. It's simpler, just being switched off... and safer!

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