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The marvel is the construction, as with a car on a far lesser scale; but once given this, it is merely a matter of discovery, to see what the channels for change are, which have been provided for. When, as here, there is a problem in this discovery, this is scarcely spectacular. What is fascinating, is what is worked; not that we cannot devise means to discover the structure sufficiently to work out how it is done! Let us return to our simple case of crystalline and amorphous substance, the capacity for a solution indeed, to 'generate' crystals, without ceasing, for some part, to be a solution.

Our point is that it does this in way which staggers the imagination. On the one hand, you have a lack of visibility of solid substance (though the same substance is in fact there in solution), and a lack of crystalline specific form. That is the super-saturated solution. This is changed by seemingly slight alterations of the situation (feed seed-crystals), so that you may now have both crystalline structure, developed from within, and solution. In fact, assuming there is excess of solute on the bottom of the beaker, you could also and simultaneously have solid, the substance in solid non-crystalline form as well.

Being able to go below the visible threshold, or the relevant threshold of form, to the underlying specifics, helps understanding of why these three forms, not geometrically related in any very obvious way, and involving two states of being (solid and liquid), and three modes (as amorphous, crystalline and solute) should occur: sometimes one only, sometimes two and at times, all three concurrently.

Where you understand, you have models, and where you can test adequately, you have confirmation or otherwise; but where you cannot, you have an sub-inspectable, or sub-testable, not an anti-logical situation, or even a non-logical one: All works in order, except one's own capacity to find what the specifics of the otherwise checked situation might be, as in the case of light. Failure to be able to test, for any reason, to observe is not a challenge to reason, but to technical method; it has no logical implications, unless it be this, that man not being God, this is always a possibility as he probes to constituents.

In the case of snow, you may have vapour without solid form, though visible, on the one hand, and given a simple temperature lowering, you may find, in given circumstances, crystalline structure apparent - but only under the microscope. Nor is this all. You have a whole series of different crystalline structures visible; and that is not all, either. You have in addition, a series of exquisitely artistic forms, with components and composition both delicate and intricate, lying hidden in the microscopically revealed snow-flake structure ... rather resembling most carefully designed lace-work from a select shop, or highly expensive pendant designs.

Now let us revert to the chemical solution case. Let us suppose that you had not discovered any underlying facts of transition of the one substance to different forms and even different modes of being (like solution, where it prima facie changes into something else and 'disappears', and solid state, where it is quite apparent). Suppose you said: 'no, there is a contradiction here. It is inconceivable that such artistic crystals, with such evocative structural finesse, should be the same substance as that amorphous material, or should be closely related to the non-solid structure of the invisible solute.'

How much more might someone, without sophisticated knowledge of the actualities of water, have objected that this artistic series of crystalline structures, in snow, could not be reconciled with the simple liquid, water, far less with turbulent, chaotic seeming steam. 'There is here,' someone might have contended, 'a fundamental incoherence.' That would be an excellent case of what is called 'waffle'.

In fact, you would have different forms with different reasons for the change of form. It is true that the forms are not seen obviously in terms of some simple re-grouping phenomenon. The one form is not seen as a simple re-arrangement of the other. They are decisively distinct forms. The laws for the change-over are not the same as ways of 'reconciling' the forms. They are procedurally related to an outworking of laws. That is all.

So with light, we can draw light from these facts, in considering the sort of scope nature provides, where it is known.

Both supersaturated solutions, in the sense of the polymorphic presence of one chemical, and changes of state like vapour-snow, inclusive of its complex and intricate designs, indicate how foolish it could be to try, in simplistic terms, to reconcile different forms. Only, mistakenly is it assumed to be a logical exercise at that level. It may be simply, as so often, a matter of finding out by thought and experiment, what are the laws governing change of form of an electron or light quantum from particulate form, to wave form; or appreciating the laws which govern the actual material, perhaps misconceived in both instances. No logical impasse has been reached; merely ignorance, this has been revealed, and with thought, some of the necessary reasons for it, at the present level of means of exploration. Like the terrain of the moon, it has surprises: but these are matters of learning, not irrationality.

Difficulty in finding measuring techniques, and in testing therefore various hypotheses and gathering indeed adequate data, these are revealed; and it is so when the means may not be small enough to deal aptly with the materials. All this is therefore exhibited as irrelevant, as far as system is concerned with our topic: the facts remain of predictability at overall levels, incorporating the minute, together with limits of manipulation of this area, with corresponding conceptual ignorance. Ignorance may not be bliss, but it is not a logical problem; often it suggests rather the need for work, and the possibility if limits to one's power...

John A. McIntyre, professor of physics and associate director of the Cyclotron Institute at Texas A & M University (Ph.D. Princeton) puts it interestingly; and aspects of this presentation deserve careful thought, cohering closely as they do with elements of what textbook writer Ford has stated.

''Another aspect of the Christian message that appeals to the scientist is that both the physical world and the Christian Gospel have certain peculiar characteristics. We find when we study the atom that we get down to a little particle called the "electron". I said "little particle," but it turns out that this "little particle" isn't always a particle. Sometimes it is like a wave. A particle is something that is right here, exactly! and a wave is something that is everywhere. Two things could not be more different from each other; yet both these descriptions fit electrons. The electron is sometimes a particle and sometimes a wave. It depends on how one looks at it. When it zips through a geiger counter and the geiger counter goes blip, there goes a particle through the counter. But sometimes the electron diffracts around things and spreads all over, then it looks like a wave. There is nothing mysterious about all this; we have accurate equations that describe what happens in detail. But when we try to describe the electron in our ordinary language of particles and waves, we learn that these limited concepts of ours are not adequate. Actually, the electron is different from either a particle or a wave; but we must use human language and have not lived inside an atom, so we are limited in our description of what happens.'' (Booklet, "The Appeal of Christianity to a Scientist", adapted from Christianity Today, 15/3/68.)

The microcosmic requires the means for depiction that reach beyond it. Where the means are limited, so is the perception, at least in terms of adequately informed systematic analysis. When adequate testing means for minute particles are not to hand, because of the tininess of what one is studying, means with which to quest and assess, then one is limited in means for acquiring and testing appropriate perspectives, in a special way. Living within limitations is one of the ways in which man is distinguished from God; but in principle, this is nothing new. Knowing what those limitations do and do not imply, is one of the ways in which man is distinguished from beasts.

In this case, as we have seen earlier, misconstruction of the significance of such ignorance, leads to flat contradiction of method, and resists even coherent and consistent formulation.

(See CHAMPING, CHOMPING AND CHAOS, earlier in this Section 3 of Chapter 4, as also Chapter 3, on Hume, supra.)

In an article in Omni magazine, May 1988, pp. 85-90 and 121, Charles Mann and Robert Crease present an interview-style, dialogue form account of the views of physicist John Bell, following hours of discussion with him. The following points are of some interest, with appropriate review added relative to our topic.

In Interview, John Bell, then, the views of John Bell seem to cover the following basics:

l) He distrusted the 'non-statistics-is-out' approach to matter's behaviour at sub-atomic level.

2) He was impressed by Einstein's insistence that quantum mechanics is incomplete and that hidden variables operate, not yet discovered (top p. 90).

3) He refuted John von Neumann's kind of contention that non-statistical answers were impossible (pp. 88, and mid-90).

4) He could not however find hidden variables when he tried to do so.

5) He concluded that something faster than light is necessary to transmit the dynamics, evidently, that conform distant particles to each other - to explain what 'Bell's theorem' first showed - i.e. "that when two particles are emitted in opposite directions and the properties of one of them are 'actualized' by being measured, the properties of the other will be found to be correlated, or linked, when it too, is measured - no matter how far apart the particles are" (p. 86).

6) Some try to 'explain' it in terms of pantheism or similar views, to which Bell does not personally respond; but that offends in any case the requirements of logic as shown in the first chapters of this book (supra).

In fact, the coherence, cohesion, correlation of those mental concepts given form and called 'matter' are not to be simplistically limited as if they needed no source, and therefore did not relate to one. This point we must emphasise. Correspondingly, irrational concepts might be expected to produce irrational results. In fact, the "Bell" constraints on distant particles could be:

i) programmed at either lower levels of magnitude or by other means altogether - the discovery of formerly hidden means as in modern micro-biology is a commonplace concept and reality in twentieth century science. If it were needed, fresh evidence is frequently being presented of the over-arching and undertaking mind of God, using means so deft and taking steps with plans so brilliant that the demeaning of His greatness and glory, by our own simplicity becomes painfully obvious. If this is the type of omission here, then the speed element felt by Bell is avoided.

ii) transmitted faster than light as Bell conceives, reluctantly. The supposed limits from the speed of light need not be ultimate. A vastly diminished speed is currently a topic of debate, for the long period. If this is right, as prima facie evidence suggests, that abstract possibility is merely made more concrete. The limits to light's speed could in any case be barrier-related, as is the movement of electrons in atomic orbit positions, conceived to be. (Quantum leaps may be in question. See also Chapter 2, pp. 241 ff..)

The barriers might within limits resist, or indicate resistance, until the threshold is past. An analogy (cf. pp. 154 ff. supra) would, in effect, be the latent heat of fusion or evaporation procedures as a substance is heated. Much needs to be done in such a case, before the specific change in view is 'actualized'.

A basic part of Einsteinian relativity is in any case not internally consistent, as Professor Dingle showed so clearly in his 1972 work, Science at the Crossroads (cf. the earlier work of Professor C. L. Poor in his Gravitation Versus Relativity, N. Y. 1922). This is conspicuously the case in terms of the discordant effects theoretically coming (on the Einstein theory) noted by Poor. If A leaves B at a sufficiently high velocity, on the one hand, or if B leaves A, on the other, in relativity, it is all 'relative' (positionally) and should make no difference. As shown in Malcolm Bowden's article in Ex Nihilo Technical Journal, Vol. 2, 1986, pp. 169 ff..

Thus, if A leaves B at sufficiently high velocity, that should have one effect on the time of A's clocks, slowing them. If B, however, leaves A at such a speed, then this should slow B's clocks. In each case, it is relative to the stationary party that the clocks are to slow. Since in relativity theory, it does not matter which leaves and which is stationary, the point is indifferent, it is all relative: then you have two contradictory results.

In the actual case (based on relativity theory), it will make all the difference to the time on the departing vessel, that it is moving and the other is not moving. On the general assumption, however, this is irrelevant and this is part of the 'genius' of the idea. It is all relative.

Here we see there is an absolute difference, depending on which actually moves away in this fashion. You could conceive the one as moving from the other, or the other from the one, in a relative space with no absolutes. In fact, it all depends whether A 'really' is moving away from B, or vice versa. Professor Poor could find no solution from his colleagues! It is a case of having it both ways: it is so cosy to be relative in space, with no difference, no absolute reference points and a ho-hum observer noting that it is all a matter of thinking it this way or that. Yet it is so inoperable since it makes the clocks do different things depending on ... something that doesn't matter... which moved away from what.

A further point is the putative decrease in the velocity of light over time, a concept popularised but not invented by Barry Setterfield; and indeed defended with so much acumen in the magazine: Creation, Ex Nihilo, and its Technical Journal, vol. 2, pp. 169 ff., for example. There is much continuing testimony reported concerning the success of this heavily computerised analysis, and there is a continual attestation of this or that academic rebutting criticism, confirming claims or dissecting counter-claims adversely. According to actual readings, this velocity does not appear, even in limited terms, a simple invariant ultimate; and the graphical exercises appear to indicate a putative curve, signifying vast decreases over time, not unlike some of the natural decay curves. (For the alternative approach of Dr Humphreys (q.v.) see Supplement, Ch. 2 and Barbs, Arrows and Balms 15, with TMR Ch. 7,    E)

First: let us observe that what all this would show is simply this: that we have various forms of uniformity and consistency which in the normal way invite, before they yield their conceptual apparatus, their laws and their forces. They invite us to fossick them out, to pester, imagine, conceive and construe, to test and to verify, until, for the time, we gain the operative concept they follow. It is then that they exhibit what we have sought to discriminate, and we perceive a law that does not languish; and if 'it' does, we amend it until it meets the case. It is a new field for the old method, scientific method: one which has had such a career because rational thought has an intimate affinity for natural process.

Now if the velocity of light does in fact decline as so much evidence suggests, the erosive, wearing out, the running down quality would be both a commonplace in Nature, and an illustration of an overall trend (Isaiah 51:6).

What then is it like ? The 'poem' is written, and the paper yellows; the design is provided, the material counterpart wears; the engine is made and the parts wear. These are in fact two of the distinctives of creation: the fixity to give it character (operational establishment) and the wastage (or expenditure of resources, their attrition) to signify its origin. As laws, these aspects appear in those of the conservation of mass and energy - with due respect to interchange, on the one hand; and in the law of entropy, the degradation of that energy, the loss of specificity and availability, on the other.

Shakable things (to use the terminology of Hebrews 12:25 ff.) wear and will be shaken catastrophically in the end; unshakeable things, God, His will, His ways, His witness, His work, His life, that eternal life which was with the Father and which the Son manifested (I John 1:1-4): these are unshakeable, immovable, like the gospel, invariable (Galatians 1:6-9, Revelation 14:6), indispensable (Acts 4:11-12).

These remain, not only for history, but in the end, past all human history. God puts it (Isaiah 51:6):

The heavens will vanish away like smoke, the earth will grow old like a garment, and those who dwell on it will die in like manner, but my salvation will be forever, and my righteousness will not be abolished.

Non-eternal things, those merely created, not equipped for eternity, these as we observe, have form and character; and in this way and that, this is subjected to the dismantling, the attrition that all the non-eternal designs experience. It appears here or there, in this way or in that; but this 'paper' is not eternal, this 'machinery' has its force and its furore, but also its leakage and decline. We make; and if it is out of action because of such attrition, we re-make. Our whole system is a stage; it will have lasted many generations of actors; but not for ever. What is eternal will be equipped be equipped with an eternal stage: God, who makes 'stages', has designs for His various occasions, worked in His various manners.

On practical and theoretical grounds, then, there is nothing sacrosanct about the velocity of light; it has no a priori magnificence; and this of course relates to Bell's 'reluctant' hypothesis. We cannot be too reluctant about the evidence of variability, or the theoretical tangles that need adjustment. Thus the scientific method moves on within the fields which limit man, because of their minute character and the difficulty of testing verifiably at such levels.

7) Wave mechanics provide a meaningful quantitative conceptual cover which - whilst means to investigate because of size are limited and baulked - establishes the rational coherence of the entire event structures at this level. This is so whether or not the actuality might be found to be somewhat differently composed, if it could be duly investigated. That is, if it were to be searched out in the way necessary for over- arching hypotheses ... with due rigour of trial in prediction and experimentation at observable, measurable limits. Where measurement baulks, theories of this kind are arrested, stopped, prevented not by reality, but by method. There is no way to say. What can be said, however, is sufficient for our purpose.

8) Further, the concept of packets of waves or a wave corps or corpus is not an impossible one. It is quite conceivable that waves correlate, with particulate peculiarities (chemistry is full of them, at other levels, just as - for that matter - is human physiognomy), and do so in ways that resist in practice, in certain respects or situations, the otherwise conceivable uni-particulate action. If the entity which exists be some ultra-wave quiddity, then it is conceivable that this (what waves 'reflect' or indicate) does so.

9) One possibility needs specific mention. It is this. Matter may be constrained by the thought of its Maker by certain preferences on His part, just as we (quite different from words ourselves...) prefer letters, in general, within words. This could be direct. (He "sustains all things by the word of His power" - Hebrews 1:3, places this reasoned concept, supra Chapters 1-3, in scriptural words). Just as we sometimes oversee a process with more or less directness, more or less program, automation, this might be. Again, it could be worked indirectly, by various mechanisms, entirely. In the level of minuteness involved, we are not in a position to exclude a whole series of possibilities, all reasonable, some related; or combinations.

10) The point, formerly made, remains: a polymorphic potential may be activated by various circumstances, just as tyres may exhibit changes of form through force, under pressure. Put more formally: there may be a reactivity-potential, subject to conditions that form a 'key' or provide stimuli for change, as well as for cohesion of sub-atomic particles or potentials, in situations which could jar ontologically with a simplistically pre-conceived form or format (as with sub-unit type refraction-reflection or diffraction grating exercises).

One thing is perfectly clear: nothing irrational has been established, and while waves do not explain all that happens (*16), they can show the underlying coherence back of changes of form.

Bell would appear to conceive them as literary characters, dependent on words, who yet leave the covers of the book from time to time, for undeniable impact in real life (p. 86).

To revert to the preceding point: back of this, there is the inability to pursue matters by normal scientific procedures such as would enable verifiable refined hypotheses adequate for the purpose; and, in the end the mind of God, like the mind of a poet, is 'keeping in mind' just as He will, such particulate properties as seem good to Him.

Just how direct and indirect it all is: what mechanisms, measures and procedures are involved, we do not know. Similarly, at this same material level, in other centuries, we have not known really routine quick steps to transmute ignorance into knowledge, speedily and dramatically, granting us facile 'discoveries' of what God has done. That His power maintains, we have shown to be necessary: its means are a display of might, an occasion for our humbling, for our delight and for our rapture at the sheer variety and brilliance of it all. Depending on the heart, of course, there are some lessons which many will not learn, though shown them for centuries, with the consistency of the rising sun. This however does not alter the lessons or evidence.

The method, then, is God's own choice and invention. For our purposes, all that is needed is the single point that rationality-meters (in wave envisionment form, using 'wave functions')... work! The evidence is no embarrassment to reason, but merely to pretensions of omniscience on the part of man.

We have shown above that both irrationalism, in whole or in part, and determinism are illogical philosophies; and investigating the evidence in the especially interesting and formative area of light, so exacting in many ways practically, we have found that the evidence is stimulating to thought, fascinating in its evocation of basic issues, and wholly conformable to principles of causation and reason. These inexorably lead to God as exhibited earlier; and particular issues constantly verify this with eloquent, elegant and continual attestation.

In some ways, there is a beautiful simplicity in much of the history of science - indeed of the world. God's glory is denied, despite the fact it is due to Him; and man is unhappy when his own glory declines or departs, while he fails to acknowledge how great is the glory of God, like an aeroplane crashing through unresponsiveness to the pilot.

End-notes to SECTION 3 (EN#)

2 Correlative to the case of 'meaningless' because 'unknowable': the case is declared on behalf of a base held to be 'unknowable'. See Chapter 3 supra. For Kantian detail, see *21, p. 208 supra, *2 p. 452 infra and detailed references therein; also Index.

3 The technological brilliance exhibited in the cell, by Denton (Ch.2 supra - and comments and considerations there adduced), relative to biological design, merely underline the force of this a fortiori argument.

4 The fallacies of determinism are exposed for example on pp. 254-255, 290, 333 ff., 353 ff., with 19-35 and 128-140 supra, and 424 ff. infra: it is no better theoretically than it is practically.

5 Cf. pp. 23 ff., 30 ff. supra. The immaterial spirit - akin to and derived from the Creator - and the marshalled sphere of matter fit, like... wind through leaves, like a design on particles, like a thought on a problem.

6 Cf. pp. 336 ff. supra.

7 Cf. Hebrews 1:3, 11:1-3.

8 Kenneth W. Ford - Classical and Modern Physics, p. 1169, Vol.3.

9 See EXTENSION on SEEKING THE CLARITY OF CRYSTAL, IN THE
COMPREHENSION OF THE IMMEASURABLE (pp. 410-413 infra).

10
 
 

A further element however may now need attention. It is the conduct of the microcosmic as such. A physicist may complain that we are not giving it the attention and the specificity which it deserves. At that level, he may say, there is indeed intrinsic uncertainty. Why, he says, there is the conduct of the particle shown in the Wilson cloud chamber in such a style as makes it hard to resist particulate status; and then there is the conduct of the electron which in certain diffraction experiments makes it hard for it to receive consideration as a particle at all.

Indeed, there we give it merely a probability status, and find no way of expressing its location at certain times except by saying that it is in BOTH available gateways at one time (as Ford puts it, p.420 infra). In other words, wave properties seem to supervene and particulate status temporarily seems simply inept. Here surely, he may continue, we must give up the concept of certainty; uncertainty is essential to the case, intrinsic at this microcosmic level in nature; and hence there is a breach of law, a vacation from it, a hole in it.

Is this really however a correct conclusion from the premises ? First, the experimental macrocosmic position is not one of any quirkish variability; and the macrocosmic is comprised of the microcosmic in large numbers. If then statistics is a useful device to use in pondering the exceedingly infinitesmal, it is NOT at all experimentally verified at the macrocosmic level as essential to the nature of the material.

It is, as Bertrand Russell says of the visualising mode for the particle, 'a logical construction'. The actual nature of the material is NOT known; indeed, the very wave-particle duality confusion is prima facie indication of that. It may indeed be partly known, intuited in measure, expressed in some features; this is indeed possible. In fact, the degree of correlation between behaviour and law or order of approach is sufficient to indicate that some measure of approximation exists between the intellectual construct and the actual fact. What the deficiency may be: that is another question.

Secondly, it is actually ludicrous in the extreme to talk of the ESSENTIAL character of nature in any area where the theoretical condition is such, that stark incongruency of concepts has not even been with certainty resolved. This is neither new nor particularly remarkable. The history of science, indeed the progress of detective work often may turn on just such an enigma. Different channels of evidence simply do not seem to cohere. Now the reason may be a fundamental failure to grasp basic and even elementary facts - a witness was lying, a result was misinterpreted ... It may, again, be that certain assumptions have been intruded too securely, because their postulate condition has been mistaken for fact. Again, a whole dimension may have been omitted. In a detective story, to revert, the correlate would be the possibility for example that some two people had superficial resemblances, and one had been masquerading as the other; or that two twins had been amazing the ignorant observers, by their correlative but un-homogeneous behaviour.

Fun and comedy: Not twins

The essential character of physical reality is aptly and without contradiction dealt with in terms of law WHERE the means of measurement are not disparate with or from the items to be measured. Where, as in cases within the electronic and light areas, we can move to the merely indirect, so that very objects themselves are inferences of the first order, then the possibility of basic misconception is vastly increased; and the possibility of interesting diversities and complexities not yet realised, is quite high. THAT is one probability which is QUITE real!

In any period of science, indeed, there can come such moments, where intellectual advancement or measuring facility, or even the very awareness of what is to be measured, can be so poor relative to the case, that contradiction or gross degrees of indirection and controversy and confusion - such natural concomitants of such a condition - may yaw and rage.

Again, the possibilities are numerous. Can a particle be fluent into wave status ? Can waves invest themselves with particulate character in some instances ? If you know one phase of a multi-faceted reality, you may indeed find only statistical relation between this and the movement of the body - as if you knew the working of a toenail in a motion display, and from this, sought to find the place of the relevant body.

There is ONLY relatively slight certainty of the placement of the actual body, given the placement of the toenail routinely attached; though there is greater probability of some predicted placements of the body, generally speaking, given that of the toenail, than would be the case without this information. Certain norms tend to appear. These depend on quite specifiable matters (if one knew them, and happened to be anatomically informed); it is merely that we would not know them in the parallel surmised; and perhaps indeed they might pass quite beyond our current level of comprehension, even if we could grasp their general nature. They might not be analytically ascertainable on the basis of the limited knowledge at our current disposal. Thus, in the illustration, the mind behind the body might be moving and flexing it differentially, for reasons indeed; but these might be past our level of intrusion and ability, to ascertain!

There is then not absolute contradiction; it may convey such an initial impression only if we assume that there is not more and cohesive reality behind the elements seen. Until however, we find this pertinent perspective and cohesion, the point remains: within the limits of the theoretical concepts in view, there is prima facie divergence; and this is no base for statements about the essential reality of what the (disparate and inadequate) components envisaged, tender to the mind.

Further, the orderly conduct of the wave aspect itself, signifies in its cohesive and intimate, but not exhaustively understood relation with particulate status, a phase of comprehensible and law-abiding construction. No aberration of particles in their dual intimacy with waves, is found to intrude on the wave coherence and control per se. No force of this phase or facet is disruptive. No consequences of postulated aberrancy are made manifest either in the wave phase or in the macro-phase.

No ground for postulating in reality what is used as a pragmatic device, an inchoate theoretical phase of investigating an elusive and minute physical area, is therefore found. It is, then, fun to investigate, correlate imagination with discipline: but merely comic to attack the system as an alternative to these labours.

Indeed, we may compare it with a mood of exasperated exaggeration or irritability on the part of a husband returned home from a hard day at the office... "A ludicrous whirl of contradiction...", he may say disgustedly. In fact, very possibly there were components which he has not yet assimilated; there are challenges to his understanding which he has not yet met; and he is inclined to use words to vent his fury, dismiss his frustration and to mischaracterise the reality at the office, pending a more relaxing and gratifying power to handle the place.

Frenzies of Irrationalism (q.v.)

Where the rationale is withheld, not discovered, for the time, the statistics may serve quite helpfully, pending needful discovery. Fascinating challenges to the rationality of our thought teach us, if history in science be any guide, that we should go carefully till we catch up, and be humble pending the new inspiration which will find the greater rationale, perhaps as greatly beyond our present thought as the periodic table of elements on the one hand, and the mutation of elements through radioactive decay on the other, were beyond the thought of the early Greek philosophers. THAT the order we DO see, and the undying regularity we assuredly DO find require a rationale now as always, has not received any ground for objective doubt.

Nor is it provided by the consideration that we do not as yet find it in some particular case, at some phase of investigation, as here. Nor, for that matter, is it here the case that one is not conceivable! It is merely to find it, test it, and implement as is usual in all the new developments of science, that awaits - if the matter be within the confines made available to man by the Creator.

Impatience then is no ground for the concept of intrinsic irrationality; nor is the conformity to order in what we do not see and can test cohesively, any permit for the concept of permissive particles, with no corresponding vagaries in correlative waves, or for some abstraction from force and motion, into irrational realms of free-wheeling philosophic fantasies where cause is not operative, and magic is a matter for messy musing.

The thought that seeks REASON for behaviour in unreason is already contradicting itself. After all, we are NOT FINDING irrational behaviour: we are finding components of impression from what we cannot see, which are hard to correlate with consistent hypotheses as to their cause.

We need not consider, in febrile exasperation or drifting fantasy, that magic is causing them; rather that when consistent hypotheses are found to cover the facts, then as in all the other cases, regularity will be seen in terms of a perspective exalted enough to allow it. In straight and undeniable fact, what we have in essence here is this: neither waves as we take them, nor particles such are sufficient to cover ALL the known facts taken singly, nor is their cohesion taken jointly readily conceived except in some as yet unverified total situation - (thus limits may extend to prevent movement to one or other phase, simply unknown as to their kind and occasion as yet).

Order surrounds this partially shrouded area, and prediction in terms of the inadequate concept is limited in some phases. As to reality, this shows NOTHING EXCEPT THAT WE ARE NOT YET UP TO IT, in this phase and field. That is scarcely surprising; certainly no novelty in science. A mere examination of the SCIENCE TEXT BOOKS of 50 years ago makes further comment superfluous! Orderly links with intimate surrounds prevent this postulate from being worthwhile: that we know enough and it is matter that wanders!

Moreover, as seen in pp. 401ff. supra and Chs. 1, 3 and 5 (e.g.. pp. 7-10, 284ff., 305-316G, 378-386, 424 ff., cf. 422B infra), myth, magic and contra-causation are not rational options. Indeed, causality has stringencies neither dispensable from thought, dispersable from language, nor susceptible to logical dismissal; such endeavours requiring self-contradiction at the very outset. Accordingly, what is not necessary, and is at the same time, necessarily not logical, is evacuated from rational discourse.

Indeed, shortly (p. 421 infra), we shall come to Dr David Bohm's approach, which presents a simple coverage of the case in rational terms, laying the problems squarely in the hands of measurement and its deficiencies. That is only one of the major options, and it is one significantly researched mathematically.

Imagination and reality

Thus wave-particle oscillations of form, in different phases of travel, as to and through a diffraction grating; and different grounds for interchange or constraint (Ford op. cit. p. 1161), depending on situation; and wave packets which, in different circumstances, equate in quantity of energy with the particles, being analogical to the corpuscular concept: all these things take no special imagination to conceive. There is no conceptual impasse per se. There is no vestige of it. We are accustomed to learning by experiment what is and is not verifiable, what circumstances produce important changes of form and so on: and where we cannot execute such experiments in a measuring situation, there is no change of method, of principle, merely one of power to probe.

That there is law is shown by macro-results, where measurement is possible. What, on the other hand, the relevant law is, or series of laws, or varieties of causal forces: this remains a matter of work to determine, sometimes difficult and time consuming work, if means be found. Any endeavour simply to 'locate' an electron, therefore, under all circumstances, linked with talk of theoretical impasse, not merely ignores the nature of the history of science and the special circumstances of measurement technology involved, at testable levels relative to theoretical needs, at micro-size: it ignores equally the assumption being made. This is that there is in fact no law governing polymorphism in this case, or that there is no polymorphism. It becomes an arcane erraticism,with the fatal deficiencies already shown.

It is similar to an endeavour to 'measure' the radius of a chemical in solution, at particulate level, as it if were a crystal; and stating that this is a logical problem: 'We simply cannot find any way of reconciling the solution form with the radius of a particle!' That however is not a logical problem; it is not a difficulty in the concept of law; it is a difficulty brought about by misusing imagination, and measuring one thing in terms of another, what is present in terms of what is absent!

It is a simplistic substitute for analysis, testing and thought. It becomes in scientific disciplines, what the painful deficiencies and irrationalities of antiphilosophy (q.v.) became in another sphere. (Cf. pp. 80 and 321, and Ch.3 supra.)

Where we know the forms to be measured, the error is obvious. The principle however is the same. In sum: laws must govern the minute elements of phases or facets of light, or the macro-extensions in multi-particle consequences could not be determinate, as they are. What the law is, at minute level, remains a problem of practical technology for research, not a causative conundrum.

The only conundrum for causation is the endeavour to be rid of it, in practice, or in theory, as to its objective validity. That ? ... It is a conundrum insolvable indeed, an incorrect hope, a fallen dream, earlier dismissed; and that very insolvability, as such, verifies the Biblical basis for this creation, which in fact is caused. (Cf. Chs.1,3 supra, 5 infra.) Worked from divine origin, this creation has its own system of consequences ... which then in turn cause. In this scenario, God inventing serial time, caused man to be a spiritual being, given invitation to reality - even access to the Creator in Christ; or scope for obduracy, as here.

There is however no conundrum in principle, relative to the place of causality in light.

There is, as Ford points out, too much made of the concept of uncertainty relative to matter. A matter wave has characteristics which are not relevant to an insistent point-location desire. You simply have to realise the crudity of trying to measure one thing, in terms of another, with obdurate superficiality, even wilfully.

There is not a question of uncertainty, in such a wave case, as to where the particles must be, but of inability at will to make particulate characteristics appear in a wave, or to translate wave qualities into single electron placement as if it were the plaything of our thought. Yet law constrains even in this inter-relation: "The wave function gives quantitative expression to the idea of wave particle duality" - (Ford, op. cit. p. 1161).

To pursue the simple analogy, to get monoclinic crystals of sulphur, it is not a matter of determining the desire, but of implementing it through understanding the conditions, the material and the range of operative causes.

The real difficulty is practical: ways of prodding material elements at this level in order to determine which of numerous coherent possibilities of form and law is operative. At present, some of this is necessarily hidden from physicists' eyes; and through evidential deficiency, it is hidden from the eyes of the mind. They may probe somewhat further. Yet the idea of an ultimate limit to the power of man to probe forever on, while earth lasts: this remains quite different in kind from gratuitous, indeed contra-evidential concepts of the non-operation of laws in areas beyond our powers of detection.

When it comes to serious scientific thought, implications must rest on more than ignorance, be far from areas of systematic ignorance, relative to the character of operations therein. Further, they should not be in violation of evidence which is available and which requires certain constraints, whatever the nature of the thing. In short, imagination should neither be projecting logical problems in an evidential void, relative to the issue,nor be contrary to what limits other tests may require.

Keeping to such reasonable procedures, we are left with human limits which however jarring to pride, are powerless to establish any concept of illogical variance, within our measuring limits, of data for inference. These like the tips of ice-bergs, project in an orderly way into visible space, and thus resist the lust for the irrational which, along with determinism, is one of the futile idols of this generation¹.

Parodies from improper projections

Thus: "It is easy to ask unanswerable questions, such as: If the particle is never to be found halfway between the walls, how can it get from one half to the other half ? The only answer that can be given to this question is that the "particle" exists simultaneously in both halves of the available space. Yet, when an external influence causes it to materialise, it shows itself in either one half or the other." Indeed, actualisation of a (MI>potential for a given form is all that is needed when the pattern of events, known or unknown, transpires.

The parallel to solution and crystallisation is particularly striking here, with simply a different and now known 'stimulus' for the 'event' - which now has become not crystallisation, but rather materialisation.

The constant presence of law is to be noted in such thoughts as: "With both slits open, the electron wave goes through both slits at once, and it is the wave that determines where electrons may be observed as particles." (The quotations above are from pp. 1165 and 1169 respectively - Ford, op. cit..)

The concepts of "causing" materialisation and "determining" results are of course still present, and nothing escapes their net. The desire to compress a creation into a contrived theory is the only ultimate problem, and that has been present with us since the first time Satan tried to detach the actualities of man's being from the authority of God's word (and hence constructions) in Eden. Endless philosophic frustrations in the dark mists of illicit reductionism tend to make the subject what it is! (See Ch.3 supra.)

At the operational level, while God does not always see fit to give a 'working model'-assist to investigations (neither spiritual energy nor freedom for that matter, per se being particularly susceptible to models) ... in matter, the unbreachable constraints (miracles apart) evidentially remain; whatever their form and depth.

In man, however, in terms of his dower of freedom, the sovereign consequences of breach continue to come, though administered with a more intimate personal disposition, from the Lord (Psalm 1, Job 1, Romans 8). Depending on the case, this may touch a spectrum of relationships, moving from a severity that might seem impersonal, to sympathy and superintendence. In view of man's approach to God, varying from advising Him how to do His work to seeking His pardon, from allowing Him to co-operate to calling on His name, from irrationally rejecting all remedy to importunately seeking and finding His remedy: this is scarcely surprising.

Nor is it so particularly strange that treating God
as a deaf-mute,
an impotent incompetent,
a chaotic contriver immersed
in a maelstrom of His inventions,
forced to contradict His principles,
or to ascertain them through the minds of matter specialists,
as if He were a creature of His own creation,
forced by His constitutional limits, by some thing or someone to do what He does not desire ...
that this evokes small help!

In such an altogether popular case, that of regressive and captious reductionism, it is not merely a matter of biting the hand that feeds you; it is rather more like saying it is not there. It is however especially difficult to accept things ... from a hand that you do not see, because your eyes are so tightly closed. (Cf. Index, Reductionism.)

John MILTON has a particularly sensitive passage that deals with this coin, in the commerce of souls, in his Paradise Lost V, lines 857ff.. Satan, amidst rebellious delicacies, filled with scorn, contemptuous while contemptible, confronts the seraph with these words:
[Satan:]

" 'That we were formed then say'st thou? And the work
Of secondary hands, by task transferred
From Father to his Son ? Strange point and new!
Doctrine which we would know whence learnt. Who saw
When this creation was? Remember'st thou
Thy making, while the Maker gave thee being?
We know not time when we were not as now;
Know none before us, self-begot, self-raised
 

By our own quickening power, when fatal course
Had circled his full orb, the birth mature
Of this our native Heaven, ethereal sons,
Our puissance is our own; our own right hand
Shall teach us highest deeds, by proof to try
Who is our equal. Then thou shall behold
Whether by supplication we intend
Address and to begirt the Almighty throne
Beseeching or besieging. This report,
These tidings carry to the anointed King;
And fly, ere evil intercept thy flight.'

"He said, and as the sound of waters deep
Hoarse murmur echoed to is words applause
Through the infinite host; nor less for that
The flaming Seraph fearless, though alone
Encompassed round with foes, thus answered bold:

[Seraph:]
" 'O alienate from God, O spirit accurst,
Forsaken of all good! I see thy fall
Determined, and thy hapless crew involved
In this perfidious fraud, contagion spread
Both of thy crime and punishment. Henceforth
No more be troubled how to quit the yoke
Of God's Messiah, those indulgent laws
Will not be now vouchsafed; other decrees
Against thee are gone forth without recall...'

"So spake the Seraph Abdiel faithful found,
Among the faithless, faithful only he;
Among innumerable false, unmoved,
Unshaken, unseduced, unterrified,
His loyalty he kept, his love, his zeal,
Nor number nor example with him wrought,
To swerve from truth, or change is constant mind..."

The scene is one in which the devil, archetype of evil, artisan in mimicry, and closely followed by many, answers appeal to be reasonable and states his desire. And this ? It is that: Any god with whom he can be associated must be besiegeable, answerable to him, or in modern mythology, formulable by him, with powers permitted and engineered spot made available, somewhere in the miasma.

Into such engineered expectations, the Creator of engineers simply does not fit. No more could I become a comma in one of my poems, or a sentence taught, disciplined and given permission by my critics. It would simply mean this: that they wished to take over from my mind, in my work. How far less is the infinite mind of God subject to such trifling!

11 See EXTENSION: FORM AND INFORMATION (pp. 406-410, infra).

12 See pp. 26-47 supra; also pp. 172 ff..

13 A little more detail on this concept may help as an extension for information. The Penguin Dictionary of Physics (Ed. Valerie H. Pitt) notes:

Wave mechanics is 'one of the forms of quantum mechanics that developed from de Broglie's theory that a particle can also be regarded as a wave... (It) is based on the Schrödinger wave equation DESCRIBING the wave properties of matter. It relates the energy of a system to a wave function and in general it is found that a system (such as an atom or molecule) can only have certain wave functions (eigenfunctions) and certain allowed energies (eigenvalues). In wave mechanics the quantum conditions arise in a natural way from the basic postulates as solutions of the wave equation.' (Emphasis added.)

Wave function is declared to be 'a mathematical function appearing in the Schrödinger wave equation and describing the behaviour of a particle according to wave mechanics. The particle is thought of as a wave ... Thus the wave function expresses the lack of certainty in defining both the position and momentum of a particle.' (Italics added.) See pp. 406 ff. supra.

14 See EXTENSION on RESEARCH AND REVIEW, pp. 413-417.

15 See EXTENSION D, pp. 422A-C.

16 Historically, it is over 40 years since Dr David Bohm first favoured a system in which waves go even further than this (Scientific American, May 1994). Deeming wave-functions not only mathematical objects, but physical ones, which exercise an actual guiding influence on particles, he uses a classical force field concept, decisive and determined, along the normal lines of material conception.

On this basis, the laws concerned have no limping statistical dimension covering ignorance, at the minute level, and he avoids the consideration in wave mechanics, of probability for a particle in respect to its full positioning detail. No more is it the case that for example, an electron may be traced predictively as going to position A or B, then with a further set of laws in probability, be assigned a readout. The readout instead is theoretically a practical and settled one. It is not a metaphysical barrier imposed in frustrated logic, by those wanting more than the characteristics of matter permit, with less than the data required; it is merely a matter of ignorance of total initial factual detail that blocks prediction.

Thus Bohm does not delve into the irrational abuse of logic by presupposing causeless events within a texture of determinate macro-events; instead, with an objective guidance from a wave function force, the matters are of only one outcome. What hinders the necessary precision is simply this: that the input detail of the requisite level and order is not known, so that predictions of such an order cannot be made.

In accordance with challenging experimental results involving changes in the direction of spin of electrons (op. cit. pp. 32-37), the functional conception of Bohm is this: he postulates two phases of an electron, a particulate aspect plus a wave function entity, which may separate and re-unite under specific circumstances. The 'empty' wave function part is deemed not to affect other particles or measuring apparatus, but to impact only on the cognate electron. It is so constructed as to have intra-systematic limits, within its electronic whole.

While such steps are given a good report by writer Dr David Z. Albert (Scientific American, May 1994), and Bohm's major advances in coherent conception and explicative power are highlighted in the article, the limits Bohm sets are of interest, as was a preliminary caution noted in Dr Ford. Limits in the field of ascertainment (p. 37), Bohm affirms to be systematic in terms of law. Results mathematically follow in perfect rationality.

It is opportune therefore to affirm, indeed re-affirm a point. Just as the creation of matter is in no way visible now (like a book being read, in no way being currently written), so the absorbing details of ever-expanding data is no guarantee of comprehensive knowledge, as though matter were autonomous. An author sometimes has his own ways of handling his work, with limits set to its manipulation by others. He can of course intervene and insert an item, or restore it, or whatever be his wish. That is the literary equivalent of miracles, discussed earlier.

Insertion is not violation, when repair or impact may be desired; and control is not irrationality, but an imposition with a decisive cause. Total knowledge is therefore dependent on total perception of total reality, conception of it and capacity so to form, formulate and function.

As God is the author, man bears no guarantee of any such knowledge, by himself. This he is constantly made to realise, just as equally he finds the extraordinary facility, within his limited parameters, with which he can reason and relate to the world.
This fact is simply a double derivative: it follows from the fact he is man and not God, GOD having made both man's equipment and man's world; and from the fact he is in God's image, so that he is not inherently alien, but can find the rewards of reason, when he equally recognises and uses the restraints of reality for himself.

First is the implicit argument by analogy: chess players, being human, may not only dream up items, but also err, the latter because of the observable qualities of humans, including a certain ... disparity between purpose and performance, not seldom found in them; and which may afflict them (cf. pp. 23 ff., 300 ff. supra). Personal creativity also abides.

If then the actual government of physical matters is realised to be by a Person (as we have shown it to be), let us say so, noting the necessities to that end, exhibited in Chapter 1 supra, and verified in numerous fields in this Trilogy. If not, let there be no smuggling of concepts to satisfy systematically bereft parts of a mortally wounded theory, as oblivious of the total scope of the data, as of the implications of its alien importations.

Second, if uncertainty were ultimate, it would be quite certain that nothing would be certain in the multiplying and inter-active events, so that no 'god', far less an illusory contra-suppositional phantasm, could govern. It could do this no more than implement purpose, such as Davies posits. There is no 'teleology without teleology' - only contradiction without warrant, hope by hiatus and illusion by indiscipline.

In fact, the overall quantifiability through wave methods, of ultimate results exhibits a constraint on matter; for you cannot obtain a system with ultimate constrained (wave) results, without the agency of constraining causes. As McIntyre (p. 412 supra, cf. 410) says: "There is nothing mysterious about all this; we have accurate equations that describe what happens in detail." Describing electrons, however, he pursues, in terms of particles and waves is an inadequate expressive mode for their form.

What is similarly certain is the implicit rebuff to any scientific arrogance which may arise during probes into areas imperfectly analysed but conforming to code. This trend was mordantly illustrated by the idea of contemporary "spontaneous generation" of life which Pastor patiently fought with the causal concept of microbes - one ridiculed indeed by Bernard Shaw! but duly and abundantly vindicated. Such rebuffs to unruly romanticism are routinely exhibited in the history² of science.

However little you may know of what is little (leaving you lost in unverifiable hypothesis, through want of procedure to measure at the necessary and profoundly more basal level, if measure you might), you know a lot when its testable eventuations (in any form) conform to equations. Neither little nippers of electrons, nor quarks, lurks, nor particle emission in radio-active decay, for that matter, can be autonomous when the decay rate, or the wave resultant (depending on one's field) itself is bound.

Laws level obstacles by adequate power, not by oblivion of cause. The scientist may be oblivious of phases of causation in delicious mockery of his often (but not always) found desire for godlike knowledge - an ersatz not limited to scientists. As Ford indicates, however, there is no profundity in such ignorance, any more than there is in the inviolable seeming characteristics by which matter waves exhibit themselves - at times pointedly refusing to come to the desired...'point', being insusceptible to convenient conceptual manipulation: precisely because - as causes - they are what they are and continue to be like earlier scientific data clusters, occupied in keeping their own laws.

Even when there is some element of spontaneity (and we men in part have a measure of it via our enduement with creative personality), there is need of a cause of the structure for this: which operates at its own level, all duly contrived, produced, conceived and constructed. No consideration of different ways of working removes in the slightest degree, the need, the necessity of causing what works. Nor does it remove the contradiction of imagining 'grounds' of the concept of causation, if not objective: a mere sophistry for begging the question. Calling into being on adequate grounds is, after all, causation. You can account for nothing by demolishing accounting: and scarcely speed its demise by assuming it. (Cf. pp. 332E-G supra.)

Objective causation, as we have seen, leads only to the transcendent, Almighty God who, in different domains and dimensions, has provided for a creation and a creative component, called man, indeed one both discrete and frequently indiscreet, whose insolvent insolencies include even this: that what is not there spontaneously produces what is; or this, that man caused causation; or even this - that a causeless base is the real cause, of what happens happening. Truly man is remarkable, when in full flight from God, for the works of pure fancy, fantasy and folly which he self-contradictorily dreams. That indeed, is what the Bible calls them - dreams (Jeremiah 23), the hallucinations of unholiness.

And the cause of all this hullaballoo, so often repeated as men seek a magic mirage to support their insupportable contentions, whether mythical or physical or whatever might be the current mode: it is a rebellion which try though it will, can never unmast the tower of reason from the ship of thought.³

Thus in physics we find this erratic passion, as also in biology and psychology: this irrational lust for result without reason. Just as in primitive iridescence of splendour, biology invents life by academic fiat, saying, Let there be Life, and there is not life, not even with man as mouthpiece, rather than matter; and just as psychology invents goodness, saying, Let there be goodness, and behold, from all this, no goodness arises, but merely a reductionism in thought which is only too aptly mirrored by the reduced morals of contemporary observation: so physics now has its turn. The universe must now likewise 'arise', with no causative interface, naked of ground, free of basis; deprived of observation: nor is law found for it; neither is means, nor basis for any of it. Frustration becomes the father of the universe!

The hilarity of it all is the more pointed for this: we are told the 'truth' of these magical potions from magical potentates who invent irrational 'reasons' while despising the integrity of reason; who tell us 'truth' while imagining scenarios not only necessarily deprived of truth, but in a system where it necessarily could not exist (cf. Ch. 3; pp. 30-41, 284-289, 299-316G, 321, 383-385 supra; 698, 934-936, 1014-1017 infra); who give reasons for unreason (cf. pp. 1-10, 30, 264-266, 284-310 supra, 999-1002A, Chs. 5, 10 infra) and grounds for groundlessness; who use what they abuse, and affirm what they dismiss in the very interstices of their thought. Self-contradiction always however has this delightsome result: contradict yourself, and others need not bother.
 
 

Bruce: Blast into being, what!

Albert: Not at all like the old gradualism, eh ?

Bruce: About as near as ice and fire!

Albert: Extraordinary thing you know. All these secular fellows, no-time-for-God people: they can't seem to say enough about this big bang theory.

Bruce: The way they carry on, you'd think they almost invented the idea of explosion into being: at the mouth of God ... ! except of course they leave out that rational part, the sufficient source of the system.

Albert: Philandering sort of fantasy, you know. The romantasising of over-disciplined minds, do you think ? horse let out of his harness, kicking his heels sort of thing !

Bruce: Couldn't be further removed from what they used to say, could it ?

Albert: All this background radiation stuff they talk about; the universe bathed in it and all that sort of thing... the "big bang" cry of its birth throes, if you want to be poetic.

Bruce: Yes, yes, I know. N.A.S.A. Director, Robert Jastrow... spoke of being unable to penetrate beyond this initial massive thrust of primordial energies, you know, by tracking. He noted it's exactly what matches creation: from nothing you see... well, really from God's creative energy. It's like a poem suddenly put from the mind of its maker, on to paper. It wasn't developed by the ink and paper; it was developed by the mind of the creator, the artist who made it!

Albert: The Big Bang lacks source, basis, begs the question of anything to bang, mocks logic, makes explosion the name for what explodes, expansion to bypass what expands,  what properties it needs to have in order to explode into delicate and mathematically refined creation, contrary to all normal results of inordinate force without control or cohesion, or direction apt to the result, let alone ignoring what wonders would be needed preceding it; and even if the radiation associated with exploding into being were sound, this therefore would prove nothing but the suddenness.

As to God, this is precisely what He indicates in the Bible which unlike modern science in its philosophic affectations, does not change or even need to do so! Science falsely so-called merely ignores the question, like some tiny kids who, thoughtless in irrelevant simplistic solecism, and waving force, begin to imagine what it needs to have, for a given result, and then forget it. It is a mixed combination of shame, sham and shambles, irrational rambles and disingenuous dynamisms. 

Albert: Oh absolutely! And these new miniature radiation variations could be the - well - contemporary echoes of God's original creative decrees, that Genesis notes, couldn't they?

Bruce: Quite conceivable. The speed of light, and other rates, is such an epochal matter too: if this is a natural decay curve of course, or something like it, or space itself expanded at creation ... in fact, creation and maintenance phases always vary - then light's velocity at the creation was far faster. Then these things could be right there, close to the very beginning of material creation. Well who's got the goods of the time scale of these things ... ? Only God. Trouble is, some of these fellows would seem so far from knowing Him, that they forget the distinction; and coming to think of it, mathematically it is infinite. Rather like that time Jastrow spoke of, when Einstein tried to divide by zero.

Albert: Yes if light did act like that, it certainly may be so. Of course the data are so subject to abuse and need checking. There are so many variables too: always finding new things you know. It's like blowing up or even vaporising a Boeing airliner. Can't really tell what it was like, unless you knew it; just a few clues.

Bruce: Yes, yet creation fits even this sort of data, and as nothing else does. Nothing else comes anywhere close: the necessities of creation find a beautiful disciple in these data. You've simply got to have someone eternally able and eternal by nature to create it all, if you're going to listen to reason; because it can't create itself and magic, mythology and all that stuff, it's no good for a reasoning man... childish really. The One you need has got to be adequate - always has to be so ... can't logically develop or 'arise' from nothing or from what is inadequate. If it IS adequate, it's got all it takes already; if it is NOT, then it can't produce it. Otherwise it's a matter of using causal argument to eliminate causal terms - a mere contradiction in terms.

Albert: I mean if people won't face reality, it'll confront them. First they're fronted by a sudden eruption of life and design in their Cambrian 'age', surging at the start; and now there's talk of a sudden eruption of matter ... with idle magnificence, thronging into being. They think by contradiction.

Bruce: Departing from the truth is like a car departing from its design or a body being ravaged by cancer. You're smashed to smithereens ! Just too ...

Albert: The worst of it is, the mind and heart of man is responsible... and voluntary selection of a derelict's pit is an awful way to end.

Bruce: Yes, and there's no anodyne for damnation.

End-notes:

1. Cf. *13, pp. 882-884 and 971-972 infra.

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2. With Davies' presentation, we simply find one more case. See *5 infra. p. 422U.

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3. Cf. the doom of unreasoned spontaneity - e.g. pp. 3-10, 18, 252A-N, 257-270, 284-291, 306-308, 315Aff., 332A-F, 379, 396 ff., 400-402 supra, 422U ff., 424-427 infra - in principle and in practice. Cf. *13, pp. 882-884, 422I-P infra, 31-35 supra - time.

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