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Contents
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CHAPTER 6
News 220
New Life, June 6, 2002
Answers in Genesis, News Update, May 2002
Creation June 2002
FETTERING FREE SPEECH
THE ANGLE ON THE AXES
AND ANTIPODEAN
ANTICS
It is true that 'axes' can mean more than one axe, or more than one axis. In this instance, it is the plural of axe. What is being axed with the utmost gleam of eye and ire of speech is that potentially lovely thing, that intensely human remains, that lively and challenging provision, that most British adoption (though adopted children are not always as loved), that Australian tang: freedom of speech.
What is left of it is being fettered, if it lives, the better to confine, to contain its residue. Pretty ? no axes are rarely pretty. Pleasant ? No, fetters do not evoke pleasure - except of course when they relate to that arch-enemy of truth and justice, the devil himself. His time will come. This, however, this case is now!
The agency of axes, the social and legal celebration of fetters ... for freedom of speech ?
We saw it coming*1 and have for years been properly vigorous in warning that funeral preparations for this commodity might soon be in order. It was examined in this fallen State (now there is a title for you, 'The Fallen State', to put on the auto number plates, but we hope that perhaps it may soon arise), because of the gross abuse of the young in schools. This followed direct imposition of indoctrination of children with such ignorant abstractions as the evolutionary myth, one that had also engrossed a lot of fallen churches, where culture has precedence in this over the Bible, over scientific method and over empirical reality alike*2.
The antipodean character of things, however, noted in the title ? The term is generic, rather than measured, for it refers merely to the extreme diversity, on the world's surface, to the North. England, and to the South, Australia, for alas, in this these are both the culprits. As *1 below indicates, the Victorian case did much to bring Victoria down to the standard of S.A., and if possible, beneath it in the matter of transgression against liberty. This is not to say that, so far, the outrages committed at the physical level, have come anywhere near those of places such as Afghanistan, or Cambodia, not at all.
Physical violence is not so far in view: only violence against income (by making laws which exclude biblical commitment as in TMR Ch. 8), against conscience (say in the teaching profession, for the same reason), against the liberty of youth to grow in education, as distinct from mere indoctrination in important categories, against academic liberty (breached when politics, as in S.A. in the secondary realm, in evolutionism, and creation, prescribes), against religion (as in S.A. where religion is misdefined in categories that exclude themselves logically as shown in TMR Ch. 8, as is Ch. 5), against the federally relevant law to proscribe (not prescribe) the establishment of a religion and so on. That is all. Just that.
Nevertheless, not merely is the physical often the result of the violation of the spiritual, but the spiritual is far more important. If an employe must sell his soul to keep his job, it would be better he had been killed outright. That is the realistic and biblical perspective: what is the good of life if it becomes evil!
Let us now however look beyond our general environment, to the two particular cases: the Victorian and the British.
FIRST THE VICTORIAN CASE
A new case has arisen, at law, but first let us see the background.
Here, as shown in the references in *1 below, there was a law formed in which, irrespective of the intent of the speaker, vilification as discerned by the 'victim', if it concerned say race or religion, could be made the ground of legal attack. MOTIVE was not the point; but result. Reasonable men could become the determinant: what would they think ?
Alas as pointed out in the News 156 and Galloping Events Ch. 7, *2 - *1, the works of "reasonable men", so called, have not always been salubrious. Is it that the conquests of king culture, there with his sceptre, that artful sovereign, so often seen though to be sure, frequently victoriously resisted, make too many loop-holes ? Holes ? no, highways for traffic against all reason, in terms miscalled reasonable, because truth has long been traded in for convenience, irrational but appealing concepts, expediency, pragmatic devices and the like.
You see the type of thing from one who suffered for it and its other allies, rebellious prejudice and formalistic functioning in popular prejudice, in Bunyan's Lord Hate-Good, the judge! How many such how functioned for how long in how many nations, throughout history! Bunyan for one knew something of it, most intimately. To be sure it made of him, in God's given grace, one of the most famous of all Englishmen; but the prison was not altered by that, all 12 years of it, in the initial burst.
Let us recall part of the
thought in Galloping Events Ch. 7.
Excerpt
It is not "reason", but "reasonable men". So does grasping culture, with rapacious hand, prepare itself to place the dagger of preference into the heart of truth.
Do you trust in humanity ? Then you are a humanist, rather than an historian, and certainly this is the nadir of ANY religion that deals with any actual God, for man, he is born and dies, in neither case (except in suicide) at his pleasure. Worship is not fitting FOR but FROM him, and that for His Maker, on whom in production as in practice, he depends (cf. Repent or Perish Chs. 2, 7).
It
is an exercise in the ridiculous to clothe mankind with divinity; but if you
do, that is humanism. This then becomes in whole or in part, your
religion, and this is then being forced onto other people. This in cases where
they do not share this, in that event, YOUR humanistic or relativistic
religion, then of course you are VILIFYING their religion, by making it illegal
in application, while, with a hypocrisy which would be admirable in audacity
were it not duplicitous, asserting your own 'faith'.
Such are
some of the problems with aggressive, dictatorial humanism.
Litigation
on this ? It begins to sound as if we are in Iran or some such place, for if
there is one thing for which Australia has been rather justly famous, it is its
capacity to 'take it' in matters of challenge and exposure.
Certainly, it can be abused, if the speaker cannot support his statements; but when precisionism replaces substance, we are in the worst features of wily law. Again, if it incites to physical violence, it is itself suppressive of freedom. However, when physical, financial or legal violence is used to prevent freedom of speech, with its own antidotes for fact, the society, the CLOSED SOCIETY, as Popper might put it, knows so much that it cannot learn.
That is one of the dangers of being touchy. You get touché - nay, smitten - by what you could not endure to consider, breaking out in legal sweat at the first opportunity.
It must in all fairness be now observed, that while such excellent willingness to hear the opposite, to consider the claims and to avoid the mere rush of blood and suppression in freedom of speech have been justly famous in our land, there has - quite apart from the repressive laws here noted for Victoria and expounded further in the references of *1 below, another new detrimental feature, a new loss, a new compromise, a new recession to the rear, in the matter of liberty. While its object may have been mere greed in many cases, it may now begin to apply here also, to religion.
Let us consider this aggravating feature, in the freedom loss situation. It is this. The TENDENCY TO LITIGATION has grown so greatly, so rankly, so rashly in this once (relatively) contented land of ours, that it is now threatening to stop many doctors in their professional tracks, or did so to the point that official medical representatives were toiling in the light of TV cameras to expose the peril. How could this be so ? So frequent, and so ludicrously inflated have many claims apparently become, in legal action against doctors, just for example, that their insurance body (one of the main ones) was in danger of failing. Thus, some medical people were frankly asserting that unless the Government did something, they would be at financial peril if they practised, and hence might have to stop doing so! That is no small development in an 'enlightened' community as it might be called by some.
The Government DID act, and the crisis was, temporarily at least, for some 6 months, in the eyes of many, solved. However, MANY small businesses are now shown to be in the same situation. Even horse-riding in Tasmania, is reported threatened in its business form, since possible charges for professional failure of one sort or another are so dangerous, that the insurance bodies concerned raise the premiums required to levels which require a large amount of spare cash, before any thought of making a living at all, can begin to arise!
That, it is merely an example, and the IT industry is also in danger of similar surcharge. In one case, known to the author, a large insurance company told a prospective customer (continuing merely as such), that it could not even tell what changes would be made in the premium this year, before a considerable (one month perhaps), investigation of the situation was made. They could not even tell "in what ball park" the new figure would be. It was inestimable.
This thirst for gain, lust from greed, readily leads to SO MANY efforts for what are sometimes SUCH LITTLE offences, or imagined offences (and some strange ones are reported, like slipping on a store floor, because the customer had spilt something on it, and then fallen as a result!). That can readily become allied with due and just concern with considerable evil, brought through extreme negligence. The mixture however appears volatile, the compensations given a subject of political discussion, and questions of limiting the enormous cases of disproportionate payment are becoming not at all uncommon. Insurance is here itself at risk; and professions are threatened.
This LITIGIOUS ATMOSPHERE in general, in terms of which it appears that Australia is coming high in the international ladder, then, makes an accelerator or super-charger to the harassment of the new law in Victoria, making people apparently arraignable in terms of the experience of the victim, and his/her thoughts about the feelings, the affront and so on, alleged to be suffered when religious or racial matters in particular, arise before the eyes of those concerned. If the law is the petrol or gas to put on the social forest, then the litigious culture is the match (or even the battery-operated lighter, for the greater convenience).
The editorial in NEW LIFE, contains an interesting challenge to the litigation brought by the Islamic Council, in the land. It presents the point in the form of a series of suggestions about being helpful, and this paragraph is cited below.
"It would help the situation if the Islamic Council of Victoria (or Australia for that matter ) would definitively state that they totally condemn the practice of forced conversion that has taken place in Ambon [a violated Island not far to our North*3], often enforcing circumcision on adults. It would help if they would condemn the massacre of innocent Christians in Ambon, including women and babies, as recently as last month. It would help if they would condemn the Islamisation of Southern Sudan by means of genocidal war. It would help if they would condemn the practice of Sharia law as practised in many parts of our world, where children are indoctrinated in the Koran using most brutal methods. It is not long ago that our television screens were filled with the horror of two women accused of adultery in Afghanistan being shot in the middle of the sports stadium. It would help if they would condemn the lack of religious freedom in many Islamic states throughout the world. Enjoying the (now relative) religious freedom of this country, it does not seem too much to ask that they seek to influence their co-religionists in other parts ot he world. It is also reasonable to ask, given the record of Muslim's persecution of Christians around the world, that Australian Muslims indicate that they do not agree with this, and do not want such things to happen here."
While then, if necessary, State assisted legal action proceeds against those who have expressed their views and concerns, it is important to consider where such a new type of legal violence fits into the prophetic scenario, for our times, these being what is biblically called, the last times (cf. Answers to Questions Ch. 5). Let us, for this purpose, refer to what was earlier said on the Victorian Law, before it had time to use its teeth, from Galloping Events Ch. 7. The point of course before us is not the specific Moslem case in view, with its various local issues, but the nature of the LAW, the PRECISE character of its intolerance, itself!
EXCERPT:
There is just one more aspect to consider. It is this.
It is this very all but inconceivable quality of the development in Victoria, and its direction, which fulfils vastly and proportionately, the Biblical prediction of
· a) the rancorous spirit of development foreknown and pre-announced (around two millenia ago, and more) for the end of our Age.
· b) an obstructive blindness, with
· c) a distorted dynamic,
· d) a this-worldly thrust, ignorant of God and
· e) an increasing amassing of the dignities of God, for man, but in name only, without the power or wisdom.
So does the ancient word find application in the modern event!
Indeed, with the United Nations together with many of the illusions of the unenlightenment, moving in the same direction*3 , and many churches, sound of yore but this no more*4 , and the various unity movements*5 that omit God directly, or betray His word, this forms precisely that composite predicted. You see it in I Timothy 4, II Timothy 3, II Peter 2, II Thessalonians 2, Revelation 12-13, 17-19, in Daniel 7 and 12, in Isaiah 2, 24, 59, for example. Next step of shining impact: Christ returns (cf. Answers to Questions Ch. 5, SMR Ch. 8). That, however, it is like the dawn, or rather like a noon which intervenes amidst the sleeping darkness of the night (cf. Matthew 24:45ff., 25:1-13)!
When, thus, there comes a spirit of delusion, illusion, confusion, of contusion of the past with the debased febrilities of the present, coming after long tolerances of much evil as often attested here: it is not for nothing, and not at all after nothing (cf. II Thessalonians 2:9-10). Long have been the ingredients of theological betrayal in major churches, till the Presbyterian Church of Australia did not noticeably break off relations with the Presbyterian Church of New Zealand when the latter categorically stated that it simply did not MATTER whether the bodily resurrection was affirmed or not, concerning Jesus Christ*6.
PAUL was concerned to the uttermost about circumcision and its implications (Galatians 2:5), but here the very resurrection of the body of Christ was made like power steering, an optional extra, and this wholly corruptive departure from doctrine and reason was permitted, while across the Tasman in the Australian sister, there was no disruption of the relationship!
This was a major result of a major cause which had been at work for an entire generation in Australia itself! Nor is this more declarative of decline than the Anglican Primate's word on the lack of need to go through Christ to the Father!
Nor does it greatly advance on the Lutheran rapprochement with Rome re justification by faith. It is all of one mould, predicted, imperious and accepted, where not long before, it would have been regarded as readily dismissible, for the betrayal of the word of the Lord so certainly represented! (See on Church movements astray, *4 below, and Ancient Words : Modern Deeds Ch. 9 and Ch. 10. These movements are often found to be a pseudo-holy aping of the antics of unbelief found invasively while the fashion lasts, this way or that, in academia; and some of the types of intrusive forces are noted in Ancient Words, Modern Deeds Ch. 9, as in Acme, Alpha and Omega Ch. 9, Tender Times for Timely Truths Ch. 8 and News, Facts and Forecasts Ch. 8.)
Apart from the collusion to varying degrees with the fanciful irrationalities of ever moving, never satisfied, mutually destructive philosophies, some major denominations tended to make some idols of their own in such realms as neo-orthodoxy, a leaven or teaching unethical as well in this, that it re-defined ancient terms so creating confusion, like a smoke screen. Likewise and earlier, there had been a similar measure of abandonment in the antiquated old Liberalism, with its presumptions in place of mere assumptions, falsified so routinely by archeology (cf. SMR 68ff., 377-378, 712ff., 1004-1007, 1180-1181, 1185-1186C) that it became a sort of waiting game to see if the next philosophical diversion from truth could be made up, before this one was so obviously discredited that the forces of waywardness would have no residual appearance with which to cover.
It is in this very much like evolutionism, forever devoid of facts, always looking for theoretical ways of avoiding this fact, and never finding any rest.
Post-modernism's most understandable spirit of discord, discontent and varying stages of cynical indifferentism seems at times to infect neo-evangelicalism, which is full of words of accord, and concord, but empties these on the pavements of sin when the junta of conformity exercises its powers; and again and again, what is true may be mouthed, or partly mouthed, but then in the incisive reality of such fields as separation Biblically, or creation, it falls (cf. The Kingdom of Heaven Ch. 7, Answers to Questions Ch. 8, News, Facts and Forecasts 10 - News 118).
This post-modernistic spirit of derelict drift, the dream of the dispossessed who seem almost to be willing to 'try anything' where nothing works (cf. With Heart and Soul, Mind and Strength Ch. 11, Repent or Perish Ch. 7, Wake Up World! Your Creator is Coming ... Ch. 6) has considerable outreach, then, into many fields, readying man for that time when amid appalling rebukes from the Lord as in Revelation 9, he will NOT, repeat NOT, repent.
The diseases of disintegration have raged long. Death arises to consume. It was to be. It is.
End of Excerpt.
It is then, in this religious setting, that the civil authorities, no longer restrained by a large mass of relatively sound churches, with considerable social weight, can institute a law which obviously is multi-cultural in the worst sense*4 of that term. That is, truth is not to the point, for it is feeling, reaction, sensation of hurt. How fast the prophets of old would have been in legal chains in such a State, then, for their socially outrageous declamations, their most nerve-rending protestations, their decidedly and distinctly GOD based censures, not at all and indeed most decidedly not relating to any form of relativity, but to the Lord alone: these would send the law courts in Victoria, presumably, into football field intensity of litigants.
Certainly, in Israel too, the prophets were often killed; and it climaxed in the axing (metaphorically, another form of the metal in fact being used, with the same result in the end) of Jesus Christ; but at least their laws were not so tainted, so tritely presuming that there was no truth, except of course for that 'truth' that there is no truth (for so it is necessary to hold it, when you IMPOSE relativism, so becoming the very acme of the asinine logically).
So now in Victoria does false prophecy bring charges. It is not for this moment their accuracy or not which is the question: ultimately it is the subjectivity of the law in terms of which the charges may be made! Truth wilts; but then it has long been seen incommodious (cf. Isaiah 59's exposure!). Yet it does not die any more, since Christ, the way, the life and the truth, having been murdered once, is simply not available for it, any more. What can and may die, is the seed of the word of God even more belittled and embattled with many birds that consume but do not sow, in the heartland of Victoria.
One
can only lament, and expect to see examples of courage and rationality to meet
this threat to reality. The pressure in Victoria is now on. Its long run of
comparative innocence at least at the legal level, is now coming to an abrupt
end. But is it not so with many batsmen, who for so long score this century, or
double century, and then quite suddenly, they are OUT!
SECONDLY, THE BRITISH CASE
Attack on one of
Truth's Towers
We move now from the litigation by false prophecy to the British political swashbuckling howls of science falsely so-called, which being bankrupt in logic, appears to need emotional duress for its case. Of this, much has been provided.
This case appears possibly the most flamboyant one of unrestrained intellectual hooliganism, or if you prefer, irrational intellectual bombast that this author has ever heard of, in the modern age evolutionism-idolatry stakes. The outcry, the outrage, the ebullition, the rage, the incensed cries of calamity: together they made it seem as if teaching creation in a school building (rented) was contrary to the creation of the New State which they appear to have in mind.
Jejune, arbitrary, evocative of zero results, it is all the concentrated kefuffle in favour of a modern Nature myth ( (as seen in Barbs, Arrows and Balms Appendix IV, Joyful Jottings 3, A Spiritual Potpourri 9, Wake Up World!… Chs. 2, 4, 5, 6, That Magnificent Rock Chs. 1, 8 - and see Index, naturalism). The forms vary, but the secular myth is one in type, has been for millenia.
It does not matter whether it be little men, little nymphs, little wood-fairies, little secretions, little thoughts, little oddments floating about in nature, always too ashamed to show themselves, divorced from basis and never attesting it, never in evidence, only in the mind of the maker, man, who insists on putting what is visibly not present, into the material realm of what is present: whether as a shield to reality, a fabrication for tittivation, a mode of relaxation, or war on God.
In any case, it is the last, war on God, when the do-it-yourself concept is not taken, as it should logically always be, as the mere thrust of the power of imagination, whether wearily or woefully, in spritely amusement or lavish indulgence, insisting on populating creation with intrinsic creators, inherent and natural to it, too shy to ... show!
As vapid as its ancient forbears (cf. *6 below), this ‘sacred’ mythology, this evolutionism, this naturalistic flame roars against evidence, insists on its creation in the mind, since Nature is so sparing, and provides pap for fantasy, without so much as doing anything to sustain, verify or even exhibit relevant elements, let alone their dynamisation.(Cf. SMR pp. 80ff., 140ff. and *2 below).
Supplying by imagination, the magic to this present world which it in all ways lacks, it invents a god of ‘nature’ instead of being impressed with the nature of the invisible God who gave it such resources, non-inclusive of creating itself, its laws or its code (cf. It Bubbles, It Howls, He Calls Ch. 9). He, unlike the secular myth, attests Himself
No fault in contest in its context, can be found, all check is countered with exposure; and events follow His words without compromise of, or collision with their nature, but rather apt expression of it. (Cf. SMR Ch. 6, Barbs, Biblical Blessings Appendix IV, Repent or Perish Ch. 2). This is precisely where word and work conspire together, as the sea and the clouds, the cliffs and the verdure conspire in beauty that is breathtaking, in cliff-walking. It is all diverse; it is all one; it has the savour of beauty, the scent of grandeur, the majesty of creation and the humbleness of the derived. Yet we must go further even that this.
Indeed, not merely is all co-ordinated uniquely, with sole validity (SMR Chs. 1, 3, 10, TMR Ch. 5, Repent or Perish Ch. 2, Barbs, Arrows and Balms 6, and 7), in Christ, in the Bible which He authenticated and pre-authenticated, but what is out of line with it limps into its increasingly hollow recesses, not only logically, but empirically, as the world both in its material and its invisible, spiritual dimensions fades for lack of His light, and moulders for lack of His health. That, it is what one would expect, but more: it is what He predicted. Just as His presence had power, His truth no answer, so His absence does not work
Let us then consider some of the British press spectaculars, which require considerable imagination for those who have not realised that like Diana of Ephesus in its ancient day, this neo-mythical modern religion, evolutionism, has the most passionate devotees. (Cf. Acts 19:24.) Assuredly, such performances as these of its English partisans, about to be noted, dull the credit record of Western civilisation, bringing it right back to the primitive confusions that preceded it.
Inveterate human desire to ditch the Almighty Maker of all (Ephesians 4:17-19, Romans 1:17ff.), is here well displayed in case after case, in connection with the school episode. As so often, rarely is it more trenchantly expressed, than by those religionists who have incorporated the idol into the service of God, just as Jewish kings did, in their own day - Israel of the North, indeed losing its role and its land, through such perfidy, regularly denounced by the prophets (cf. II Kings 17:8-18, 32-34, Amos 5:25-27).
Culture clasps some to her bosom.
Do we not find that the Bishop of Oxford is reported to have complained that teaching of creation would hinder people taking the Bible seriously! In fact (cf. TMR Appendix), however, the desecration of creation in the mind of man is merely a symptom of his combined antagonism to the empirical facts of science and the emphatic declarations of scripture alike (cf. Isaiah 40:12-27, 45:12,18, 44:24, 45:18, Jeremiah 2:26-28, 10:11). Scripture ? WHO created the heaven, the earth, the man on it, God here asks. The answer: it is LORD who has done it, alone He has made it all, created it and what is in it, for it is by His knowledge, counsel and the work of His own skill. It is, He declares, the LORD who is God, who has done it; and there is no other. HE did not rely on nature; IT relied on Him, and it is He who created it.
Indeed, the word of God teaches, man in his forgetfulness of the power and identity of His Maker, the Creator of all, finds fiascos for faith, tiredness for strength and confusion where clarity is available (Isaiah 40:26ff., with 41- 45).
If in the Bible, repeated emphasis, incisive clarity, ridicule of fairy tales, detestation of naturalism were any criterion; if multiplication of demonstrations of His action were any relevance, then the withholding of belief in creation is merely the direct assault on God. Thus, if the Bible is to be compromised in taking the Bible seriously, it would appear that NOT taking it seriously is the serious thing about ‘believing it’, as when a child refuses to take seriously his father’s threat: do that and I will disown you. Dad, he says, if you say that I cannot take you seriously. Let us talk in more emotive terms. That sort of 'faith' however, is mere rebellion (cf. TMR Appendix).
Not only is God decisive that it is His own sole work, but derisive in showing that naturalistic premises are ludicrous (Jeremiah 2), and that the gods which are imputed to what is not there, may as well 'save' their devotees who vainly trust in them, mouthed nullities and void phantasms of the misled mind. Indeed, and in fact, He declares, He Himself will famish all the gods of the earth (Zephaniah 2:11, cf. Isaiah 43-45), those nonentities which did not alone make the heavens, nor create man from their thought and mind, power and action, requiring no aid in the process. That was His own action, His and His alone, God and God alone, without limit, predecessor or successor. In Genesis, the term ‘kinds’ by the examples is reasonably broad, but at the same time, decisively limited.
With that incredibly brilliant series of 'witty inventions' (Proverbs 8) with which God endued His creation, He performed simultaneously two mighty acts, the execution of the form and format of 'kinds' and the provision for adaptations within kind, which respond within scope provided, to environmental stimulus and genetic distribution, or to divine call as in the curse or divinely ordered plagues, so that the range of specialisation and the control of the range are the mutual marvel of His controlling vision.
In John 3 and Colossians 1, further, we find that not only is He the source of all creation (the Greek term signifying ‘from nothing’ absolute creation), but nothing in the very category of ‘made’ is other than what He Himself has made. Yes, the Biblical teaching expressly is, these things, ALL that could be called 'made' are the result of the work of Christ, the everlasting word of God. If 'made' is it, created, then the source is that person who came as Christ in the flesh, the Lord who came as man, the One sent from His Father (Isaiah 48:16), whose ways are eternal (Micah 5:1-3). Greater detail is found in Barbs, Arrows and Balms Appendix IV, Beyond the Curse and News 74 with SMR pp. 252Lff., at *52.
We may now proceed further to examine more of the attack in Britain, on the God whom professedly, at the formal level, the nation embraces.
The author of the source documenting this British clamour, medical doctor Carl Wieland, in the May 2002 Edition of Answers in Genesis News Update, gives an interesting coverage of a sort of national outburst, of quite a different kind to that relating to the vast celebrations for the Queens' 50th anniversary, but not so different in passion! It does indeed remind one of the Great is Diana of Ephesus long sustained chant, in the spectacular in its own day, of Acts 19!
The start of it, rather like a fire coming from a radiator which caught a nearby blanket with its heat, leading to the gutting of an apartment block, is small. As Virgil in effect puts it, Small my subject, not small my theme. He was talking of bees. In our article on 'killer bees' we see how even this apparent source of sweetness and exemplar of industry, can become in one variety, a source of death and rampant assault (cf. News 97). So too can the social structure of a once great nation become the bitter source of irrational assault on truth and on man's true place, as we shall shortly find from the report.
In this land of tolerance, this Magna Carta isle of fame, this blessed England, this Reformation Establishment in name only, what has happened ?
Only this, it seems. An auditorium was rented in a school near Newcastle, in Northern England, at Gateshead in fact. Ken Ham's Answers in Genesis group were making their case known. This heinous crime, as it would appear to be conceived of, for many, occasioned debate in the House of Commons, and the artillery of the Evolutionism (TM) Establishment, which with hoots, and cries, clamours and faintings, stirrings, whirrings of the mental mechanism and sallies with the tongue, castigated, vociferated, enunciated, calumniated and otherwise expressed horror at the daring, the deliberate act of teaching creation within England, on the part of the Answers in Genesis body, which in America has a very considerable status.
The Principal of the British School concerned received what appeared a haughty letter of scorn for so enabling the meeting of ... creationists, and in vain came his reply, that he was RENTING it, a commercial operation. SHOULD THIS TYPE OF PROGRAM be taught in school ? asked the relentless critic. The fact that it was not being taught in school, in terms of the renting, seemed irrelevant to the ire. It so happened that this was a FAITH school, as enabled by the previous government, and that its results as a school had been assessed as EXCELLENT! From all this, a number of witch-hunt specials arrived, like the Romanist Inquisition of yore, yet so far without thumb screws, just verbal depositions. But their nature, oh their nature! (Cf. News 1 and The Kingdom of Heaven, Ch. 10, part 2 and part 3. the prevaricative provocation of this crypto-religion called evolutionism!)
The Principal replied to the critic that creation was indeed taught to some children, this being an alternative presentation to evolution, and that on the other hand, the school did follow the National Curriculum. The critic then sent this data to Professor Richard Dawkins, a noted writer on the dogmas of evolutionism. Now the interesting thing here is that in one of the Videos we have on evolutionism and creation, the same Richard Dawkins is featured in an interesting logical interchange. He is asked if he knows of any case where in the normal consequences of new generations, NEW INFORMATION is given to the descendant.
The Professor thought long
and hard. Of the utmost interest was the way in which, at least twice, he
quelled a budding answer, before it bloomed into speech, like one frustrated in
thought before speech could arrive. At length, he acknowledged that he could
NOT. Now this is the empirical fact: why then all the fuss ? It does not happen
in terms of observable science, or for that matter, in terms of demonstrable
results of theoretical speculation, duly verified in the laboratory. He went
on, in a very acme of logical irrelevance, to note the same sort of thing that
Aristotle might have said, in the theoretical thrust mode. What sort of thing
WAS said, then, in this video, by Dawkins ?
AH, if ONLY we had been there when it happened, when this turned into that, and that into the other, THEN we would have seen it.
All but incredibly, this was the purport of his eventual answer!
This is rather like saying, in chemistry: Oh, if only you had been there when the solution I have in mind changed colour and became effervescent, all this followed by a white flocculent precipitate, and then two orange ones of different shades, each then becoming multi-tonal, like a sunset, the whole being succeeded by an arising of little men, who went around and cleaned the test tube, before all dissolving ever so neatly into the last drop, which then evaporated. The instructor might justifiably make a simple query: Young man, you have spoken of your imagination, which has its own world. Currently, we are more interested in this one. What happened, in fact!
However, the case is far worse than that, for if all these things had happened in some imaginary or claimed solution, inspired by the distillations of thought and not of the laboratory, it would be as nothing compared with the creation of life in its intensive, symbolic logic, and executive style coding, leading to the norms and forms of thought and logic, and the capacity to will, to man.
But even in the case mentioned: the questioner might of course say something like this, if he thought things through. Now no one has observed what you claim: perhaps you could produce some witness, or describe his whereabouts so that we might seek him (the case is yet worse again, for not even Professor Dawkins in the actual situation seen on the Video, From a Frog to a Prince - Answers in Genesis production - could claim to have seen such things happen, or that anyone ELSE had EVER done so, or COULD have done so - not evidentially). Indeed, it would be possible to go quite a distance further ... like this, when we move from the imaginary solution above, to the actual plight, life itself!
Not only so, but as to the ground, basis and cause of all the organisational capacity, the evocation of dynamic, executive capacity, design modules, programmatic code or vitality apparatus: this is as absent to all rational knowledge IN NATURE, as is the sight which would arrive by its means. In practice and in principal what you say is effete, scientifically irrelevant, a misuse of the concept of fairy tale for science. Now it is nice to have fairy stories, for in the ears of rational, imaginative and duly will-endowed, purpose-equipped people, they can provide a form of instruction and delight. However, when such imaginary resources are sought to be implanted in 'nature', when 'she' shows no sign, symptom or signal of knowing anything about it, or any capacity to do anything about it even if she did, this is an abuse of scientific method and of fairy tales alike.
Let us then move from secular myths to sacred truth.
The critic of the secular myth of evolutionism might then point out the requirements for what life actually is, the absence of means within the system to gain it, and the necessity for what has the means, on pain of irrationality, and then follow the mode as shown in SMR Ch. 1, of finding what does have such a mode, checking the while the validity of this and other approaches, and finding this alone possesses validity, and is alone verified, so affirming the matter in terms of creation.
Inventing for 'nature' the power to write books of symbols in code is merely extraneous. It is not according to EITHER facts or observation. It is the very essence of magic, best kept to children, that romantic and relished disregard of reality in the interests of wonderful wandering in realms diverse from this one, where neither observation nor causation nor limitation as of yore have application, but the thing invents itself in the mind of the writer, and comes like scones from the oven, delicious to the taste; except that this kind does not enter the mouth, only the stomach of the mind! Mouth-scones are not made that way. Fun, but not science!
What is in accord with all facts, logical, empirical and verificatory, is creation. This has been shown so often, and in such contrast to evolutionism, that its repetition here is unnecessary, though of course the references are not (cf. *2 below and Indexes.) Some overview however would here seem in place.
If now you assume that what is not found, is there,
This
is their charm. You present a whole WORLD which is NOT there, in terms of the
one which IS there, and you deliberately confuse the issue, or for
imagination's sake model it so that that 'world' not discernible in any way, is
made to appear as if it were really the operative one. When however we turn from
the antics of children to the aspirations of adults, the case loses its charm,
and for more reasons than merely this, that it is confusion of conduct, of fun
with fact.
An 'enlightened society ? it has in this the enlightenment of the Middle Ages. What then is it to be called, this 20th century with its fringe of the 19th and its start of the 21st ? The Age of Obscurantism ? the Schizoid Society, hard of head but weak of heart, indulging in escapism to counter the acute pressure of its regal ways, as it approaches the world like an owner, itself as a god and its puniness as a power. It makes for itself its manipulable god, its 'nature', and dizzy with power and pain combined, the price of fantasy (and not a little of this was paid in World War I for imperial pride, and World War II for racial pride, all busily surviving to be fit), it proves itself false as readily as it invents ever new magic, that ever dumps it like a surfer trying to surf where it is too rough and too shallow.
Naturalism's treatment of nature is like that. But what of the 'nature' which has all the fascination for it, that it desires ? What does the thing DO, SHOW ? It has all the ability to exhibit what it takes to make it, that it has to show fairies being made and doing this and that within it. That is to say, its powers of this kind are fully attested, for centuries confirmed, in all most recent knowledge exhibited to be as deficient in such things, as a young elephant in Alzheimer's disease. The very idea is laughable, an excursion into fantasy for a sardonic smile, for some wry purpose or irony.
'Nature' - It simply does not to mind, to eye or observation of any kind, show anything to the point; and it simply to all these instruments, shows the absence with a finality, a flourish and a finesse which is total, in principle, in procedure, in practice, in construction, in exhibit, yes, in process or equipment. It is as active in these ways, to any information technique, as is a moron in Einsteinian physic. It simply does not go that way. It is a "pass" situation.
As we see in It Bubbles, It Howls, He Calls Ch. 9, the world which is other than this material deposit, needs to be seen in its own terms; and as in Little Things Ch. 5, the fixities and features of things have to be traced to their sufficient source connotation. It HAS to be invisible since the visible does not in practice or theory based on any observation whatever, in the least degree exhibit it, or for that matter, the means for it (cf. SMR Ch. 2 esp. 251ff., TMR Chs. 1, 7 and 8) or even the capacity to make itself what it is, like some baby seeking arrogantly to dispense with mummy! It comes replete with organisational imprint, without printing equipment. This is just the way it is.
Moreover, ONLY if this sponsor of actuality is present, is any truth possible, concerning the nature of things, since in the absence of absolute truth, no one can know it; and if it be present, it can be found only when it is self-communicating. Otherwise the very instrument of reception is the limit of the divulgement, in sufficiency, or inadequacy, in intelligence or its absence, in discernment or its dumb exclusion, and its OWN relativity is the limit to the truth's deposit. It could not even know it if it came, unless it came under its own power, and donated itself.
In its absence, that of absolute truth, in fact, no hypothesis could reach it; for nothing can reach what is not there. The career of naturalism comes to an abrupt halt.
What however of its presence without life-communicating power ? Then nothing can ascertain it in its own intrinsic reality, since the forms, modes and powers of the receptor are the criterion of what is capable of being received. In such limits, what is beyond them is not possible. ONLY its works can be attested, and its minimal powers. Moreover, its purposes and thrusts, desires and plans can come only from its own divulgement; for even our OWN need expression so that even others at our own level can only guess at them, and often, despite every appearance of complete sophistication, exhibit at such a task, only utter ignorance (cf. SMR pp. 380ff., 857ff.).
When however this absolute truth is operative to divulge itself, having created a mind able to be instructed, and when this reception is verifiable, then validity is at last possible, the non-self-contradiction which faces and prevails in the two necessary features:
When these conditions are fulfilled, no more is "the truth" the result of an assessment in which the limits, distortions or disturbances, the desires, the dreams, the indolence of the assessor are prominent, and indeed in some ways dominant. Now it can be KNOWN, and THEN it can be verified, so that its unique validity, derived from the exclusively correct operation of a logic which does not require ignorance in principle, becomes in partnership with its total verification, the simple answer*5.
That of course is why you get such an array of things, and inordinate plethora of profound architecture, multiplied design in the Cambrian Era, as Stephen Jay Gould so emphasised. Greater was it then, said he, by many times, than is it now! What wonderful progress! It is as progressive as is the second law of thermodynamics, and what would you expect ? It is what would be expected. It is ever so here: what is true, works, and how it works overtime, even unbidden, all fitting like engineered products, the one into the other.
By gradualism, such a thing COULD not happen. You do not suddenly have vastly more by that means, at first stages what far surpasses what arrives 'later': for this simply contradicts its very basis and postulate, designed for plausibility, and destined to the tip for its ludicrous rebuttal by simple facts, supposedly its source! This vast enduement with design, multiple, multiplied, sophisticated, operative, parts mutually required, totally intertwined, it is not made thus, since gradualism is by its nature the concept that the movement of little increments of data (such as are not found), become synthesised packages of multi-operational data (such as are found, but only in engineering establishments and the like, where people use minds, not in 'nature' by itself).
Still, by this attestation, it did happen. It was THERE, just there. On current theory, this put it there at the first stages of history, this very ocean of design prototypes, intricacy presentations, sophistication ingenuities, like a plan of a Piano Concerto, provided in several movements, as the author was preparing to sit down! Bad luck theory. Having more than you end with, near the start, is not a good description of gradually acquiring it, is it! it is rather like this: saying that the way the genius worked was simple. He first of all saw it all, and much more besides, and then, having encoded and made all this operational, he allowed it slowly to run down, so that people were for ever looking for new exhibits they might lose, since the available ones were constantly disappearing from the store.
Yes ... perhaps. It is asking a lot of a genius to do that! operational included! What case could be named ? and in so many myriad dimensions so quickly! Seems unrealistic ... but yes, of course if GOD did it, yes that would answer the case. What then is the other thought, some hypothesis was it not, since no one is proposing merely a genius, who would have to be there before he arrived to do it! Ah yes, evolutionism.
What then does it suggest as the cause of all this anti-gradualistic MULTITUDE OF FACT ? Nothing ? That is the hypothesis ? This explains everything ? Ingenious... Nothing acted on all the absence of plenary, synthetic, progressive, unitary compilations of law in life, to create its presence. Ah yes, of course, nothing did just that, no intelligence, no wisdom ? Well then, but there is a thought. For such a product, simply do not assign a cause but a name. How very ingenious! It resembles medicine in its worst verbal side-steppings of issues, giving names of diseases where neither the understanding nor the cure is at hand! The special ingredient for change is nothing. It is so effective that it did it all at once. Remarkable! (Cf. SMR pp. 226ff., TMR Ch. 1, Ch. 7, Spiritual Refreshings... Ch. 13. Wake up World! ... Ch. 6.)
Gradualism for all that is still taught in some of the most luxurious disregards of fact it would ever be possible to imagine! Things go up BECAUSE they go down. Remarkable concept! They arrived UP, and in vast complexities and refinements of multitudinous design systems, because the evidence is that it goes down! Yes, quite a theory. It is of course a Noel Coward joke about the British, you know, mad dogs and Englishmen ? But it is not only Englishmen ? Ah, then what is it that we are seeing ? It is the grand wave of international delusion predicted in the Bible as a GENERIC phenomenon near the time for the return of Christ, and the SPECIAL wave of creation hating lust, also predicted for this time. For this ? see II Thess. 2:4ff., II Peter 3:1-5, 2:1ff., II Tim. 3:1ff., News 74, Joyful Jottings 8.
That of course is the everlasting irony of it all, not only is every patch-work quilt of fact-avoiding nonsense thrown off the sleeping figure of 21st century man of this world, but God has millenia ago described the type of pathology that would cause it, in detail!
Let us however proceed with the deadly, yet droll reality of comparison. Again, the scriptural requirements of keeping to type or kind, DO happen, just as the mandate from gradualism does NOT happen. Handsome thing, creationism. It asserts quite simply that nature did not write itself, nor did nothing decide one day to be something, or something to be something better. This is the way things go NOWHERE. At the start, it doesn't have what it takes; at the finish, Nature doesn't do what it says. The persistent practice of Biblical creation, quite simply heeding what the verified book declares, however, means this: what it says is verified at all points. Quite a difference!
Readily then let return to reality. Where synthetic purposes on the smaller scale (as in the dendritic interchanges), are made operational in terms of synthetic purposes on the larger scale (as in the total operation of the nervous system in servicing all organs, and the executions of thought in space and time), and these are endowed with integral purposes (such as staying alive) on a still larger scale, and the whole is endowed with the facility to analyse the whole thing, and this is endowed still further with the capacity to hold and execute (some and indeed many, highly diverse, and carefully thought over) purposes of the personality, for which the synthesis of mind, body and spirit is a totality, the spirit, the willing power calling the shots: then what ?
What do we have in such a case as this ? (Cf. Repent or Perish Ch. 7.) We have what intelligence always makes and chance cannot make, since chance is merely the name for the operation of the contrived, what operates not in terms of one's purposes, or the purposes of whatever it is that one has in mind (cf. Ancient Words, Modern Deeds Chs. 13, 9 with Tender Times for Timely Truths Ch. 10).
System does what system is; and what it is not, it does not do. Put in what you need, and out it comes. Leave it out, and out it stays. Magic has its own ways; and this world likewise, what is its own. They are wholly diverse in nature, these two! What then do we have ? Only that combination of intelligence, imagination, mathematical capacity, engineering brilliance, architectural contrivance, wise provisions, purpose, plan and program, will and interest that is normal to life, but not to matter.
What life has merely ILLUSTRATES what is required, and it would need to be beyond our lives by the power that institutes, compared with the power that executes, the Maker as distinct from the operation of the made. Still, we can imagine and create, so that for all that, we are not bereft of understanding of the power needed. It would need to be in being absolutely, instead of relatively; and constitutive of itself, instead of derivatively so, as we are. Otherwise, you could start with nothing, but this by definition has nil results, for if it had them, rather than nothing it would be something with results, which of course is a something very far from nothing, being filled with demonstrable potential! If you DO NOT have the potential, it CANNOT happen. If it does happen, you MUST HAVE HAD the potential. If you, or whatever it was, therefore, DID have the potential, it was by no means nothing. It is DEFINABLY other than that!
We pursue all this in detail in SMR Chs. 1 and 3, TMR Ch. 7, Barbs, Arrows and Balms Appendix IV, and consider further related issues in Repent or Perish Ch. 2.
It is all very simple, and simply glorious. Why ? It is because what is NECESSARY logically is what is VERIFIED actually, in this, that all the Bible statements on purposes, plans, programs, actions and intentions of the Creator, the (necessarily) non-material and hence to normal sight, invisible and yet most realistically operating Being behind all this NON self-making assemblage of which we are part: these are comprehensively valid in action, as always in logic. Rationally it coheres; empirically, what is says, happens.
Logic and thought, empirical action and prediction, all join hands in one class, the class of revelation in the Bible. They are still further confirmed in the enormous assemblage of data on the Messiah, and the way in which this too fulfilled its every prediction; and then again, on the later assemblages of predictions, and their apt contemporary fulfilments, of which the current furore in Britain is ONE! (Cf. Joyful Jottings Ch. 8, Benevolent Brightness 74). So do we come to the present.
This then leaves us with the simple choice: something with nothing verified, everything contrary to fact, finding and logic; and on the other hand, something with everything verifiable, verified, with the immense domain of potential error, not able to be found in error, with everything that works as well three thousand years ago, yes add half another millenium to it, very nearly, as it does now.
THAT, and not the changing and continually wrangling of 'science' wrongly so-called on the topic, is what has stood. This contemporary philosophical folly, illegal immigrant into sober science, changes like the weather, fights with misused influence and ends in constant disarray, only the bombast sounding like a fog horn, in the mist. On the other hand, the Biblical position is what it has been for some 3400 years, and is constantly congratulated by the evidence, so needing nothing but to be read. That, it is majesty!
What is right, demonstrably given by God (SMR), and evidentially unique beyond all contest in its superb accuracy and adequacy, the Biblical depiction, it does not need to change; it is what is wrong that has changed its song, like a dithering opera singer, forgetting her script. Indeed that is precisely what modern man is doing: forgetting his script. After all, part of it is written WITHIN HIM, in his DNA. The other part is what is written OF HIM, in the Bible.
As to that, it does not change; has no need. It sits stable and serene, as you would expect, when the all-knowing, eternal Maker speaks to what He has made. Thus Biblical creation is what is expected of truth; and evolutionism rather daringly in view of the hostilities so readily aroused, dingily airs itself in ever changing costume, the very chameleon of inadequacy.
Science ? from Darwin to the purely nominal 'punctuated equilibrium' which bypasses Darwin and fact alike, in that it has nothing to explain anything, only a phrase to poise: it changes, and changes again, and is never satisfied because it is never right (cf. SMR pp. 211ff., 226ff.).
Of course, to be fair, thousands of competent scientists are NOT in this predicament. They believe creation by scientific method and by scriptural declaration alike. It is not SCIENCE which is astray but science falsely so-called, which DOES NOT follow scientific method, and this it is which in the most blatant way - one which all but induces appreciation at its sheer nubilous disregard of all due discipline in the matter at hand - pretends its philosophic mansions, in the absence of science.
Yet it is this Establishment, perhaps quite seriously, seeking to take over socially when the majesty of Britain is no more (as soon, quite possibly may be the case), which makes such an anti-scientific ferment about someone presenting in some HIRED school hall in Britain, what scientific method requires, and logic cannot avoid! ... namely creation.
But hear some more of it! It is like a tennis match in which the crowd are booing the not-our-nation player, who must endure their quite explicit and too obvious race-based favouritism. Here the 'race' is the HUMAN RACE, which in terms of that ultimate form of racism, is booing. Consider however the decibels in some of these reported events!
Professor Dawkins ? According to one newspaper report, he was 'incensed at the idea of creationism being taught to children at taxpayers' expense'. Fancy paying for what scientific method REQUIRES! What sort of a society then is this ? Would it not be at home in Vanity Fair ?
In fact, it is the DOUBLE EXPENSE which those who with logical justice hold to creation, and must pay for private schools where their children can avoid science falsely so-called (around in Paul's day, cf. Cascade ... Ch. 3, Deliverance from Disorientation Chs. 6 and 7, and a continuing epochal folly in this form and that, right from the ancient Greeks*6 ): and it is this which is the outrage. Far more thus is often paid, both in educational tax components and private school fees, by those who prefer to have science taught in terms of facts, not fancies, method, not magic, observable reality and necessary logic, not an unreality which is fractious to the last, and has never heard of the qualities so deceptively applied to it.
This demi-god, 'Nature', as listless as Baal ever was, is found NEVER willing to perform, NEVER seen in relevant action, no not even to the point of inventing new information before the arrested eyes of its devotees.
God however has created the Bible, millions of transformed Christian lives, and alone is sufficient in the realm of the immaterial, and that of necessity, to provide what is here (cf. TMR Ch. 7). He never misses. Necessary, He is also verifiable in His word, His works and His wisdom. The evils which so appal those who reject Him, are merely the due price of sin, either to instruct, to ridicule or to expose; and the evils which reject Him, in turn, ask for more of the same (see Amos 4, and Beyond the Curse). These things being so, you can sense the ache in the heart, where words to the EXACT contrary to the facts, zoom like those of some bionic bomb, through the British atmosphere. The angry outrage at truth sears the air.
Listen to these: Dawkins is reported as saying that the Inspectors who gave accreditation to the School where one dared to teach creation when renting the Hall (a Faith school, duly accredited and much commended, you recall) should take action. What action then are these Inspectors, summoned by such public ire, to take ? It is this: as to the school of which they spoke well, they should re-examine it. That is the Dawkins model, by this report.
How appalling that the current contempt for reality should not be introduced into it, that the school should not be the ward of arcane dictation, the preserve of those who do not pay for it, the victim of a riot of unreason, so that the poor starving indoctrinees should have little chance of ever sensing the truth, even if their parents pay for the privilege.
The very spirit of the crucifixion is brought to mind - "Away with Him, away with Him! Crucify Him!" - John 19:15*7.
Can you hear the cry ? It almost seems to be this.
Surely if a nation ever asked for trouble, so tending its young, Britain now does so. Yet perhaps there will still some moment of liberty again, some redress of the irrational clamour and the unwarranted dictates. Yet now the cry is damaging to the land, and has foreboding. What is the word ? Why this: How irrelevant that the students did exceptionally well, and the school was commended. It is intolerable that the branding of pupils with evolutionism should be omitted! appears to be the cry, as if never would they suffer presentations that do not bow to the void!
It is well the PM stood up at least to some extent in this noisy reported revolt against the requirements of reason, and the gift of revelation, in their glorious concourse and complementarity.
Is truth clean gone in the land, then, at the establishment level ? If so, no wonder there is anger in Britain, that the truth should dare to raise its head! Axe it ? At least there are contrary voices, not inundated in this flood.
Oh England! you are devastated indeed; but let us not pretend you are worse, though perhaps more VOCAL, than your Australian and US allies. The ferocity in the USA, where creation scientists abound, is certainly intense; but for pure spectacular venom, it is not easy to match the British-made situation here. For that matter, one hopes it is not easy to match the sheer irrational effrontery on the topic of religion in Australia, whether for example in SA, in the arrest of the minds of school-children (TMR Ch. 8), or now in Victoria, the arrest of freedom of speech, a commodity currently under threat even more invidious, insidious and debased.
You do notice, though, do you not, that there is a certain ... air. To be sure, the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair got into some deep waters for defending the school - you know, the 'SCHOOL'! the ONE! - being perhaps more interested in its outstanding record of attainment than in the philosophic slanders which it appears to have suffered. Now that, it is good. Let us be pleased with that. Someone stood up, at least at one level! It is also true that someone said this, by report: If Blair is a creationist, he should have said so and resigned at once!*8
You see it ? A certain ... how shall we say ? intolerance, intractability, irrationality, extremism, subversive insolence, cultural kinship with kings and gods, an intransigeance, a mood of indomitable Britain, fighting not this time, the Luftwaffe, but God.
Ah that it should come to this; but remember, they are not all thus. Many scientists here as in many other lands, are persuaded that creation is the only answer that can face the facts. It is merely the current Establishment, which is so concerted, acting adversely, intemperately, with rash speech and pre-emptive self-assurance, following its nature myth, so that the overthrow of Britain, and its becoming slaves after all, may not be so very far off! Not for long can you play the fool, without becoming folly's fool.
If now you want to come to the right ending, read the end-notes, especially the last one: that IS the end! It is a very good end, for it the Lord who has made it so. That is what is so wonderful; it does not matter how futile the beginning, God has provided on a strictly individual basis, for THE END!
End-Notes
*1
See News 156 for detail and exposition on the Victorian law for the NEW Victorian Era, there, and its wording in the relevant respect. See for further discussion, Galloping Events Ch. 7, *2.*2
A) For the South Australian case, a very prodigy of the malapropos, see That Magnificent Rock Ch. 8, in conjunction with Ch. 1. For the earlier indications, re Victoria, where one of our cited examples of assault on free speech is occurring, in terms of new laws, see *1 above.B) For the contra-scientific method nature of evolutionism, its roving unrealism, see SMR pp. 140ff., A Spiritual Potpourri Ch. 6,
Spiritual Refreshings ... Ch. 13,
Wake Up World!...Chs. 4 , 5 and 6,
Little Things Ch. 5,
It Bubbles, It Howls, He Calls ... Ch. 9,
Ancient Words, Modern Deeds Chs. 9 and 13.C) For its anti-empirical aspects, also, see for example
That Magnificent Rock Ch.7, section E, and
Stepping out for Christ Chs. 2, 7-10,
Wake Up World! ... Chs. 4 , 5 and 6 , with Epilogue
A Spiritual Potpourri Chs. 1-9 and Index, for this number is legion.D) For the actual Biblical teaching on creation, in this sphere, see That Magnificent Rock
Appendix I.Remember that the Indexes have multiple and detailed references to different topics and sub-topics.
*3
See News 133 for some detail on this virulent religious
persecution in the Moslem realm.
We have considered this issue in several places. For the present, it suffices to point out that if you are being tolerant and forbearing, not dictatorial, psychologically aggressive, culturally domineering, it is well that you are so. This is maturity and dignity.
However when this is confused with something very different, as it perhaps in this land, normally seems to be, the case if just one more of those lures which destroy.
Is it tolerant to make truth relative ? It is even impossible philosophically, for it proposes what it denies, as noted above. Is it mature to make meaning inarticulable, lest it offend some vestige of the multi-cultural garment ? Is the abandonment of the Christian background of this land, in terms of much of its institutional kind and legal calibre, to say no more, for the sake of the VAST UNKNOWN, inane gambling.
Is Australia then to be totally committed to the whatever-it-may-turn-out-to-be enormities of uncertainty that result from determinative immigration, proliferation and whatever other psychological or cultural change may 'arise', a matter of catatonic toning, so that thought and liberty alike must yield to the giant of the mixmaster social machinery! It is not a question of who can come, but what is done when the coming is complete, what is the direction, what the values, the principles, the past, the structure. Is to be meaningless to be god ? Is manipulability to be called virtue ? What falls helps no-one, not even those who push!
Is a phrase to become a god ? Is an idea to become, free of all fact, a lord ? Is the idea that men being equal, their thoughts are equal, their religions are equal ? It does not seem to apply that their logic is equal! Why not ? Why not go to the moon on the general statistical probability worked out from asking everyone what he thinks is the best way ? Why not be the very last word in multi-culturalism ? The answer is simple. It would not work.
The other answer: you cannot chain logic to psychology. The objective testimony of fact is not dispensable by desire. Delusion is no goad or goal for any sensible country. It merely ensures an accident with fact, one which indeed may readily prove fatal in the end.
The case is not different with religion. While some multi-cultural people inconsistently condemn certain violent forms of religion, whilst being very circumspect when it comes to big religions like the Moslem one - despite the facts (cf. More Marvels ... Ch. 4), this is merely a concession (to social 'harmony' ?). People do not LIKE and do not WANT this sort of violence, offered by a 'faith' to the faith of others. In this they are intensely RIGHT (cf. SMR pp. 1186Aff. , *3, 50ff., 65ff.), for faith CANNOT be invented by force. They are wholly disparate.
Conviction, constraint, is not the same in the field of the spirit of man and in the law court, in the atomic weaponries or in the thrust of fists. The endeavour moreover to make it so, seeking to sue force into the realm of faith, as if mere arm could impel and then compel, would not merely implicate God in all evil, since in such an event He would have power and not use it to make a harmonious concourse of men, on this view mere machinery, manipulable by simple force, gutted of spirit, loons in human form, drifting debris of total inconsequence. And this it would do by simple confusion, as if force had any appeal to thought, grit for spirit, courage for character, scope for man, when it is the mere drafting board of basic materials.
It would do more than that, however; for it would also make man what manifestly he is not: the witless witness of his own spiritual inertia. On the contrary, his will to will has whole regions to examine, even leading to illusions of autonomy; and his embracements and disillusions are legion leading to empirically justified guilt, and the fastidious phenomenon of error. If he could not will, he could not understand his errors, or make them, being merely programmatic.
Spun from the meaningless, meaningless from man would be the talk of this and of that, including the philosophic assertions themselves! Without truth, in its absence, he could not speak it.
Yet his clamour that this and that is the truth, is equalled by his concern to remove the errors of others. Determinism, removing the free play of thought, and subjecting it to indifferent force, removes the capacity to be valid, and hence is not tenable. Rationality is not dispensable because one is speaking of or to GOD who made reason, and whom reason irresistibly attests (as in SMR, TMR, with Repent or Perish Ch. 7, with the crucifixion of logic, et al.). Reason requires grounds, and the groundless reviles reason, which thus and thereby is excluded as a valid instrument of discourse by those who so propound.
Force assuredly is no criterion of truth, nor has it any truck with faith; and what disesteems truth for convenience, in breaching the matrix of manhood, in unmanning man, masks only itself, for even its prey is not changed: only killed.
However though this common in Australia, this VERY JUST repugnance to force in this religious field, relative to faith, and it is exceedingly sound, yet its source is not so in the current climate of change. Indeed, this monstrous provision for religious litigation is tolerance turned into tirade, and restraint renamed intolerance. If a MERE social desire is LAW, then the mad society will spend its time, as in Vanity Fair in Pilgrim's Progress, in censuring the just, because they lack insanity, and do not adjust to the squalid substitutes of the time, which display themselves, seeking to replace with their artifices, the rational requisition of objective spirituality.
To be sure, they did it to Christ; but is this an excuse for repetition on His servants! Not to be sure, in the celestial court, can insanity plead that its attribution of folly to the just was temporary. It is alas becoming more and more (if possible) a permanent fixture of this drifting world. If earlier the word was this: you can believe what you like so long as you do not think it is true (departmental convenience), then now it becomes: You can believe what you like so long as you do not apply it outside the private psyche of your self. One word to many, emotions rising, and you find a fine or a prison. How convenient so to dismiss the truth; but then that is always the way of the Fallen Society.
It wants itself, more than its basis; it wants its security more than its spirit; it sells its soul for the squalid remains of man, left after the social costs have been calculated, for his most pleasant continuation, and the mirage of residual liberty displayed in place of the actuality.
In short: toleration with grace and maturity of religious error, provided it does not bring violence as the death knell of its own liberty, and agreeability to diverse races, with the removal of mere and rank prejudice is the GOOD side of the multi-cultural philosophy. The gross side is of two facets. One is this: and it is possibly the worse. There is a CONFUSION of spiritual graces, such as forbearance and kindness, excellent as they undoubtedly and duly are, with spiritual disgraces, such as pretentiously and irrationally claiming that since all is relative, religion is so also, so that it must always present itself IN THIS WAY! The author has met such an approach as long ago, by memory, as the fifties, relative to a religious aspect for teaching! The general idea then appeared as we have seen, to be this: You may believe anything you like, provided you do not think that it is true!
The Gospel has been entirely diverse from this, wholly contrary, and adorned our land with a depth of restraint speedily departing, as its source is derided with indifference, or detested with venom, depending on the interests in view. After all, and despite all, this world, ex-Creator, is quite something to GET! and many are they who are willing to fight for it, even if it be against God! The Gospel provides an invitation, however, of love, not an invasion of race, or the human race. It encourages liberty, since force is irrelevant to it, so that Christ, concerning His kingdom was quite explicit: MY KINGDOM IS NOT OF THIS WORLD. IF MY KINGDOM WERE OF THIS WORLD, MY SERVANTS WOULD FIGHT! (John 18:36).
They are not grabbers but givers, equipped with the message of the gift of God, who having made man, mind and matter in the creation, provides likewise the method in redemption, for all of these things, which has the great and additional advantage that not only does it work, but it leaves the sickness of the force option outlined like a cancer in an X-ray of a lung. The world aches with the agony of its betrayal of God, and hence of itself.
Truth and its liberty of expression, the grace of allowing its free dissemination, with the liability to be sure, to test, but equally with provision for its exercise against the rabid and merely reactionary, and against the merely expedient misuse of it and all it implies: this is an imperative for any society of hope. Otherwise, if it be exchanged for the sake of the comfort zone of inert drifting, the society falls self-condemned, and it is only waiting the due and true judgment. If truth is captive, peace is certain to follow it in this fallen estate. Liberty is in chains.
An assessment then of what a country wants, if it wants change, should not be by the mere confusion of phrasing, or the subtle but fatal abuse of terms. If it WANTS to chain truth for the sake of increasing its concept of survival value for itself, then it is sold already. At least, however, if it said it openly, it would not become dishonest by dishonest means. That is precisely the danger of loosely operative 'multi-culturalism', which becomes a sort of god, to which truth is expected to bow.
The Truth, He was
crucified; but truth does not bow; and where a society bows to what is NOT the
truth, then it is dead already.
This is of course, named 'revelation'. We use the same term sometimes of one another, when a divulgement of the 'inner man' is made. Even in our own lateral terms, one person often fails utterly to grasp the aesthetic, motivational, discretionary, idealistic or crass, the brilliant or thoughtless, the sensitive or the unperceptive, the rationalising or the contemplative, the reductionist or the aspirational thought of another, and stands utterly amazed when the facts are revealed. If man can be so obtuse, uninformed or vacuous about his own ilk, what does he know of the purposes of the heart of his Creator, except where logic curtails folly or informs against irrelevant extrapolation from the distortions of rebellious man, to the scope of deity!
Accordingly it would not
even be POSSIBLE to know the Gospel if it had not been revealed; indeed, and
further, the forgiveness of man is itself a private and intensely personal
matter, from one of our race to another; how much more is it when one comes to
lèse-majesté against the Creator of liberty, the manufacturer of mind and the
institutor of logic in the universe, so that our minds might assimilate it and
work on it, with profound effect, as we may do.
*6
Cf. The Biblical Workman
Ch. 7, Joyful
Jottings 3, Spiritual Refreshings
Ch. 13,
A Spiritual Potpourri Chs. 1-3, SMR p. 422E-L, With Heart ...
Ch. 10.
Kinds of Blindness
The Biblical picture of such spiritual blindness is quite clear and very moving. Alienation from God, exhibited by decisive distancing from His word which He has spoken (John 14:21-23, Luke 6:46), not as a suggestion but as the Creator's coverage, the command to the creation and a light to man, otherwise too like dark crawling things in an increasingly dismal pit, as the day passes: this makes man's spirit dysfunctional in much. It is for this reason that in Isaiah 8:19-22, we can read these words of the deepening gloom:
"And when they say to you, 'Seek those who are mediums and wizards, who whisper and mutter,' should not a people seek their God? Should they seek the dead on behalf of the living?
"To the law and to the testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.
"They will pass through it hard pressed and hungry; and it shall happen, when they are hungry, that they will be enraged and curse their king and their God, and look upward. Then they will look to the earth, and see trouble and darkness, gloom of anguish; and they will be driven into darkness."
The red section is to emphasise the relevant section. Notice the ascription of nil luminosity in the crucial area of ultimate truth, to those departing from the light of the Creator, the law of the King and the word of God: there is no light in them. There is light by which you see, and there is flickering by which you hope to see. The light of God is inimitable, irreplaceable, and in its absence, the result if confusion. It is a directive, a categorical matter, independent of any personal participation: like cancer. If it is there, it is there.
In Isaiah 9:2, we have this: "The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light ...", and in 9:6-7, we find this to be a person, who coming as a child, is to be the everlasting ruler. Though as Isaiah 52-53 in such detail attested some seven centuries before it happened, there was to be much suffering first, even vicarious victimisation by this, the Messiah, yet thus did the light come to the darkness!
This alienation and its results are spoken of quite categorically in Ephesians 4:17-24:
"This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind, having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart; who, being past feeling, have given themselves over to lewdness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.
"But you have not so learned Christ, if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus: that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness."
Again, the especially relevant part is in red or bold, or both, for emphasis. It is to be observed that 'lust' in the Bible is uncontrolled psychic force or above all, a spirit of departure from the constraining, controlling grace of God to whatever it is that one fancies, whether it is moral elevation (on one's own definition) or whatever else. Matthew 23 is full of this last kind, but the kinds are most numerous, as in other forms of disease, which at the physical and sometimes mental level, medical students study in their own realm. You see some indication of this in II Corinthians 7:1: "Therefore, having these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God."
As to the blindness so stressed in the scripture above, it is like the case of optical cataracts in this, that alienation excludes much light and readily prevents vision. The time comes when they cannot see. Comprehension of quite simple spiritual realities becomes excluded. Indeed, in the end, a form of spiritual delusion is scripturally posited, one that positively reinforces this disturbance (II Thessalonians 2:10-12).
The case is clear, it is decisive, it is sure, and it results from these principles, Biblically enunciated, that where such spiritual conditions arise, and they are most common, then various things otherwise amazing, will occur; as indeed, in the physical parallel, happens in many physical diseases.
The love of God even in such a perilous human predicament, however, is not automatically thereby excluded. The divine heart is not alienated, for God is love, by mere error: it is the final, the finale of rejection of remedy which moves to the realm of the fatal rather quickly, and with deadly tread. This is precisely what you see in John 15:22ff.. There, the MERE FACT that Christ was in their midst, exhibiting what He did in unique word and deed, thereby fulfilling prophetic prescription and providing incomparable performance criteria, while they still rejected Him, means one thing. What is that ? "...now you have no excuse for your sin."
That is the divine distillation of wisdom, here; it is the Physician's ruling!
How accommodating and kind the Saviour's word, that if He had no come and spoken and done such things among them, "they would have no sin", as if He could see them soon stripped of it, by His substitution of Himself and donation of His own righteousness: not a problem. Yet if there is to be nil or negative response to the remedy, then the foreclosure occurs. What do you do with the unwilling who refuse rescue ? It is not heart, but the restraint of love that does not proceed.
In Hosea 11:8-9, you see something of the divine ardour, that does not lack that perfect purity of restraint, or fail to be ardent because of it:
Though they call
to the Most High,
None at all
exalt Him.
“How can I give you up, Ephraim?
How can I hand
you over, Israel?
How can I make
you like Admah?
How can I set
you like Zeboiim?
My heart churns
within Me;
My sympathy is
stirred.
"I will not execute the fierceness of My anger;
I will not again
destroy Ephraim.
For I am God,
and not man,
The Holy One in
your midst..."
This in the Old Testament is quite like this in the New, in Colossians 1:19ff.:
This, with the emphasis added for clarity of relevance towards our present point, shows likewise the intensity and immensity of the divine love, that it is not discriminating in the sense of merely exploiting desire, but rather it is CATEGORICAL in its issuance from the heart of God, towards mankind, as in Titus 2:11, 3:4, Romans 5:18. To be sure, the RESULT of the love is as love is, not categorical but personal; but this result is not induced by divine dereliction in the office of love, but rather by the very love which does not force, though in wisdom, God knows, and has always known all (Ephesians 1:4, Isaiah 46:10), even before He instituted the world, who are His own.
Some illicitly imagine that this in some way diminishes His love, but quite to the contrary, it ensures it; for no single thing, and no scrambling of events can possibly interfere with His knowledge of who are His own, nor can any sin prevent Him who knows the heart of man, and what is right. Since their existence is NOT because of a lack of love, but rather and quite explicitly in the Bible as shown above, DESPITE its presence from His heart at the outset, this being the categorically stated divine attitude, this certainty of result is comforting, just, delightful and stable.
Thus the tragedy and the wonder, profound both; but what of the practical results at a given time ? This: when, at any stage, a person is still caught in the alienation, then the blindness that ensues, and continues indeed, has a pathos which the quotation from Hosea above makes the more pointed, since it is so rebellious in the face of a tenderness which is that of Truth Himself.
What then is the position when the alienation will continue (as in Matthew 23:37 cf. SMR Appendix A, and Luke 19:42ff., despite the grace, as in Ezekiel 33:11, Hosea 7:1, Jeremiah 51:9 - the last "We would have healed Babylon, but she is not healed!") ? Why then this departure of man, like a cancer, disturbs the system, defiles and spoils the operation of his spirit, making him blind to the kingdom of heaven (as in John 3:1-7), so that irrespective of mental power or perhaps even intention, pathology relative to this so obscures understanding, becoming compelling and contrary to what is right, proceeds. In this, like trembling in Parkinson's disease, we may expect to find things that otherwise would be all but incomprehensible.
They result from such a
case; and since they are to be seen, this continually verifies scripture, like
some sublime, divine irony, its principles being EXHIBITED by those who reject
it!
The
condition begins to rule the very spirit of man! Accordingly, even those
well-intentioned in their own estimation, or clever, or both, can engage in
logical and spiritual errors through deprivation of the light that is both
personal and comprehensive in its unique interpretative power (John 8:45-47,
9:39-41, 9:15, 8:12). .
*8 Calling evil good, and good evil ...
That undivine art (Isaiah 5:20).
Another quasi-delightful, reported Dawkins-ism was this: "Any science teacher who denies that the world is billions (or even millions) of years old is teaching children a preposterous, mind-shrinking falsehood. These men disgrace the honourable profession of teacher." In fact, as seen in TMR Ch. 7, Section E, there is only one thing that is quite sure in science on the question of the creation of the world, as to its time: it does not know.
The hysterically loud sounding voices that know this (until tomorrow, when a few billions of years may be shaved off - as once happened) and know that obviously the age is thus and so, as it is clear to all good men (until it is found that it is flatly contradicted by something else), and point out that there is NO WAY in which such and such a radioactivity theory could be wrong (until one or more new relativity applications, or other approaches arrive, that had not been thought of), the chant changing just a little at that: these are the litany of pride, the dragoons of pure, unsubstantiating dogma, and this is the new form of the Inquisition, that of King Culture.
This 'king' ? He knows NOTHING
of the answer to the question, and knows ALL, in the manner of despots, and
tomorrow finds it convenient to change the obvious, into something quite
different, but still obvious, until the obvious becomes, in terms of usage,
something that means "unknown".
1) It is not scientifically known at all.
2) This is because scientific theories are changing, mutating as if influenza viruses, taking on new characteristics from one another.
3) But if it were to be a matter of
seeing WHERE ALL things known can be covered, where MOST things are simple and
clear, and where nothing is unanswerable, one would have to say this, that
scientifically, a date of some thousands of years is rather clearly indicated.
MANY things require it; nothing denies it. As to the other option, NOTHING
requires it, and many things deny it.
How readily does passion make fools of men!
The only safe passion is one where you can keep your head, which God gave you, and use it, as God shows, and find what is what, and not invent, or accept the tainted words of culture (which is really multiple, for its name is legion). When you do that, you are simply left with the adequate source of all things ordered, the orderer, not the disorderer; the adequate source of all things made, the Maker, not the unmaker (things tend to LOSE information, in fact, over time); and the adequate book, the Bible, the testable, and unlike all the other options, the NEVER failing.
With this comes the decisive need to look to the Messiah, the date-prescribed (Highway of Holiness Ch. 4), the data fulfilling, the Lord declarative on earth, substantiated from heaven, exhibited in history, controlling it on His departure by His word: the answer that nothing can match.
When you have done all this, there are no more intellectual problems, though as always there is plenty of work. That is nice; but it is not nice enough.
There are two further features. One finds, as over the past 15 or so years, one has applied oneself very intensively to these things, that there are certain results. It is like being a maritime engineer, and finding certain things as you practice.
One is this: NO new fact arrives which in the least troubles that truth explosion, the Bible. On the contrary, the more one looks both at it and at the world, material, mental and spiritual, the more the adequacy of its remarks, the accuracy of its analyses, the inspiration to solution-power in its declarations, is seen. It reaches to the point where it is awe-inspiring and delightful, like someone growing roses, and wondering how in the world he could be so fortunate, since they are so entirely delightful!
That, of course, it is what one would EXPECT to find; and all this furore, similarly, and empty rhetoric, contrary to both logic and experience, it is what you would expect to find. Why ? But it is to be found in SMR Ch. 5, parts 6-8. Why not read them ? This is the Biblical explanation. That too is verification: for whatever explains the more and the more yet again, this is the dominant, not the domineering, the thrust that counts ... even in scientific method, it is so. And here ? It is entirely so, and ... nothing else is. That really, in principle, is all there is to it.
But as to the Messiah, you MUST receive His gift of eternal life (John 3:16, Galatians Chs. 1, 3, John 5:24), and His being a sink for your sin, if you want life that is from God, the life of actual contact by covenant, and not passing dross from culture. The latter ? well since the world is going, and making a quite excellent job of attesting this fact in so many ways, political, military, psychological, religious, martial and the like, for it is limited, and malice is not: then the reign of this little King Culture is not for so very long. Not long at all, really. There remains, then, the decisive need to look to the Messiah, the date-prescribed (Highway of Holiness Ch. 4), the data fulfilling, the Lord declarative on earth, substantiated from heaven, exhibited in history, controlling it on His departure by His word: the answer that nothing can match.
The reign of the One who created our time, with its limitations and interesting forms of challenge, He is by nature eternal: our stuff is the invention. With Him, as for His child, the end is not there. It goes, but the life in and from God, this just continues. It is called everlasting life (cf. I John 1:1-4). Life is a very lovely thing when you find it. Otherwise, as in all confusion, it is perilous and has its black holes. These arise, in life, because the light is not followed. They prove very attractive - one speaks metaphorically - to some, because they let out no light. As Christ put it, if therefore the light which is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness! (Matthew 6:23).
Better to infinity is this: IN THY LIGHT WE SHALL
SEE LIGHT (Psalm 36:9).