CHAPTER  7

Anti-scientific aversions of science falsely so-called

A SURVEY INCORPORATING MANY FIELDS
INDEPENDENTLY INVESTIGATED EARLIER

8 Aches in a part of the Body of Culture in the 21st Century

The aversions of some of one race for another can be hypocritical and baneful. One says: He is black, I do not like him. In another case, coming to our ears, one says, He is only deep brown, not really black. That is inferior! It works in all directions. This is the difference between being childish and child-like. It is the latter which is desirable, not the former.

The aversions of one political group for another can be distorted by hate, inflamed by fear and incited by ambition. However on occasion, there is reason for acute concern, as with Hitler's Nazis, Lenin's revolutionaries and various other 'solutions' which seem more likely to dissolve the human race than its problems.

There is now the special pathology of wild destructiveness of life-vomiting corpses-to-be which throw their whole vitality in overcoming beauty with ugliness, life with death, action with inertia, industry with desolation, for the sake of some imaginary god called Allah, with zero evidence, zero effectiveness in making his word happen, and zero tolerance in multiplied practice, for the true God. In the interests of this religious plague, the people of God have been mangled in Sudan and Ambon, just recently, allegedly in the interests of this 'god' (Psalm 96:5 as Ephesians 1:10 makes his status clear) who seems to want force for his aims as he did at the start with Muhammad (cf. More Marvels ... Ch. 4).

While all this furore and ferment proceeds, it is however in science falsely-so-called that the aversions have taken longer than some, to develop their talons, sharpen their claws and make raucous their battle-cries, as they lunge with a luxury of confusion, pretension and militancy to subjugate the earth.

As shown in Cascade ... Ch. 3, when Paul used this term to Timothy in I Tim. 6:20, knowledgeable knowledge, the sophisticated self-assured learnings of the learned had long been in vogue, indeed for hundreds of years, were well attested, their aspirations as ludicrous as now the latest 'novelties' of philosophy in its invasion of science. Indeed, in some ways there is little difference between some of the ancient cases, as with the Greeks,  and the present.

In a parody of reality, reductionistic themes were thrust. It was so then; and in principle, it is so now. What was it then ?

All was atoms (what if the spaces and the space itself ?), all was water (what of the fire), all was fire (what of the water), all was change (what of the underlying principles that kept form and feature intact ?), all was static (what of the changing knowledge, politics, cultures), and so it went on with various sophistications, variations, qualifications, inundations and the like for hundreds of years. In his time,  Plato presented less ludicrous musings, varying at times, as in the Timaeus even to thought of the righteous God, though debased by impossible intellectual notions, such as the form of the good, which did nothing to explain evil, or account for the intellectualised short-comings  of his visionary principle. Aristotle sought a more mundane temper, but his god had to be insulated from the practical realities, and was too aloof to be a basis. Various philosophic models were straining for birth as man mused, but did not attain to knowledge, being debased since the flood, and left with the sole witness at the explicit level, of the Old Testament.

At that, many Jews sought to use this very law, mutilating its tutorial aspect - which exposed sin in its looseness, by its clinical severity - into a mode of salvation, one which Paul justly mocks in Romans 10. Knowledges were everywhere, desolations, desecrations, 'noble' thoughts based on nothing and 'interpretations' here sound, there mere pangs of philosophy, which, pretentious in flight, without overview, listlessly summoning its ignorant wits to speak, speak and speak yet more. Small wonder Paul sums it up in I Corinthians, saying with eminent and divinely inspired pith, as he proclaimed the Gospel, not made by man (Galatians 1), but donated by the Divine Lord and Creator of all (cf. TMR Ch. 3):

"For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written:

'I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
And bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.'

"Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this age?

"Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?

"For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe.

"For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men"

(I Cor. 1:18-25).

The Greeks indeed "sought after wisdom" as Paul most acutely was aware! It is this sort of thing which in all its vainglory did challenge, had challenged and was to continue to challenge Christianity: alternative religious life-styles were involved. Obviously, it was for this reason that its 'babblings' in I Timothy 6:20 were sufficient to warrant warning for Timothy from Paul.

There is your babblings of science falsely so-called, or knowledge falsely so-called, of which current science in its philosophic dress (which some components of it often display rather than clean, as if of exhibitionist mentality) is a significant part. It is merely, this 'science',  a specialised method of which Francis Bacon said much, as have many others, some features of which have long been far better known than done, and which has been a sturdy element in some of its aspects in much thought.

It has been loved and breached, sought and sundered, and nowadays, it has been abused and confused, as it was earlier, but the confusion is now not so much about the basic method, as about FOLLOWING IT. It is of course true that this has been so in the past likewise, but with the increase of knowledge, and the modes of seeking its comparability by method, there is a new way of spoiling and foiling the contribution of disciplined thought in terms of the fashion of the universe, its material phases and parts and its totality.

Nowadays it is the phenomenon of AVERSION, so blatant in things racial and political, that is clamouring like a spoilt child, for more and more attention in science. Knowledge falsely so-called, of which 'science' as now defined is merely a part, and nowadays one of the most blatant parts, one most comparable to the philosophic musings of Paul's day, is scouring the longsuffering earth. It is part of that to which Paul so pithily refers, and this science falsely so-called is aflame with desire, no less than politics, and in some cases, far more. As with politics, not ALL of it is so; but much of it. As with politics, not EVERYWHERE one looks is this phenomenon of captious clamour and vain babbling seen; but it is in this world, nearly deafening in its intensity, quite horrifying in its immensity and appalling in its vanity.

There are -

EIGHT
ANTI-SCIENTIFIC AVERSIONS
OF SCIENCE FALSELY SO-CALLED

here to be noted considered. We could look at the aversions of OTHER parts of 'knowledge' but our current task is this specialised sub-section of it.

• These are the aversions:
  
  

·       1) to individuality ,

·       2) to meaning,

·       3) to creation,

·       4) to person,

·       5) to the supernatural

·       6) to a commencement,

·       7) to an end and

·       8) catastrophic convulsion.

They appear rather as assumptions more often, or as jibes, as species of distaste or desire, as in politics, tending rather to be a pirating of philosophy, seeking slaves to convention and captives to culture. So does culture make fools of men, and does convention makes them slaves.

It is important to see the pathos of this pathology, and to seek to overcome it with accurate thought, avoiding science falsely so-called, and applying scientific method without fraud or favour, to what is before us. Only in this way, can science recover its image of chaste self-control, which Lord Zuckerman in his work, Beyond the Ivory Tower, so pilloried.

It should be noted at once that Zuckerman was a most eminent scientist, greatly used in World War II, and his findings were not the jaundiced result of personal affront, but the sad musings of knowledgeable experience, in which the prejudice of those in white coats, apparently to his utter astonishment, was found to be as mundane, as irrational and as arbitrary, where there was space to insert it, as that of anyone else in other professions!

This is precisely what, biblically, one would expect. Having a certain profession does not remove the alienation from God, noted in Ch. 6 above, and the more a given discipline requires something objective, the more certain it is that there will be some outbreak of the vagrancies of the human spirit towards its creator (hilariously, many scientists tending to want to ignore the very function by which they CAN ignore at will! cf. It Bubbles ... Ch. 9, Ancient Words, Modern Deeds Ch. 9, TMR Ch. 7).

This behavioural fact, seen in 'science' s elsewhere,  then becomes simply one more verification of the Bible; and indeed, it comes to be that nearly everywhere one looks, it is verified, like the presence of objects, in the impact of light! All reality of creation dissolves into submission before the light of the Lord, in His word which we considered in the preceding chapter in this aspect; for light exposes things. That is one of the ways one knows that which IS light!
 
 

1) THE AVERSION TO INDIVIDUALITY
and 2) to MEANING

In an article in the June-August 2002 edition of Creation magazine, p. 39, the author, Spike Psarris makes an interesting observation, in speaking concerning Uranus and its moons, its magnetic field and its axes, of the awesome peculiarities and non-conformities (to superficial concepts of the universe's creation, such as are the monist's fables cf. Repent or Perish Ch. 7). "We are told that such catastrophes are unrepeatable, and are therefore 'unscientific." Yet here we see that evolutionists are allowed to invoke one-off planetary catastrophes with impunity, to overcome problems within their belief system."

The topic at that point was the reductionist endeavour to explain away certain individualities of striking kind in that Uranus has its equator at 98 degrees inclination to the ecliptic (the plane in which most planets orbit the sun). Why so diverse in the presence of common origins ? Ah! comes the answer, some massive impact on Uranus upset things. Why then is there only 0.01% of the mass of the planet, found in the moons, and why such evanescent debris from such an imagined colossal impact!

However, the point in this rather tiresome escape mechanisms, trying vainly to make uniform what is individual, is this. There, in such an instance,  is exhibited the individuality of an exception to the apparent trend of many scientists, to disdain or disincline to, perhaps dismiss 'catastrophic' singularities in explanations. They want to use here what some of them abuse elsewhere! Our interest is this: there is often enough found this desire to avoid the individual, the exceptional, the rising of something above the surface of the imaginary mill-pond of conformity to some concept. It is violated if need be, as here; but it may be acclaimed, revered or sought, in some servitude of mind to preferred models.

As we saw in the words of Jastrow in SMR (pp. 73-74), even Einstein had a preference for a comparatively static kind of situation, and even went further in a mathematical error! Individual preference is one thing however; a generic trend is another. (See further Cascade ... Ch. 6.)

Why then there should be this prejudice, this preference, this awe at the merely similar, this reductionist aversion to the proper mode of examining reality at the material level in all its variety, as in any other (cf. It Bubbles... Ch. 9, Little Things Ch. 5), rejoicing in it, and finding explanations fitting to this originality, differentiation and divergence in diversity, which fit best the case, rather than the philosophic preoccupation ?

What is the basis of this distortion, this disturbance of rationality ?

Are criminals to be deemed not a subject of scientific investigation, because they vary in their methods ? Are murderers to be rejected if the evidence is that their individuality is most marked, departing from all known norms ? Or is the evidence to be considered in finding that combination and synthesis which best and most aptly, amply and sensitively explains all, including any diversity in the attestation of the accused , under various trials and tests ?

Is philosophy or science to be the pursuit, not factuality and reality ? If so, then the muddles and nonsenses that so disadorn so much in what is reputedly science, but in reality is its sudden invasion by mere philosophy in its motorised agencies, are not only explicable, but despicable.

As soon as your preconceived ideas rule your permission for hypothesis, it is not science, but a spirit of enquiry equipped with answers prior to investigation, a ludicrous if common expression of human prejudice, here found in one of the thrusts of much popular 'science' or more properly, science falsely so-called. It  becomes academic popery, the ideational machinery of the Machiavellian, slavery to culture, servility to desire.

One can imagine the inner thrust in some, who might exclaim:

But how COULD there be anything individual, since nothing means anything, and the cosmos is one vast movement of disturbed matter, without origin, without end, without purpose ?

That, then,  would be one of the philosophic struts underpinning such a prejudice: that question and its implications! It is easy to find, as in SMR Ch. 3, the monstrosity and irrationality of such a formulation as this implies. The universe HAS NO meaning ? Then the person who knows this, has the meaning of meaning at his/her hand, in mind, and can divulge this nullity, as it is supposedly,  as the 'correct' interpretation. Yet how does this facility with meaning come when its absence is the subject of the assertion ? If NOTHING means anything, then the assessor means nothing, his method of determining meaning means nothing, and what means nothing has no power to declare, define or determine anything. It is only the APT and fitting instrument which can determine.

Yet it might be objected: It is not that NOTHING means anything. I MEAN something. It is that the material universe means nothing.

Ah then, at once, we find that the person is no mere part of the material universe, and has an immaterial aspect in terms of which determinations can be made, such as that on the nature of meaning. Hence materialism must be false. Hence the concept that matter is all, is abandoned. Hence the nature of spirit comes into focus; and its place and form, force and action is now required for assessment. As soon as this is done, the concept of a merely material universe in which all has no meaning, is contradicted (cf. Repent or Perish Ch. 7 ). You need spirit to contradict it, since matter, moreover, merely conforms to what it is, and our topic is an assessment of various possibilities, not a mere conformity to what we are, and that without meaning.

Moving to the domain of spirit, in order to move at all, we are then obliged to consider its meaning, and in so doing, to find the evidentially attested reality. Freed from the delusion of materialism, the mirage of monism, we now move to what is to be found when we look, instead of what we believe when the fixity of our science falsely so-called, prohibits thought.

Actually, the meaning of the material universe is a topic which, as to method, is most readily left until you answer the causative questions (see Causes and SMR Chs.1-3, 5,  with TMR Chs.  1,  5, 7 ), and validity in terms of which ANY assertion may be meaningfully made. It is only when these matters are logically met, that the question really arises. When you have identified the cause of the material universe, it is then simply a matter of finding out whether this Being has or has not spoken to the minds He made. When as in the above references we find that He has, of necessity, and that this is constantly verified in all realms, it is then that the only available answer is found, adorned by the fact that it is the necessary answer.

What then does He declare to be the case, from His all-comprehending aseity, bound by nothing, in need of nothing, and implementing the wishes of His Spirit, which is what He would be! What is the proposition presented ? This we found to be that it is a creation for His glory, for man in His pilgrimage, trial and test, a screen of His majesty, an exhibit of His 'witty inventions' who invented man to come to Himself in a fellowship so intense and monumental, that it dwarfs the mountains, which however remind of Him, is deeper than the oceans, which yet speak of His prodigious performances.

This creation of His is however harassed by sin, the voluntary abuse of the meaning of man, the image of God bearer, who CAN and often WILL send anti-security messages to his Creator, in rebellion in cause-divorced rationalism, thought-screened empiricism or more blatant blasphemy to taste. For that, we found from the discovered and verified word of this Creator, the Bible, there is need of redemption that God may stay just while showing mercy, and that the Redeemer is Jesus Christ, after whom the date has been named, whose death date was displayed hundreds of years before He came (Highway of Holiness Ch. 4).

This then is its meaning and it is considered further in TMR Ch. 7, Section F.

The political counterpart of this invasive philosophy of reductionism, anti-individuality, with its prolix desire to assert meaning while denying its only possible basis, is of course found in the desire for -

·       ONE gender;

·       ONE ruling form of government, (until recently, on the part of many, ONE ruling race! but this is no longer culturally popular, for it has proved both costly and evanescent in practice! so goes fashion ...);

·       ONE manufactured form of morals, made by man, propounded by the UN, and excluding God while making grounds for morals thereby nil, since cultural preference has no logical force;

·       ONE self which is self-seeking, manipulable, meaningless, and

·       ONE world which is to be all that a world could possibly be, except that the more it is sought, the less it is found! (Cf. Repent or Perish Ch. 5. ) Reason ? It is incredibly simple: You are looking in the wrong place.

Why ? It is because the Creator is the right place, and this is forbidden by science falsely so-called (SFSC), that  is, the philosophic sovereignty which has sought to take over science in the current fashion show of culture in this regard, and to make it a mandated territory to itself. This brings us to the next element of SFSC (which we recall though probably followed by most, is not followed by many scientists, who prefer scientific method without philosophic bonds, and while expecting indeed to find what they do find, in principle, do not seek to transform it into what they want - there is no need, and no warrant for those who both believe in and are abundantly satisfied with the Truth -John 14:6).
 
 

3. AVERSION TO CREATION

and the CULT OF THE FORBIDDEN

The CULT OF THE FORBIDDEN, that most masterful delusion of SFSC, is one apart perhaps with the Jehovah's Witness programming, for pertinacity, persistence and perseverance, despite fatal flaws (cf. Joyful Jottings 14, SMR pp. 532ff.).

Its method in the case of the Science Falsely so-Called Cult, that of the forbidden, is simple. You merely Hitleresquely (re propaganda METHOD), repeat, assert, imply, assume, pre-suppose, frown, express irritation, expostulate, intimate, arrogate rights and proceed with imperious mien, or as a variant, humble obstinacy, to present this concept as king. There are things you cannot, must not think; there are places in thought you must not go; there are domains into which your seeking feet must never intrude: verboten, these are the sites excluded.

WHY ? Why is it forbidden that the cause of all should be sought not in the procedurally equipped things themselves, but in what is sufficient for the purpose, 'nature' itself being consistently, constantly, logically, empirically, historically and notoriously incapable of doing the job (cf. TMR Chs. 1, 8, SMR 1-3,10, Ancient Words, Modern Deeds Ch. 9)! The answer is complex but not at all complicated. Let us consider some of the causes of this anti-scientific insistence, this philosophic invasion into science properly so-called, which follows not its method, but its arcane cultural master, as here.

1) As shown in Ch. 6 above, there is the biblical analysis of man's spiritual plight which makes ANY method of disregarding God, desirable, any approach to His exclusion an imperative. This is a pathology like other compulsions, sui generis. Over the past 50 years of ministry, one has found the inability, at university or elsewhere, to even begin to excuse this exclusion, this ultimate prejudice, this often scornful and derisive discrimination, the irrationality of which seems almost in proportion to the assurance of its presentation. It is as if the MORE the logic fails, the WORSE the disease becomes! That otherwise brilliant men can differ so markedly in such a field and that logic is missing where God is excluded as shown frequently on this site, from the first, is itself a testimony to the subjectivity and virulence, both, of the thrust to exclude God.

In reality, it is necessary to be willing to test ALL things, if you are to know anything well (I Thessalonians 5:21).

The point is simple: scientists are men, not at all robotic, and the afflictions of the race, in its ultimate HUMAN RACISM, and other forms of exclusivistic reductionism and magnification (of themselves) simultaneously, are not to be removed from them. It is a racial incline, and the tilt affects all who have not removed themselves from this slope, so often seen in a logical slide at the same time. The scientific failure in this part of its domain, on the part of many and its submission to the cultural captivity, is merely one more illustration, one more verification of the correctness and precision of the biblical case, in this instance, a generalisation about the spirit of God-resisting man.

No domain is empirically excluded; no domain is theologically absent. They concur. That ? it is normal.

2) Men often feel threatened when something, or someone outside and above themselves, is presented. For their 'independence' they are currently fighting so many conceivable and virtually inconceivable wars, in all but unimaginable horror and suffering, often where famine is there to exacerbate the folly of it, that it is plain how precious this commodity can become. That there should be independence from the maw and mawling claw of culture and ideational manipulation goes without saying, for why lose your soul by mere habit or expectation of others! However, that it should be politically expressed at such cost, when a war torn nation like Afghanistan for example, in seeking a new meeting as now (June 2002), to find some consensus and method, some leader, that war lords still seek to hold sway, this is in itself a datum of staggering proportions!

WHY do they so often feel threatened ? It is because they fear domination by the inferior, the merely swash-buckling, the swaggering tyrant, the self-elevated philosopher, vagrant, maker of mountains of money while 'serving', or else want the domination of their religion of force, as in the Islamic cases sometimes noted on this site, or they wish the domination of their race, family, combine, approach, or the removal of some other domination, or the combination to secure some third domination, or feel clever and want to ensure for a long time some massif of domination which will exclude trouble and so on, and on almost to infinitum.

·       WHY should there be such a vagrant hubbub of desire ? It is because of past suffering, suffering audited, suffering desired in revenge, because of illusions of grandeur, from philosophic delusion, religious connivance, industrial dynamising and so on.

·       Why is there such corruption ? It is because of spiritual sin against their selves, their Maker and their neighbours, as well as against their world.

·       Why is there such sin ? It is because of the nature of man.

·       Why is the nature of man thus ? It is because he has charged like a turgid stallion, against his Maker, and refuses, like an autocratic patient, the ministrations of the Redeemer duly provided.

·       Why does he refuse these ministrations ? He does not always do so, but in many millions of cases does receive and has received them.

·       Why then do so many NOT receive them ? It is because of the individuality of man, which is simply a fact, because of the repugnance to rule, which properly (or rather improperly) fanned, can come like any other forest fire, and in the heat, consume many, and because of the alienation from God.

Naturally, in such a setting, which is spiritually its own testimony, there will have to be aversion to God in any place where His impact 'threatens'. Where more does it threaten sin than in creation, for if one is a creature of God: it is

i) humiliating to absurd pride

ii) suggestive of responsibility which many desire to abstract from their situations,

iii) exclusive of insane pretensions to human power over the property which God created, and hence incurs a sense of loss of a satanic dream which many find too attractive - like gamblers - to exclude!

iv) contrary to secret hopes for this or that philosophy, political settlement, world rule and so on, which many want either for self-fulfilment or for the sating of strange and erratic desires. (Cf. Isaiah 14:13-17, Ezekiel 28:9.)

Man is MOST individual and MOST PERSONAL, and in view of this, the thing obtrudes, naturally enough, into his conduct; and his conduct ? this obtrudes into science, and when it does in such ways as these, then he wishes to EXCLUDE PRIOR TO ARGUMENT and CONTRARY TO ANY REASON that can stand, CREATION!

Hence you see the storming as in Ch. 6, against the simplest expression of creation, in Great Britain, still nominally relating crucially to the Bible, while disdaining its emphases as if de rigueur, or preparing for a party at which Satan is to come as prince. The thing is quite biblical in kind (cf. John 14:30), for Christ Himself noted that the Prince of this World, an unsavoury character and in the last analysis, Satan, was coming and that He Himself had NO PART in Him. You CANNOT have the fashions of this world, and Christ: they are contrary. The world is swaying on its way to specifically and precisely announced judgment, and its foothills as marked out, it is duly now treading. Liberty and judgment to not accord! (cf. James 4:4, John 8:29ff.).

The world (cf. News 87) has proceeded through numerous and fascinating historical-spiritual phases, and the arising of this and that nation, such as Great Britain (cf. The Other News 13), while they seek if by any means they might find the Lord (as in Acts 17:26-27), is par for the course.

This on the one hand shows WHY there is such a thing as this CULT OF THE FORBIDDEN, that sultry, squalling pseudo-intellectual sovereignty which at times threatens to fail a student if he does not conform (case known in a High School), or disestablish a School if it does not (case progressing as in the preceding chapter), or sack a Lecturer unless he contrives to conform (known by and in the author!), which makes it an offence to teach creation as a matter for questing consideration along with evolutionism (case in South Australia, as documented liberally in TMR Ch. 8), which has a Sydney University teacher tell us to jump in the lake if we disbelieved evolution, or a linguistics teacher assume it as read in the course, or nursing establishment teachers, harass and seek to intimidate a student for not holding to the MERE ASSUMPTION that it was correct (in the blessed case of my own daughter - who held fast in this case, with good courage).

It also shows WHY it needs its unjust methods, its intimidatory collusions, its profusion of repetition and so on: IT HAS NO OTHER WEAPONS but those of force. Man being sinful, this particular sin seeks outlet. It has no reason; so it uses force, often more effective in propaganda unceasing, anon rancorous, anon seductive, to secure its ends. This shows why it is so remorseless, relentless and irrational. This is the way it is; this is the way it feels it has to be to gain what truth will not establish, reason will not confess and righteousness cannot allow.

This however leads us to the next aversion of SFSC, that in the region of PERSON.
 
 

4. AVERSION TO PERSON

In 3) above, we have been noticing that man is in empirical fact, most personal and most individual. This is the sort of being that he is. Why then is SFSC often found seeking to depersonalise man, to make him the woefully smitten butt of all-controlling forces, when his idiotic lusts, his irrational and subtle contrivings, his ambitious dreams, his coldly distorting dynamics, his warmly corruptive antics, his devious plannings and his reckless and deliberate diffusion of duties into desire, makes him so personal that the very concept is almost unbearable ?

Why is the very concept of the personal in such lurid circumstances, all but unbearable ? It is for this reason. It is rather like seeing virus infected roses ... the possibility and the actuality are so far apart that it is almost heart-stopping to behold the ruin of such potential loveliness ... unless there is REMEDY! (for the rose, take the relevant pressure can ?).

Doubtless, the desire to escape responsibility from God, in so potentially rational a being as man, is not without its implications. If you do not want God, then it is easy to take a broad route that you are NOT responsible. In that way, firstly, you can do as you want anyway, and then again, if any seek to disturb your peace, you can make it clear that you are perfectly guiltless, either because your freedom is in answer to none, or because your freedom does not exist (either method is popular, the fact that they are opposite in presupposition being merely further attestation of the anti-empirical subversion of fact to desire).

Hence 'person' must go. So in cartoons you get the Simpsons, that reductionist fantasy of gross debasement of man. But how does it go ? It is removed by the decision of persons, who think as persons, contrive as persons, consider as persons, plan as persons and implement as persons, on the base of individual conceptions, privately considered, publicly uttered, and in the midst of scope for error, abundantly attested in attacks on this and that view, such as creationism. Yes,  it likes to consider itself determined, being very determined by its own volition, to make no mistake about it, this time, and to remove the error of those who being determined cannot err, though they do!

This self-contradiction (cf. ROP Ch. 7) being daunting, then it may then be met by taking the opposite line: it is too free to be told. Do not tell us anything! it now thunders. We are so free that to make any claim on us is unthinkable! Yet there is no noticeable freedom about their birth, or death, or diseases, or capacity to shout down logic or ignoring it, to reason without it! (Cf. Predestination and Freewill Section 1.)

It is understandable that both these efforts be made, since each has a measure of truth or at least justice in it. SOME things are determined by program; some things are not. To make all things by program gives one line of escape; to make nothing relevant so determined, gives the other. Since neither exaggeration is true, some may try one line, then the other, and fashion can confirm from time to time, as seems most expedient. (Cf. Licence for Liberty, Predestination and Freewill and see Index on Monism and Freedom.)

This philosophic invasion from culture affects PEOPLE, and SCIENTISTS are people, so that they in succumbing privately, often express publicly their conformity to one ludicrous extreme or the other. This is nothing to do with science, but  much to do with men, who happen sometimes to be scientists, and to use their status for suggestions about things their method has not found, so allowing them the liberty they desire, consciously or unconsciously or both. Men are men. That is all.

To make this ludicrous departure from scientific method the more appealing to the humorist, and the more piercing for the tragedian, we have the two phrases for use: one MONISM, in which man is depersonalised by reductionism; and the other PERSONALISM in which man becomes the hub and summit (made by non-man) and so being assumed answerable to nobody, does what anybody thinks, which he does to his capacity, and so in these two dimensions, towed like a swaying trailer behind an automobile, man does what he is doing.

What however is that ? He becomes despotic, autocratic, criminal in drugs without limit, murderous, unmindful of his start or end, indifferent to the suffering of others, provided it conflicts with his major motives, and sometimes for the sheer disdain of it, disorganised, disorderly, odious, a dragooning, a crooning union man in political or international affairs or anti-biblical ecumenism, or whatever.

Then what ? Why then, by these and many like means, he is inventing some of the cultural sovereignty, the inanities and asininities of the TWENTY FIRST CENTURY, so that, to the extent it lasts for a little while longer, he can be VERY MODERN MAN.

Being impersonal makes him obnoxious; being all personal makes him more so. Between the two, he has to have scientists, who when falling to the cultural subjectivity of the fashions of the times, imbue their words, when they make them in philosophical style, which is not so seldom, with the taste and the colour of the culture. What does this have to do with scientific method ? Only this, that it is an interesting place on which to employ and indeed deploy these anti-scientific nostrums; but alas, as to showing scientific method in this AVERSION to responsibility and person, and all that this involves, it is a NIL RESULT.

It has nothing whatever to do with it. It is simply one of the ANTI-SCIENTIFIC AVERSIONS OF SCIENCE FALSELY SO-CALLED.

Once again, however, one must be careful to be fair: we are describing and considering together not ALL scientists, no, not by ANY means. Some of the very greatest like Faraday, Newton, Maxwell, Kepler, had nothing to do with this sort of persuasion. We are considering not even all non-Christian scientists, for some are circumspect at least in their open announcements. We are looking, to use the word of Christ, at LEAVENS, powers of social, cultural, spiritual and political kind, powers and influences working upon man, and thus upon scientists in particular; and we are doing so simply because this is our current subject. These leavens, they move with their own force.

One always remembers a medical film one saw, on moulds: the microscopically revealed speed of their growth was staggering, the activity, the work, the outreach of fibres! SO is it here: the LEAVEN moves thus, more in one than in another, but always it is seeking striving, moving, active, and polluting. It is ruggedly active, and realistically, it has to be avoided, or if found, smitten to the death. It kills and its own life adorns nothing. Such is the way with pollutants. This world is not a rose garden (Biblical Blessings Ch. 7, News 74, though it has roses. One has to be careful, to discriminate in the sense of seeing, not in the sense of refusing to look! It is interesting, that, is it not: the same word has BOTH of these meanings!
 
 

5. AVERSION TO THE SUPERNATURAL

From the presentation above, we have already seen the basis of this aversion, that against the supernatural, so that now we merely need to consider some of the forms of its expression in the relevant scientific case.

This may take the form of excluding the SUPER- natural because the NATURAL is the god of the heart. Thus it is felt by some, or intuited, that it MUST be natural because this is captivating, limiting, manipulable, without control, merely a challenge. This being desired, the supernatural, despite its inescapable, its ineluctable rational requirement (cf. SMR, TMR, Repent or Perish), produces fear, apprehension, guilt, unsteadiness on the well-known feet, a desire to escape, resist or repel and so on. It is just that the natural becomes the worshipped thing, the ultimate and it is MADE so by someone whose denial of absolute truth makes it absolutely impossible to make any absolute statement about anything, except of course, because of desire, and in all caprice against reason, in the case in hand. Supernatural must be out because it is not the NATURAL. Naturalism is the god (as in Aviary of Idolatry).

Again, the commands of this god  may be presented as needing to deal with things that repeat themselves (the way, in significant regards, individual man does NOT). We have already seen the fallacy of that, but it does in a pinch.

Or instead, the appeal may be to things you can measure. This produces logical positivism, the inane appeal to a standard which can be measured, as the ONLY  ground for the view, while this very criterion itself is in nothing which can be measured, and hence excludes ITSELF at once.

Further, the appeal may be to things visible, though the thought about it is not visible, for no one has even begun to show, the length, the colour, the weight or the contours of abstract thought. The fact, as in a tape-recorder, that methods of imprinting RESULTS of the thing may be found, has nothing to do with it, itself, any more than the artistic production in an opera, the temper, the thought, the penetration involved, is in any way comparable with the recording mode which simply produces a method of conveying the RESULT of such thought (cf. SMR pp. 316Dff.). Thus the appeal is by invisible things to remove the legitimacy of invisible things. The desire is not visible; the philosophic background to it is not visible, the inward love of rebellion is not expressible in visible terms and so on; nor is error's concept visible. (See It Bubbles ...Ch. 9.)

So the invisible, for invisibly construed reasons, must go; and the logic of that is also invisible! if the invisible is invalid, then the invisible contention is so likewise. If you commit suicide, your life is not available for conflict. Remove your grounds, and you are homeless, without base.

Again, the appeal may be this: YOU CAN CHECK IT IF YOU CAN SEE IT.

However many physical things can only be inferred by their results!

Are these too to be disallowed ?

This is merely inconsistent. Does ocular range make logical validity ? Does a particular kind of existence, itself merely a theory of the mind, exclude all others ? This is irrational ideational apartheid.

The CORRECT approach on scientific method is NOT to have such exclusion zones for evidence and attestation, but to approach ALL things with ALL hypotheses, and to use the exacting procedure upon them without prejudice.

SUPERNATURAL means, what do these portend ? They imply that the coded, sequentially contrived, material world, and the analytical, logically contrived mental realm, with the willing, disquisitive world of what seeks to account for will, all this, has a source which is not itself for the very simple reason that in NONE of these realms does the extant thing do the job of creating itself. There is continuity by plan and program, that is all. The thing is not found to be inventing itself.

But again, the retort comes: then it comes from nothing.

This is scarcely credible as a human product, but actually it is quite common (cf. TMR Ch. 7), A Spiritual Potpourri Chs. 1-9), and we have considered this in detail before. However such a contention gives a good exposure for our consideration in our present quest and context. If nothing is the basis, then should anything EVER by ANY means come from it, that is at once the definitionally bound case where the thing is something. It is a mere contradiction in terms, and such a fallacy is not really a sufficient ground for the universe! It would constitute however a most sufficient ground for failure in any examination where scientific method is enforced with rigour.

We even have heard of a fluctuation in something being considered a species of or approach to nothing! How could 'it' fluctuate if it, being nothing, did not have the undoubted disadvantage of nothing, that it is simply not there in order to do anything!

• So the hostility to and aversion from the logical and evidential realities continues in this sphere, till nothing is given the prerogatives that God has exhibited in the creation, a somewhat surpassing example of aversion!
   

No, to the facts we return, in due and solemn use of scientific method, logical applications, and so cannot allow aversion to dictate the absence of God, when rational realities dictate His presence, and scientific method confirms it in verifications innumerable, without considerable comparison in any field, or in any way. (SMR in order examines many of these spheres, and see also A Spiritual Potpourri Chs. 1-9, Little Things et al.).

The supernatural, the natural, the personal, the individual, all these are to be considered in terms of the evidence, the requirements of reason, of validity (cf. Barbs, Arrows and Balms  6 -7, and TMR Ch. 5, SMR Ch. 3), and not with implicit or even explicit EXCLUSION ZONES, like the worst forms of racism. Here it is human racism, very frequently which is in operation (cf. SMR pp. 1008 -1111), and the discrimination is most undiscriminating!

Given discrimination as a mental prerogative, to define the things that stand and find what falls, man here, even in science by the force of the LEAVEN, sacrifices it all, for the sake of aversion.

That it does not work, is sadly attested: in evolution leaving him in a laughable medley of opposing views, all so helpless that they cannot defend themselves from each other; in society in a sadly pathetic lurch to madness and violence; in youth, in zealots, in unemployed, in luxuriating abusers of kindness and so on; in fallen churches, leaving a seething mass of inventive spirits vainly deluding themselves into thinking the answer is from a synthesis of their thoughts and those of the Bible, with expected results, that do little to help a fallen society, being rather a drug and a drag than a help(cf. Spiritual Refreshings Ch. 16). Does not work, cannot stand ?  this does not matter to the zealot.

The AVERSION, the ANTI-SCIENTIFIC AVERSION walks on hot stones, with scalded feet, but will not leave them, for the cooler pastures of scientific method, where there is that due, just and glorious liberty of no exclusion zones.

·       You can have ghostly figures^*1 with monumental power but no actual existence, doing all the job which takes existence (cf. Wake Up World! ... Ch. 6, Ch. 5, SMR pp. 225ff., 252A, 422Lff., SMR S15ff., 79ff., with The Origin of Species Revisited, W.R. Bird, Vol. II, pp. 235, 206).

·       You can kick, molest, subject to X-rays, to bombardment of atoms, of particles, of energy; you can stress and invade, cajole with incredible antics: but the poor smitten creation, 'nature', does not respond. It can't, sir, just can't sire, create itself! Like an abused cow, it responds in polluted air, in bellowing, and man listens, and continues. He has no heart for not continuing.

He has an aversion, an anti-scientific aversion to what he finds. He looks where nature has long told him, he looks in vain, but he looks until his eyes sore, his resistance lowered, his world in ruins, his science blithely misled in these fields, he considers it even difficult or perhaps anon, grievous. Yet he proceeds.

There are in life, however, things which can be quite final and fatal, because there is a limit to its misuse.

This is called judgment; the world is suffering it now, and individuals will face it later.

Aversion is not logic. Its sustenance is only by irrationality. For irrationality, no reason can be given, if it is your system, since it is excluded! That is no good excuse, however. The actual reason for the courtship of this incommodity however is quite simple. It is a resting place from God which, however empty of logic, is full of escape for the time. After all, if you insist on defying reason, possibly in grandiloquent immensity of spirit, giving reasons for its denial, so using what you despise and employing what you proscribe, and can still earn your living by inconsistent behaviour, it is your responsibility. And if you make a personal and responsible decision to ignore responsibility, again by self-contradiction, while it does nothing and less than nothing to clear you, verbally it may prove an anodyne for the tempestuous spirit of rebellion. Like an aspro, it may serve for a moment.

In the end, the self service in this case, disguising the pain of an impasse, merely increases the grounds of judgment. In the meantime ? It is one of the features of our current focus, ANTI-SCIENTIFIC AVERSIONS.
 
 

6. AVERSION TO  A BEGINNING

You will sometimes find a scientist, like Paul Davies, point to the fact that there must be a beginning. However, he may talk of some fluctuation of nothing, or other irrational concept, to try to hang on somehow. (Davies held a position as Professor in Physics at Adelaide University, South Australia, for some years.)

Obviously what is running down is not in the way to being created by such a process. Your bank account likewise does not come into being by a process of attrition. Becoming less is not the same as being created! We are truly in a realm of fairy tale when beginnings arise in order to be avoided. You must have them because all things point by their degradation to an impartation at a time. Yet, the idea sometimes is this, that before things began (in this sphere of thought), they had been going in some other sphere of thought. Hence there is posited, a certain continuity.

However, the transition being as clear as a bath in a coal mine, and as well equipped as a recently bombed hospital, it is all a work of the mind. What we need is a work of power to produce results. Thinking that maybe things were different is not such a power. Seeing that things are increasing entropy, decreasing specialisation, losing information, in the present situation, is simply to identify a decomposing system. Who made it is the relevant question, not How did it develop from something which was not only not running down, but running up things for the presencing of what was here in the former stages, before it ran down so!

That is the case if we follow scientific method. HOW did a system so advanced that it COULD run down without ceasing to be both wonderful and artful, come to be ? By nothing ? Nothing can do nothing. By something adequate to secure the stakes as it came to be ? We have seen from SMR Ch. 1 that this is God. But what if the system oozed easily from some other system which was going UP all the time ? Then such a system would need a cause of

a) being there at all, just as our system does, with the same result - namely God; and of

b) being able to impart the super-systematics to our system, so that it could be so high in placement that it could fall constantly for thousands of years and still have the wonderful intelligence by-products which serve it so well.

Such a system as that would simply require considerably more MAKING than our one did, and so the answer is precisely as for our one.

If you had a series of such systems, then the series as a whole needs the same creation as our universe, and so the matter is merely delayed, not answered.

The evidence for there ever having been this 'other' system being zero, and the result to the purpose being in terms of difference from simply accounting for this one, zero, it is useless to imagine such things. They change nothing; but the words that pour out of the mouth, they do something. They act in exposing and empirically exhibiting the alienation from God, the anti-scientific estrangement without ground, so that it invents that for which there is no evidence, to the exact contrary of the evidence, and even at that, changes nothing in the necessary logic which forces the issue to God as the Creator in any case.

This has one impressive result: it shows forceably in an example of some elegance, the extent of the alienation in view, to the point that a wholly ineffectual effort is made outside all evidence to secure an evasion of what in any case cannot by such or any other means be evaded.

What is it like ? It is like a schoolboy, late for school, whose every excuse does two things. Firstly, it shows the extent of his imagination, and second the degree of his motivation not to be penalised for being late. In this case, however, the penalty not being a detention, but a judgment for refusing the remedy of the One who imparted the intelligence and liberty with which to love or hate, to sin or be godly, there is a higher motivation, and a lower result.

Speaking of vast ages contrary to all reason (TMR Ch. 7, Sections E and F), the effort is often made by distancing the time of the invention of the universe, as if to distance the thought of its being made at all, like a neighbour indicating that some evil thing will be done, but not for a long time. However the 'long time' while smoothing early frowns, does nothing to remove the actual result.

The necessities of causation do not permit magic, but require rationally articulable sufficiency in order to make things AT ANY TIME, including time itself, in its present mode. Nevertheless the hope of making things distant, may for some attenuate by the sense of distance, the need for thought. It may like a drug drag the mind to acquiescence; but logic is immune to it, baying for cause, not time out, or any other delay mechanism, useless as it is. (Cf. Wake Up World! ...
Ch. 6, Spiritual Refreshings ... Ch. 13).

Unlimited the Creator created limits, which are one of the distinguishing marks of our creation, and time is one of them. By this, we who are thereby limited, await time until time's up, and the eternal God makes His creation of time, the curtain for conduct and the entry to judgment.

You get something neither for nothing nor from nothing. You get it from what is adequate to produce it, and nothing less. You do however get redemption for nothing as far as your own payment is concerned; but this is by no means for nothing as far as the nature of the redeemer is concerned. SOMEONE has to pay! (cf. Romans 3:23ff.), and Someone in sacrifice, did!

You get no world from nothing; and when you get it, you get a COMMMENCEMENT. Is it because of the correlative, an ENDING, that the anti-scientific alienation produces a mere reactionary desire, often enough seen, to make it that the universe never ENDS ? 'End' smells of justice, judgment, assessment ... Whatever the reason, the result is as irrational in its leaven to remove a beginning as to avoid an end. Psychological desire, spiritual malaise, however, have in actual scientific method, no power to install some 'solution' because it is more comfortable.

Comfort is not the aim of scientific method, but truth.
 
 

7. AVERSION TO AN END

Our consideration of a beginning has already taken us to the concept of an end, and its correlative alienation dynamic, relative to many minds. Why should a thing not end ? Only one reason is adequate: it is by nature eternal or what is so, imparts that nature at a time of its choosing.

When then is the character of such a thing itself, for which there is no end ? This: It does not wear out, run down, come to nothing. Human life on this earth in each individual case (with some exceptions, but exceedingly few), ends. Its systems age. The energy availability is running down, entropy increases (cf. TMR Ch. 1, and Stepping Out for Christ Ch. 2, and Lord Kelvin in particular), cohesions disperse, deteriorations mount. Cancer is merely one of these.

Erosions occur; pollution mounts, supplies are limited, being what they are, and without warrant for any concept of increment; genes become slightly less precise, as mistakes, though marvellously safeguarded, in due course occur.

An end ? It is distasteful to the guilty conscience and the lordly arrogation concepts for Mankind to Rule (cf. Revelation 19:19)what it did not create, but merely investigates, as if being a detective gave your authority to own the home! It is rather elemental, when it is quietly considered. However the natural evidence for what is eternal, an operative system in which life continues, an energy system in which provisions continue, an earth in which abundance is not polluted, limits are not reached: this is firstly, zero in kind, and secondly, contrary to all scenes.

But perhaps something could continue in mangled and deformed estate, without cease ? That, it would depend on the Mind of the Maker. What is apparent is that, like an ageing car, this world MAY indeed be able to go on for a long time in SOME respects. However its operational efficiency and proficiency and sufficiency for man is quite another thing! In fact, the Bible indicates that the thing was created, has a purpose, has a time for the fulfilment of the purpose, as you expect of any purpose-made product, and in this one in particular, replete as it is with code and specifications on all sides to a degree far surpassing anything any man ever made or even began to make.

It indicates accordingly that it has an end, and indeed, just as one once saw a huge and acrid smoke surge, rising to the heavens near Philadelphia, a tyre burning work (around 50 years ago, or so), so there is a time to destroy what has passed its operational efficiency, even if in some sense, it could continue, dysfunctional, for a little longer!

For human life on this earth, there is an end, not merely programmed, as the nature of the material case would indicate, but personally planned by the Proprietor.

This merely requires the facing of the Fact, looked at earlier, that the Proprietor was needed to create this most intricately formed among all the structures that intelligence ever wrought (as it is, in fact, without question of any kind), and so will elect what He will do when He is pleased to finish with His creation as it is. The signals and signs inherent in it, of course, scientifically, in the meantime give eloquent indications that things will approach a terminus, just as a beginning is rigorously required, all cavil apart.

Thus desperate efforts are being made, sometimes verging on the hysterical, to save our world, save our environment, save our species (it all is running down in fact, as the Second Law of Thermodynamics so accurately, with no known exception, depicts of nature); and sometimes even, to save our souls. The desperation in the natural realm,  is symptomatic of the case. It IS going. That is the nature of the case; and it IS being helped to go by blatant selfishness, exploitative commercialism, relative to goods and people, rash indifference to results in one diminishingly large looking earth, so that war and famine can tangle in the wrangle of dissipative events. (Cf. News 97.)

War becomes a fever as Revelation 6 depicted would be the case. Rankling is added to wrangling, tangling, insane ambitions, religious engulfments with destruction, as if madness became a religion, while the earth gives what is ever nearer to being a good imitation of a death-rattle. This is the fact. It is a fact precisely in the very spirit of its announcement some 2000 years ago. It resembles nothing more than the very nature of the judgment which it represents, that same sense of recklessness in man, which corresponds to the condign judgments in Revelation 6:4, 8 announced by God. It is not just the FACT; it is the nature of its operation which coincides to perfection.

This, which we have now received,  is what you would expect in view of the nature of decay, the nature of man, the nature of the word of God, and the nature of its predictions. It is all in perfect accord, and nothing else is, or at such a level, is even testable to the slightest degree of comparability to this most annunciatory of books!

Even at this simple level, the anti-scientific alienation from an end is a noteworthy inclusion in the degenerative phases predicted. Who is so prone to death by cancer as he who refuses to face the evidence that he has it! Who is more likely soon to be dead! Who thus better fulfils any prediction of an early demise. So it is, and so it was to be (II Peter 3), an arrogant indifference coupled with an arrogating temper for man, rejecting past judgment, creation and invoking judgment to come, and finding fulfilment in a scarified world and a scarred spirit. The word of God fits all with no competitor, and does so from a long-range starting point, for good measure. What do you expect ? is a case of such utter importance to gain minor role in predictive pronouncement ? What it needs, is what it has got. That too is verification.
 
 

8. AVERSION TO A CATASTROPHIC CONVULSION

It is simply not convenient to have an end, and that is an end to it! This appears to be the ultimate sanction.

But convenience ... science ? Is desire the new source of data then ?

It is interesting that in Ephesians 3:21, rendered in the Authorised Version as "Unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen" is not accurately translated. It should be as in the NKJV, "to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen." There is no question of this world continuing forever, but the place of God's children continuing forever in the presence of God who is forever, this is there asserted and so assured. In fact, as Peter declares, there is to be a new heavens and a new earth (II Peter 3); but our present point is simple. The end of this earth is forecast with as much certainty, yes and more, as are the evidences which point to it.

Yet in II Peter 3, as noted in News 74, there is not only forecast the above noted aversion to a beginning and an end to match, but to the catastrophic convulsion of the flood. That is the nature of nature. It is what it is, and not what philosophic thought recommends. Science has to seek to find out, not join philosophy in mere preference.

The vigour with which the anti-evidential efforts to disclaim the flood is pursued, seems inversely proportional, like so much more in this domain which we study in this chapter, to the ground for it, and perhaps a substitute for the missing grounds. What is it like ? It is like a man brought up on a huge estate. But suddenly, through legal action, the grounds are no more his. What shall he do ? He rents a small cottage, but the less he has grounds, the more his delusion increases, to compensate! In word, he lords it over all; in deed, he has no deeds, no title deeds at all!

The flood was indeed a 'legal action' in this, that it has left a trail of ruin so vast and so explicatory of so much, that it takes great dedication to ignore it (cf. News 1)! The fact that it is predicted that in the time approaching the return of Jesus Christ, this boisterous rejection would be the case, and the twin fact that this IS that time (unquestionably in terms of biblical evidence cf. Answers to Questions Ch. 5), provides further light on this disinclination, indeed this anti-scientific alienation from this deluge. Nothing known begins to give ground for the force of the revulsion from it!

The competence of the word of God is not merely to attest what is never able to be contradicted in nature, but to attest about man what he would do, in phases what he would develop, and how he would fit as time went on, and to do this even in exceedingly great detail where so chosen (cf. SMR Chs. 8-9 also). So far from changing its tone, man's culture moves the tongue of philosophy and alienation make fashions for the invasion of science in its soft under-belly. Whereas however its secular words are merely pulsated out, without reason or ground and often contrary to it, changing with a monotony of restlessness, the Bible keeps just the same, on all fronts and in all regards;  and history ? This does just the same as it always does and has done: what it is told to do. As it is written, so it comes to pass.

In scientific method this gives its information an incomparable edge over all comparison.

v           It does not change.

v           It has no ground for change.

v           It does not err in its pronouncements.

v           It constantly predicts.

v           Its predictions are coherent on one basis.

v           They never clash with each other or events.

v           They predict psychological, military, economic, national, philosophic, religious phenomena with equal ease, and time in centuries or over millenia, with equal ease.

v           Even these predictions do not err, but have consummatory performance.

v           The unpopularity of those forwarding these words from God in ancient times, many of 'my servants, the prophets' being killed, is similar to that of the alienation syndrome's contribution, relative to God, today. Note the furore in Britain in Ch. 6 above, and consider this as a mere example. Consider the slightness of the cause; the amplitude of the result, and ponder!

v           The resentment against them, appears in a straight line graph over time, together with that against what they provided, as also against the Christ Himself in His day on earth. All of this relates to the growing incoherence in philosophic science (the common interface with society, in terms of religious bigotry founded on nothing, as in the above cases) as it, having no way of killing the Bible, as the prophets were killed, seeks to kill its statements, in the face of all evidence, and against evidence.

What then do we find ?

Thus the desire towards repeatable events, for non-individuality, for non-person structure, for no beginning, for no end, for no supernatural, these things form a barrier for actual science which though mercifully many scientists skilfully and justly avoid it, some of these of the utmost distinction, both in this part of our Age and in many very illustrious cases, continues its virulent extortions, exhortations and confrontations. It acts as the same sort of leaven has acted earlier:

Yet God is infinitely wiser than man, and in His directive providence, in the light of His word, these general lusts in this part of the body of current culture merely the better attest the accuracy of the Bible, and the extent of the alienation from truth, evidence and correct  procedure, where sacred truth is concerned, and they do so in this realm, this most populated realm, of  science falsely so-called. This thing, it had to be, it is and it fulfils the word of God; but it does not remove the grief at seeing the peril of blindness, the fruit of such fancies: for God has not taken leave of absence because man has corroded his heart and filled his mind with illicit fancies. (Cf. Acme, Alpha and Omega Ch. 8.)
 
 

THE BEGINNING OF SORROWS AND THE END OF THE MATTER

It is time to reflect.

In my mind, I was walking along a moor, and the gathering darkness was pierced by diminishing rays of light, as the sea nearby sounding disturbed, emitted a low roar which also was subdued, as if moaning, and as these things happened an increasing hush supervened. As I looked up, there was a slowly disappearing suffusion of light, and a sense of the approach of some action, some event.

It intensified and I was reminded of Jeremiah 4:23ff.:

"I beheld the earth and indeed it as without form, and void:
And the heavens, they had no light.
I beheld the mountains, and indeed they trembled,
And all the hills moved back and forth.

"I beheld, and indeed there was no man,
And all the birds of the heavens had fled.

"I beheld, and indeed the fruitful land was a wilderness,
And all its cities were broken down
At the presence of the LORD,
By His fierce anger."
 

This is soon followed in Jeremiah 5 by this:

"Run to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem:
See now and know,
And seek in her open places
If you can find a man,
If there is anyone who executes judgment,
Who seeks the truth,
And I will pardon her.
Though they say, 'As the LORD lives,'
Surely they swear falsely.' "

"O LORD are not Your eyes on the truth ?
You have stricken them
But they have not grieved..."
 

So does the world, this time replacing Israel as the focus scope, come to be smitten, but it does not grieve; and so as in Amos 4, have there been SUCCESSIVE calamities, inordinate disasters which are to speak, but man does not hear. Too apt for confusion, too keen for the quality of lust, for the deviating imagination that suffuses the natural light with darkness, he awaits his end like a fascinated cat, one watching the children of cruelty, pointing at it with a gun...

Jeremiah saw what appeared a virtual undressing of the globe, a sort of revisiting of the first stages of creation, using the very same terms, without form and void, in the process, as the kindly and gracious features of creation were being faced with judgment. Then it was for the nation; now it is for the world.

But let us proceed back to what I saw in my mind: it was not a vision, just an imagination, but let me share it with you.

As I continued walking in the gathering darkness on the moor by the sobbing sea, there seemed to be dim but distinct shafts of light, which manifested themselves more clearly, like arrows without a head, but gleaming for all that, amid the misty gloom. Then a shower of light came, suddenly, sharply, and these gleams, outlined by the dark, were gone in an instant, and the oppressive gloom, gathering as they left, was abandoned as they departed for the place of the light, from which the sudden shaft had come.

We were then at the wedding feat, the regathering of the people of God as in Revelation 19:8 and as indicated in Matthew 25:1-10, in the parable of the bridesmaids, awaiting the groom. Heaven was now the place of the gleams of light, for it is Christ who said, "You are the light of the world. A city set upon a hill cannot be hidden," as seen in Matthew 5:14. It was then that He added, a little later, "Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven."

This lustrous place for man however is merely subordinate. It is CHRIST who is the light of the world, so that a man who is in His care shall not walk in darkness; but His light is reflected, and we hold up the light that it may shine (John 8:12). What opportunity to exhibit His lustre for man there is now, and for those whom He anoints, His people, His chosen ones, the active and actual Church of the living God! Not King Culture, a sort of King Kong, this time with the praise of men in his eye, but the King of Love, the Lord of Life, the God of creation,  it is who must be served, if the truth is to be loved.

Now is the time; soon it will be too late. Again in ancient Israel you have a forerunner to this situation, now facing this whole globe. Let us hear it from Isaiah 21:

"He calls to me out of Seir,
'Watchman, what of the night ?
Watchman, what of the night ?'

"The watchman said:
'The morning comes, and also the night.
If you will enquire, enquire;
Return! Come back!' "
 

This follows the dramatic signals for the fall of Babylon, as the darkness of judgment indeed was gathered, and came like a cloudburst, not of rain, but of the reign of desolation.

·       So now, what of the night ? It was Jesus who said this (John 9:4):

·       "I must work the works of Him who sent Me, while it is day: the night is coming when no one can work."

Again, He declared this (John 14:30):

·       "I will no longer talk much with you, for the ruler of this world is coming, and he has nothing in Me. But that the world may know that I love the Father, and s the Father gave Me commandment, so I do."

In Matthew 24 and Luke 21, as in Mark 13, following Mark 12's revelation of the plot of sin to excise the King from His world, you see the tracing of the beginning of sorrows to the return of Christ, who comes with a suddenness and unexpectedness like lightning, each of these accounts supplementing the other. The night is coming, and that which is of the light will go with the Light when He returns ( Matthew 24:29-44, I Thess. 4, Matthew 25:13, Acts 1:7-11 cf. A Spiritual Potpourri17)), the event for which the whole world is waiting, as its darkness intensifies, not only in the flood of foolish philosophy masquerading as science, but in the raging torrent of odious wars for odious reasons in odious circumstances with odious contempt for life, for truth and for justice in multiplied instances.

We have looked in this chapter at but one of the parts of the body, which is suffering its eight aches; but the whole body is sick, and the whole life of this world is going, running down spiritually and morally, as also physically.

Ø        The good news is this. It is all predicted. It is all just. It is all coming to the conclusion. The book of life is written not only in our genes, and the look of life is found not only in our spirits. The Great Spirit of the living God, for God is a spirit, has countenanced all these things beforehand, even He who devised our sort of time as a growth and test device, and has announced what is to be. War and worse is to be, before He comes, who has come, and has been distorted by the false churches, contorted by false philosophies and rejected by the sneers and smears of the godless.

So be it, but the light of the people of God, concentrated in His word, the Bible, and found in their hearts, this continues and must be held aloft in case any shall see it in the gathering gloom. Even if the 'children' are not afraid in the dark (or so pretend!), the dark in this case IS fearsome. It is a darkness not of mere light dimmed, but of hearts and souls dimmed to the point of peril.

Gloom and doom ? Let us be honest. This is what it is IN PART, in the aching part of the body of culture, captive to the follies of flesh. This is NOT at all what it is where the life of the Lord is, in HIS BODY, which not being the body of culture, does not luxuriate in its fevers, and call them thrills, nor live in its gloom and call it light. ONLY LIGHT is for the righteous, though they be imprisoned or killed in this earth. It is inseparably annexed to them, for it is Christ in you, the hope of glory who lives in them (Colossians 1:27). There is no gloom in that, but only contrast to it!

There is shortly (no man knows when) to be a separation. Watchman, what of the night ? The day comes, and then the night ? There is no fear in the night for the light, for it is to be taken out of this gathering darkness, which fondly calls itself light, though it writhes the more daily in its blindness, not knowing where it is going, or even why!

The gods who have not made heaven and earth may be appealed to, but their end is as their beginning, dark (II Thess. 2 declares some of it, cf. Jeremiah 10:11). The God who has made heaven and earth and shows it by His word which regulates history, invades philosophy and shows its evanescence, thrills the heart of those who, taking it and following it find this very God Himself personally. These serve Him, and He covers His people with light like a garment, the light of His countenance and the love of His heart, who having loved His own, loved them to the end (John 13:1, Psalm 36:9). This God, He will not come again to die, in the form of a man. Now ? It is to rule, and if you want compassion, kindness, hearty understanding, glorious comprehension, delightful apprehension, cordiality and understanding, from the One whose word is truth, He is there. There is nothing gloomy about that.

As to this world, certainly when He comes with His saints (I Thess. 3:13, Zech. 14:5), He will exercise judgment, having first removed His people from the gathering darkness leading to Armageddon (Matthew 24, I Thess. 4), its darkness of aches and agues, feeble plans and grandiose ideas, under its prince whose perceptions this world shows all too clearly, even in the dark. When He so acts,  it will know, this world,  what He will show. Then for a little time the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea (Habakkuk 2:14, Isaiah 2, Micah 4, Isaiah 11, Psalm 2, 110, Isaiah 65-66, Zephaniah 3, Joel 3).

Yet as Isaiah 26 puts it,

• "Let grace be shown to the wicked,
• Yet he will not learn righteousness:
• In the land of uprightness he will deal unjustly."

Rebellion demonstrating its entirely personally based antagonism, free from the best of environments, refuses Christ to the last. The end has come. The world then, always flattened at the top and bottom, will now be removed. With its works, it will go; and the darkness that has been its life, though much light has been shed by the word of God and the people of the Lord, will come after the rush of heat and noise predicted by Peter (II Peter 3) attests its end.

What does it matter ? This world ? it was a great scene of wonder, creation, industry and beauty, wisdom and grace, joy and plenty; but its people refused the word of the Lord, the Lord of His word and the way of His life. They are coded in their very bodies, but they are callow to their King! So in final udgment, and this not before He has demonstrated not only His love as now for so long (cf. Romans 5:1-8, Titus 2-3), and His reign, which is to come shortly as predicted in Revelation 20, Isaiah 11, Psalm 2, 73:  in judgment this world will sink into nothing.

Yes, they will have their nothings at last, and it will be such that "the earth and the heaven fled away. And there was no place found for them." What is out of place in the end HAS no place!

But so be it, the artist can paint more, a new heaven and a new earth. Meanwhile, consider this testimony to, from and of faith in Isaiah 51, concerning such things:

"Lift up your eyes to the heavens,
And look upon the earth beneath.
For the heavens will vanish away like smoke.
The earth will grow old like a garment,
And those who dwell in it will die in like manner;
But My salvation will be forever,
And My righteousness will not be abolished.

"Listen to Me, you who know righteousness,
You people in whose heart is My law:
Do not fear the reproach of men,
Nor be afraid of their insults.
For the moth will eat them up like a garment,
And the worm will eat them like wool.,
But My righteousness will be forever,
And My salvation from generation to generation."
 

Thus^*2 the pains and pangs of the obsessed body of culture, should now  be ditched for the light and loveliness of manifest truth; and the sordid slums of this world's gloom, should be forsaken for the valiant vigour of actuality, and regality, that of the only one that matters in the end, the King who is the Messiah, the Christ, whose word now rules, and whose hand was pierced, before it should bring down the judgment.
 

 

END-NOTES

*1
In the W.R. Bird reference, you see some of the marvels of a man whose intelligence would not allow him to fail to see intelligence, in his own construction and that of the universe (Hoyle, cf. SMR pp. 209ff., 224ff.), but who apparently with the normal anti-scientific zeal to avoid the supernatural, conceived a beckoning spectre, as it were, a 'force' or 'intelligence' bringing up the future development, from the world of the past.

What however is this spectral ... entity ? It must by the proposition, have intelligence. It must be able to 'draw' or exert a force creative, imaginative and facilitating. It must have the knowledge, and if not, find it in whatever has it, which means another spectre, being, entity in which there is no need for a basis, since it is its own. This then becomes simply God by phraseological importation, put in the future instead of the past, perhaps by drawing upward to account for the degeneration of the universe as in the second law of thermodynamics! After all, this would be to provide the opposite of observable material reality ...

It draws them up by letting them flow down ? How impractical can you get ?

Is it also 'there' to ignore the need of a ground for its institution, and that of all things, needed since a beckoning spectre needs something to beckon to, something to beckon with, the ingenuity, wisdom and understanding to know and invest all things with wisdom, and to secure its aims, purposes and ambitions! By then, however, we are becoming alarmingly factual, and so of no use to those who wish to sport the alienation syndrome, from scientific method, when otherwise it would require them to face God, and not another.

Obviously, to cut the excesses, you need the intelligent One who put the realities into operation in the first place, so that the intelligence would be there, invested them with wisdom, awaits them in judgment, provides them with grace, whose word having established all things, allows them to work on the basis provided, as is perceptible: not some futuristic propulsion being shown, but the severities of past construction, and current spoliation.

It is not the beckoning future which makes the past, nor would such a system fail to need its own origination even if it were relevant, as would any other! It is not this, but the maker of time, matter, mind and spirit who is logically required; and His ways do not change. Figures of the imagination do not comprise the effectual working power needed for what is, the way it works, has worked and is working. This provides neither a universe nor a future; only a past of missed opportunities by the cavils of thought.
 

*2
For the scope and sweep of things, see News 87, and SMR pp. 502ff..