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To be sure, the first sub-title at the outset, seems unappealing.

Even if a certain tendency for humans to think of pigs, in the vernacular, as those who are lustily selfish, with boorishness snouting out their desires, is to some extent offset by the feeling of some for their pigs, so notable in P.G. Wodehouse's works, as in the intense desire of one lady in Adelaide to have her pig as a tender pet -  it seems to work: there is still about the word 'slimy' a certain repugnance. The lack of an inbred delicacy in many pigs gives perhaps, together with the habit of many owners to grant to them things that are not in the best of order at the outset, a bond for slimy, with pig-pen.

This is admitted; indeed it is asserted! But when you see the point, you will realise, as in the case of those who are dealing with the ruins of the World Trade Towers, that the evil has a point and a purpose to it. It tells of much that needs telling, and if the tale is tragic, it may help other tales more so, to be distanced for some at least, in the future.
 
 

The first acronym, for that it what it is, is now unlocked.

Seek the Lord in Miry Yearning, Precious in God the Soul that Yearns:
Turn Realistically unto that Hope.

SLIMY MIRE!

Let us briskly to the point. Mire ? Naturalism, seeking to pound its material base to produce its spiritual purpose (as exemplified in the desire to pound it!). Yearning ? The effort to GET IT (one remembers with some mirth a youngster who would, at around 9 years of age, accost my son's ears, after some simplistic effort at a joke, with 'Get it!' with such a yankee sort of twang, as to constitute a household item!).

Despite all this effort and misled enthusiasms, vain, vapid and nebulous, there is the residual fact. The very yearning is an attestation of the desire for unity, for understanding, for comprehension, for knowledge, that is part of the image of God in man. Its ferreting, its fevers, its fiascos notwithstanding, the effort is part of that aspiration for the divine which however contorted, twisted with pride or hate, is resolute in purpose, like a Palestinian bomb victim, starting with himself.

The burning yearning, however, vain as it is in its misled and futile meanderings, is something which when turned to its efficacious and purpose-built path, finds God, and when it does, it comes to be in Christ, who is God manifest in the flesh, and so comes to be in God. When it is, it is part of His treasures, which He will make up in that day when His kingdom comes, as we have prayed, we Christians, that it will, for some two millenia, and not, you may be sure, without effect; for it is His purpose in the Lord's prayer, which we follow when we so pray! It is this sort of prayer, doubtless, with many others which the Lord heeds as we see in Revelation 8:4.

One recalls that precious scene. The vision of heaven is just complete (Rev. 7), when there is a certain necessity appearing. History has yet to come to the point where all the number of God's chosen persons is complete (it is not an arithmetical exercise, just as a marriage is not, yet in a marriage there is an arithmetical component which needs to be 'made up', namely two, and in heaven there is a mathematical component, though love is its base and truth its light, peace its river, which also needs to be made up, and it will be! - as in Revelation 6:11). Its many lessons, its exhibitions of truth, its uninhibited follies, its restrained rebukes, its empires, its fashions and its follies, its sacred trysts and brilliant sacrifices have all to be made up - as in Acts 17:26-27, Amos 3-4, Genesis 15:16 a leading example or illustration.

In Revelation 8, therefore, the need for history to unfold, for the plan to be completed is intense, for has not heaven just been seen in Rev. 7! It is grave indeed, what is to come, and grand also, like the vast mountains where some are killed, but many see the majesty and the wonder of it. Care is needed. At this point, we see that  "the smoke of the incense with the prayers of the saints, ascended before God from the angel's hand" (Rev. 8:4). Now does the thing proceed! We are reminded to this end, of the word of John,

• "He who testifies to these things says, 'Surely I am coming quickly.' Amen. Even so, come Lord Jesus!"

So in Rev. 8 do the prayers arise, and the action proceeds. It is thus with a great sense of gravity, reality and solemnity that history unfolds, and it is not unclear why there is such a depth to the matter, when we see NOW in our 'advanced' century, Danielically filled with 'knowledge' (Daniel 12:4), the carnage and the guilt.

But it is in Revelation 5 that an even high point of drama and a greater massif of certainty arises, if it be possible. There the very unfolding of history as such, stands poised, the scroll on which it is pre-written not opened, but sealed. WHO would open it ? It was in vain that effort was made to find such a person who would be worthy to unfold it.

How would the love of God inhabit the scenes which were and are (for not all is yet past, though much of it now is, being fulfilled by this late time!) to be disclosed in history ? Only when there is the ONE who has given His life in the love of God for the people of God, a people gathered from an entire world, and an entire history of the world (Colossians 1:19ff. showing its TOTAL scope of relevance) without prejudice, even all who receive Him, whom indeed He has foreknown: only then can the scroll be opened. Only then can history proceed to its grand conclusion, and to the dregs of dereliction which it also will and does contain.

Thus in Isaiah 51:16, we find the one who is like a sharp arrow in the hands of the Lord (Isaiah 49:2, the Messiah cf. With Heart and Soul, Mind and Strength Chs. 4-7, and Spiritual Refreshings Ch. 15 ), without whom He would not have created the Universe! It is the Messiah, on whom all rests for the salvation of the world, who is the light of the world as in 49:6, and who as in 42:6, IS the covenant, being the very word of God.

This is He without whom, not merely technically, but morally, the world would not have come. He, the word of the living God, eternal in His own being, is expression of God consummate, and by His work is creation and salvation alike, accomplished. As He is sent (John 17:3, Colossians 1:15ff., John 1:3, 5:19-23, 8:58, Isaiah 48:16), so has He done; and intimate is the mutual access between the Sender and the Sent, the Almighty and His eternal word, so that there is joy in the creation (Proverbs 8 cf. Barbs, Arrows and Balms Ch. 27).

Without love, without sacrifice, without redemption, no go! Unless quality is to be there, quantity will be zero. God IS love, so that necessity flows by His will from the Being who is He, whom He wishes to be, and knowing all, eternally and changelessly is, having no development, progress or progression; for He knows all at all times and in Him is comprehensive certainty in hallowed truth. Thus does freedom occasion certainty, for as He freely desires, so He is; and as He is, so He executes, blending human actions with divine resolve, so creating the certainties of history, which at will He thus predicts.

So it is that  history is not without the sovereign bestowal of what is required. Human liberty has its say, but not the last word; for God, He has His sway.
 
 

This brings us to our second acronym: SPATULA, which blends with the first. The Special Pearl and the Treasures under the Lord with Awe.

The spatula of offer provides the preparation of salvation!

To our point then, when the yearning turns to Christ, and when the soul that yearns is thus received, and redeemed, then precious in the Lord, is the soul that yearns, for he who seeks finds, as Christ says, and when you will turn and seek me with all your hearts, you will find Me, as Jeremiah declares from the Lord (29:13). We have in this way nearly finished the wording of our first acronym. Let us look further at it. Thus, in the slime of the pig-sty, in the illusions of naturalism, in the murk of evolutionistic fables, in the mire of psychic delusion may have been the thwarted and clayey yearning;  but in time for many, all this is past, so that the soul is turned to the Lord in simplicity of faith, He is to be found, and when HE is found, then the mire is over, and the new scene swiftly composes itself under the hand of that God. So do people come to Him, and it is He who esteems those who are His, as precious pearls. Thus we proceed with our acronymic message. Let us go further.

Thus have they TURNED REALISTICALLY TO THAT HOPE, as we have it, in the last of that acronym above. In terms of this former one, moved from the trash from which they have in spirit come, they find the other, the definitive place of peace, and thus relish the TREASURES UNDER THE LORD WITH AWE.

That is, they find the other members of the Lord's inheritance, the other saints. Of these, the Lord declares in Malachi, of those who come out and receive Him openly (3:16),

"They shall be Mine," says the LORD of hosts,
On that day that I make them My jewels.
And I will spare them
As a man spares his own son who serves him.
Then shall you again discern
Between the righteous and the wicked,
Between one who serves God
And one who does not serve Him" - Malachi 3:17-18.

By contrast, it is His divine sufficiency covering and making all things, and this by His own will which needs nothing, but has all and gives much (cf. SMR Ch. 1), that those who have found Him stand in awe at Him! All creativity is from Him, all artistry, all POWER to invent, dowered to man, the universe itself one of His pictures which He has painted; and He has already indicated His will to make a new heavens and a new earth.

His intensity is past parallel, His grace is without competitor, indeed so far past all comparison that infinity from mathematics, may be borrowed to give some conception of it! Thus HE is the SPECIAL PEARL for whom a man would sell all that he has, that he may acquire it! in the spirit of the parables of Jesus. Moreover, when He IS found, He is found as Lord, under the harmonious holiness of whose word one lives (Luke 6:46, Matthew 7:21ff.). He is the KING of the Kingdom of Heaven, and heavily has He paid for His crown! When you find Him, you find His own saints with Him, whom He loves and cherishes, so that Pre-eminent Pearl has baby pearls in rich abundance, by it!

So with AWE do those whom He has MADE pearls, regard Him and His other redeemed. It is, as in Revelation 5, UNDER the Lord that one is found, for He is LORD, and His cover places one under His grace, for Christ is the end of the law for righteousness for all who are His (Romans 10:4). That is, when it comes to the attainment of perfect righteousness, it is only by grace that it is to be found, for it is donated as a gift from His excesses, whose infinitude moves such mountains of righteousness, and still lacks nothing (Ephesians 2:1-12, Romans 5:1-12).

However, this:  to be under such a boundless fragrance, and garlanded, covered with so glorious a gift and free  (Isaiah 61:10, 55:1-4, Romans 3:23ff., 6:23, 5:15, Galatians 3, 5, Ephesians 2:1-12), it is a mark infinitely to be preferred to the mark of the beast (Revelation 13), that signal to the sty, that the pigs are carnally crusading, lavishly lost at the trough. The free gift of eternal life is infinitely removed from the forced 'gift' of the dark rule of hell and its pawns. By the former, a life being linked to the absolute loveliness of the Lord, it is transformed by faith, moved by grace, and walks with God (II Corinthians 3:18, Galatians 5:22-25).

So it was with Abraham (Genesis 15), so it was with David (Psalm 32, 132) and so it always has been and will be with the Lord and His people. (Cf. TMR Ch. 3,    Barbs, Arrows and Balms 17.)
 
 

It is with a certain measure of regret, that after all these things have been surveyed from their biblical basis, itself attested by reason as continually seen on this site, that we come back to the unhygienic and unhealthy state of the pig sty. In vain will someone decree that pig sties can be places of peace and plenty, ably maintained and very clean; for this is not the basis for the belief that a pig-sty is a place of shame to cleanliness, to refinement and to order. However much the dear pigs have been improved, these days, and their quarters made like a cafeteria table (though that is in itself a question ...), the concept remains clear: certain idiosyncrasies of pigs do have a tendency to manifest themselves. "You pig!" is not an endearment. "They are pigs," is not an accolade.

We have been acronymically complete, now, but why the slip into 'slime' anyway ? We are really looking in terms of slimy pig-pens at that disease which mars man, manufacturing that slatternly substitute for the spirituality only God can give, that debasement of man, that disease of the soul, which brings down what should inherit the heavens, to the pit, and looses the bonds from which purity can come. But pits ?

David in Psalm  40, that Messianic Psalm (as in Joyful Jottings22), speaks of being brought out of a "horrible pit". He is indeed drawn up from "the miry clay". There you see the link. To be sure, mire and slime are not entirely identical. Let us then to the substance of the theme, past the environmental depictions for the moment. First however let us note that a HORRIBLE pit and MIRY clay, to boot, make a combination of some infernal summitry - despite and indeed IN their depths - to beat! It is a kind of negative summit! an inverted one...

'Free among the dead' says the Psalmist in 88, and there IS a certain freedom in necrosis: you don't have to do much. It is being done for you. It is so with naturalism, shattering, battering, clattering, spattering the universe with its unnatural claims, inane as the braying of donkeys, off-key as the cacophonies of musical hopelessness, a dark licence to a fallen generation, invasive, intrusive in search of that always elusive power, design, purpose, meaning, not found in clay, or pits, maundering with slime, smashed consequences, like broken lives, of misled zeal. Batter your books, but you find not author there.

In the case of Jeremiah, for his righteousness attacked, and how blessed says Christ, are those who suffer for righteousness' sake (Matthew 7, in the sermon on the mount), there was a stinking, sinking pit (Jeremiah 37:11ff.). As for him, he did not seek it; for he was thrust into it for the detestation in which he was held, because he told the truth about God, not acquiescing in endless fallen schemes for a fallen nation to practise the functions of its fall, with all the freedom of dead. Into a sinking pit ? Now that is a case of transferred epithet, for the pit is not known to have been sinking, but the effect was a sinking one for Jeremiah (38:6), for its murky depths were moist, the ground not content with being stable, giving way beneath his sucked-in feet. Further, a 'sinking pit' merely puts the concept of sinking with that of pit, and does not specify in what respect the combination is operative. A lowering is the dead heart of the matter.

In all this, however, we are brought the more intimately to the condition in which the prophet found himself. A little more and he might die from hunger, if not from slime. What is slime ? It is a combination of dirt and moisture which brings about a concept of some distasteful odour as a strong portent, and perhaps a certain foulness, involving some organic material. The dictionary tells us that it is "any ropy or viscous matter, esp. of a foul or offensive kind", which is fine: that is, the definition, not the slime which underlies it.

Accordingly a slimy pig-sty would be inclined to be one in which ropy things were to be found, possibly excremental, possibly undigested remnants, or ingredients of one kind or another, not to the taste of a pig!

Why on earth should such a fouled and offensive things be conceived ? It is because it is better to be offended by the stench of rotting flesh than to become it! When all question of metaphor is past, the fact is that Christ in Mark 9 made things enormously clear. There is a continuity involved in the picture of relentless worms continually consuming a residue that once was a person on this earth, in the place called hell. Kings, societies and cultures can participate proleptically (cf. Isaiah 14:4-11), almost grasping from beneath what falls into it.

There is similarly a not attractive look about flames that are not quenched. At once, the sensitive soul sees the point, does it not ? Worms are instruments of slow dissolution, with no regard for the dignity (if any) of what they consume. Flames are evidences of combustion which does not hallow the premises on which it burns! There is a sense of dissolution, therefore, with one of pangs, of unsavoury contempt, improper placement; but on the other hand, when it comes to Gehenna, the term Christ also used and which depicts a rubbish dump, there is a certain justness about the co-placement of the disreputable offering and the disintegrative forces which afflict it.

Transfer such a picture to pig-sties and one would need nothing less than slime to evoke the sort of strength, which this other picture provides; while on the other hand, we are near it in any case, from Psalm 40.

Now one could discourse on the slime, the flame, the worm, the unsated destructive power in a word, the unsavoury nature of what is being destroyed. It could be in terms of sexual abuse as in pornography, child depravity at adult hands; or in drink yearning for the one whose stomach is prostitute for the enslavement of life; in the lurch to gambling in its gallants whose funds for function, become feelers for self-indulgence; in addiction to adultery and its illicit flames of desire, theft of body, a brothel for morals, or in many such chaotic calamities that study the pit with acclaim. It is not however at this time, the need to do this. The topic is naturalism at this point, in line with our last chapter, and our earlier note in this one.

Think of it. A pig is thought of as snorting with pleasure, anticipation, if not greed, so that with small concern for nicety, it moves into what it mows down with its mouth, consuming all before it: that at least is the picture. It is never satisfied. It seems to hover ready to consume, to imbibe, settled on the necessities of large and lavish intakes. This, however, is not an essay on pigs but a consideration of the picture they so often evoke, and sometimes, at least, not without reason!
 
 

So we move to the allied contemplation of the fetid ruins of naturalism for here the poor thing, nature, in itself, having such wonder and intricacy, even beauty and majesty in many ways, such intelligence sublime, such imagination unmatched, such ingenuities of marvel, such placidities of peace, such exhibits of grandeur to offer, such accomplishments of sheer magnificence of mind, spirit  and art, is made a mere butt.

As to matter: It is worked on as to particles, as if to find the ULTIMATE in some way, presumably because it is little; though not little in the least is the desire to find, and to blind with the rays of the revelation coming from this uncomely and meretricious combing^*1.

It is travestied as to meaning, so that what this and that does, is to be indicative if not directive for man.

It is pummelled with energy, so that in France a huge tunnel houses space for experiments to prove what can become of matter when amazing energies are diverted into its flattened midst. It is rather like smashing a house to find the architect's plan. The debris however does not speak; nor yet does it create. Directive specifications are not grounds for the specification, even in life; and in the inanimate, the preface is not found in the stage directions.

As to life: this in one form has been  battered with X-rays continually for decades, to find what energy may do to genes.

It helped not at all, as you would imagine if your new Jaguar car were bombarded by forces intended to ... change it. The car would be far less intricate than the genes! (Cf.  TMR Ch. 1, p. 32, End-note 2). Yet so sure are the wave surfers of nature, that it MUST make itself, that they -
 

a) ignore its proof-reading facilities in the genetic program, when more genes are made, as if this were a grant that they will change, which is a system to prevent change.
 

b) ignore the incapacity of material atoms to invent codes and executive suites of programs for construction sites, for the body.
 

c) bypass the obvious necessity for synthetic completeness of program, in multitudes of parts, directive, executive, aggregative, mutually so structured that each part shall contribute to the other, in its need for construction, so  that the program will ensure this happens, parts being disposed or dispersed, as in any other assembly line,  in order to enable the program to operate on them effectively, while the program itself is sited where organisation is adequate to enable its prototype, executive and self-copying arms to proceed without balking; and

d) ignore the fact that the earliest masses of designs found in the Cambrian level, by current theory, had far more designs at the first, than we now have at the last.

Overall, what theory is suggested by such data ? What architect has such sophistication, power and intelligence, imagination enterprise, environmental control over millenia that his buildings copy their own plans and then rebuild as the case may require over time! What moron makes such things^*2, and how moronic is the mindless! The gradual is out; the adequate is required a fortiori; the conceptual capacity of knowledge and the administrative power of correlation is needed; and the features of our own lives, but in much greater measure, are needed to make the originalities and foster the technicalities, invent the purposive adaptations to various needs and implement the whole with codes of programs integrable with kinds of facilities in other aspects of the creation.

Since matter is but the chatter of programs itself, sophisticated, elegant, the impact of law on form, the contrivance of phases of being related intimately to the needs of other and more advanced designs, such as life and mind, there is need for a correlation, integration, sophistication, synthesis which nevertheless preserves the differential, a purpose girt conceptualisation and an aware implementation, taking all into account in every part, phase and grade.

If then the hypothesis of evolutionism is irrelevantly created, the exact opposite of the specifications, then to what do we come, once we move into and beyond the sheer humour, as if in some School Humour Program, some child were asked, What is the need for this magnificent composition ? and answered, Something deficient in all understanding, knowledge, skill and mind, in order to appal the teacher: what is the outcome of such freedom among the dead ?

What then do we have in this devout theory, this anti-scientific nihilisation of necessity ? It is a religion of an arbitrary and irrational kind. Small wonder that Professor Løvtrup bewailed in the case before him, the Darwinesque,  its indolent misdirection of effort, in research (cf. SMR pp. 252A at *43 and 202). There are numbers of such academic tragi-comedies, humorously catastrophic philosophic creations masquerading as science, and this is the specialty of false religion, which by repetition and the outrageous subdues the vagrant minds and erratic spirits which look for 'escape' from reality, whether consciously or unconsciously.

Indeed in The Kingdom of Heaven Ch. 10, Part 2, we took this fact into account, and considered in some detail what aspects of religion were at once apparent. It is noted in Creation June-August 2002, p. 9, that British Professor, Dawkins has indicated that if a service concerning evolution (ism) were to be offered at Westminster Abbey, then for the sermon segment, he would "do it like a shot."

It is a religion, so that the old trouble of using the things of the God of creation for the idols of desecration has already been noted as bringing on enormous tragedies to the Jews (88. 822ff., 757ff.), who fell for this error on a scale of lavish proportions (cf. I Kings 14:8-16, II Kings 17:16-18); while it is predicated likewise of the Gentiles in the divine overview of Romans 1:13-32. As disclosed in these scriptures, these innovative vapidities present an abysmally fatal 'life style', as gaunt in destiny as destitute in rationality. They have for us at this point, however,  one advantage.

The designation of such naturalism, such attribution of divine qualities in part or in whole to God's mere products, as idolatry shows the mundane consistency of wanting to bring its tenets into WORSHIP services! It accords well with the persistent, insistent - and now dramatic desire for religious veneration for such members of this world's fantasies. Indeed, this author has seen such things grotesquely and with minimal if any inhibition, crusading into churches for half a century. Thus all is confirmed. What it is, it both desires to do, and does. With this, the outside seeks the inside of churches, the inside like the pseudo-pods of amoebas, seeks to bring the outside, inside.

The 'watch me preach it' suggestion, in Britain therefore,  is a concept is sound in one thing: it exhibits yet once more that evolutionism is not misconceived for the offerings of a religion. In fact, not the laboratory but the misplaced worship of man, on his part, and sometimes for his part, now as for thousands of years, can only waft words when it comes to this naturalistic apotheosis, put it in what words (for variation) you will.

That is precisely what it is; it is not science in the least degree (cf. SMR pp. 140ff.).

In fact, Dawkins cries with joy or relief, at the news that a British bishop has decreed that it is a great disservice to the Bible to have people talk creation from it (despite the facts, however, attested in detail in TMR Appendix), because this may lead to its lacking credibility for ... folk (is that the word ?). We read that Dawkins regrets, or affects to regret what he calls opening the big mouth, when the bishops could do the job for him so much better, and so the dedicated evolutionists could have spared themselves ... some resistance, the Professor and those with him! (Creation, June-August, 2002, p. 7).

Let the bishops sell naturalism's fair bride to the people, seems to be the inference; for they do it so well!

• Similarly, it was easier to let Gorbachev despatch the false religion of Communism, to its restless resting place, to kill it by words and thoughts, by movements here and there, by contrary suggestions and innovations, here a little, there a little,  till Europe strained its voices crying, Gorbie, Gorbie! It was easier to exhaust it from within, than have the smashing woes of war.

 
• So here, it is easier to let those do the job, who within an organisation, have been using the name of the Church (one freely speaking of unity with Rome under the Pope as Chairman, and in Australia, via its Primate, of not needing Christ to find God, thus like a double-barrelled shot-gun blasting away at the faith). More readily, the idea seems to be, can they dismiss what is written with authoritative mien, than have obvious outsiders do the same thing!

 
• Again, the phenomenon of naturalistic religion is attested: it can be bought by bishops, screened by religious committees, inventoried by ecclesiastical inventors. The Pope likewise, half a century behind even the more obvious times, is now decreeing likewise, Darwinesque noises, approbatory sounds, when if there is one thing that is more obvious than another, it is this, that gradualism is scientifically anti-evidential to the last degree! (Cf. TMR Ch. 1, SMR Ch. 2, A Spiritual Potpourri Chs. 1-9, Spiritual Refreshings Ch. 13, Wake Up World! Ch. 6).


What is this then ? After the war is lost, the papacy signs a cheque for its maintenance! So idolatry spreads (cf. A Question of Gifts, VI, SMR pp. 1032 -1088H, 911ff., at 5). In such ways, and not for the first time, can the ecclesiastical act as undertake for the divine! It is a presumptuous endeavour, always has been, always will be, and ends in the pit, denying the mandates of life, in the necessities of the necrotic.
 

Thus can an ultra-biblical establishment, in Rome and London, move to make a religious fantasy
out of naturalism's ancient heritage of shame in its more modern dress. Has our contemporary world then moved with the times ?

In this philosophic fantasy, certainly, for it has moved backwards to meet dates B.C. with an effortless seeming ease^*3, dabbling in the dungeons of the human mind, altering but the mode of worship, not the basis and the vacuity of the past millenia.

Of naturalism, evolutionism is one wild phase. It attributes to 'nature', now in this way, now in that,  the creative power and precision of God, who made it, merging creation and creator, to the insult to the latter, and the wild excess of empty worship, to the latter. If then the evolutionism, the evaporative fantasy,  is to be officially recognised as a religion, like the Buddhist or some other that deals in concepts of a less rational kind (cf. SMR pp. 1011ff.), then perhaps we could provide some concepts of its ... shall we say ecclesiastical procedure. Indeed, is there not already a ... quasi-ecclesiastical establishment.

An ORDER OF SERVICE ?

Indeed, it is ALREADY instituted as a religion to a profound degree.

For this purpose, let us quote a little from  the Kingdom of Heaven (loc.cit.), in the religious terms noted some 5 years ago.

The following excerpt from that work will give details...
 

The Priests ?

Of course.

Professors who demean their arch-enemy, the God of fiat creation (He spoke, the designs were executed, like a draftsman), the God to whom they will answer, who distort, deviate, indoctrinate, diversify their own teachings over the years like the wind, consistent in one thing only: their rejection of Him. These are the priests.

No Jesuit is likely to excel them in sheer dedication to the protection of their pope, the exalted transubstantiationist, evolution, which can make things that are not, by means that are not, in contradiction of what is, as may clearly be seen (cf. Matthew 24:26-27). The sheer invisibility of the means, the methods and the results of this grand transubstantiation of the evidential reality, the facts, this is one of the greatest tests of faith of the chosen.

Here are the priests. There can be laymen too, who take up the challenge, factory worker priests who can take it as they work, to extend the kingdom and the domain...

Lecturers who lord it over students, trampling on the evidence, sidestepping scientific method: these too are the priests, in lower orders, for there is a hierarchy of bishops and lesser ones. As in all superstition, mysticism is magnified, here the goddess 'NATURE' is glorified as in the days of Aphrodite. Some of these imparters may become cardinals, if they are careful about the Goddess, the Law (see later) and the prescribed practices of the cult.

The Praise ? the salvation ?

the sanctification ?

Praise is the salutation of the goddess of Nature, evolution her power, racism her product, superiority her clique, hell the terrestrial place accorded to her rejects, scorned and derided with all the shame this world can find to spare: salvation is her progress, sanctification is to love to have it so. (Cf. Jeremiah 5:30-31, 2:27-33.)

The congregation ?

Wait for it. So effective is the Educational Line in the Professional Schools, that this is large. Its devotion is often unquestionable. It tends to stick together in one thing, that those who do not hold to the contemplations of the cult are outré, to be despised and avoided like the plague, derided, slandered as was the Truth and Life Club Inc. at Adelaide University, though none ever found a reason with which to answer it where it could be found for years; and its offers, its challenges, its demonstrations still stand as on the first day they were made.

After all, the process of educational conformism is extraordinarily effective in programming the minds of the neo-religious, and it is doubtless felt to be imperative that these be protected from unsettling influences, which hence must be avoided, as the only safe way of ensuring stability amongst the chosen. The DISCIPLINE which can be achieved in pursuit of these goals is a highly noteworthy aspect of this faith; as with any cult, its members can stick closely together, their minds closed to all evidence, any logic.

Further, de-programming work is much to be feared where facts are already adverse, and a certain sensitivity for those in the evolutionary faith is perfectly understandable. Thus the de-programming procedures of "FREE MIND" or others may here have outstanding opportunity. It is all psychic manipulation; and in it, where is any truth to be found! It may be searched for, but it cannot be found.

Offers may be multiplied to come and show how it can stand, in open style, as at Adelaide University. Yet, though some tried, in the end, none prevailed, and all contenders departed. Truth is expensive, certainly. That is always the case when there is no fiction. When sin meets truth, there is payment required, as in any other disease. The marvel is that the doctor who has the evidence, Jesus Christ, has been willing to make that payment, to reconstitute, regenerate the distorted, the departed, those who have deviated from righteousness; as have all now on this earth.

Yet for all the evidence, and for all the wonder, and all the witness, and all its own idolatrous failure, this delusion so abounds that we shall look at the neo-religious schooling procedures next.

The Schooling ?

a) Inculcation from Primary School, especially in secondary school, in text books and now in S.A., by government sponsored directives to continue the cant of evolutionism without opportunity for competition.

b) Protestation from many an anti-creationist pulpit.

c) Profanation directed against the God of creationism, of the Bible, the Father of Jesus Christ (see SMR pp. 179 ff., 485-498).

d) Indoctrination in the 5 Points of Preliminary Evolutionism

i) Thou shalt sever all connection with the Thought of the Designer-Creator, from whom man fell.

 

ii) Thou shalt never consult with reality concerning the immutable fact of no-mutation relative to major design types. Man is made for adversity, so that the adversity of evidence which is not able to deviate here from the creationist line, must be borne as a cross. It must be tied about the neck, as a chain.

 

iii) Thou shalt despise the doctrines of evidential realism, the 3 main laws of physics openly manifest in the Bible for thousands of years {SMR pp. 329ff.}; and

 

iv) Thou shalt chatter endlessly instead about Science as Hope: which is the first and greatest commandment; for if you cannot prove your point, then imagine what the evidence would have been if it could have been -

then act as if it were there, and in your existential being within, it will be.
 

v) Thou shalt fear the Lord, naturalistic evolutionism, and his Word, theistic evolutionism, which is usually around somewhere, and when naturalistic evolutionism seems too bad to avoid charges of hypocrisy or even programming , then CALL UPON THEISTIC EVOLUTION: for though it can't change the evidence, it can change the topic long enough to permit a strategic escape if your opponent is unwary.

e) Intimidation. If all else fails, threat of loss of employment, such I found when Lecturing, and Moody Monthly has attested in one of its articles; or of failure in exams, as even a year 10 student's father attested; or loss of Honours; or of loss of a Ph.D., as was the challenge to one well-known geologist because he was a creationist; or non-publication of a books, a situation that was clear in the early career of Professor W.R. Thompson, as reported by him in writing - these things frequently work. From scimitar to Inquisition, this technique has been employed by religions which depart from the Bible, with impressive vigour, and often considerable enrichment, then available for the propagation of the neo-Faith of the neo-religion to neophytes.

f) Co-operation. One way to quell much dissent and even unpleasantness is simply to encourage students to be co-operative. It is good for the team, the Tradition. Thus if they open their mouths against the sacred Canons of the religion of evolutionism, this need may be made clear to them in one or more of a thousand manipulative techniques.

Items for use in twisting the minds of students into rugged conformity to the neo-faith:

i) The best students are humble, therefore always willing to learn in the face even of the most unco-operative evidence. Therefore, do not create a ... fuss.

 

ii) The best just trust their teachers, and the Tradition of evolutionism, its Canon Law offered by exponents who, though they frequently clash, always know a sacred cow when they see one.

 

iii) The best students - those who get the prizes for research, are nearly always carefully selected. Let the ambitious ... take heed. Why ? It is because those selected are indeed almost routinely unrealistic, gradualistic, anachronistic evolutionists, Professor Løvtrup ( of Darwinism: the Refutation of a Myth fame) in effect, expostulates in his disquisition.

Indeed, natural selection just does not evidentially do what is required; nor does it make steps in kind such as are required. What therefore is to students a pressure test of morals, if they see through evolutionism - perhaps to remain silent, is to this eminent professor a callow corruption of biological sophistication.
 

Deploring the deceitfulness of Darwinism in particular, of gradualism in general, he finds that this trend diverts funds from more objective reality. These often speciously selective grants help to ensure that biology does not do much to move from the ranks of deceitful gradualism: this appears to be his message.

 

This unnatural selection, he holds, tends to stultify, distort and warp research, retarding biological advance. In terms of 'Nature', he finds, natural selection does nothing for essential evolutionary progress. The idea is a myth. Intelligence and method should be used in the deployment of research funds, not ungrounded bias and blind traditionalism.

• Actually hitting a car with brick-bats is likely to change it, maybe more to the taste of the thrower, if on drugs, but not in terms of more advanced, integral design sophistication; nor if cars could have children, would bashing the womb be likely to improve the infant. Stress can of course activate the provisions and of, or break a design; and in particular it appears to be a component in the causes of cancer: yet it is worlds away from creating the master plan. The ingredients of directive design are more demanding than the provision of corrosive or erosive forces; and that is the area of our concern (cf. SMR pp. 114-159, 332E-H; 257-270; 289-316G).

 
• Capacity to endure shock is not the same as capacity to create being created by it: for any programmed production. Multitudinous, intricately related, sophisticated code commands with their symbolic significations, assigned agencies and dynamic directions are not really manufactured that way. (Cf. SMR pp. 128ff., 226ff., 251ff., 284ff., 315Aff.,, 999ff..)

Noise is not voice.

• Far less are they naturalistically begotten in a bold and daring flash of conceptual brilliance of overview, insight, oversight and symbolic perception, shrinking time into an ecstasy of creation, as some beleaguered biological theories in this post-Darwin era are coming to ponder. Their parameters however are coming close to an irrational duplication of the rational action of creation.

 
• As for the concept of such orphaned 'advents' of the natural scene arriving unsolicited with massive increase of the symbolic design fundamentals, however, one wonders in which world the theorist is living!

 
• The fact is that they have been so begotten INTO Nature, WITH ALL ITS CHARACTERISTICS, and it is powerless to duplicate them. Whatever it is, is not what made it. What did, has a name. (Cf. SMR Ch.1.)

 
• Which world ? As to this one: It is God who has spoken. Not with the utmost encouragement can it produce it itself. Such a creative out-thrust is precisely what the evidence on the one hand, and the Bible on the other indicate. What was spoken endures. In the material creations, we are increasingly able to read it. In a vain speculation contrary to all logic and evidence, however, the brutalities of self-manufactured speech parallel those of humanly manufactured follies such as the World has seen come and mutate for the last sad 83 years of bluster and folly among the nations.

 

 

The Sacrifice ?

Yes, whole races or portions of them may be sacrifices
because Nazi evolutionism so decrees, in terms of its estimate of the dynamism of variation; or Communistic Evolutionism so determines, in terms of its estimate of the dynamism of historical advance; or U.S. racism so allowed in its slavery days, when Theodore Roosevelt felt so sure of the "destiny" of the white races. Students may be sacrificed to The Tradition, research a sacrificial victim to the Law (the only law discernible in evolution is this - 'Prevail, somehow: be fit, survive away, with and in your day, while you may!' A pretty little ditty, don't you think ?: it is certainly popular!).

the rites ?

Please notice the spelling, since this has mutated as religion has moved to neo-religion. It is now a matter of rites and wrongs.

These are solemnly observed on endless TV programs where the needs of the lore of evolution must be served in endless seeming indoctrinative consolidations.

With all the other programming, at multitudinous levels, there is always the danger of de-programming. Hence the TV and radio must be constantly utilised, droning, intoning, chanting, the Praise, the Tradition, the Prizes, at every turn. As with much religion, doubt is unacceptable; and since here it is handsomely warranted, the means of preserving from its fateful and baneful influence must be many.

Since logic and demonstrable revelation are abundantly available to the contrary, this process of programming through the public media is naturally seized like a million from the casino. What would happen without it ?

As in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, Giant Maul seeks his own - so that Giant Media's mauling is always available to reach people in their unsure times, when they are less prepared for conflict. 'Maul the mind, maul the spirit, maul the imagination, utilise anything, everything, get among them: now is the time.' This may be the motto!

For such purposes, this invasion of leisure with business naturally should be made as palatable as possible; a course fairly generally followed by the media.

Additional aids to neo-religion: Have newspapers very sparing in publishing letters to the Editor on this topic, except they conform; and use brevity as a method or the pretence of pride on the part of writers, in order to make them desist. If they get difficult, don't reply. Thus the AAP fax was not even acknowledged (see news 12). If there was some other reason for this, or if this is regarded as normal business practice, it would be interesting to learn.

The time of day, as Rupert Murdoch put it when seeking in vain for time with a politician some time ago: the time of day ? this is not readily accorded from the media for such purposes as this!

The choir

This has already been noticed in some of its operations. However the giant massed choir, though admittedly by no means of angels, sings of the wonders of Nature, her artfulness, yes, and her wisdom, her striving, her efforts to meet need, her prevenient knowledge, her developmental prodigies, her designs, her devices, the difficulties she has foreseen and the steps taken with insight to overcome these, her grandeur, her solemnity, her judgments, her prodigalities, her liberalities, her overall schematic control.

It is wonderful how all this is effected, though it does not happen, and how wonderful she is, though she never does it; and how the One who did it is ignored, though His works are here rightly appreciated, under a new management which does manage to do any of them at all.

the hymns

Countless hymns to Nature, though she has never been found to exercise any of these powers, are made. Sometimes she is Mother Nature, or even Mother Earth, and her terrestrial powers are as well-known to the mind of the true-believer in evolutionism, as her exercise of them before the eye of observation are absent.

Sermon time

As to this, these questions, forget them! That is the Message, the Address, the General Purpose Sermon of Evolutionism.

It proceeds: "If you hear THESE things, forget them, fast! ..."

"Which things ?.."

"Why, also these:-
 

• " 'What has such wisdom ? where is intelligence to be found ? what has foresight ? what invents synthetic contrivance ? what meets understood need with understanding ?' What should your answer be ?

 
• "Never say - 'a mind', never say - 'a person', never say - 'the creator's wisdom,' never say - 'generative, autonomous intelligence', never say ..." (dramatic pause, while the words filter)

 

  "never say, 'the controller of nature who has no trouble with the same since it is His invention, and its ways are in the first place those of His choosing, as with any other inventor'. Above all, never say that non-nothing invented it all, created it all. Say anything! Anything at all, but never be logical. There is no prize for that, and if you want to survive and stay alive, say anything, but stay evolutionary.
 

• "'God, the God of creation' ? Only for blasphemy, PLEASE!"


"We men," it proceeds,
"are our own fountain pen:

Wrote ourselves,
connote ourselves.
Are the very model of being,
Just what we must become -
Before we're there to do it,
In order to get it done.
 

"Nature was just the same
That Grande Olde Dame,
Inventing without a mind,
For the progress of great mankind.
Just herself she blissfully made
To join, from nought, the grand parade.

(This may also be said three times daily, after meals, with wine!)"

Matter's chatter and life's provisions considered into the phase of religion, we have two duties left at this level. First, we must note that space too is investigated with appetite, and billions are spent in its ucongenial resources, making recourse to endless invasions, in case this part of 'nature' should reveal its secret composition (cf. A Spiritual Potpourri Chs. 1-3).
 
 

Nature ? What is it like ? How is it being treated for this religion of evolutionism ? It is like an old-fashioned and heartless teacher: his student is sat on a hard-board bench, for hours, the better to avoid luxuriating in sinful content, so that 'learning' may more aptly occur. He is caned relentlessly, subjected to sarcasm remorselessly, given homework stolidly, without regard to originality, inventiveness or colour, to individuality or any question of particular gifts which he may or may not have. Exams scream at him, work loads land on him, drillings load themselves effortless on his tiring back.

Now this is not to say that authority and discipline, vigour and vim  are not desired by this author, an ex-Principal himself. It is merely to note that there have been EXTREMES in both directions, and that the impersonal, aloof, all tireless pummelling of students is as far from the warm and kindly, the thoughtful and watchful, the sensitive but well-ordered path as is the current movement to Mickey-Mouse substitutes for any organisation and system in knowledge, as often happens, sentimental apprehensions of students as if their youth made them virtual gods, above direction, correction and discipline, and the willowy concept of teachers as 'resource-persons' where the whole sense of inspiration and wisdom is lost.

The reason for the development of our hideously authoritarian school picture was not to endorse the equally horrendous opposite, but to expose the incredible seeming misdirection and harsh disregard of reality, present in the endless scheming and schemes directed to making 'nature' king, author and so on, of itself.

It is harried, harrowed, it is narrowed and enlarged, it is smitten and efforts are even made that it might be unwritten (fragmented), it is stirred, it is whacked, it is driven, it is bashed, it is tested, touched and wooed. Why ? It is that its ULTIMATE meaning, its ULTIMATE particle, its ULTIMATE nature and so forth, might be assessed. Why ? It is that it might be shown to have made itself.
Why ? It is that God is not desired, so that some substitute is sought. THAT is the nature of naturalism.

It never rests; indeed it cannot rest, for the wicked departure from God is such that it KNOWS no rest. God told us that long ago (Isaiah 57:20-21):

"The wicked are like the troubled sea,
When it cannot rest,
Whose waters cast up mire and dirt.

" 'There is no peace,'
Says my God, 'for the wicked.' "
 

Thus the investigation of what God has made is fine, and the endeavour to realise more and more intimately its nature is not wrong. However the endeavour IN doing this, to find the nature of nature, without the necessity of its Creator, is merely a wasteful exercise in irrationality as we have often enough seen before ^*4. To find what evinces no mind, as the source of mind; to find what evinces not thought, as the source of thought, what evinces no will, as the source of will, from matter spirit, from substance the invisible, is like seeking from the laboratory examination of ancient bank notes, the source of wealth.

It is a basic confusion of purpose and procedure. The tired and long retired 'nature'^*5 which persistently and consistently allows itself to downgrade, as highly specialised codes and procedures, exposed over thousands of years to events not always or in all things by any means conducive to their welfare (like atomic bombs, volcanoes, plagues, cosmic rays), slowly lose their pristine perfection, this is not the book of life. Rather, it is the life of the book, the work God did, the resource that the resourceful One has made, the call for its sufficient cause, the book of His writing.

Books do not write themselves. They evince what is the result of the one whose personality and ingenuity composed them (or the stupidity of the one who woefully sought to do so, without the requirements to be requisitioned for such a task - publishers could be helpful in terms of experience here!).

But life does not declare itself when it is subjected to such bucolic energies (cf. TMR Ch. 1, p. 32, End-note 2). It manifestly and continually (like the worms in their activities on corpses) yields only more evidence of deterioration. Hurt the furniture with a saw, Johnny, and Grandma will not be pleased! What did you expect ? 'Oh,' says Johnny, 'doesn't the furniture respond when you give it attention ? I saw grandpa playing with it, and thought if I did the same, it would be better. Sorry!'

Irrespective of the possible sincerity or otherwise of Johnny in this case, the fact is that grandpa, in making the erstwhile furniture, was NOT, repeat NOT playing! He was working with skill adapted to the case, with thought and ingenuity, with effort and resource. That is HOW and WHY the resource-filled objects of art were created. It has what it takes; it is made by what it exhibits.

In Mars exhibits, likewise, in the discursive excursions into space, there is the same relentless, restless energy looking where the answer is not found. Thus in Creation, June-August 2002, we see a very interesting specific exhibit. It is this.

It is found in the University of Dayton News, for March 25, 2002, that a geologist researcher is further discrediting claims that Martian meteorite ALH84001 contains evidence of past life on Mars. He does this in a delightfully straightforward way, by showing that such 'remnants' can be manufactured by purely natural means, indeed duplicated!

Heating a synthetic rock to 200 degrees C, we read, then quenching this with water, was a procedure producing structures of 'the same size, same shape, same bevelled edges and same lined-up atoms' as in the meteorite.' Thus a natural collision of Mars could have  generated both the heat and pressures needed. It is therefore not a sign of life, but of mere chemistry without alchemistry,  in matter!

This is merely one of the disclaimers against the original clamant and clamorous Mars claim, and it is interesting in its simplicity, that it tends to reinforce the oft-found evidence of a virtually mutinous outrage style of insistence on earth, in this world's hut, that anything and everything, all but infinitely surpassing the powers of man to make, even with his utmost ingenuity, must be found not to be the result of powers correlative to the functions shown.

This is of course anti-science. In science you look for what IS correlative to a consequence, in terms of a cause, and you do not favour a postulate which excludes what is required, and exudes as consequence, what you look for in cause. The reason is simple: it is unbalanced, does not work, is logically derelict and follows not evidence but desire.

The concept of genomes is similar. Here the hype of newspapers tends to make people think that in some important way the genome is life, that you get another life like the first from the similar genome and so on. We looked at this misconception and misconstruction in News 166 and 153, in detail, but here merely mention the matters. In this case, it is imagined that because the instructions for the construction of the casement for man are similar, that therefore the man will be so. Identical twins can be most different, and the reason is clear. The physiology is not the psychology; the psychology is not the spirituality and the spirituality is not an open door to environment alone, but to God also. God deals  with individuals individually. That is one reason why there either are or COULD be individuals.

Otherwise, they would be mere automata, vainly confused about their status, imagining their decisions matter, when they are programmed; that their errors are wrong, when there is no wrong, only occurrence; that their guilt is real, when it is merely happening; that their thoughts are significant, when they are mere jerks of matter; that their dreams are meaningful, when they are but the festering of disorganised ideas, and that their visions are significant, when they are the delusions fostered by misconception. But are they ? Of course not, for then the theory to this effect would be a mere jerk of matter, and the concept a mere fostered misconception. SINCE this is then its nature, the nature of its validity is zero. You cannot contest when you exempt yourself from all competition.
 

In fact, of course, individuality is a work which has many elements: the physical structure is a basis for its expression, the mental endowment is a potential for its development (and desire and environment alike can alter this greatly, in simple fact), the spiritual relationship to God is its anchor or its debris enabler, and so on. Visions do or do not meet the facts; interpret the realities; find their fulfilment in what happens on all fronts. Relationship to results is fractious and pernicious, or receptive and sensitive: individuals have an almost endless regime of elements, all incorporated in one, all one to the spirit of the man.

In this swift review of what has before been a more major subject, then, we see but one more effort to endow 'nature' with a meaning it does not have, cannot provide, and to assume its forces to be determinative, when they are merely provisional, providing for what is to be done with them, as a 'teen-ager is provided with his father's car, scarcely a determinative gift for the son, though if wild enough, the son may be most determinative for the car! THAT, it is the nature of material things.

We have often seen^*1 that the endeavour for physical, cellular and moral particles which are to be ultimate, declarative of ultimate meaning, is as jejune as the other bashings of 'nature' in an effort to interpret 'her'. The smallness of a particle is not the largesse of its meaning. The isolation of a cell is not the interpretation of its integral plan. The making, the 'creation' of morals is not a function of society, in multiplied instances of delusion on participating and credulous cretans (cf. The Other News 19, SMR pp. 583ff.). Preferability is not confusable with actuality. Goodness is not attributable to statistics. The call of the sublime is not equatable with the sad queuing of the drafted.

What is it like ? First it is like a notorious publisher. He is disgusted with his author. He is fogged, and cannot explain his popularity. HOW COULD people buy such stuff ? What is its appeal ? Wherein lies its meaning ? He is determined, indefatigable, indefectible, inexorable and ineluctable in his proceedings. He is, if we are to make it a just parallel to the foolish preoccupation with 'nature' as source, meaning and ultimate for man, AT LEAST ALL OF THAT! Never will he give up. He will find out. It is part of the mesmerised muddle of his being.

He employs chemists, physicists. The paper on which his author's books are  written (he is careful to give specious reasons to the actual author in order to get, as far as possible,  the very 'original' hand-written script for that writer's works) is subjected to analysis. The pulping factory is found; the forests are investigated. The early growth patterns of the trees are scrupulously examined and reports 5 volumes thick, are given on these topics.

Physicists examine the nuclear ingredients of the sweat they look for on the pages, DNA tests are made to see if during creation there are any signs of degeneration or regeneration or recuperation, or destitution, and psychologists are employed to find out how and what this would mean if it should be found to be so, and why it matters anyway. They are all on contract, and having a good time of it.

The slope of his script is considered, and compared for passages of irenic kind, with those of high dramatic content. Nothing is left undone. Years pass. Eventually, bewildered and impoverished (as man is continually coming to be), the publisher decides on what for him is a novel course. He is inspired, you may say, to follow it. He goes to the address of the writer and ASKS HIM.

As C.S. Lewis shows so well, this is wise precaution. Cambridge's Professor Lewis, a man in the news often enough in his day, found that NEVER did a reviewer make a correct analysis of his ground and situation in writing (cf. SMR p. 859). Assumptions of a personal character did not have the felicity ONCE to be right.

The spirit of man, by which he estimates options, considers cultures, observes bodily distresses or impacts, conceives and surveys estimable responses, adjusts in terms of principles, moves according to divine indexes, examines evidences, demands a reason for faith, and finds faith in accord with reason, but God the summit to which reason pointed like a sign post, is as far from programmatic matter as a bird is from a piece of pitch (cf. It Bubbles ...Ch. 9, Licence for Liberty, Predestination and Freewill).

People, after all, are people with wills, vision, industry and illumination, with liberties and losses of liberties, with equipment and psyches, with or without God, and with or without hope. They are desensitised or resensitised, they are morbid or exultant, radiant and pictures of peace, or anguished veterans of inward scars. This is what becomes of their equipment. They tend to make it so. Their spirits soar or roar, they descend to the pit, they seem in the escalating drafts upward, like gliders soaring. They understand many things in their lives, or nothing. They pass by magnificent opportunities, or take them as effortlessly as a bird appears to take a 6 inch hole in some dense foliage, to soar through at 25 miles per hour!

They overcome bodily defects, or make them. They overcome social defects, or induce them. They overcome the sins of the flesh, or yield to them. Their equipment is their piano; they play it. Many parts of it are not available for optional activities (like inner strings), but some are most available. So it goes, and so lives result.

Now our publisher, having followed the inert domain of 'naturalism', in a figure, comes to the point of finding who WROTE IT, and asks him WHY and thus finds out. Now a man could deceive you, for all that, on purpose. After all, he is a creature of purpose, so that his universe could never even possibly lack it. He himself is to the contrary at once. However God cannot lie as we have seen often enough (cf. SMR Ch. 1, Repent or Perish Ch. 2, Barbs, Arrows and Balms 6 -7), for in a word, it would puncture his consistency, and make him at war with himself, demolishing with a word what He accomplished with His wit, at His own instance, when nothing is denied Him, and He does what He will; so that this would exhibit an internal war, which presupposes a constituted character which is contrary to will, and so on, so that He would not be god, but an image of the mind.

God then TELLS us what is the score in our match. We do not need to use ever so many types of telescope to try to find the score-board, or spend years in linguistic research to seek to find how to interpret the symbols upon it.

In a word, 'nature' is the unwitting and witless butt of witless excursions into the nature of its construction, to find the reason for its composition, or more extravagantly yet, the way in which it made itself, before it was there to do it, or how its inadequacies for propounding things, in fact propounded it, so that it could be there and ready for investigation to find how in profundity it propounded its premises and premisses, before it was there.

'Nature' is not amused. Indeed, it could not be, since it has no mind. It is merely the testimony of mind, like any other book. We do not find in the Sydney Harbour Bridge, a trifle compared with the human body, HOW or WHY it constructed itself. The question would be inane. We find the testimony to the mental prowess, the integral capacities of thought, the conceptual capacities of design, the institutive felicities of expression, in making the vision actual, and so on, of the author, authors or makes and builders, jointly; and if there is more than one, as here there is, we see reflection likewise on their capacity to work as a team.

We do NOT find in this, the DIRECTION they had to build the bridge. A library might have this. We do not find what was the private preference of the architect. Newspapers might have revealed that, or a biography. We look where the knowledge is germane to the topic. We do not need to be geniuses to see the need to align action with ability, ability with implementer, implementer with knowledge of the same, and team-work as an item for separate analysis. We do not look to the bridge for all of this; but as an exhibit of overall CAPACITY in the constructor or construction team, it is a certain evidence. The final vision MAY have come from the COUNCIL, which hired the builder's gifts. In that case, it would be wrong to attribute to the architect personally, the power to conceive that plan; but the power to receive it, certainly would be assured of him. Everything as we well know, has to be found at its relevant command centre, revelation resource, and everything has its contribution at the facade, functionality and reality of what it is.

There is, in short, a certain proportionality, and individuality, a discursive propriety in relating all results to sufficient causes, and construing these in terms of their precise input and impact, not in some listless holiday from reason, in which the precise opposite is posited, and the bridge is to speak for its author, and announce its genesis and ground, as if the engineer's past presence gave a tape recording of his thoughts. It is an exhibit, not a cassette. Wisdom looks, but with a restraint which sees what the bridge CAN and CANNOT provide, and a willingness by research to find the agents, agencies and wisdom resources which were at various times, and in various stages and indeed, possibly the very structures of authority and disposition, involved before any action transpired at the bridge site.

The universe is still requisite of cause (see Causes and SMR Chs. 1 and  3). It does not evaporate logic because of size. Thus the tinny tedium of tireless wastage of funds, spoilage of fun and dereliction of intellect which is now so fashionable, as Nazism's goose-step march and salute were once, but are now seen as ludicrous posturing of the impotent, continues as a tribute to human ineptitude ? No, but more to human obstinacy of unbelief, rigour of inconsistency, prostitution of mind and alienation of spirit from reality, from - that is - its source, God Himself. For the purposes of the architect, consult him. Don't ask the bridge! In simple cases, you may guess, but debonair delusion is always the pit for pride.

That is where the slime comes in. The thing is malodorous, misdirecting humanity to a sort of grubbing greed which does not mind the dirt, and is not discriminating in its direction. It tends to stick to the feet of those in this miry clay, and it leaves it marks all over the world, on the global carpets of wars and flurries, as if it all depended on our wit, our naturalistic wit, where we all got, hope to get or imagine we are getting, as each uneasily eyes the other, and some make bombs of themselves for good measure.

It sinks like a bog surrounded by quicksand. It has abandoned the rock, as did Israel, the cause, the sufficient cause. It blinks at it, winks at it and then dispenses with, by a wit which leaves it so barren of peace, so leery of justice, so wrought in mind, so intimidated in soul (for bullies tend to be intimidated within, by their very superficiality), that the world fills with fears and their ample absorption in wars, with greed, and their excresences aplenty, bestrew the globe emptied of hope, except in vanity, like naturalism. Man ? HIS works toil on this globe, and philosophers, politicians and social sophisticates try to work out what on earth the creature, mankind, is about! With God ? yes, even with man, it is wise to ASK HIM! As to God, He knows... Alas, for many it appears that the risk of finding out allays curiosity to the point of total spiritual stultification.

What is it like ? It is like trusting in the book, as paper, as ink, and examining these things, without once bothering to read it! It is not these ingredients which reveal what is finally necessary; it is He who wrote it.

When however this irrational greed for human control, march for 'victory' which is the most defeated since Napoleon's from Moscow, or Hitler's for that matter, when this is abandoned, and reason proceeds, and the spirit is willing to find the resource of the Maker, and the word of His book (Isaiah 8:20, 34:16-17), which verifies itself empirically, just as it requires itself in validity as we have seen (cf. SMR), then what ?

It is then that the reality of the mind of the Creator, the regality of His Spirit, the humility of His love, the grace of His victory, which He confers on His people (cf. I John 5:4, Romans 8), becomes accessible. To this man will I look, says He, to him who is poor and of a contrite spirit (cf. Matthew 5, in the Sermon on the Mount), and who trembles at My word (Isaiah 66:2). Indeed, when this is given you, already your gaze can discern and your heart is loving the One at whom you look (Isaiah 45:19-25):

" 'Tell and bring forth your case;
Yes, let them take counsel together.
Who has declared this from ancient time?
Who has told it from that time?
Have not I, the Lord?
And there is no other God besides Me,
A just God and a Savior;
There is none besides Me.

“' Look to Me, and be saved,
All you ends of the earth!
For I am God, and there is no other.
I have sworn by Myself;
The word has gone out of My mouth in righteousness,
And shall not return,
That to Me every knee shall bow,
Every tongue shall take an oath.

"One shall say,
‘Surely in the Lord I have righteousness and strength.'
To Him men shall come,
And all shall be ashamed
Who are incensed against Him.
In the Lord all the descendants of Israel
Shall be justified, and shall glory.”

It finds it in rugby stars (and this is not to diminish admiration for their persistence and acrobatics, but awe ? ), its excitement, instead of in the mind that made the stars, it seeks it in glamour, in wealth (often, other people's), in the power of this or that nation state, in majesty of kings (and some kings are good indeed, as kings, but awe ? ), in intellectual capacity (and this helps, but
awe ?), in 'nature' seen in this or that guise, and it is wonderful in its testimony: but as to the
Maker ?

"The ox knows its owner
And the donkey its master's crib:
But Israel does not know,
My people do not consider" - Isaiah 1:3.

What does He say ?

"Hear O heavens, and give ear, O earth!
For the LORD has spoken:
I have nourished and brought up children,
And they have rebelled against Me..." (1:2)

Again as Jeremiah puts it from the Lord:

"Even the stork in the heavens
Knows her appointed times,
And the turtledove, the swift and the swallow
Observe the time of their coming.
But My people do not know the judgment of the LORD" - Jeremiah 8:7.

Thus does man abase himself before what is small, because he will not abase himself before what is infinite in majesty, glorious in praise, doing wonders, filled with love, delighting in mercy, precise in understanding, deep in wisdom, appealing in heart, providing redemption to his perversity and sin (Isaiah 55:6, Micah 7:18ff.). There, in the sum total of sovereignty expressed, in Christ, is the answer, the exclusive answer, but not exclusivistic, whose death on the cross was not high fashion, but the height of ridicule from the cruel, whose love that drove Him was not glamorised in comfortable cushions (Matthew 8:20, Luke 9:58), and whose resurrection was not artful verbal ploy, but a fact as brutally frank as death for an opera singer because she wanted a face-lift and as evident as a strong-man whose staggering weight-lift is raised above his shoulders.

This artist, however, the Lord, covered the cost of folly, and offered not a new face but a new life, restored in the image of Him who created him, by yielding His own, satisfying the scales of justice, making the expressway of fellowship, opening the highway of holiness, without tremor or failure, but with many a sigh, and much depth of anguish, as He performed what makes all other surgical operations seem but the work of children. THEY may save one body for a while; HE has saved all who freely receive Him, for ever. They patch the body; HE provides at the general resurrection (I Cor. 15), a new one.

Theirs last a few years at best; His does not wear, being eternal by the power of God, declared before men, insurmountable, indefeasible, triumphantly predicted a millenium before it was, and still executed before the scurrying, worrying criminals who conspired to kill and were dismayed that no body was to be found in their clutches any more, as foretold in prophet and Christ Himself (II Cor. 5, SRM Ch. 6, Biblical Blessings Ch. 15, *2, SMR pp. 931ff., 937ff. ). Not only so, it all happened on the third day, as carefully prescribed, to give arithmetic for sauce!

AWE is not in vain like the denotations for 'AWFUL'. If you refuse awe at His wonder - one clean, glorious, light filled, radiant with glory, acquiescing not to sin, but to the reception of its sentence that in justice He might pardon; if in stability you reject, rather than through redemption receive, then that is a case of negative awe, profound horror at the supine traded for the sublime.

It is awful, the slime for the glory, the slippage for the security, the invidious for the victorious.

• That, it is to be human. That choice, however, it is to dehumanise.


It is the unnatural perversion of nature. Its fruits are bitter, personally, nationally, internationally, politically, morally, socially; its spirit is squalid; its future is not bleak but divested of light entirely; its destiny is according to its folly.
 
 

ALSO SEE Beauty for Ashes Ch. 3 for an  extensive treatment of the themes of naturalism, the Dawkins attack, theistic evolution, in historical setting.
 
 

*1

For example in:
Ancient Words, Modern Deeds Ch. 9,
Little Things Ch. 5,
Repent or Perish Ch. 7,
A Spiritual Potpourri Chs. 1-9.

*2
See Repent or Perish Ch. 7, A Spiritual Potpourri 1-3.

*3
Cf. TMR 1, p. 21, TMR 6, pp. 131ff.;Spiritual Refreshings ... 13, Wake Up World! ... Ch.  6, pp. 130ff., pp .138ff., and Ch.   7, above.

4. Cf. Little Things Ch. 5, It Bubbles ... Ch. 9, Ancient Words, Modern Deeds Ch. 9, That Magnificent Rock Chs. 1, 7 and 8, A Spiritual Potpourri Chs. 1-9,  Spiritual Refreshings ... Ch. 13, Wake Up World! ... Chs. 4-6 with SMR pp. 422E, Ch. 2 Supplement, and so on.

*5 Here, see Beauty for Ashes, Ch. 3, *13.