Introduction:

POLITICAL EXTRAVAGANZA
IN
STATE DEALINGS WITH THE YOUNG

We come now to an Australian affair: a political extravaganza. It concerns education, indoctrination and the State, now bidding fair in this, and not in this alone, to surpass other organs of harassment; and in this case, to do so with the very words of soporific soothing. Whatever may be the intention, as a case of propaganda, it is assuredly a classic. As an instance of current spoliation, it challenges and even surpasses the worst that might be said of deforestation of the mere surface of the earth. These, the children, are those who walk on it!

Those in other countries may with reasonable confidence expect that their own, or nearby States either do things of this kind openly , or surreptitiously, by now-established custom or in some parallel performance. For them, practical value in this Australian instance will come not least from considering the slithering sophistication of the phrasing, co-operating with the brazen effrontery of the thrust. Both need comparison with logic on the one hand, and need on the other.

As a performance, this S.A. case of oppression is a world leader among "the free". Accordingly, the syndrome will bear study. After all, it represents a supreme disorganising dynamic in the studies of the hostage young, whose deprivation and whose plight are a major concern to us. As in other instances of slavery, where the party afflicted may have little or no choice, it should not be accepted supinely. If our streams are best kept free of pollution, how much more is the state of our young a matter for concern, for pity, and for action.
 
 

	In conjunction with Ch. 8, below, the reader may well consult
	Ch. 1 above, on creation;  and Ch. 7 on various theological and technical scientific aspects (updated 2004 since this volume was first published in 1996, 2nd Edition 1997);
	Worn-Out World and Coming King Ch. 4,
	SMR Chs. 1 and esp. 2,
	Earth Spasm ... Chs.   1 and   7,
	Wake Up World! ... Chs.  4 ,   5, and   6
	Spiritual Refreshings ... Chs.  6, 13 and 16,
	Delusive Drift or Divine Dynamic Ch. 7
	A Spiritual Potpourri Chs. 1-3, 4-9
	Stepping Out for Christ Ch.   9,
	Secular Myths, Sacred Truth Ch. 7
	Calibrating Myths Ch.  1
	Beauty for Ashes Ch. 3;
	Deliverance from Disorientation Ch. 7
	News 84,  94, Ancient Words, Modern Deeds  Ch. 9, Divine Agenda Ch. 7
	and see indexes on relevant topics including creation and evolution. In addition, the composite work of 22 chapters, The gods of naturalism have no go, is a convenient one stop compendium.

Chapter 8
Remodelling or Transforming -

Report on the Political Extravaganza
in the Field of Religion in South Australia
- how to relate to intrusion where angels fear to tread

South Australia has indeed gone all the way, as its much contested 'motto', logo or statement of intent signified. It has done it in one stupendous piece of impudence, as great as any committed by Roman Emperor or medieval tyrant, at the verbal level. Words moreover, have a way of being followed not infrequently by deeds.

Religion has been accorded official specifications by the State! What supernal wisdom, what superlative knowledge has allowed this political coup of the centuries to take place, we do not know. What gurus of fame and name have instructed the Heads of Government into such epochal wonders of wisdom, is not something revealed. The result, however, is revealed. What must be sought in remedy of this disgrace, is similarly exposed.

	(Cf. pp. 198-206, 214-233 and esp. 195-199, 219, 244, 261, 263, 271-272.
	See also The Shadow of a Mighty Rock overall for a general and systematic view, putting this matter in its setting.)

The picture is gloomy, and the cold desolations which have been wrought need a wholly different climate of understanding.
 
 

 

I. THE ELEVENTH COMMANDMENT

1 - The Orientation

A. The Circular to Principals

The assault on the minds and hearts of youth is exposed in a Document, a Circular to Principals of January 1988* which has been contested, rejected, appealed against and condemned by persons mounting to the hundreds of Christians, in this way or that, over all those years. From Ph.D. and from Th.D., from pastor and layman the protest has come. The Government however does not arouse itself from sleep, not alas in this, the sleep of the just.

Issues, as we shall see, involve:

·       a) invasive misdefinition of religion at will.

·       b) intrusive direction in the field of religion in schools.

·       c) unethical directives at the religious level, to school Staff which also impact on students.

·       d) the misuse of authority to direct the minds of children, by fiat.

·       e) the abuse of educational liberty, to establish philosophy desired by the State.

·       f) denigration of the claims of major world religions without established ground, and contrary to grounds presented to it.

·       g) denial of important debating liberties to students in the very field where the authoritarian abuse of political power in the field of education has occurred.

In ESSENCE, there is
 

·       INVASION of academic liberty, by DICTATING what is to be entertained as rational, evidential and artificially creating barriers on the word of God, as if it were KNOWN by some mystic (certainly by no rational) process that God does not deal with facts in His speech. In fact, in the Bible constant appeal is made to them, both Christ and the apostles declaring that they are saying what they see and hear, whilst Isaiah constantly appeals to greater  factual reliability from God than from any source which neglects Him. To assume what you have to prove is not science. To ignore, what in fact is demonstrably true, is neither logical nor just.

·       INVASION of religious realities, without ground, BY MERE AUTHORITY and presumption. Thus we have the principles in view in this application to a particular theory: "While the two views are in competition, they are in a sense not alternatives in that rational debate between the merits of each is unable to be conducted on common ground - one being a scientific theory and the other based on belief."  WHY however is it assumed that the belief relating to ALL religions is non-rational; and why is it also assumed that factuality is foreign to religion ? (See also End-note 2 in Section II, The Situation, below.)
 

·       EVASION of responsibility for so doing, BY FAILING to debate, or even give sound ground for the presumption/assumption procedure, at the very heart of the tax-paying parents' education system. NO rational response has been obtained from 3 Governments on this topic, mere appeal to authority and imposition of it. The latest response appears to have ignored the religious aspect altogether, as if all the States in the land had performed the same blasphemy/belittling/indoctrination/presumption. No evidence has ever been provided for such a claim.

·       What neither can nor does stand in logic, is forced on the schools by legal power and governmental intrusion, making a mockery of the academic approach.

·       What has been debated for millenia, is suddenly produced into a certain thing, namely that it is all unfactual anyway, a frontal assault on Christianity which claims factuality and physical reality in the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ in particular: and what is demonstrably true, is without reason, removed to the shadows of a sovereign State's factual spittoon: NON-FACT. The impudence is only equalled by the effrontery and the irrationality; but both are in danger of being surpassed by the IRONY:

·       EDUCATION was never more affronted than by this cavalier invasion, evasion and definitional fallacy: SAY what it is, and lo, it IS it!

 

B. The Circulation to Children

Amongst the prime real estate in the new Religious Property of the Government, freely legislated/dictating/directing/oppressing in the field of religion are the following philosophical gems. This is the constant propaganda, contra-factual in itself, throughout
this epochally intrusive and maximally contentious document.

 

TEN COERCIVE DICTATES ^*1 THAT PAY TRIBUTE
TO THE WONDERS OF BUREAUCRATIC AUTHORITY:
BUT NOT TO EDUCATION

 

1. Religion is non-factual. Thus (p.1): "While the two views [i.e. creationism and evolutionism] are in competition, they are in a sense not alternatives in that rational debate between the merits of each is unable to be conducted on common ground - one being a scientific theory and the other based on belief."

It is of interest here that not only is this a patronising and authoritarian premise, but the first part of it is illusion and the last part of it is the precise contrary to the truth, as shown both in this Chapter, and in Ch.1 of this work, Chapters 1-3 of The Shadow of a Mighty Rock (SMR) and elsewhere. While there are limits in both cases to verifiability, there is a vast common ground where this crucial feature does apply, with the most fascinating results in stark favour, in terms of scientific method, of creation.
 

2. That however, though a fascinating fact, is less significant than this one: that in a consummately contentious manner, the scientific method of comparison and verification of working capacity is REMOVED FROM THOUGHT, while talk is at the same time in a sort of comic caricature of education, made of this policy: "the school's approach to religion must open up the issues, not close down the discussion" (p.3). It is hard to believe that Dr Goebbels composed conflict more ceremoniously, as Hitler rode to power on the back of arrogant and unverifiable prejudice.

 

3. Religion, we are advised, is likewise concerned with meaning stories, deemed both 'rich' and 'powerful' (p.3), while religion has a language of its own (p.3, para 3), "used to seek to explore meanings and purposes behind the material world".

It is fascinating how often IN THIS FIELD, this is precisely what evolutionists do (cf. SMR pp. 211-213, 226-230, 78-88, 145-150, where 'PATRIARCHAL MOLECULES" are referred to, just as 'Nature' often 'sees the need' or 'devises a solution' or strives to do this or that, in the metaphysical jungle world of evolutionary substitutes for rational thought). In Genesis 1 however, there is an almost science notebook sense of economy of words, brevity of expression and sequence.

Education cannot consist in such perversion of facts, devious tanglings and danglings in the very face of scientific method.

(SMR 145-150 is a good opening section here, in terms of actual scientific method in operation).
Educators and educational units which purvey such things must be willing to confront and to be confronted. But now let us take separately some of the above.
 

4. Religion is in this radically and with all the intensity of apartheid, separated from the realm of the nakedly practical and of the scientific. They never meet, being more averted from each other than any lady of fashion from the downcast eyes of admiring servants.

 

5. It has a special language of its own, which helps the apartheid.

 

6. Endeavours to relate anything any god or God purports to say to what is actually the factual case are vain, misleading, confusing or misled: this is the nature of 'religion' - clearly the subject of a special, vilificatory DEFINITION which ignores both the claims and the performance of what is indubitably religion, in that it derives both from the stated source of God. However, as to 'gods', we learn this: that such beings as may exist in that field of divinity, do not speak in that sober, factual manner.

 

7. Hence students in science do not need to consider, even with the rigour of scientific method, any propositions emanating from, or indeed forwarded by RELIGION.

 

8. RELIGION is all of one kind in this, that it is all subjective, value-oriented, outside the practical, factual. It lives in a world of its own, and that is decidedly not the practical one which we inhabit.

 

9. Religion may be useful; people with it should be respected; but there is never any real question of any actual GOD factually stating what is the case. Whatever we in our wisdom think is right, and whatever such divinities may say is wrong, if there is contest and facts are involved.

 

10. From all this, the position outlined in the Government Circular, whether or not its folly was adequately considered at the time, or since...and the facts of the case, we distil these antichristian consequences.

• To all this, we shall in some detail, attend in later sections. Meanwhile, let regard ...
  
  AN HISTORICAL NOTE WITH CONTEMPORARY CLOUT
   
• SOMETHING SO LIKE THIS DISSIPATIVE AND DEFAMATORY AND INDEED
  GRATUITOUS ASSAULT ON THE CONCEPT OF RELIGION HS HAPPENED BEFORE IN THIS COUNTRY. THERE IS A CERTAIN REPETITIOUS FLAIR TO THIS FLIGHT INTO FANTASY where what appears in this, a political papacy decries the nature of religion, without so much as a suggestion of grounds, and contrary in its combined relativising philosophy and irrational self-absolutism for decree, even to itself.
  
  Thus, it is to be noted that in much the SA Circular to Principals
  is close to identical with the infamous Russell Report which was decades before,
  prepared in Victoria, and similarly denigrated and defamed religion.
  It did so with that same apparent lack of concern
  or even realisation
  about invalid and unattested generalisations,
  which appears in the eminently unscholarly Circular to Principals in this State of SA,
  one which is so characterisable for just that reason.
  
  It is like pointing to a lion and a tiger
  and then generalising that of course all animals are really just like that.
  
  In fact the religious case, as in the illustration,
  on investigation proves to be other, as we see in SMR Chs. 1, 5 and 10 for example,
  and will be shown below.
  
  Since however that Russell Report, a similar signal
  concerning the philosophic substitution
  of an inaccurate religious generality of an unsustainable character for 'religion',
  is so exceedingly similar in tone and perspective to the Circular now in SA
  (like a dinosaur, out of due season), it is good to note that this treatment,
  at least in Ch. 4 of the book containing it
  (the author's Dip.Ed. thesis for Melbourne University,
  written in 1978, given an Honours result for some reason or other),
  is available HERE.

The title of that volume is Lead us Not into Educational Temptation. Its treatment of symbolism and reality is found in Ch. 10, and of an implicit (and rather similar creed to that implicit here) in Ch. 11. For perspective it is of great value in this current case.

Let us however return from our brief historical sojourn to consider the results of our specific findings for the South Australian Circular.

 

C. The Consequences Considered,
Implications Reviewed...

 

1.     That those who think Christ rose physically from the dead because of the Bible, and the factual evidence back of the statement, are simply irrelevant to this nostrum. Here is the supreme example of a religion making a factual statement: of that there can be no doubt. THAT, for one interested as a S.A. Premier reputedly was, in putting the meaning back into Easter, is quite an innovation. It is one which cuts off at once from Christianity as defined in the Bible (Romans 10:9, I Corinthians 15, Luke 24).

 

2.     It is interesting to have a GOVERNMENT put this age-old heresy into practice, and an Education Minister refuse to alter the horrendously heretical document on so being requested by laity and clergy of various denominations. It is still more interesting that the Premier neither gave rational defence of the points made in reasoning on the subject by the Petitioners, nor consented to see them or their representatives. Platitude replaced thought and evidence was ignored.

The eleventh commandment was in operation: that of statuesque Statism.

More interesting yet is the circumstance that this foul, ravening intrusion of the secular mind into religion with the swagger and sway of total ignorance, without rational defence, without religious accuracy and with total misrepresentation of the position of 3 world religions: it has come with scarcely a whimper from Adelaide. Hundreds? yes. Thousands? Apparently not. It is true that this is putting A meaning INTO Easter, but scarcely THE Biblical meaning back into it; except a pagan scenario be in mind.
 

3.     In fact, this viewpoint is merely a common and rather antiquated heresy much in vogue when some of the older civil servants were perhaps at their impressionable years. Indeed, it follows if this tyrannical document were true, and in view of its position in practical affairs, that:

 

4.     God either does not exist or if He does, does not or cannot speak rationally to man in the world of factual events.

 

5.     All religions lack a God who does what the Bible says God does.

 

6.     Jesus Christ as recorded in the Gospels was a hoax, for if anyone ever insisted on factual and practical matters like raising the dead, healing the sick, finding where your funds are going to come from, precise practical and factual fulfilment of detailed prophecies involving sequence, simultaneity and the like: it was He.

 

7.     The Christianity of many of the most basic creeds of Christendom is wrong to the greatest degree.

 

8.     The Government ought to seek to justify this extraordinary bravado; for even though only general propositions are made, they are titanic ones, with extensive consequences for the students whose Principals are bound by these dicta, directions, dictatorial intrusions.

 

9.     Even if some Principals elect to breach these guidelines, the position is outlined with no by-your-leave flexibility. It is given with decisive and self-assured patronage. For those with no word provided in pure reason in their defence, this is simply irrational; and that, it is always dangerous to any people. When it tilts at the God of the Bible as therein revealed, it is infinitely more so.

 

10.  In particular, the Government ought to answer the book, The Shadow of a Mighty Rock (SMR) which in the pages noted to it ^*2, sets forth why the Government view is illogical, unsustainable and unscholarly. It is not just that it cannot stand to reason; it is that it comprises an UNDEFENDED assault on several religions without the slightest actual force of reasoning to the point. No rational reply however has been given, the Minister acknowledging in a Meeting before he took office, that he was not at that time equipped for the purpose.

 

11.  In practice, with its autonomous intrusion into this field, the Government has added the folly of tyrants, refusing to reason, to meet and to change. The Premier in fact noted that the time was not come for a review of these things, some years ago; NOR, EVIDENTLY, HAS IT DONE SO FOR WELL IN EXCESS OF 1000 DAYS. Indeed, now the litany of delay continues. Thus in this vilification of the faith presented in the Bible, which as shown in SMR, has unique credentials in reason before all comers, as in its intrusion into several other faiths, the Government continues.

 

12.  While it is possible, and indeed to be hoped that many Government members are unaware of this unscholarly piece of existential affirmation made so official by so few: it is yet necessary they should bear the blame or take action as the case may require.

 

13.  No Government making such an irrational approach, without rational grounds to defend their position, without willingness to meet those who object, without any step to answer a scholarly presentation to challenge any such extreme as that to which they have committed themselves: no such Government deserves office. It is an ambush of our freedoms, an abuse of power and an intrusion into fields without knowledge, as if all authority and knowledge were theirs. In fact both Labour (who under Mr Bannon perpetrated this outrage) and the Liberal Party (who under Mr Brown have coddled the monster) are responsible.

 

14.  It is the children who are mauled by these dictates. By such means are they deprived not only of education, in which facts and views and grounds are freely considered, but of an enquiring approach useful in science and appropriate to those who would learn. Instead, the dictates of the mighty are put with the permission of the people, in defiance of freedom, sensitivity and spirituality alike, into the schools as if they were slot machines.

 

15.  For no amount of money or power is it wise for any man or woman so to domineer. KNOWLEDGE may be presented with the means of it; positions may be defended and debated; but when in a democracy, power is used to determine the result, not power of mind or spirit, but of pen, it is time for any free people to demand not only action. Also in order are: firstly apology for irresponsible outrage, and then secondly, evidence of a change of heart. To none is apology more due than to the children who become inhabitants of youth camps with absent commanders, drilled in folly, separated from proper enquiry, taught philosophy in the realm of science and confused in practice as to what scientific method really is.

 

16.   A significant issue is involved also in this incredibly audacious intrusion. It is one of a fascinating meeting place of science and religion. If we define religion as a cultural quiddity, a thing of man, then of course the position is of another kind. If however it be a concern of the Creator and His creation, then the creation itself, as the Bible indicates, comes into the forefront.

 

17.  Hence the Circular to Principals' directions adverse to creation by God Almighty through His own power and not as a naturalistic sideshow, become a second front. The trilogy, The Shadow of a Mighty Rock has formally been presented to the Government by the Petitioners, denied access to the Government as a body for many years. It presents reason and scientific. It presents reason and scientific method, as do hundreds of Ph.D.s in related fields, according to world report, for creation and not for a naturalistic substitute.

 

18.  These presentations need answer; and all the positions should be considered in the schools, or none. This is not time for favouritism in which a cultural clique commands obeisance, a bowing of the knee to the cultural gods preferred before whatever fall is coming.

 

19.  The current extreme fibrillation, variability and strife in the field ofnaturalistic evolution should be documented or the field avoided in schools in the power of secular sources. With scholars of the highest repute attacking most of the shibboleths of organic evolution, some with a vehemence of outrage, and charge of deceit, deviousness or failure in scientific method, it is no time for high-minded arrogance.

 

Notes

*1

In Commonwealth terms, it is interesting to note that this without logical doubt constitutes a breach of Section 116 of the Constitution, for it is

the establishment of a religion and the exercise of duress

in the form of requirement that those who do not like it must use extra money to educate their children outside the State system, suffering disadvantage; while the State nevertheless proceeds tyrannically to use their money

to direct (other) children in the canons of the implicit State creed.

That it is surreptitious does nothing to improve it, or adorn it. To be sure, the various Australian States are not simple Commonwealth items; yet they are deeply intertwined with what are - and that at levels both numerous and deep.

If however the State finds it too onerous to keep to such national guidelines, at least the prophets who come in as politicians, should acknowledge to the electors their prophetic pretensions and ... intentions, before submitting themselves for election. A spiritual swagger stick might very properly appear by the polling booths, in such a case; though it would be more swagger than spiritual. See also pp. 284ff. infra. It is time these gratuitous inflictions and afflictions ceased in the mis-nurture of the young, to whom the boast is education, not this ignominy.

* 2

These were such as: pp. 145-159, 179-190, but very much in the trilogy - heavily indexed, and especially on the topic of evolution - is relevant, including especially: pp. 109ff., 162-163, 195-197, 208-211, 226-232, 270-284, 308-310, 482-498, 931ff., 999f., 424ff..

1. It is important to observe that Appendix 1 in That Magnificent Rock conveniently supplies a slightly adapted version of the red-numbered references listed. It concerns this: What the Bible does/does not teach on creation. While it specialises on Genesis, it covers the topic broadly to ensure the earnest reader is left in no doubt on the area of our interest. This is found on pp. 293-338 infra, both negatively and positively.

 

D. Democracy or Demagoguery

1. We who have protested in the name of Jesus Christ, at the abuse of truth

firstly in mischaracterising some 'religion' in ways which cannot be sustained, as is shown in the trilogy noted, and
secondly, generalising in such a way as to caricature and misrepresent to the uttermost,
have no fear of the truth. On the contrary: it is exposure to the evidence and to scientific method, with some restraint in vilifying 'religion' in this flood-gate generality, which is in view. Apart from anything else, as an exercise in logic, this sloppy induction is a deplorable example to students; while the authoritarianism is if anything, worse.
 

2. In short, it is high time in this field that the (former) Education Department avoided any just ground for being thought of as the Department of Miseducation (indeed, as the Function of Propaganda, the Grand Non-Communicator), and came back to earth, this one, where evidence matters.

 

3. If not, then in the next Election, it is necessary for citizens who care for respect for evidence, for reason and justifiable claims made in the name of God Almighty, for freedom of information, precise instruction concerning views and hypotheses and their grounds, and not in the navel concepts of politicians: all fairly and as case requires, critically examined - it is time for them to act. IF NOT, THEN the citizenry itself will be equally responsible for the irresponsible propagandising of minors, in the name of secular education. Oddly enough, it is paid for by taxes from many, subservient to the ideas of a few.

 

4. As a result of this immoderation and inaccuracy, many parents take their children from the schools which follow such courses, preferring the extreme discrimination of having to pay for education twice, once in taxes and once in private school, to the folly of dogmatic indoctrination which never once stands up to reason. In this case, indeed, it sits in its offices, and denies access even when hundreds appeal.

 

This, it is education of a type which it is better not to see, education by word and deed which, though consistent with each other, are not consistent with the facts or the requirements of the future, where accessibility, reality and validity are crucial.
 

5. We shall, after our detailed review, revert to the categories of vital impact here:

a) The Children's Crusade for Liberty and Opportunity.
b) The Project for Parents, to protect them from gross discrimination.
c) The Need for the Nation, if it is to avoid the pit of history.
d) Glory to God, the fundamental feature and focus.

 

 

 

 

E. Initial Notes on the Circular

• Initially:  P.1 - "Creationism and evolutionary theory should not be considered alongside each other" ; "creationism is not to be taught as a valid scientific alternative to the theory of evolution in science or biology subjects and classes."
  
  
• Competition blushes; objectivity makes hurried departure...

It would be apt to quote a direct and flat contradiction of such an approach cited in an intriguing fashion by an eminent biologist. It is contained in an excerpt from The Shadow of a Mighty Rock, p. 162, and in part in The Revised Quote Book, of the Creation Science Foundation:

'In due reaction [to what one can with justice deem boa constrictor propagandising], Dr Colin Patterson, Senior Palaeontologist, British Museum of Natural History, related in his keynote address at the American Museum in 1981, "one morning I woke up and something had happened in the night, and it struck me that I had been working on this stuff for twenty years and there was not one thing I knew about it." '

He then proceeded to put to prestigious bodies... this question, concerning evolution: Can you tell "any one thing which is true ?". In answer, he gained only... silence... and this: "I do know one thing - it ought not to be taught in high school."

What then of South Australia (q.v.) where evolution alone is taught as science at High School! Woe to the land! Woe to the propaganda, woe to the authoritarian, non-science based and dogmatic use of children as refuse bins for wasting theories, carefully preserved from logical hygiene in this thing.
 

1. What then? The thought of validity and observation in the normal manner of scientific method is absent; authority is present. If a religion has creationism then as religion, realistically ... it falls. Apartheid never had it so good.

Presumably it is profitable for some to have this profound discrimination and abortion, dismissing science in favour of philosophy, taught in science to the displacement of the normal competitive considerations of science.
 

2. Introductory page - "Any student exposure to creationism in the school environment ... must be integral to the learning process". But WHAT learning process? That of sound scientific enquiry, or witch-hunting fears in the face of an overwhelming case for creationism in terms of scientific method. If there is some masterful, methodical and logical answer, it seems such a pity it is never heard.

What is heard (see Ch.1 above, Lectures on Creation 1996, and Ch. 2 SMR) is a series of distress signals from people of considerable learning and without a religious background of creationism. The noise is almost deafening; but apparently the Government neither hears, no regards.
 

3. On p.1 of this unhappy document, we find this disavowal of contest on the issue, just as the Director General failed to come when challenged by outstanding U.S. biologist Dr Duane Gish, to debate.

"While the two views are in competition, they are in a sense not alternatives in that rational debate between the merits of each is unable to be conducted on common ground - one being a scientific theory and the other based on belief."
The painfully observable lack of common ground in that statement is reason.

There was certainly no common ground between the debating feet of Dr Gish and the Director General, who notoriously failed to appear, just as the arguments in favour of this propagandising extravaganza have failed to appear when the Minister of Education, then the Shadow Minister, was met in his office by two Ministers of Christ, just as the freedom of students to be educated rather than merely indoctrinated in this field has failed to appear.

What has appeared is oppression.
 

4. There are a few errors in this p.1 statement of the Circular, then. Firstly, rational debate is precisely what creationists throughout America (most recently, Berkeley California Law Professor Phillip Johnson in a swathe of success) have engaged in, and won handsomely time after time. Dr Gish was almost fabled for his thrust and power in overcoming sometimes rather ignorant and pointless efforts against creationism. Books itemising the conduct and consequences of these debates are written.

In fact, some of the world's greatest scientists have been decisive creationists, and their total combined talents and contribution to scientific theory reads almost like an illustrated guide to the history of science.
 

5. This however is merely incidental. The method and the logic are crucial, and as shown in the Lectures on Creation and elsewhere, they do indeed allow only one rational result. However, it is not the hypothesis of developmental evolutionism which, as Professor Hoyle of Cambridge points out, does not reckon with the inability of "natural process" to "generate" the vast "information content of even the simplest living system" (SMR p. 252A).

As Denton notes in his Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, p. 353:

"Whatever the initial source of its appeal, the concept of continuity of nature has always suffered the enormous drawback in that at no time throughout the whole history of Western thought, from the first glimmerings... right up to its latest manifestation in twentieth century Darwinian thought, has it been possible to provide any direct observation or empirical evidence in its support...

The concept of the continuity of nature has existed in the mind of man, never in the facts of nature." (Emphasis added.)
 

6. This naturalistic evolution is merely one of the parade of theories which start in the mind of man, not in the facts, looking for an upward grading self-hood in terms of principles never met, but treated as if they were old friends. It is evidently an exercise in delusion. (See also Mental Chiropractic, above.)

 As Professor W.R. Thompson F.R.S. (SMR p.200) put it :

"To establish the continuity required by theory, historical arguments are invoked, even though historical evidence is lacking."

Professor Fred Hoyle of Cambridge fame, looks for a universe, on a Big Bang model, dead almost at the start, unable to be born on the mesmeric model in vogue; while Jeffreys, speaking in terms of the assured results of modern science, appends the view that the "conclusion in the present state of the subject would be that the [solar] system cannot exist". Natural processes on earth are not relevant to life, says Hoyle. As to the astronomical contribution in modern theory, to the organic myth of evolution, Hoyle adds:

"Why should this be so against expectations which appear soundly based in all other aspects of physical experience."

On that base, there is "predicted inertness" - which is rather different from natural processes in fact set before our eyes. (See The Intelligent Universe, pp. 183-185.) "An affront to reason," says Denton (Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, p. 351), of that maestro of codified data, specifications and orders, the human body, if viewed as irrationally tossed out, though it is subservient to reason.

In such a perspective: For these results, you need an acute sort of visionary manufacturing apparatus enshrined in matter, in order to make the vital templates and encoded constructions, before matter is there: a proposition which is merely flattered by being called paradoxical. Even now that matter is here, alas such creative power lacks the decency to declare itself within it, in order newly to fashion the biological engines and acuities underlying biological life. In terms of evidenced capacities, they simply proceed, generically along their ordained lines, as since they were created.

Matter is dumb apart from orders given. The orderer is needed, the symboliser whose words are contained. Indeed: where is the parent of any hypothetical power, the supplier of such deciduous power-tools, the more sophisticated if they are to create so much, if such intra-material power were to exist ?

With these prescriptions for matter delivered, having inserted law without limit by chance, prescription by servility, symbolic apparatus by inadvertence, with no possible payload as likewise no relevant power... the (shall we say ? - ) 'facility' could start. Start on what? ...

Start on life where only total correlated accomplishment of directive, executive, technical functions could operate successfully, at a given technical level, envisaging the phases that left no trace; on life that the highest human intelligence has never invented, not even with a working model of life's only working language before it... yes , it has but one.

Ah! But there is a solecism. Our eminent but absent designer, law-maker, intelligence is left without a name quite as improperly as without a face and without a trace in the obedient servants called matter, and in biological life! Introductions please: GOD! Immaterial, not at work in creation either of life forms or of matter, no, neither in structure nor in function is this seen:

And He ? He is not to be 'visited' with creation as if it were a sub-unit of maintenance, or told that He IS creating
 

• when the evidence concerning the creation of the universe

o       is this -

• that like the 3 basic laws of physics -
• it is finished,
• over, non-continuous,achieved
• (see Professor Barnes,  infra).

Next we shall be calling the janitor the architect! And granting him a doctorate! Or claiming that legal action for breach of contract, this was the way he built the edifice he conserves!

God has delivered His creation with all its intricate diversities in only one biological language (biochemical code), as in onephysical prescription; just as He has declared His mind to those far more fascinating and profound creations, the minds and spirits of mankind, spirit to spirit, life to derived life, authoritatively and definitively in just one place - as distinct and contradistinct as the human body, which is a mould, pattern and specific: but this, it is the body of His words, the form of sound words, delimited, definitive. (See SMR Ch.1 for that place; SMR pp. 328-333H, 348ff., 31, 71-72, 139, 158-159, 194-197, 264-265, 307, 313-316G, 424-431, 999-1002C, and pp. 1, 141-148 supra re human resources and spirit, with SMR pp. 140-145 re life in its forms.)

Reason demands for matter the immaterial base that it might be, and be possessed of what it does not perform (cf. SMR Chs.1,3,10). He, however, who has demonstrated Himself, not mirage but adequate and necessitated Maker of Nature, so that it might exist in each and every dimension, of its laws so that they might proceed, of its code so that it might order, of its system that it might be deployed, of its synthesis so that it might be correlated, of its commands, that its work might be done as specified and symbolised: He is not mute before the antics of man.

He provides unlimited testing to His own propositions, as we have discussed at length in SMR, where the Bible is logically identified and verified. Meanwhile, His works continue at the level of their institution, deliciously disinclined to create themselves, now as ever; but in the case of our race, creating what (such mini-, derivative) creators were created to create.

Another Professor from Cambridge University (Thorpe, a zoology professor there) has this to say:

"I think it fair to say that all the facile speculations and discussions published during the last 10-15 years explaining the mode of origin of life have been shown to be far too simple-minded and to bearvery little weight. The problem in fact seems as far from solution as it ever was... The origin of even the simplest cell poses a problem hardly less difficult... There is no real clue as to the way in which any of these riddles were solved."

For the references and quotations in this point 6, other than Thompson, see The Origin of Species Revisited, W.R. Bird - extensive citations from these authors appear to this effect in Vol 1, pp. 76-77, 72, 418, 462, 481, 374-5, and these are merely selections from the theme:

What we have for input, fails entirely for any such output.

In other words:-

Nature does not - because it cannot - produce Nature.
The book of life was not written by the book.
 

7. Power and proclivity are required of existence before it can produce; and it is really needful to have these before you produce yourself, in order to be there to do it. Nature producing Nature? ...Neither in power, purpose, principle nor procedure is this seen, may it be formulated, informed with laws, constructed with form, astronomical or genetic, garlanded with mind or articulated with freedom. Nature is insufferably obtuse to such suggestions, unseduced by such irrationalities, and gives a clean pair of heels to such performance criteria. What is required to be instituted, constituted and given existence, is what it has; and it does not have what it takes to supply it. Indeed, in the relevant realms, we have a whole choir of specialists declaring that as to creation in operation, it is not seen and from within what is seen, it cannot be construed.

Hebrews 11:3 said it thousands of years before; Isaiah long before that (40:13-28, 45:12, 44:24); and Genesis before that. (SMR & allied refs., pp. 175-180 infra.)
 
 

8. Continuity is lacking, power is lacking, evidence is lacking: except of one thing, that what this world has is not what it can produce. What is not lacking, is educational oppression. It can produce this.

 

9. Like shark jaws, the laws of Nature clamp like a garotte about the folly that they invented themselves in time or out of it. As shown (cf. Ch.1, Lectures on Creation, pp. 1-22 supra, & pp. 227-230ff. infra), the Bible pre-formulates not only the chief of these laws, but does so with an invariant knowledge that equally asserts ultimate discontinuity, such as so many distressed scientists attest in field after field, as earlier noted.

It did this long ago, it has for long done it, it has never varied its statements; while the knowledge of man, some of which is called science, undergoes its perpetual transformations, inspirations, reversions and restorations. Its statements have the inestimable privilege of meeting all the facts, correlating them on the grand scale, and as it were, watching cavort in keeping to what it says.
 

10. Accordingly, we can, do and must agree therefore with the Circular to Principals that one of the contestants is not really valid or appropriate at all; it is just that they have portentously chosen for will, not logic, and where they choose, the evidence does not choose to remain. That is precisely the danger; and one reason why education should include the facts, not the dictates of intemperate philosophy. It is the other contestant which in fact, aptly, harmoniously and accurately fits. Creationism is tailor-made for the evidence; evolutionism wars on it.

 

11. Unfortunately, the Circular repeats its erratic error on p.1: "Creationism should not be taught as a scientific theory in our schools, either as a replacement for the theory of evolution or as an alternative to it."

 

 

Nor, in passing let us note,  does it rightly rely on caricatures of what some people want to attack, namely creationism, by stating that for the purposes of the Circular, this will be deemed to teach “a belief that plant and animal species as we know them were created de novo…”. Such a gross mischaracterisation arouses at once the query, What then IS the purpose of the Circular ?

To misinform ? One would hope not, but again, claims should match to some extent, actions. Modes of variation within kind have long been a due and lavishly investigated concern of creationists, who find the biblical account of basic kinds to be what is found, and the concept of transmutations, what is not at all to be found, Gould even wondering how one could even imagine them! Let us pass on however, from this gaffe. On this aspect, see below.

It is here that the Circular makes unseemly exposure of still more philosophic prejudice. We read this dictum: "Religious language is used to seek to explore meanings and purposes behind the material world." So 'creative' is this language generic, imagined by the writer(s), that we learn of students worshipping a 'creative presence'.

Creative also are interpreters who bring meaning to the "meaning stories". But surely few are so 'creative' as the writer(s) of this Circular with whom is that superb key by which to generate generalities about religion which, had he/she/they done it in science so freely, would have created a well-earned zero assessment.

It rather reminds one of a separating couple who say that of course there was no factual content in their earlier utterances, which, since they included love, were in substance meaningless. The tongue of truth is not so.
 
 

2 The Situation

 

COMPARISON AND CONTRAST OF RELIGIOUS AND SOME OTHER ASPECTS OF
THE CIRCULAR TO PRINCIPALS (5/1/'88):
AND THE BIBLE
 

Part 1

Preliminary Orientation

A large part of the material below has been presented to the Government, some years ago, and to different parties, both personal and political. Though new references occur, much of it appears as it was presented. Hence some material will closely follow other material given earlier; but not all.

As far as is known, the Circular to Principals January 5, 1988 is available from the DECS Minister or his office.

PART 1 of the presentation comprises certain pages in THE SHADOW OF A MIGHTY ROCK, a work supplied to the Government, pp. 485­498 and 179­197, focussing Bible teaching for purposes of comparison with that of the Circular. These are found in substance on pp. 296-340 infra.

These relate to creation on the one hand, and the philosophic synthesis known as theistic evolution, on the other. Since the challenge involves two major points, that the Circular aggressively assaults Bible teaching, and that this assault is not only scientifically unwarranted but scientifically untenable (as well as logically absurd), this exposition is entirely necessary for any understanding of the Petitioners' desires: any failure to be aware of it represents an ignoring of the Petitioners, something different from denial...
 
 

Part 2

The Circular to Principals:
The Brute Facts
A Mini-Tour of Inspection

The following data relate to the above.

1."Creationism and evolutionary theory should not be considered alongside each other because of the danger of students feeling forced to make a decision between one and the other" ­ p. l of Circular, 3rd. of four marked points.

Thus there is no comparison; the syllabus is to act on ONE basis, one BIAS: the students must be delivered from the instructive art of comparing, and by the supernal profundity of the Department, told not to do so. They must take on trust their single thrust, unable as we shall see, to secure their knowledge even so, sufficiently for debate! Meanwhile, freed from comparison, the students are given material which itself repeatedly assumes what the young must not DECIDE about. If this is not propaganda, the definition may need adjustment; if not philosophy, that term also needs re­definition. The philosophy, unfounded, of the Department and the propaganda are inviolate, untestable.

2. "Creationism is not to be taught as a valid scientific alternative to the theory of evolution in science or biology subjects and classes" ­ p.l, first of the "major points".

Neither approach however is based on observation of the occurrence: yet Biblical creationism does make numerous validated predictions. As Professsor Karl Popper notes, evolution is not a scientific theory as it neither predicts nor is experimentally verified (pp.36­39, Conjectures and Refutations, 1972; The Poverty of Historicism, 1957, pp.l07­8).

Nor indeed does it produce agreement even on retrodiction, as to just HOW what is guessed to have happened, would have happened. The collisions and confusions of experts even to confirm AFTER the 'event', which way it went, is the opposite of science in method! The Bible on the other hand issues the challenge to test the predictions OF GOD, those that are any part of its claim to be the word of God, and hence to be the word of truth on any topic, such as creation, to which it makes address; Isaiah 44:7­8, 48:3­8, 41:17­24.

Each such test produces remarkable verification; each test for evolution produces lack of verification ­ words of excuse, but not verification. It is for this reason that we are getting ever new theories of evolution, their proponents remorselessly and vehemently critical, each of the other.

For further detail on these aspects, see THE SHADOW OF A MIGHTY ROCK (supplied) pp.l02­251. (We would now add: pp. 252A-N, Ch.2 Supplement S1-S34, 315A-316G, 329-332H, 348-349E, 422E-W.)

Ø        As Popper rightly says:

Ø        "Can there be a law of evolution ? ...
I believe the answer to this question must be 'No' " ­
(The Poverty of Historicism, loc.cit.).

Ø        What a law! which cannot tell which way things are to go, or even provide grounds for agreement on much of what is 'here', as to how or when it happened, what steps, what order indeed; and to quote Popper again, this time from his work Logic and Scientific Method, 1959, p.267:

Ø        "Neither Darwin nor any Darwinist has so far given an actual causal explanation of the adaptive evolution of any single organism or any single organ."

This is from an evolutionist; and micro­biologist Dr Michael Denton in his renowned ­ Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (1985) goes further, dissecting each segment of the theory to reach the profound negative conclusion that gradualism is illusory metaphysics (p. 358), and from technical grounds of recent findings to advise this:

• To those who still dogmatically advocate that all this new reality is the result of pure chance one can only reply, like Alice, incredulous In the face or the contradictory logic of the Red Queen: Alice laughed. "There is no use trying," she said. "One can't believe impossible things." "I dare say you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was your age I did it for half an hour a day. Why sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

 

Fred Hoyle, who served as Professor of Astronomy at Cambridge, is of course of precisely the same view, and puts it more stringently. Denton adds:

• Whatever the initial source of its appeal, the concept of continuity of nature has always suffered the enormous drawback in that at no time throughout the whole history of Western thought, from the first glimmerings... right up to its latest manifestation in twentieth century Darwinian thought, has it been possible to provide any direct observation or empirical evidence in its support... the concept of the continuity of nature has existed in the mind of man, never in the facts of nature. (This is from p.353, op.cit. ...It should be noted that Denton makes no Christian profession.)

Continuity which lacks laws, verification, testable formulation, correlative laws, (see later) contrary to known laws, even the 3 greatest in science, is of course what all the talk is about; its assumption against the verified Biblical view is the folly protested; and the authoritarian insistence is the torture to youth condemned here.

Just because they are young, this is no reason why they should be treated like mental garbage, receiving unsolicited the mental throw-aways of a confused generation, dictatorially thrust into their systems by opining bureaucrats who outlaw on the premises, informed, free and open debate. And this exclusion? It is AT LEAST during formal instruction; but it does not always stop there. What cannot be rationally considered in time when one is in the 'teens at high school, surely cannot be rationally taught there (Circular, end p.3, para 1 page 4).

A people which tolerates such things, may find before long that they will have much more to tolerate in overweening arrogance taught in humanistic pride (virtual or actual), achieved by inhumane direction and propagated like a nurtured plague in the hearts of the young. Is it wonder that children taught such things, and in such a way, sometimes behave as if they were true, and follow such ways. Like the rest of these theories, they do not work in practice; any more than they stand in theory. Folly has that way to it.

3. Biblical teaching in this Circular to Principals, is not merely repeatedly removed from relevance to the actual power and laws whereby Nature does in fact observably work. That (actually, this would be true of evolutionary theory, rigorously, and it is mistakenly and contra­factually assumed of the Bible) is not all! This sleight of mind also affects the relationship to Christ. HE therefore, who taught otherwise, as we saw, is made a poetic symbol or rhapsodic or at any rate bypassable figure as far as Nature is concerned, the Nature (Colossians 1, John 8:58) which He claimed to create! Yet more than this is in this gratuitous document, this philosophic try­on, bruising the minds of minors at the instance of the 'Education' Department.

4. On p.3, a mini lecture­of­sorts in theology is presented. (State­establishment of religion parades: an unpleasant concept!)^*1 We find that this religious beast, man, loved to tell "meaning"^*2 stories ­ rather like "poetry". From what might have the appearance of rather profound knowledge, we learn ­ albeit without reason granted, for it is apparently irrelevant to the whole presentation ­ that Genesis on creation is rather "akin to the language of poetry" (p.3) ­ in that it is in that class of things that people of religious bent sometimes make.

But God ? Well now, it is assumed that the work, the book, is not at His mouth. Quite an assumption, and one impossible to establish factually; while the fact that it IS at His mouth, is readily validatable, as shown in The Shadow of a Mighty Rock! We, however, are not seeking to have these things thrust in secular schools into the maws of manhandled or personhandled children; but open to rational investigation. On the other hand, the negative read-out graciously supplied with the Government Circular is provided without ground given, or debate permitted.

Is there no shame!

Such knowledge is too wonderful. One learns that they 'develop', these religious things (same generalisation ­ the breach of this logical principle in this document is perhaps a world record), "to help explore the religious significance of the world". Relative to the Bible, in the last century or so such views, quite apart from the incapacity of relativity to get past relativity to the truth (e.g. for relatively, how COULD you know relativism to be absolutely true!) have received a fearful rebuke from archeology, as well as from logic.

Ebla with its 3­4 millenia old advanced civilisation, in stark kinship with the culture evident in early Genesis civilisation, is only one such rebuff to the concept of a slow progress to the times of Moses ­ a concept contrary to the complexity and sophistication of Leviticus for example. From this as only one of varied examples, we find in fact, THOUSANDS of years BEFORE this Biblical time, such complexity NOW ARCHEOLOGICALLY SHOWN to have been present in the world, together with monotheistic testimony. Writers like K.A. Kitchen, of the University of Liverpool, in his Ancient Orient and Old Testament (1966) have shown in depth how artificial was the divorce of the Old Testament word from the Middle East civilisation to which it related.

However, this is not a work on Christian apologetics (see The Shadow of a Mighty Rock, SMR, which is). We are merely noting the blithely blasphemous assumptions made without ground in a State document, arrogating religious authority and pontificating on things far beyond it in science. This ? It is the notorious Circular to Principals of schools which minister among other things, to Christians.

Of particular interest is the implicit assault on the Lord Jesus Christ ... 'detected' by COMPARING THIS gratuitous, irrational and factually unsupported teaching with HIS (e.g. Matthew 5:17­19, 19:1ff.), and with the Isaianic challenge of Isaiah 48:1­11.

5. In some way, wholly unexplained in the Circular, Genesis for example is to help (thus tenderly treated by the Department) ... students see "the interconnected web of species" with "greater reverence". Perhaps they should worship them, then, thereby breaking one of the 10 commandments, become reverential Nature­worshippers ? Nor is the situation improved when we realise that the context of these commandments incorporates clear, concise and incisive statements concerning the divine fact, mode and monergism of creation.

It was, as a matter of fact, Jesus Christ who said (John 5:47), when speaking of Moses:

• "But if you will not believe his writings,
  how will you believe my words ?"

 

We are not, remember, HERE talking about the understanding of Genesis or Exodus, but of divergence between the view Christ took of these writings and that of the Department. In fact, what was by Him presented to view is in precise accord with all known scientific law, all observation; while any evolutionary gradualism is so wholly contrary to the same that anguished scholars continue to surface.

Active in such a category as this, have been or are: Goldschmidt, Denton, Nilsson, Gould, Schützenberger, Hoyle, Grassé - past­President of the French Academy of Sciences, Løvtrup, and appalled academic lawyers, like Phillip E. Johnson, conspicuous for much enjoyed campus campaigning in debate with noted biologists. (See his Reason in the Balance, and Darwin on Trial.)

Such scholars as these with very considerable force, and of course in this, with enormous ground, negatively relate the claims of the continuity theory to the claims of scientific method and logic! At the factual level, creationists long the critics of organic pretensions, whether people of the highest academic calibre or of different pursuits, in this regard, merely join with them...

In view then of the stated desire of the authors of the Circular to Principals to prevent students having to 'decide', is it not here strangely inconsistent for them that THE AUTHORS DECIDE FOR THE STUDENTS (as if they were, without the works or the words, the Jesus Christs of the twentieth century), by using grossly unbalanced views as A NORM for Principals, in the practice of their profession!

But then, with such 'sensitivity' for students, verbally speaking, they also DECIDE for students what they are to get in order 'not' to decide, suppressing screeds of scientific material in the process, and determining the ACCEPTABLE PERSPECTIVE whether indeed in science or elsewhere, on CHOSEN assumptions in the field of creation­evolution, theology and religion.

Consistency can, in some circumstances, be a virtue; but all we need say here is that there is revealed a certain consistency in the Circular in its metaphysical negativity, religious presumption, and plenary­inspirationism^*3, accorded ... to itself! In this respect, it seems to possess a certain narcissistic aura.

But why! the answer comes: it is through no reason of logic, evidence, observation or scientific method. Its only basis is authority, mere authority, including this or that chosen religious authority, and not including the case of the Queensland government, these many years, for reasons perhaps best known to the authors. It opted for education! (A review Statement of the Queensland Minister of Education in 1989, is available or enclosed. For more detail in this item, see ^*5 infra.)

6. We also learn from p.3 of the Circular that the approach of the Department is to help students "appreciate the reverence of Australian Christians" for one thing, towards what it sees fit to call the "Genesis stories about creation". One would rather however have thought that this highly imaginative idea of organic evolution which no one has ever made to work or observed (despite the incredible credulity of the 5UV announcer interviewing one of us, who thought he could call on the University to SHOW it!): an idea which is thus consistently and unblushingly exempt from any laboratory appearance, would tend to do one of two things. It would be likely either

i) to create ridicule for, or
ii) to gain it from what flatly contradicts it.

This contradiction is provided by the Bible, in clear and historically articulated statement, such as is found at length in Romans 5, in Genesis, Exodus, l Timothy 2, Matthew 19, Colossians 1, Revelation 4 and so on: but we have in SECTION l already covered this in detail. It is this fact which makes the responses numerically listed above, all the more likely.

This Biblical statement - call it A1, unlike the case with evolution, assigns
a clear and consistent cause, God, for the operations that occurred which set
up the tableau, the situation which science finds, and notes in its Law of Conservation of Mass and Energy and Second Law of Thermodynamics... observational findings in precise accord with the Biblical record: What is, in the sense of the realm of physical existence, has been placed and that is that; what is, is deteriorating, and we observe the process. (Cf. pp. 329-332G, The Shadow of a Mighty Rock, as noted.)

This statement in view, A1 then, not only assigns the Biblical cause, the creative act of God, but it notifies us that it has ceased (cf. Hebrews 11:1ff.), the creation of the universe has ceased. In fact, it does not occur ­ and this, then, unlike evolution, is the thing which is in practice observable to be so, formulated in scientific law. It could have been otherwise; but it is not. Science takes note of what is.

It is time the Department in this field, returned to what is, and got on with the
business of showing students the way it behaves; then the peremptory priesthood of the Department would cease, then the churches and their children would be exempted from this mental molestation, performed with tax funds provided in part, by those who accept the clear statements of the Biblical record. In this connection, it is of interest that quite recently, a large group in the First Year Medical students in a Melbourne­based University affirmed creation. The manipulative, intrusive behaviour of amateur philosophers who happen to be scientists, should cease. Science should resume... even in Science Classes: unless this is indeed to be Alice through the Looking Glass; but then, the story is fun, the reality is folly.

7. More marvels follow. Students ­ basking in the glorious mini­gospel of magic that is organic evolution (one that never operates however, having no visible power, unlike the gospel of Christ and the word of God) are said to have something to gain. What is it? It is said that they will gain ­ from the world­view of this sophisticated mystery of evolution and its religious adjunct, the how­to kit on religion ­ (p.3, pare 6), "a greater understanding of the power of religious belief to motivate people".

This implies that the Bible is basically irrelevant in the fact field (a discovery seemingly made by prejudice with no assigned grounds given), or is systematically so ...and that it is quite wonderful the way people can be stirred up by such poetry. After all, it was said earlier on p.4 of this intrepid document ("courageous" as Sir Humphrey might call it) that "religious language is used to seek to explore meanings and purposes behind the material world" and this was to explain the 'wholly other' character of the concepts of creation and evolution. They could not compete! Such was the nature of the language.

Now then, if this is the nature of the very language of religion, are we justified in assuming the Department is merely following this valueless generalisation, by deploying it thus in creation ? thus dispensing with data by definition!

Small wonder therefore the factual debate is never allowed to take place, and that the Education Department did not accept the challenge, pick up the gauntlet for such a DEBATE from a world renowned doctoral debater, after the Circular first codified the Government's prejudice. It is fundamentally dishonest, this nursing of a mirage, ignorant dispensing with the authority of the Bible to declare what it covers as the truth, while evading the issue. Where is the Government official who has accepted debate in this field?

No, more! the students MUST avoid its reality in School here, just as teachers must EVADE it in Classes, and the Education Department DID evade challenge to debate at Flinders University. Such oblivion to the realities of test, let alone in the name of science! cannot be commended.

	In fact (see SMR, Chs. 2 and 10, and in particular pp. l45 ­173, 330, 931­939), in terms of SCIENTIFIC METHOD, the evolutionary theory is dismissed and the Bible is starkly verified. But if the government does not acknowledge the book, if the Department does not debate the cause, if relevant correspondence is not answered, if challenges are not met, then
	the Repressive Society continues. Rational challenge is dismissed: authoritative fiction is entered.
	A sphinx-­like 'wisdom' stares serenely, undisturbed
	by facts

and reality STILL UNMET,

from a Department
seemingly oblivious of the data in front of it.

 

Patronising quasi­philosophy is talking down to religion. It does so, to change the image slightly, from the abstracted heights gained by standing on the debris of a theory (organic evolution) in disastrous conflict with the growing body of technical knowledge from subjects as diverse as molecular biology and mathematics; and the former of these fields, with its new data, exacerbates the disaster for the evolutionary theory ­ that grows in the latter as it grows in other fields. Michael Denton, molecular biologist but not a creationist, covers rather well the numerous interfaces that will not match between gradualistic evolutionary theory and the facts. He does this in his 1985 work: EVOLUTION: A THEORY IN CRISIS.

The cumulative effect of his review of new and old areas ­ in the light of new
development is TOTAL REJECTION of chance, natural selection and gradualism.

Of interest is a final, candid evolutionary reflection, after profound detail (p.358)!

• "One might have expected a theory of such cardinal importance; a theory that literally changed the world, would have been something more than metaphysics, something more than a myth."
   

Similarly, Professor Søren Løvtrup in his work, Darwinism: The Refutation of a Myth, marvels (pp.351­352):

• "I have already shown there are a considerable number of facts which do not fit the theory, adding:

 

·       "Neither in Nature nor under experimental conditions have any substantial effects ever been obtained through systematic micromutations."

·       Then ? "Only one possibility remains, the Darwinian theory of natural selection, whether or not coupled with Mendelism, is false". And the result of that, in the current circumstances, according to Lövtrup: "So why his it not been abandoned", this theory ? It is because they "refused to accept falsifying evidence".

·       There is an almost Biblical ring to the denunciation coming for slow wits and traditionalistic obtuseness, from this eminent scientist.

Thus here a Professor Hoyle of Cambridge, there a Dr Stephen Gould of international bioscientific fame, denounce gradualism, whether with the chance concept added or not.

Indeed, a fascinating if amusing bevy of new sources of now INSTANTANEOUS CREATION is sought; none of which however ULTIMATELY meet the case, as the Wistar international Conference of world experts in mathematics and bioscience indicated, in affirming that the very form for any intellectually viable theory back of coded language in cells, and the advancing stages of creation orders, does not exist (that is, without God).

These men were not creationists, but they admitted, now here, now there, the obvious facts.

Let us revert to Denton, who would have hoped, one remembers, that such an evolutionary theory of such "cardinal importance" would have been founded on "something more than a myth". He is not alone in marvelling, amongst numerous scientists. How long before the arm of Government dealing with education returns then to education, in this sphere, and stops its delusive indoctrination; a tyranny substituting for truth...AN ARBITRARY ARBITRATION BY AUTHORITY!

One would then certainly, and with good reason, have thought that such a theory was not science. Denton calls it metaphysics, quite accurately. This theory neither starts nor finishes where science should, nor does it operate as science must.

One might add indeed, despite what seems a Departmental misconception in the matter, that ONE failure to be verified by proper test, this is ENOUGH to stop or INVALIDATE any theory, as it stands, in science. THIS, scientific method requires. NOTHING may be claimed which is countered by non­verification.

A little rigour does no harm at all; and it is our contention that to MEET THE TEST of science in determining what should be taught in science, is eminently fair. But then, we hear, and this from the Premier, that the Minister, who as Shadow Minister commissioned a partial re­writing of the religiously abusive Circular to Principals, does not have a current schedule for the review of this Circular. How singularly unfortunate, for the reputation of the Government! We continue to hope better things of it.

In science, one has to be VERY selective. Here however the theory is contradicted or unfulfilled almost routinely, and flamboyantly as Gould shows, in the Cambrian area of major and massive eruption of law and higher life forms, and as Denton shows: the non-verification is pervasive and masterful. How many 'selections' adverse to the retention of the theory therefore are needed when one suffices! Worse, this mess is FORCED remorselessly, and apparently pitilessly down the throats of students as the sole available area for consideration, when...

WHAT IN NOTHING FAILS TO BE VERIFIED IS CASUALLY CAST AWAY FROM THE SCIENCE CLASSROOM, AND THEN, AS IF INSULT MUST BE ADDED TO INJURY, CHARACTERISED AS NOT EVEN RELEVANT TO SCIENCE.

Is there then no shame ? none at all!

 

8. We learn in the Circular to Principals at the top of p.4, that students couldn't "possibly" gain sufficient information to wage "in depth debate".

This appears a masterpiece of propaganda, however unrealised, and a cloud cover obscuring reality.

IF in fact this were so, then obviously, if education rather than indoctrination is involved, NO presentation should be made in the field of controversy. Selective school presentation, in THAT case, would be propaganda better controlled, the more corruptive and the more indefensible, an assault on minors, a ridiculing of The U.N. Convention on Child Rights.

Selective school presentation, in THAT case, would be

• propaganda which being better controlled, is the more grossly corruptive and the more insidiously indefensible,
• an assault on minors,
• a ridiculing of The U.N. Convention on Child Rights.

 

To use the delusive seeming pretence that evolution is a scientific
theory when no ONE of its current theories developed to meet constant shortcomings,
can either

 

	a) serve as a BASE TO PREDICT,
	b) BE VERIFIED, or
	c) EVEN MATCH known scientific laws

 

(see esp. SMR, p.330 ; & pp. 225, 227-229 infra, and hear noted U.S. Physics Professor Barnes):

this is to foster a myth unworthy of serious thought.

Its vile and violent overtones and undertones in the ludicrously irrelevant 'natural selection' (which Professor Søren Løvtrup exposes, like Paris Mathematics Professor, Marcel Schützenberger, as being wholly unworkable for the ARRIVAL of the fittest, which is the issue in hand, that is to say - origins... ): these continue, with State support, to surpass the TV violence.

Thus they teach young minds which then the State must pay to ... rehabilitate when they 'do their thing'. This teaching is merely part of the warping; but it is no insubstantial part. Recently psychiatrists have revised their opinion in a major meeting, admitting TV violence DOES adversely affect the minds of the young; and this, the State's myth, adds to it, by day, what TV can contribute by night.

Was it not Chancellor Malcolm Muggeridge's comment, one not then without some reason, that 'the theory of evolution ... will be one of the great jokes in the history books of the future. Posterity will marvel that ... an hypothesis could be accepted with the incredible credulity that it has' (Pascal Lectures, University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada).

It is indeed not the theory of evolution which is operative; it is the THEORIES of evolution, one and all critically attacked at the highest scientific level, which are competing in an uneasy inadequacy ­ none either working as a scientific theory must, or containing an even intelligible working principle based on reality ­ a point not lost on either Professor Karl Popper^*4 eminent expert from the University of London, on scientific method, or on the Wistar Institute Symposium contributors, eminent, international academics, from M.I.T. and the University of Paris (mathematics professor).

It is, after all, HIGH TIME, the South Australian slavery of the minds of youth, dedicatedly if ignorantly performed in these areas despite long years of protest from the Petitioners, was ... REVIEWED. The truth would be quite an adequate basis for revision; all of it.

What then ? This extensive maze of evolutionary failure is to be given the pretence that it is scientific while the utterly verified statements of the Bible are rejected or placed in the suspense account of poetry, myth or legend, exotically, arbitrarily and ignorantly, DESPITE its lively, detailed, factual challenges to its accusers, and paleobiological, archeological, methodological (scientific), logical verifications which cannot be silenced!

THIS, then, it is revelation: of what ? It shows the myth of evolutionary magic, replacing citable sufficient cause, ex gratia being given the post of a scientific theory (myth being a theoretical idea with CONSEQUENCES but no aptly formulated CAUSES to offer...): is a powerful one! It gives, to use the language of the Circular, insight into what motivates Bible assaulting forces (SMR pp. 179ff. et al., as cited). Why, look what it has done to the Education Department ... The motivation is clearly intense, for despite the evidence, the resistance is prolonged, unreasoned and constant!

This myth of evolution helps us to understand, perhaps, something of people's motivation, then; and indeed, it reminds one, this myth and its setting in the Establishment, of the reaction to Christ Himself, as noted in the parable, long ago: "We will not have this man to reign over us!" Will is a notable thing! Whatever the intention, however, the Bible is departed from ­ in the face of the evidence: something of no mean import (John 7:17) in the end, using the framework of the Bible itself. (Cf. SMR, pp. 179ff., et al.)

Actually, one must stress that if it were true that students couldn't gain enough knowledge to wage significant debate in this area of evolution, then neither have they sufficient critical acumen to resist indoctrination (something contrary to observation). Are then creationists' children to be taught enough elsewhere, to meet the flawed defence of this evolutionary hypothesis, against their equals at school; while the schools themselves, forsaking their educative role, pit against them not only their peers, but verse teachers, enjoying much longer educative periods! Is this folly to be while the LAW forbids them to reply to the LOGICAL point, either in Science or elsewhere!

Is Belsen worse in its fundamental contempt for the reality of man with his discursive spirit: even if this be mental, moral and spiritual, rather than entirely physical ? And is it not at all physical, when the unhallowed sound waves impinge on the disgusted ears of State-fed indoctrinees! - perhaps in many cases marvelling at the intellectual languor which results from the mesmeric force of unnatural, irrational, unsupported, unverified and dysfunctional naturalism.

Is it not enough that the disproportion of age and education apply against the children of creationists, many of them creationists likewise, older teacher to younger student, in this unfair and morally vitiated onslaught! Must LAW act to protect ... what ? The truth ? Is it so vulnerable that the age difference alone is not enough: or are we not then talking of something very different, which the Wistar Professors deemed intellectually indefensible on current known bases!

Not even the grossly unjust MONOPOLY given evolution, in official TAX­PAYER funded time, year by wearied year, in the onesided materials so often presented, appears to provide enough for the defence of evolution. Law brutalises opportunities, supplants truth!

9. Indeed (p.5 of the Circular), Creation literature itself is to be kept... "sensibly" ... in the Principals Office! This statement may or may not be negotiated by some, out of the original circular; but its initial presence in it says more than enough. To comment further would seem wholly superfluous!

If now young evolutionists, immersed in the stuff for YEARS by a constant bombardment of authoritarian propaganda­pushing philosophy misnamed science, attractive to many, cannot be competent to debate: what then ? Then they do not understand enough to organise it in their minds, review and appreciate it, it would seem. Then what ?

Then the teaching is beyond ... on this basis... beyond their level of comprehension likewise.

Is this good ? Is this normal ? Is this rational as a policy ? For when end then ? That of leaning ? and
if not, which ? To think as you are taught by philosophic traditions, with acute religious consequences ? To follow your culture ­ sorry, part of your culture: the one that is dominant in schools ?

Is this then the aim ? Whatever the aim, the method fits such an aim with impressive precision. Perhaps the mice which may be in the Principal's Office would be better off. They would have more freedom.

If the Liberal Party does not favour freedom, which does, one might ask as one surveys its protestations? If it does, it is time that it be exercised, not only by the Education Department, but by Principals and teachers and scholars; that information be made available without prejudice, matters be discussed without miserable preconceptions which cannot stand up to intellectual debate, being REQUIRED before commencement.. is made.

It is indeed true that this presentation is being made in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ of the Bible; but it is no less true that it is being made

• in terms of logic,
• scientific method,
• freedom, its due exercise,
• the abolition of anti­intellectual discrimination
• as also of the misrepresentation of Christianity; of truth.

It is true that the Lord Jesus Christ is the master of men, as well as of millstones; but it is not involuntary submission which we here seek, either to religion or to irreligion: it is truth.

We are entirely confident that nothing could better serve the cause of Christ, who, not mistakenly, we affirm, called Himself, the Truth. That Magnificent Rock needs no assistance. It is fitting however that it be not obscured with meaningless fog, mechanically induced.

 
  Before we proceed, it may be helpful to some readers to look at further analyses, records and exposés concerning naturalism, evolutionism, and further attestations concerning creation; and such may be found at such areas of this site as:

Worn-Out World and Coming King Ch. 4

That Magnificent Rock, Ch. 1, Ch. 7, on dating Ch. 7 (special site)

A Spiritual Potpourri Ch. 4

SMR Ch. 2

Earth Spasm ... Ch. 7

Secular Myths and Sacred Truth Ch. 7, Ch. 1

Stepping Out for Christ Ch. 9

Wake Up World! Your Creator is Coming Chs. 4, 5 and 6

Spiritual Refreshings Chs. 13, 16

Ancient Words, Modern Deeds Ch. 9

Repent or Perish Ch. 7

 

and of course in the extensive twofold Index , touching topics such as creation, evolution, naturalism and monism.

 

What Then ?

_{What we are asking for is this:}

_{Free and honourable usage of all the data: scientific method, logic and open debate;}

_{or else the entire removal of any teaching in the field in view.}

_{It is an honourable option and we should like to see it honourably exercised ...}

There is much that is beautiful in moderation, information and composure, which considers the realities and not the cultural compulsions. Movement to these ends is imperative if the State of S.A. is to cease despoiling its young human resource, which it did not, after all, create, but rather abuses in these areas.
 

_{Let the reader ponder the Queensland Government letter on the topic}^*5_:

_{it has strong parallels with our own presentation, making the work of the State of S.A. to the point, seem as indoctrinative as it is.}
 
 

ENDNOTES FOR PARTS 1-2:

 

*1A It is suggested that the following example of didactic peril for children may be put into a separate window, and thus consulted readily as the criticism and exposure of its multi-faceted errors proceeds.

For reference in the exposure of the errors of this most presumptuous and ill-conceived document,
it is presented below. It would be difficult to find a better example
for the study of the principles of propaganda,
than appears in the criticism of its invasive pre-occupations
with irrational philosophy,
made mandatory for children.

 

 

EDUCATION DEPARTMENT

SOUTH AUSTRALIA

5 January 1988

CIRCULAR TO PRINCIPALS OF SCHOOLS

CREATIONISM AND THE SCHOOL CURRICULUM

From time to time principals of schools are expected to deal with the issue  of creationism as it impinges on the school curriculum.

In certain instances schools are sought as venues for public meetings on creationism. In others, permission is sought for creationist- literature to be retained on school premises or for students to be addressed by a visiting speaker on the topic of creationism. Officers within the Education Department, including principals, are urged on various occasions to provide equal time for the teaching of creationist  theory alongside evolutionary theory.

The attached statement represents the Education Department's position on the place of creationism in schools. It provides guidance to principals on how to act in various situations which can arise.

The statement comprises six major sections:

A. Evolution, Creationism, and Education

B. The Place of Creationism in the Curriculum of SA Government Schools.

C. Creationism and the Teaching of Science.

D. Creationism and the Teaching of Religion Studies and social Studies,

E . Creationism and the Treatment of Contentious Issues.

F. The Entry into Schools of Creationist Information.

The major points of advice can be summarised as follows:

o    creationism is not to be taught as a valid scientific alternative to the theory of evolution in science or biology subjects and classes;

o    various religious views and beliefs regarding the origins of  the planet and its variety of living things may be discussed, but not taught or imposed as fact in order to make students conform to one belief;

       o creationism and evolutionary theory should not be considered alongside each other because of the danger of students feeling forced to make a decision between one and the other;

       o any student exposure to creationism in the school environment, whether through the agency  of  the teacher or visiting speakers or literature, must be integral to the learning process, not divorced from it or superimposed on it.

I suggest you familiarise staff with the document and retain it for future  reference and guidance.

 

(Signed)

J.R. Steinle

DIRECTOR GENERAL OF EDUCATION

 

 

PAGE  1

CREATIONISM  AND THE SCHOOL CURRICULUM

 

A.  EVOLUTION, CREATIONISM AND EDUCATION

 For the purpose of this statement, creatlonism is characterised by a belief in the divine creation of living things; a belief that plant and animal species as we know them were created de novo rather then evolving from simpler species. While not of itself a religion, the creation movement has its roots in religious beliefs, in particular in the belief that the description of the origins of life on earth contained in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible is literally true.

 For years there has been contention between this view of the origin of species and the theory of evolution. While the two views are in competition, they are in a sense not alternatives In that rational debate between the merits of each is unable to be conducted on common ground - one being a scientific theory and the other based on belief.

Almost as contentious as the issue of which Is "right" is the Issue of the place of creationism in the school curriculum. On the one hand, creationism is given by law, equal time to that given to teaching of evolution in certain schools in the United States of America. On the other, the Sydney Catholic Education office has notified its teachers of the reasons why creationism should not be taught in Catholic schools. The New South Wales Department of Education has issued a memorandum to principals entitled "Evolution and Creationism in the Teaching of Science". In short, it directs its schools not to teach creationism as a scientific theory in science subjects or courses.

 

B. THE PLACE OF CREATIONISM
IN THE CURRICULUM OF SA GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS

 Individuals in our society are free to hold their own religious beliefs. Teachers therefore have a responsibility to be as objective as possible, to avoid distortion of discussion and to respect the rights of students and parents to hold particular religious beliefs. Accordingly, teachers should not attempt to prescribe student beliefs; nor should they consciously, create Irreconcilable conflict between the curriculum and student beliefs.

Nevertheless an educated society, in Its search for truth, tends to value knowledge gained through accepted and tested methods and procedures more highly then unquestioning belief. Teachers would wish to reflect that value in their classroom practice.

These two principles have guided the development of the following position that schools are asked to adopt with regard to the place of creationism in the school curriculum.

 

C. CREATIONISH AND THE TEACHING OF SCIENCE

Creationism. should not be taught as a scientific theory In our schools, either as a replacement for the theory of evolution or an alternative to it. 

 

PAGE 2

o   Creationism is riot accepted by the vast majority of the scientific community as a credible scientific theory for the following reasons:

o   Creationism's basic postulate that plant and animal species were created by an act of divine intervention is untestable. Furthermore, the methods of creationism involve a selective search for evidence predisposed towards a fixed, unalterable conclusion.  Creationism therefore fails to qualify as a scientific theory in terms of both its basic postulate and its methods:

 o  The scientific evidence cited for creationism is not generally accepted as reliable by scientists;

o Creationist explanations of events and observations related to the age of the earth and the origin of species are viewed by scientists in general as flawed and invalid.

Science teachers may, where appropriate, refer to literal creationism as one of the views held by some people about the origins and development of life. They may also consider the differences between creationism and evolution from the point of view of what constitutes scientific method and the differences between religious beliefs and scientific theories. Such considerations may help to clarify students' understandings of the nature of scientific enquiry.

Where the topic of evolutionary theory is included within the school's science curriculum, eg SSABSA's Year 12 PES Biology syllabus, science teachers have a duty to treat it, and indeed other scientific theories, as theories, and not as immutable or unsubstantiated fact. {sic}

Science teachers should not be made to feel, nor should they create the impression in students, that evolutionary theory is of itself atheistic, rejecting the existence of a divinity. Science teachers are at liberty to provide the view, during any discussion of knowledge structures e.g. science, and belief structures, e.g. religion, that appreciation and acceptance of evolutionary theory does not immediately plunge one into fundamental and irreparable conflict with certain belief structures. Acceptance of evolutionary theory is independent of, and therefore reconcilable with, belief in either the existence or non-existence of God. Evolutionary theory does not deny the existence of a divinity; it does, however, deny the existence of creationism as an alternative credible scientific theory of the origins of the earth and its plant and animal life.

 

D.  CREATIONISM AND THE TEACHING OF RELIGION STUDIES
AND SOCIAL STUDIES

 The guidelines, for teaching about religion in South Australian schools, whether in integrated approaches or as a separate study, include the following principles:

o  The school may discuss all religious views with students but may not impose any particular view;

 o  The school should seek to inform students about various beliefs, but should not seek to make them conform to any one belief;

 

PAGE 3

o The school's approach to religion must open up the Issues, not close down the discussion.

These guidelines clearly fit the discussion of religious beliefs about the origins of the planet and the variety of living things.

Students should be helped to distinguish between the language of science, which in used in investigation of the material world and the language of religion. Religious language is used to seek to explore meanings and purposes behind the material world; it is thus in some ways akin to the language of poetry, and makes rich use of metaphor and imagery.

In different cultures rich and powerful "meaning stories" have been developed to help explore the religious significance of the world. For instance, the original Australians have the story of the "Rainbow Serpent*'. Students exploring this story in a class can be helped to appreciate the importance of the land in Aboriginal religion and to develop an empathy for the spiritual nature of Aboriginal appreciation of life.

Similarly, students should be helped to appreciate the reverence of Australian Christians, both for the Genesis stories about creation and for the one whom they worship as the creative presence. They should also be aware of the varieties of interpretation that difference Christians, bring to these meaning stories of creation, and that some interpret them more literally than others."

 

As a result of such studies, students should be helped to develop both a greater reverence for the interconnected web of species on the planet, and a greater understanding of the power of religious belief to motivate people.

E. CREATIONISM AND THE TREATMENT OF CONTENTIOUS ISSUES

Section 58 of the Administrative Instructions and Guidelines, Discussion of Contentious Issues in Schools, provides broad guidelines on the teaching of such issues in schools.

Within any classroom treatment of creationism, the topic of evolution and evolutionary theory will almost automatically arise. Discussion of the two side by side, however, creates problems, viz:

o  The two are not directly comparable. one being based on scientific language and pre-suppositions, the other on religious language and pre-suppositions;

o  Students may perceive themselves as being forced to consider which of the two is "better" or to make a decision between them. Placed in this situation. students may well be faced with a dilemma - that of being unable to reconcile an acceptance of evolutionary theory with a belief in God. This situation is eminently possible despite the fact that many successfully reconcile a belief in God the creator of the universe and life with acceptance of evolution as the mechanism whereby life as we know it today developed. It is quite wrong for students to feel forced into a decision-making situation;

 

PAGE 4

o  Given the time constraints of a normal curriculum, students could not possibly gain sufficient information to wage in-depth debate on the issue. let alone arrive at a decisive conclusion.

For these reasons teachers are advised against dealing with the two side by side arid would be expected to discuss creationism as a contentious issue, if at all, with caution and sensitivity.

 

F. THE ENTRY INTO SCHOOLS OF CREATIONIST INFORMATION

From time to time those holding creationist beliefs may seek entry to schools for purposes such as talking with school management, talking to students or holding public meetings. Alternatively, they may wish to supply the school with creationist literature. While some may be representing certain religious groups which hold creationism as one of their tenets. others may represent one of the creationist societies or the creation movement.

As principal of the school it is your decision whether or not to accept such overtures and, if so, in what way.  In exercising judgement in such matters you will need to ascertain the motives behind the use of school premises for public meetings on creationism or offers to provide creationist literature to schools. Whatever the case you will need to appreciate fully the Departmental stance on the issue of creationism in schools as portrayed in this statement. Common sense dictates that teachers should not Invite or accept approaches from creationists to speak to meetings of students without your approval.

The prime consideration must be the curriculum needs of the students and not the chance availability of visiting speakers. Any student exposure to creationism must be integral to the learning process, not divorced from it or superimposed on It.

Creationist literature and/or curriculum materials are sensibly retained in your office.

 

 

*1 See: The Cultural Dominion of the State.

*2 The text of the Circular of 1988 is almost too presumptuous to cite, but it needs attention, so here it is, from p. 3, paras 4-5:

• "Religious language is used to seek to explore meanings and purposes behind the material world; it is thus in some ways akin to the language of poetry, and makes rich use of metaphor and imagery.

 

• "In different cultures, rich and powerful "meaning stories" have been developed to help explore the religious significance of the world. For instance, the original Australians have the story of the "Rainbow Serpent".

Students exploring this story in a class can be helped to appreciate the importance of the land in Aboriginal religion and to develop an empathy for the spiritual nature of Aboriginal appreciation of life.
 

• "Similarly, students should be helped to appreciate the reverence of Australian Christians, both for the Genesis stories about creation and for the one whom they worship as the creative presence. They should also be aware of the varieties of interpretation that difference (sic) Christians bring to these "meaning stories" of creation, and that some interpret them more literally than others."

This invasive pronunciamento, embalmed in authority, violating and inviolable, we have found not to be available, even for discussion.

We therefore duly attribute responsibility for it to this Government.

Hidden in its crevices, rapidly growing into academic crevasses, it resides in the domain of darkness, indefensible, undefended, while the children are crucified in their minds with this counter-evidential contrariness.

• No debate challenge has ever been taken up;
• no Government power has ever managed to face it,
• one merely indicating his entire unfitness for such a task, being ill-prepared.

Yet it continues its defiant assault on the word and work of the Almighty, vilely sinking into the ditch of "Nature" the production of nature, as if words of man could imitate the word of God and bring the thing to be. Of its own power to produce itself, we find only that inability which any work of art, or engineering shows. Alas authors and engineers are not part of their productions, and must work to produce them. Nothing to the contrary has even been found in matter of scale, or magnitude.

Fairy tales continue to abuse the word of God, which unlike these, stands forever secure, defended and defensible, true and evidenced, attested and implemented, exhibited in science and paralleled with its laws. Such a case, alas, is too well-attested to be found in these fearless follies of S.A.. Fantasy replaces both the word of God and the laws of logic and evidence. In the name of science, they continue with strong-arms akimbo, to violate the method of science.

The result of such a "TEACHING" rule and principle, applied through Principals of Schools in this State, is a derelict and squalid presumption:

• which would with inept antics, act as if to muzzle the mouth of God with the mind of patronising man,
   
• aspiring in a type of splendid but ludicrous exuberance,
  to reduce to imagery and human exploration,
   
• the well-attested infallible utterance of the deity,
   
• which science properly so-called actually mirrors
  in its three most fundamental laws and never contradicts
  (see pp. 227, 230ff. infra with p. 20 supra).
  
  

There is on the other hand, in many scientific operators,

• a frequent yielding to feeble metaphors, such as

• ("beckoning spectre" motivating matter or upgrading life, "patriarchal molecules", "Nature" "striving" to adapt, a adjust, advance, things coming from patriarchal "Nothing" and so on),

• frank contradiction of the evidence (transmutation does not happen in all laboratory work, is not shown to have happened in any verified scenario, lacks the methodology for it to happen, all contrary to scientific method)and

• the expression of hope that some method may yet be found which contradicts one of the most fundamental laws of physics, the laws of logic and the evidence and testimony of the senses.

And THIS ? It is science! In fact, however, many scientists are godly; many think clearly even in the field of religion; but many, in this as in other spheres, including that of religion itself, abuse their privileges by this religiously defamatory, gratuitous disregard of the testimony of truth, logic, evidence and methodology.

In this, the imaginings of scientists is no different from what may be found in philosophy, politics and other vital resources of human life. Prejudice is wonderful at propelling in any field, and in science is no more safety than anywhere else, when as here scientific method is supplanted with inrusive fact-contradicting philosophy.

'God' and anti-God are never in such modes a matter of evidence or truth; though when this is made a criterion, the result as shown in The Shadow of a Mighty Rock, is decisive, the deity in His own utterance standing more alone even than do the laws of science, which often are made subject of re-formulation; whereas the word of God, the Bible, never needs this scenario. It stands because it is never overthrown; and it is never overthrown, in stark contrast to all else here, simply because it is the truth. That is the ultimate test at this level.

Only defamation is the device, disregard is the procedure in the end and invasive pronunciamentos, pettifogging prescriptions of poetry, like these cited in this end-note, the kind of result to which one becomes accustomed, like diseases for a doctor, but this time, of the soul.

The actual Biblical teaching is as clear as a Summer's day, as shown in detail infra in this work, in Appendix, pp. 298-316, in terms of procedure in creation; 317-322 in principles; 323-340 in text.

*3 There is no difficulty with plenary inspiration, that is, the view that God knows how to speak rather better than we do, and when He says it, it is right. The real difficulty comes when bureaucrats so strangely seem to acquire this capacity, without having the advantage of being celestial... much less God Himself.

 

*4 SMR, pp.l45,147­8,211, 157­158,198 cf. 308­-309.

 

*5 Only an excerpt need be given to the point, from this Queensland letter.

It is from the Minister for Education Youth and Sport, June 23, 1989. It states:

"Evolution should be presented as a theory, not fact, and creationism should be included since it is part of the debate on the origin of our species. At the same time, teaching of detail on creationism should be covered in religious instruction.

"In providing balanced discussion, teachers must acknowledge that alternative theories to evolution exist. Some may be supported by scientific evidence; other may not..."

Of interest also is the Minister's general statement:
 

• "A policy of acknowledging alternative theories on the origins of man is in practice in Queensland State schools. Science teachers are required to provide balanced discussion on the theory of evolution and on alternative theories and are asked to take care in ensuring that sections of the syllabus dealing with the origins of life are presented in manner which gives appropriate attention to each of (sic) the major theories."

Part 3 ...

THE RESULTS OF THIS COMPARISON: ACTION
The result of this survey and comparison
( PARTS 1 and 11 above) is this:

There appears, in the Circular, to be a profoundly peremptory and wholly inadequately reasoned presentation of a viewpoint which is so thrust upon School Principals that not merely is their professional integrity subjected to stress or duress, but also that of their Staff ­ relative to freedom of thought and of speech. It is also seen that misuse is made of the notion of scientific method to a degree that appears quite spectacular: whatever else MIGHT have been appealed to, this is one point which is wholly CONTRARY in method, to what is so compulsively required.

Failure to educate effectively in SCIENTIFIC METHOD, if this is any just sample of what is being offered in Government Schools, would appear merely buttressed by any reference to this hypothesis of organic evolution, in terms of it.

Why ? It is because that hypothesis neither presents itself in ways warranted by the observations, conformable to accepted law, or suitable for prediction, nor predicts, nor authoritatively retrodicts; nor does it have the happiness to be verified in the scope of its claims.

In short, it neither states a law apt for prediction, nor formulates the matter in a way which would permit this, nor explains in intellectually defensible terms what it affirms; nor confirms itself at its own level; nor is there agreement on the very basics of the theory by the most eminent authority. It is a tussle, a fight and a fiasco, almost like an uproarious party of drunken and dithering kind, a theory without scientific heart, now in a fibrillation so profound, that only the most intensive care is keeping it in this world.

This misnamed method of intrusion into religion ­ which it in fact is ­ ought then to be rejected on the ground of irrationalism, discrimination and denial of what the U.N. might call 'child rights', but we call child integrity, yes and teacher and Principal integrity, improperly here invaded. Free speech and thought ought to be re­introduced. People of whatever rank, with superior arguments ought to be free to deploy them; and authority ought not perilously to intrude, with unsustainable ground, either into religion (where it is effectively and ludicrously posing as expert!), or into science, the real science of verification and formulation, in this way.

As a result, it would be better for those responsible for this continuing outrage, to remove it expeditiously, before more harm is done to this State, than that already wrought. Although it is not possible for us to know the motives for this kind of thing, it is not difficult to see its results.

One FURTHER result, whatever may be made of it, should be noted: Numbers of parents, at least partly because of these and such errors, decline to use what could intellectually be deemed hijacked school premises; and so are required to pay for others (through their taxes) as well as for their own children's education. This undoubtedly appears ONE MORE FORM OF DISCRIMINATION, intolerance of social justice, for those interested in it.

Once again, the motive for so misusing schools is not known; its results however are brought to your attention.
 
 

Part 4
 

SUPPLEMENTARY CRITICISM OF THE PROPAGANDA OF THE CIRCULAR TO PRINCIPALS

When one has read the earlier, revised document, the following may be perused. All presupposes the detailed information and content of the pages of the apologetic work, The Shadow of a Mighty Rock (SMR), to which reference has been made.

CIRCULAR: Introductory Page:

The major points suffer from the defects that:

i) an authoritarian preference is imposed on thinkers.

ii) there is a slide between 'valid scientific alternative' and 'imposed as fact' which disguises the propaganda. Thus the desired option, evolution is included as 'valid science' whilst the opposing view is 'not to be imposed' . Put differently, evolution is to be imposed and creation is to be disposed, in terms of competition. This is authoritarianism.

iii) if the Circular view that religion is non­factual (an incredibly presumptuous piece of philosophy in itself) were acknowledged, then the students should be 'safe', knowing what they are taught to be irrelevant to fact. However they appear to have a double non­scholarly 'protection': first they must be facilely indoctrinated about religion in terms of an existentialism the Circular authors are evidently sold to, then they must be preserved from making any comparisons just in case the truth dawns, that the facts are NOT as they are told.

If not, why the fear ? is not the case good enough to stand on its own feet, without this elaborate bureaucratic intrusion, like an anxious mother fussing over her young ducklings, keeping them near to what ? This: to the philosophy which mischaracterises religion and fails to allow debate on evolutionary claims to be science at all. This is a case of 'Well done!' ­ to imposture, but of irrelevance to truth.

iv) the final point 'o' on p.1 again neatly propagandises. Visitors to the school must follow a prescribed pattern to gain access. And this? It must be integral to the learning process in their presentation; while of course, the learning process must be integrated with evolution, so ? So the world outside this philosophic play­pen is excluded from the office of removing delusion.

CIRCULAR PART A: p.1

i) For the purpose of the Circular, Creationism is 'characterised by a belief in the divine creation... that plant and animal species as we know them were created de novo rather than...'
In fact, this begs several questions. Thus it is standard creationism that, for example, the colour of skin in races has diversified and codified, and the biological grounds for this opinion are given by experts. The concept of types (i.e. as a means of arrival) is widely used, with environmental, mutational and other stimuli or degrading impacts, such as are generically postulated in the classic law of thermodynamics, that entropy increases in such a system as this. WHAT is claimed by Creationists, is that superior LEVELS of DESIGN were not products of a non­designer, but came by Creation. Hence this is making of a straw man, and unscholarly; yet it is put forward, with supreme irony, by the EDUCATION Ministry!

ii) The concept of 'literally true' is employed in what appears some species of legal equivocation. This misnomer and irrelevance is adequately refuted in SMR , pp.485­498. There is to the point, no question of creation by self-invested powers being taught in the Bible, such as evolution demands, contrary both to all observation, all known law and revelation alike. God can use metaphors if He wants to; but like us, He is also able to make clear what is the nature of what He affirms and denies. That clarity is exhibited in these pages.

iii) If the creation movement has its roots in religion, as the Circular dismissively seems to find, this is because so has humanity. This does not prove anything at all about the logic of either humanity or religion. The question is not how long things have been around (like 2+2= 4, which is not wrong because ancient, but rather the more validated by use for so long), but WHY they are affirmed, and WHETHER they are factually and logically verified. This glide from the antiquity of religion, with the inclusion of creation, to the concept of unreliability is as illogical as it is gratuitous, and in no way figures as an argument.

In fact, as is shown elsewhere, the sheer millenia of non-amended, unaberrant accuracy in the Bible, not least in the practical sphere of what is the situation in this world in terms of law, is a vast enhancement of its claim, just as the fibrillations of ever-varying evolutions and naturalisms, unable to stay in place for the simple reason that they are not right and are readily disproved in order, is one of their chief exposures. Their failure is dramatised by their mutation: that is the one mutation which is an increase in design, the design of the Almighty to show by these intellectual mutations, inter alia, their vanity and inadequacy.

iv) The announcement with the pontifical ring, the pseudo-prophetic assurance made manifest in paragraph 2 of p.2, seems to be apocalyptic. It is not based on anything observable in the form of evidence or logic; far less scientific method, which is constantly ignored in EVERYTHING asserted; merely referred to vaguely, if at all.

v) The "right" of creationism to a place in the school curriculum is often negated by authority, but as here, that is little to the point. Increasingly the pure folly of ignoring the 3 major laws of science, as Professor Thomas Barnes (Physics) of El Paso University Texas put it, The Law of Conservation of Mass and Energy, the Second Law of Thermodynamics and the Law of Biogenesis, each of which precisely verifies the Biblical contentions, in favour of what is wholly contrary to these laws, is clear enough. The only question is this:

What right has evolution to be in the School Curriculum at all, since it is wholly unverified in terms of the crucial point, increase ­ quantum increase in design by natural means, without necessary intelligence ?

In the writer's view, the answer is this: students need to know what has so gripped so many for so long, even if now on every side, micro­biological, paleontological, logical, mathematical, it is being exposed ever more obviously by gifted scientists, irrespective of their world­view. In The Shadow of a Mighty Rock, Chapter 2, these points are available in detail. World class scientists, whether creationist or not, are absolutely rejecting Darwinism with its survival of the fittest, not only because the latter is a redundancy, as long ago exposed, but because it does not evidence any power at all that is RELEVANT to the arrival of the fittest. Paris Mathematics Professor, Schützenberger, as the trilogy shows in detail, abhors this concept (though he disavows creation) as inadequate, irrational ^*7. Varied and various evolutionary views are engaged in internecine dispute: and not without reason, for none satisfies the evidence.

In short, education is needed, with names and points of view Being presented to the students, instead of this exclusivistic paternalism which proselytises them mercilessly, indoctrinates them monopolistically and dismisses freedom like a naughty child. Alas it is the Department which is in need of discipline; self­discipline to start.

The reference to the Roman Catholic body in Sydney is selective if nothing else; the Queensland government, long requiring exposure to competing views in this field, is outrageously disregarded in its formulation...

From various aspects then, we are compelled to ask:Is then the Circular to be a pap­fed document, like pap­fed students: underprivileged philosophical victims of metaphysical romancing, which even as they suffer, is losing much of its appeal, and multiply is being challenged for repeal!
 

CIRCULAR PART B: p.1

vi) The need to be "as objective as possible, to avoid distortion of discussion" is precisely that which is breached wantonly in this Circular. Practising what it preaches it so horrendously at fault that again the only academic distinction, is the degree of irony imparted! But that, it is clearly not intentional! Indeed, the Circular is so opportunistic an assault on creationism in the name of evolutionism, for which only authoritarian support is given, that it is impossible to see how
teachers who follow it COULD be objective. It is like asking pilots standing on the ground, outside their aircraft, to be airborne, while being addressed. The address is the ground that prevents their take-off, just as this Circular prevents objectivity because of insupportable prejudice, definitional distortion and either ignorance or confusion, or indeed both.

Distortion is its modus vivendi, whether through ignorance or inveterate philosophy. Again, HOW could any intelligent teacher respect the right of students and parents to hold a particular religious belief ­ such as ritual slaughter, not so strange, after the recent Mall episode! Or is there to be a departure from truth to accommodate views ? To be willing to sacrifice truth is the work of a liar.

The principles stated are inept, inadequately thought out, and merely sonorous. Nor are they kept, even for the good aspects of them: but sonorous verbal symbols are replacing actual deeds, as shown here.

vii) The begging of the question in the third last para is so good that it could figure in a textbook on logic. "ACCEPTED AND TESTED" methods purportedly favour naturalistic evolution?

What are these methods? Those called scientific method, called symbolic logic, called verification of formulated testable propositions on a competitive basis so that what stands is considered, and what falls, as is the case with organic evolution, is dispensed with?

Clearly not! it is not these which are in view; for the opposite is being REQUIRED to enable the theory of organic evolution to be presented. A theory which would have things come by natural and gradual means finds the work of Stephen Gould, world famed naturalist, exhibiting starkly the utter contradiction between requirements of the theory and fact, in the Cambrian era, to the point of absurdity, and yet... as Professor Søren Løvtrup puts it, it remains, despite the failure of evidence, a sort of article of dilapidated faith ( in his : Darwinism: the Refutation of a Myth cf. pp. 227-229).

Of course, some then make space men, or earth miracles, both unevidenced and neither scientifically sustainable by validated tests, to be the INSTANTANEOUS cause of creation. In this, they attest an occurrence, just as the Bible stated. The requirements of God are merely clustered with unattested intermediaries which do nothing to alter the call of the case, or the evanescent fantasies of artists for which scientific method provides no licence, are painted onto the natural scene, like a lady's overdone make-up. It does not alter the face of things natural at all.

Hoyle (The Intelligent Universe) is excoriating on the make-up delusion, while Løvtrup indicates by implication that creationists have always been right in asserting it is manifest nonsense to have a slowly created organ of great complexity assembled (and of course dysfunctional, of no survival value) over millions of years.

He is right. THIS is the sort of thing that should be taught: WHAT science is now finding; WHY evolutionists differ VASTLY, and what are the relationships of the views emerging to religious and indeed Christian views, including those of such scientific nonentities as Sir Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday, Von Braun ... of whom as such, perhaps, no one has ever heard in connection with the history, methods and original advance of science ... ? Nor in this are they very likely to do so, in connection with this vicious substitute for objective education.

Indeed, Løvtrup (op.cit. p.352) states this of neo-Darwinism: it "is not a theory, but a range of opinions." Indeed, as to this field, "so many theories float around that one sometimes gets the impression that the phrase holds: one man, one theory." He adds: "this is not a stable situation", and notes Darwin's own reference to creative elements needed... for creation (op.cit.,pp.422, 109). This is of course, though an understatement, the case!

Meanwhile, in this State, at State expense, people are being turned into academic illiterates in this field. Competition is better; openness to reality is vastly better; and awareness of argumentation would be a vast improvement. Nebulous and defamatory abuse of creationism because it is enshrined in much religion (as in many scientific geniuses, in the mind) is as much folly as any other 'guilt by association'. What makes this a defamation of the century however is this: The 'guilt' (relative to the point in view - actually it is the 'crime' of factuality) is FIRST subjectivistically ASSUMED, and then URGED against the view not desired. A more thorough­going case of blackguarding it would be impossible to imagine. The Circular's presentation is a demeaning travesty that demeans itself, the Department and the State.
 

THE MOBILITY OF SCIENCE, AND
THE IMMOBILITY OF THE CURRENT
PHILOSOPHIC CRAZE

In fact, scientific theory (p.2, para 2) is based on belief; and those beliefs have to be mobile as evidence arrives. What is wholly unacceptable is the ASSUMPTION that because some religions deal in myth, all do; because some do not come from an infallible God who made man's mind to have validity, and can speak to it, therefore none do; because some scientific views are tested, all are. Evolution is an example of one, both in the Circular and in much more, that, as Løvtrup points out, is NOT only NOT validated, but sustained DESPITE its falsification (op.cit. p. 352).

Bathos is a ridiculous fall from the stupendous, grand or outstanding, to the ordinary or the unimpressive. In literature, this can disgust, offend or amuse.

In science, as here, it can scarcely amuse. It perhaps time to remind ourselves of what was pointed out in SMR, pp. 330ff., and an excerpt follows for convenience of reference.

·       As Professor Thomas Barnes of El Paso University (famed physics researcher) put it in Scientific Studies in Special Creation, Ed. Lammerts, pp. 330 ff.:

·       "No laws of science are more firmly established than these three laws ...'' Which? He referred to: "the First Law of Thermodynamics, the Law of Biogenesis and the Second law of Thermodynamics'' - p. 331. The first (`"also known as the Law of Conservation of Mass-Energy''), implies that despite different forms (`"including mass''), "total energy remains constant.'' The second means that in a self-contained system, processes have "an irreversible tendency ... to go toward lower order'' - to degrade - decay and disorder increasing. The third "states that life comes from life.''

·       Obviously a static lump of energy-mass (1), a life for life procedure - not non-life for life (3), and a decay liability (2), these are the observable material or visible facts to be expected, if creation happened, and stopped. That is virtually an identity statement. It is this which is observable, and that is a creation verification with which evolution cannot for its part compete.

·       We are in the maintenance phase. The thing to be maintained is in the finished phase. What is maintained, miracles like the bodily resurrection apart, tends to wear out. This is scientific and also a matter of common observation. That is distinctive, detailed verification of the Bible.

·       Why then, in the full scope of the evidence and the concepts already seen, is creationism not taken as the only 'theory' which can currently be considered scientifically, rather than the only one that cannot! (See SMR pp. 129, 135-144, 149-151, 158-159, 202-203, 208-209, 213, 252A-C, 284-290, 315C-316A; cf. Ch. 2 Supplement, 332E-G, 421ff..) The rules are broken in this, that it is not so received.

·       There is a metaphysical paralysis of thought which has made the many consider this: that if PROCESS be not ASSUMED to be the author of process... in the sense that the CURRENT is not the father of what is current; or if PRESENTLY OBSERVABLE THINGS or a CURRENT CONTEMPORARY REGIMEN are not the source of living things, then this is unscientific.

·       THAT however has nothing to do with science.

·       To LIMIT and REDUCE the scope of hypothesis to some preferred sanctum,
some sanctuary hidden free from reality:
this is precisely what science is not,
what scientific method forbids.

It is what begs the question a priori, and sets mere philosophy in state
at the head of science,
with prejudice for its queen by its side.

From this its place, it mocks science. (Cf. SMR pp. 252I supra, and 332E-G infra.)

·       The source however should be conceived especially in terms of its product, the hypothesis should be esteemed in accord with its power to cover the data, the case - to work to meet specifications of test in neutral and fair play. WHATEVER theory works, which is uniquely verified, is relatable well to other effective theories, the one suffering no loss to any test for verification: THIS in science has superiority. What fails verification in adequate test, even one, is already excluded; what knows no verification is not included.

·       Thus to refuse a `theory' on the basis of its source... is like academic racism; "Give us an answer from an `accepted' source, or its merit will be entirely disregarded!" - so goes the philosophy of alienated prejudice (which, as we have seen - is also the metaphysics of irresolvable antinomy in this case, cf. references above). This is the `word' of this discriminatory metaphysics masquerading as science.

Let it! it has nothing to do with science. When it also 'accepts' what tests of verification in fact exclude, it is merely comedy.

• What the Bible states however - finished creation which is wearing out (e.g. Isaiah 51:6, 49:26, 45:12, 48:12-13, Colossians 1 - the first declaring: "The earth will grow old as a garment''), and what is basic scientific law are in entire and absolute agreement.
   
• What disagrees is undisciplined imagination *7! evacuated of verification, parachuting bathetic follies of irrational creeds, evolutionism, dispelled by logic, is humbling science by force-feeding it with these deceptive and hallucinatory dreams. Now what is there? ... the wonder of creation, and the folly of such delusive dissertation, doctrine, decrees - and in that ? you have bathos to perfection."
   
• That is bathetic; but what is pathetic in the original sense is this: that the Schools are subjected to this undisciplined licence with reality, and government in education has provided no remedy. Indeed, to this point it has not even, when the body in power, provided an interview to the Petitioners who for years have protested, attested and sought to activate reform. It is not nice to see children in chains.

Doubtless then the Education Department had reasons for NOT accepting the challenge to debate of bioscientist debater, Dr Gish. After all, his record in winning creation ­ evolution debates in universities throughout the world, is formidable. What is of the light, comes into it. What shrinks, can never validate itself.

The Department has been bold in propaganda, in defamation of Christianity ^*8 and of creationism, neither showing ONE valid ground for the view, nor being WILLING to debate with an expert in the field. The boldness stops at challenge; and the students are forbidden to challenge factually, on the simple pretence that creation is equivalent to religion, and religion to non­factuality.

If this were so, why did not the blaspheming Circular pushers, the irrational fantasy fabricators SHOW the world in general, and South Australia in particular how right they were and by sheer intellectual, scientific muscle PROVE the point, once for all. They had the opportunity. Instead, the Department jibbed ingloriously at the test.

It has survived by hiding, while defaming what is ready to debate, in authoritarian tones. If this is good enough for you, Mr Premier, no more need be said. We are servants of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the issue reverts to Him whose name is so defamed by what effectually, at least, are people­in­hiding. Whatever the intention, this is the result.

Before, however, we leave the 3rd last para on p.1, let us note the prince of question begging. We are advised here that: "EDUCATED" society tends to value knowledge through ACCEPTED AND TESTED methods, above "UNQUESTIONING BELIEF". Would that this were true! The exceptions are some of the very stuff and matrix of history, as in the case of this magical evolutionary theory, which strides the surface of the earth on seven league boots, never made for getting down to facts. Although the above two terms are question begging, virtually derisory, consider what follows. The straw man contrast is then put, that this is vlaued: "more highly than unquestioning belief".

Now WHO, oh WHO has instructed the Minister. HOW oh HOW COULD he consider that religion = unquestioning belief. True he has not invented this deplorably unscholarly document, but also true that he steadfastly and without any show of reason for his views, by which to establish them logically, REFUSES to remove or qualify it! Hence he is responsible, as is all the Government en bloc.

Has the Minister  never heard of the prodigious labours of Christians in science, logic and
theology ? Has he ever answered the argumentation even in these 15 volumes now on the Web in this particular instance ? Has he given it thought ? May we see its product ? It is all, like evolution, invisible. KNOWN laws it contravenes, NO laws it appeals to, and NO visibility it provides, and these are "TESTED" methods!

Let us be clear. This is mere rubbishing of the logical validity of creationism. It is not an answer! Thus the steps: ELEVATE untruthfully, evolutionism to a methodological marvel; DEPRECIATE  ALL religion (in one basket, no differentiation, no scholarship, no factuality, mere prejudice and presumption) to "UNQUESTIONING BELIEF", give NO REASON, and then the matter is solved without ONE FACT. A marvel indeed, but not of logic, ethics or propriety; merley of debasing politics.

Nor is this all. In passing, while treating this particular theory of evolutionism, the document is
 

a)   derogating all religion just in passing

b)    characterising all religion without visible warrant of any kind

c)    in crucial regards, homogenising all religion, by fiat, irrespective of highly divergent claims in the point at issue

d)    using this logical pons asinorum, to found an argument without ground, in science, and calling this education! It is difficult to see how Gilbert and Sullivan could have resisted this, had they seen it. Alas asinine indeed might appear the  acceptance of such a methodology by those to be afflicted by it!

Let us hope that this State will find a way out of this arrogation of power in the interface of State education and religion. At its present rate, it could take millenia; but far less is available (see SMR Ch.8). It is possible for people to be confused; it is necessary for Governments to do their homework and be able to show it, when they invade such fields as these. The cost in children coming from  these illegitimate and ill-conceived methods is inestimable. By such things is this precious resource defiled, yes, in method.
 

viii) P.1, last para.

Again is written in the Circular, its pontification: Creationism is not allowed in the arena of sober fact. Who then is 'right' ? Why of course the one who IS allowed in! Fact in such a case! Never, even in law, was fact so fictitious.

Famous! Prejudice could have no better record.
 
 

CIRCULAR PART C : pp. 1-2:

ix)  P.2, para­1­3 ... para 1:  *9

Let us hear this one: "Creationism’s basic postulate - that plant and animal species were created by an act of divine intervention - is untestable. Furthermore, the methods of creationism involve a selective search for evidence predisposed towards a fixed, unalterable conclusion. Creationism therefore fails to qualify as a scientific theory in terms of both its basic postulate and its methods…"

In principle, the case is the precise opposite, except that the "act of divine intervention" is an act of "no logical base" in the parallel, in the evolutionary case. Moreover, the concept of intervention is false. It is creation.

Does even an engine builder "intervene" ? The concept is strained, forced and unnatural. He creates an engine by action. Without him, no engine. He acts and there is an engine. It is not as if engines make themselves and he makes them by intervention as an alternative. Never does an engine make itself as a design unit, with the attestations of design, as in our bodies. It is not intervention but creation.

If the charge here so falsely levelled were that the creationist believes that kinds were formed by an act of divine creation, it would at least have some relationship to the case being examined, instead of being an expression of evolutionary, gradualistic uniformitarianism, used as a basis for expression. It is however one of the most fundamental realities of scientific research that a particular approach or view or theory must be considered in its own light, not in that of some contending opposite, which if false, would spread its own falsity into the arena of the opposing theory, by using its own assumptions even to express the case of the alternative.

This is wholly unacceptable, distorting, contortionist indeed, and an enemy of objective thought, whether here or elsewhere. It is possible only when the basics of the alternative theory have been disestablished. Here the opposite is true. The basics of the desire to get something for nothing, or from what is rationally inadequate are and have been exposed. The propriety of having a sufficient-cause and resultant effect is uniformly used in constructive thought, even in efforts to overcome another and contrary position; and this therefore is an impossible ground, and justly exposed.

This preliminaries over, let us proceed with the critique of this illicit presentation in the Circular.

 

a)

This negatively propagandising, anti-creation assertion is constantly being undermined as thousands of scientists, including some of the highest order, increasingly associate and publicise, for creation. We could as well say, in creation: for the facts are demanding, wide-ranging, immense, intense; and in the way of science, require an approach which fits them.

That no doubt is one, and a major reason why the creationists' instant (or virtually so) creation concept is being MIRRORED now by multitudes of evolutionists, whose lack of concern for the enormity of such assertions, coded language appearing in magnificent concerted, unified circuitries ... is not shared by the world famed scientists who met at the Wistar Institute international symposium on mathematical and biological sciences.

Here as noted, it was frankly admitted there was no language, no theory, no vocabulary, no answer to the needs of evolution^*6to be theoretically found at all. The speakers were NOT creationists; but they were speaking in this, honestly, and amid deep debate.

In effect, what the creationists have been saying for so long, that this ludicrous concept of anti-survival oddities which don’t and can’t work because they are so specialised, so brilliantly contrived that ALL or nothing is close to the reality, so that gradualism is as barren theoretically as it is in the fossil record: THIS is now mirrored more and more by those evolutionists, forming a pattern and a group, who though not creationists, begin to use language and to acknowledge a position like it.

This they do in declaiming against such follies as this uniformitarian gradualism, in part or whole, and its seeking out of unevidenced and unworkable ideas that have neither logical nor empirical legs, a result that is merely made the more ludicrous by the means assumed. If some of these seek now, from nothing, the marvels which in fact have come from something adequate to produce them, this is because the collision between the false theory of naturalism and the true facts which are unalterable, fixed and rigid, leave them in increasing desolation.

What then of the charge of this gossamer Circular of fairy-like fantasy, what of this, its claim that creationism (unlike evolutionism) is SELECTIVE of evidence, has NO TOLERANCE to adapt or adjust but is iron-clad and that it postulates that all SPECIES came as they were to be, with no scope for variation at all! These are straw-men, one and all. The iron-clad aspect results from iron-clad evidence which never fails either in logic or in evidence, either rationally or empirically, to be confirmed. Is this invariable ? Is the evidence itself now to be assaulted ? And is evolutionism FLEXIBLE ? Does it allow ANY invasion or intrusion from NON-NATURE, to account for Nature’s very existence ? What utter confrontation with reality  this constitutes, what a fiasco of intolerance, and worse perhaps still, what a strange walking off from debate to simply make accusations which are the OPPOSITE of the fact, levelled at ALL creationists, when in fact CREATIONISM, like EVOLUTIONISM has many supporters of many kinds for many reasons.
 

The variability of species within type-levels is apparent: as in fact Biblically specified, for it was kinds of a broad level which are specified as can be seen from the types used in illustration in Genesis, and to go beyond this and even to attribute it to ALL creationism, is merely unscholarly. Non-information-adding mechanisms or impacts for this variation within a kind, and/or removal of misconceptions about these or additional specialised technical barriers  against upgrading developments have been rehearsed or analysed in such places as CREATION Magazine and Ex Nihilo Technical Journal what would seem times almost without number.
 

{See for example, June-August, 1999, pp. 28ff., June-August 1995, pp.46ff., June-August, 1992, pp.22ff., June -August 1990, pp. 299ff.,  in the former, Volume II, Part 1, 1997, pp. 82ff., and Part 2, pp. 212ff, and Vol.  6, Part 1, 1992, in the latter; cf. J.W. Klotz, Genes, Genesis and Evolution, Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis pp. 82ff. with 276-291.

Intriguingly, Denton here adds an emphasis of his own on the statuesque bio-molecular confirmation of typology, through distinct and decisively ordered groupings of creatures as found in protein comparison over time and over extant orders of life. The result, he declares, can in much be PREDICTED from the non-evolutionary framework that was so rigorously pursued by so many outstanding biologists in the 19th century. Now it is found.

Indeed, all the protein sequences are distinct, and relate to type; nor is any intermediate, as was the case with the cells themselves, as noted in SMR Chs.1-2, 10, esp. 120ff., 1031C and preceding review. Hierarchical ordering is the rationale that is observable; and theories of 'KIND' motion do not fit.}

The quite extreme technical provisions for stability notwithstanding - and these are almost mesmeric in their extensiveness and minute intensity, their intellectual diversity and schematic brilliance within the microbiological workings of the cell: various  modes of lateral or downgrading variation within the fabric of a system have been shown, directly or indirectly, very often as microbiology advances. Some of these, as in bacterial interchange of information, are mere procedural provisions.

What CAN and DOES happen is being well-accounted for.

What does NOT ever show itself as happening, KIND CREATION, is likewise NOT well theorised about by an admittedly barren naturalism, but exposed in this site repeatedly, as contrary to ground and the necessities of logic as well as to empirical evidence. It is the EVIDENCE which is iron-clad, so that both the empirical and the rational are as one, expressly alien to such upgrading 'natural' events.

Thus it is a pleasant change from the methodological squalor of organic evolution to find that the means for variation within a type are to a significant extent known, statable, and demonstrable. It appears to relate to  the flexibility of use, arrangement and data-variables within structured information on the one hand, and the mutation which creates elements of diversity without design advance on the other.

The abstruse antics of engineering working diligently on the subtle changes of injury or activation/deactivation as for example through changed available raw materials, or their greater presence,  can have fascinating impacts in variation, which nevertheless stop far short of creation. The influenza virus appears a striking example. The capacity to absorb or respond to such variables is part of the marvel of the essential matrix, like a vast program allowing for various actions and responses within itself.
 

• The means for a biological type change, a change of kind, however
• for upgrading of design information, or else action BEYOND INBUILT PARAMETERS ALLOWING FOR IT,  just as we do in our own human constructions which may be activated WITHIN DESIGN:
   
• where are these ?
   

The concept of things being so built, constructed by happening; not energised by engineering, but apart from rather than within its multiple provisions: this is foreign to logic and empirical research.
 

·       Adaptability is inbuilt as one of the features of ‘kinds’; reorganisation, transmutation, this  is not.

·       The code and the conditions in the observable entities of life ALLOW for various adjustments and developments and activations; they do not ALLOW for upgrading information systematics, they do not provide for transmutations. For that, the means and the results, both, are not apparent.

• The record merely confirms what the laboratory attests.

It is alas, therefore,  the precise opposite of the case as asserted in this Circular. Evolutionism’s hypothesis is "UNTESTABLE" since it is never found. It is iron-clad, because it has the force of political law and academic inertia. Indeed, we might go further.

If ANY test is proposed, the result is always negative, and this result is dismissed on the grave grounds that it is not acceptable. The theory remains like a wrecked aeroplane after which, no one bothers to clear the ground.

The creationist’s assertion, apart from being logically demonstrable (see for example, SMR Chs.1-2, 10, and pp. 251ff., 315Aff., 329ff., cf. 422Eff.,  and That Magnificent Rock 1, A Spiritual Potpourri Chs. 1-9), is empirically what is found, and theoretically what can be attested. Its logical basis is manifested in empirical evidence. All aspects of the case agree as is necessary in science.

Meanwhile, in the case of evolutionism the desperate FAITH displayed in the concept of Nature coming from nothing or from what is not adequate to produce it, is kept in defiance, like a childish tantrum of all logic, storming against all evidence; and the iron-clad insistence continues.

Hence the Circular makes accusations which in bulk and principle apply to evolutionism, by a sort of sleight of hand misapplying them to creationism, which meets all test from scientific method with a splendour and straightforwardness which is singular. Such a charge made in the Circular is thus mere froth accentuated by its applicability in this way, to its own case, as well as its manifest inapplicability to the case it seeks to remove, and indeed does remove, BY FORCE, but not of logic.
 

• The FACT remains however is that the evidence attests only ONE THING: NO creation is occurring now, merely variation within kind. It has finished. It was, and is not. That is what the evidence has to say. The activation of reality as it is now in existence is not a process observable, a case logically discussable. What it takes is not acting. Means are not discernible in the operation of ‘Nature’.  What has been done is evident. It has been created, since that is the nature of the evidence, the most closely worked integrated designs on earth are in evidence. The logical requirements are ineradicable, as the empirical realities are intractable.

To imagine that what is not seen is happening, what is not found is occurring is mere anti-scientific faith. To assume that what ‘Nature’ in no case shows in principle or practice, is nevertheless true, and to abort logic in the process, this is certainly nearer to faith than to science, but in terms of the Biblical ‘faith’, not good enough to reach that category. It is not an acknowledgment of a necessity, but a refusal to face it, which clings to what is systematically inadequate. It is therefore far more apt to refer to it as fantasy than as faith; but if the comparison is to be made, then let it be ‘faith’, albeit an irrational variety.

Creationism has a logical faith, which though called ‘faith’ because it is not NOW seen, is based on evidence which IS seen. The evolutionary faith is based on evidence which is NOT seen, and defies the logic of what DOES occur. It proceeds FROM a "fixed, unalterable conclusion", with a research so "selective" that Løvtrup complains of the wholly indefensible bias in the use of research funds, as shown in SMR Ch.2. This, he asserts, is with grave impropriety pitched towards gradualism, Darwinianism,  in defiance of the academic needs of reality, which cannot afford to dabble in magic and fantasy (see SMR pp. 252Aff., 202-203 and cf. SMR pp. 422Eff.).

It is true Løvtrup is not a creationist; but it is equally true that he insists that this whole Darwinian and gradualist hypothesis is in DEFIANCE of the facts, just as Goldsmith, Gould, Nilsson and countless others have done, and indeed, Ph.D. biologists in swarms. The distortion of such evolutionism as now controls the mental insertions for so many students, in claiming that creationism per se involves the concept of species all invariable, is a charming invention. It is neither factual nor tolerable.

Hence we have the all but incredible reality that in principle, and adapting to the case:
 

• PRECISELY the charges made against creationism in this deplorable Circular to Principals,
• are TRUE of evolutionism,
• direly applicable in the case of the variety being propounded in the Circular,
• substantially so in the case of all organic evolution -
• since this likewise first makes Nature the 'mother', though it is a barren source both logically and empirically for the information and design, and then escalates demands of it, requiring sudden productions from what lacks the means even for slow ones! It is as if spending double the mortgage will assist the repayments.

What scholarship is this! Is this science or sour grapes ? What an Education example have we here! We find an intolerant falsity of makeshift and unfactual charges presented as a ground for being unscientific not  only in CHOOSING evolutionism as a monopoly theory, but in CHOOSING IT IN THIS WAY, degrading opposition by contemptible false charges, unfortunately all too true of its own procedure. The Circular’s request that teachers should not "prescribe to student beliefs" is precisely what is violated in the Circular itself, both flagrantly and flamboyantly!

Nor is this all. The concept that all creationism is religious is false. Similarly, the concept that all religion is untried and untested is false. Again the concept that a view entertained, when this IS true as is sometimes the case, on the basis of a religious book, or with this as the primary or principle source, is WRONG FOR THAT REASON is both false and unscientific.

The just and correct scientific question is simple and it is but ONE:
 

• DOES a GIVEN VIEW find itself CONFIRMED in the multitude of logical and empirical methods, in the court of reason and of evidence, in the interlocking of theories and the constant attestation of empirically new evidence, in projecting what is to be found, before it comes, and being verified when it does come… or DOES IT NOT ?

It is not that ultimate form of discrimination, a furious and spurious statement that we need:

namely, that BECAUSE so and so said it, it CANNOT BE TRUE;
but this question:
whoever said it, IS IT TRUE ? that is needed, if we are to be AT ALL SCIENTIFIC.

IF the one who says it, who makes the assertion in view, has a record of factual reliability over thousands of years, unequalled by any and approximated by none, then this is only FURTHER REASON to consider and test it, from a scientific method perspective, NOT for rejecting it out of hand. When the tests, as have been made intensively for well over a century, constantly and consistently attest by scientific procedures, once again the accuracy of the source - here the Bible, to take just one case, but one distinctive in this as in many other features - this is scarcely ground for rejecting the triumph, as if it were the most monumental case of ‘sour grapes’ of all time.
Whatever the cause of these false accusations, ignorance, inveterate prejudice, confusion or other, and who but the Lord knows the human heart ?: their taste is in all the circumstances, hard to differentiate from just that!

In the case of creationism, for example in its Biblical format, this consistently reliable and sustained result of vindication and verification is PRECISELY at the POSITIVE level what IS FOUND! In the case of evolutionism, this is precisely what is NOT FOUND (see here, for example, A Spiritual Potpourri, Chs. 1-9, and That Magnificent Rock Ch.1). Could any worse distortion of reality occur than is found in p.2, para 1, in the Circular to Principals! It is at least difficult to conceive such!

Is not one forced to admire the succinct and allegorical exposure of Jonathan Swift, in Gulliver’s Travels, of the incredible seeming pomposity or pretensions of State and royalty; for it seems that pretensions are the very essence of this Circular. Not for one moment could one suggest that it is a conscious device; it is merely that it is an evident result. That is: What is asserted here is the virtual opposite of the fact; and the very grounds used and asserted for condemning all creationism are those which condemn the very heart and pith of evolutionism. This we have seen by taking them one by one.

That the word ‘science’ could even be used in such a setting is a testimony to the extent to which scientific method is divorced in this page of philosophy (for that is what evolutionism by strict definition in fact is), from application.

 

b) 

Paras 2­-3:

Numbers of true believers (in organic evolution) are asserted. The argument from the sheer, mere number of devotees to a theory, in controversy is irrelevant. The only reputable and scholarly question is this: WHAT are the facts, what is the evidence, what are the points and counter­points; and if creationist scientists, in all their thousands and in all their eminence, are to be denigrated inferentially in this way, then are the schools run by slander, not science ^*10.

It is TIME to be honest in the issue: that WHAT is definitively found is evaluated, not what is wanted. Imagine if, in a court of law, the judge were told that all the papers and people, to a large majority, favoured a conviction. The judge would rightly regard this as unethical irrelevance, possibly citing contempt of court.

Scientists are no less subject to prejudice than are others, as famed anatomical morphologist, Lord Zuckerman both found and asserted, in debunking by computer analysis, evolutionary views of the Australopithecines. This he did, not because he was a creationist, but because the evidence demanded it. To his horror, many were so wedded to the desired evolutionary outcome, that his research was received, as it were, through gritted teeth.

And is THIS fact taught ? Do they know of him ? Why not ? It is indeed difficult to see in what the Circular approach differs from the mis­guided intrusion of a Hitler! DADDY KNOWS! You swallow; we have PROVED it. Where ? (The Circular at this point might say: Refer to one of my many paragraphs denigrating the objective standing, factual worthwhileness of religion and creation, showing that in THIS regard they do not exist. They have been DEFINED out of existence!) In empirical science, this is sheer folly. This is an easy way to survive; but thoroughly academically disreputable.

 

x) P.2, para 5: Here science teachers are given the nod on how to indoctrinate, all premisses provided and psychological adjuncts conveniently made available for the tools of State, as they appear to be regarded.
 

In fact, IF science teachers were to show what may be seen concerning scientific method in terms of creationism and evolutionism, they would dismiss ^*9organic evolution as CURRENTLY without

• any of the necessary verification on observable design increments,
• ANY theoretical means by which laws 'arise',
• any testable ground for validating the contention,

• and with

 
• many anti­verifications, any one of which is sufficient to remove the theory as non-operational (as well, of course, as theoretically void in logical structure).
   

However, the Circular in a circularising way assumes the result, and by the assumption seeks to justify the conclusion. No better example of circular reasoning is known to the writer, than that of the Circular. And this, it has something... to do with ... education!
 

xi) P.2, para 6: The statement of Governmental approach should be enlarged to include all viewpoints, with this proviso, that any which fundamentally contravene all known scientific laws will be regarded in a negative category, and those which meet all, in a higher one; and any views which meet all, in the highest. This of course would favour creation, prior to the actual logical work at another level, which with reason demonstrates it (see SMR, Chs. 1,3,10).

xii) P.2, para 7: For the reasons presented in The Shadow of a Mighty Rock, pp.179 ­197, it is shown that any 'god' which 'created' through the never validated, and contrary­to­verification methods of organic evolution, with its 'survival of the fittest' as the myth for creation, would have a certain moral character.(See infra, pp. 293ff..)

This is blasphemously contrary to that of Jesus Christ, just as the theory itself is unscientifically contrary to observation and to known law. Thus it is gratuitous blasphemy to assert this and require it of others. It is better to CHECK the data provided than to dismiss them simply because so and so, and this and that person opine this or that. WHAT are the DATA ? Check them, we suggest. Professionalism, not propaganda is needed.
 

xiii) P.2, para 7:
The sort of 'divinity' that organic evolutionism as taught permits, is an anti­Biblical 'creator'. It is therefore inventive of religions, intrusive and divisive in religion; and this all on one basis: Its myth, which contravenes scientific method absolutely, demands it so.

This is therefore an approach to religion, and its earlier statements about reverence reinforce this, which is being imposed, or superimposed in the minds of students. WHAT FITS IT, is 'permissible' factually; what does not, is not. The facts are irrelevant; it is the theory which dictates; just as the presentations of the petitioners have never been answered; and likewise the challenge of the debater. This is certainly no open society! Thus this propaganda style remark in this para gives misleading appearance of even­handedness; and if not deceitful, is certainly delusive on this point. Those who want delusion may have it; we are not among them.

We prefer TEST: and we challenge to test. Hiding in the shadows, this deplorable government by fiat is both an embarrassment and a harassment to scholarship, for it violates it in method and substance, merely claiming "authority".
 
 

CIRCULAR PART D: pp. 2-3

xiv) The point 'o' (bottom of p. 2) in the field of discussing religion, is however, as extensively shown, consistently broken in the foregoing, making the Circular document, also to be short­circuited. Some kind of deity is amenable to the theory, to the authorised presentation as provided; here we are graciously advised that it is not anti-god or itself absolutist.

To discuss in the field of religion, but not to impose! Could Shakespeare ask for better dramatic irony than this! That is similar to Communism being the will of the people!

	The perhaps noble-seeming speech of disclaimer comes after the murder, as it were, and tends to grate rather than comfort.
	If any document ever had an exclusivistic world view, a religion­crimping, absolute world­view asserting approach, this one has it. All it lacks is reason and evidence. We cannot approve of these omissions in practice, nor of the tampering with the minds

The noble speech comes after the murder, as it were, and tends to grate rather than comfort. If any document ever had an exclusivistic world view, a religion­crimping, absolute world­view asserting approach, this one has it. All it lacks is reason and evidence. We cannot approve of these omissions, nor of the tampering with the minds of the young, predisposing them to violence by this survival syndrome ^*11.

The case is further aggravated by another consideration. Is there not a name for formulating as a principle what exactly contradicts a substantial and sustained performance, in the opposite direction ?

We have long warned and exhorted this Government indeed before it was one ­ to STUDY the underlying facts; for the penalty rate for delay or negligence here is prodigious.

xv) P.3, para 1: MANIFESTLY, THIS POINT IS CONTRAVENED. What religion IS, has already inaccurately been affirmed by writers so taken up with ONE variant, that they whisk off all the others.

THAT is precisely "closing down the discussion" and refusing to "OPEN UP" issues. The very terms of reference are propounded, definitionalistic dictation is engaged in and the mouth of the Government binds. The notion of freedom here is precisely as impressive as was the notion of democracy in Russia, 1917-1991.

It is as deplorable as it is inconsistent; and if continued, would be a difficult labour to differentiate from hypocrisy (or perhaps delusion): that is, the DECLARING AS OPERATIVE, OF WHAT ONE CONSISTENTLY BREAKS!

This is not impressive; but it is repressive, as well as irrational. It had seemed that a government with the SLIGHTEST concern for liberty would not so err. If it WILL so err, then its commitment to liberty must be consistent with this performance: abysmal, alas as that is!

xvi) P.3, para 4: The sovereign and simplistic assumptions about religious language have already been touched, in the earlier document on this criticism of the Circular. In short, this is not what the Bible declares about religious language, God in Isaiah Chs. 41, 43, 44, 45, 48 making it clear in a definitive challenge that the FACTS as to the MATERIAL universe, which HE DECLARES, will be validated in a way no other source can muster. The Shadow of a Mighty Rock gives EVIDENCE with REASON that this is so.

Thus this approach to 'religion' works on its own definition of religion (existentialism, would fit), and ignores what the Bible affirms, in making a GENERALISATION about RELIGION! Thus religion itself is defined into shape, to meet the needs of the Circular, in a way which is frankly unscholarly; and any government which engages in this derogation, defamation and inaccuracy is guilty of libel against the God of the Bible. More may be said: but not yet.

Does it not occur that the relevant FACTS should be checked before such all­knowing and nothing­showing documents as the Circular are let lose on people of many different religions, insulting the God of many with as much grace as ground, that is, none ?

In 'Science', are all its models of checking and verifying, to be thoroughly  disregarded in a State Education circular about science, when it intersects with religion, inter alia ?

Is there anything more needed to make this Circular, except for interest, to become competitive - if not with creationism, which it merely libels - with Alice through the LookingGlass! Imaginative? certainly, but not actually ­ science!

xvii) The para 5 'similarly' is a manifest slur, that looks not at all at facts. The 'greater understanding' apparently is to come both from following the stated views about 'guidelines' and those about religions, propagandised in this infamous document; and THAT? it is simple anti­Biblical religious indoctrination, made the more infective, in that 'reverence' is brought in. The understanding of "the power of religious belief to motivate people" in its contrasting context, pre­supposes NON­FACTUALITY, which in fact, is quite contrary to the religious motivation of millions; and perhaps, of hundreds of millions. This assuredly is propaganda's masterpiece, at least for such a country as this.

For completeness, let us add this: it is also contrary to logic to assert this of the Bible, as shown in That Magnificent Rock (e.g. Chs. 1,5,7,8), in association with The Shadow of a Mighty Rock, to which reference is often made.

 

CIRCULAR PART E: pp. 3-4

xviii) Paragraphs 1-3 of Part E. The non­comparability line has already been exposed. Creation and evolution are treated as chalk and cheese (as they in some ways are, but in reverse order). This merely formalises the propaganda at the procedural level. The Bible in fact (e.g. Romans 1:18­21) CLAIMS that the knowledge of God is REQUIRED by logic and evidence; and that the debased 'knowledge' of Maker vested instead in what is made, that is substituted. People thus often come "to worship and serve the creation rather than the Creator", it is declared. "They became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools." This is done in terms of special 'presuppositions' made by what rejects the God of the Bible, the word here affirms.

Accordingly, The Shadow of a Mighty Rock over something like 900,000 words demonstrates that reason requires the God who speaks; scientific method confirms it past any alternative and all options; and no alternative is available which meets rational criteria.

Such views are often expressed, and such in this century by famed and prolific writers. The contrary assertion therefore, lacking its own cogent argumentation and citable, adequate evidential support - though not failures in enormous proportions to gain verification; lacking indeed what it might incorporate to be seriously tested and confirmed, is remarkably brazen. In human relations, this is often the way.

Such an announcement then as the Circular here makes, could only properly be made from some religious figure, assuming total knowledge. The One, incidentally, possessing that is the God who speaks, and not mortal man. The writers of the Circular not being such, they are in a wholly inconsistent position; for they are using an assured knowledge without ground, contrary to ground, and without any possibility, on their own subjectivistic grounds, of gaining it (see SMR Ch. 1, esp. p.101; Chs.3 and 10).

  xix) Paragraph 4, of E.

 Students, in harrowing and unrelieved effrontery shown the preference of some, in the field of creation and evolution, are now suddenly the subject of grave concern. What if they should haply feel unhappy, driven to choose between options! This must, it seems, at all costs be avoided. Gone is the normal usage of intellect, considerations, the education in discerning propaganda, such as evolution has become in its endless harassments in education, TV and press, gone is this excellent opportunity to grow in maturity.

Responsibility for living suddenly becomes oppression. Assessment becomes overnight a matter of being ‘driven’. Why precisely ?

The oppression already present in the prescribed teaching in this field is a thing not considered; the oppression of being served facts and approaches to them, with care and self-control, is not to be alleviated at all. Students must realise that all the thinking has been done for them; they need only lean back and inhale the laughing gas, and let the dentist proceed to extract the tooth of trouble, and leave the gaping hole. No need to wonder if the tooth was the good one. It is enough that you consign your soul to teachers, and let them, under the sure direction of the Education Department, which is not at all restrained in this field, tell you what you really need to hear, and not all that ... other stuff.

Perhaps in later life, students may even, if avoiding the dole,  feel driven to choose between dentistry and truck-driving, this girl and that for marriage, or this friend and that, this way of life and that. How appalling! Fancy letting them realise so very young that life has options, that some are wrong, that the UN on Child Rights is all wrong in wishing to safeguard their freedom of information and preference to such a degree that they should not even be taught at all, the scientific aspects of creationism, held by hundreds of Ph.D. graduates. They must learn to accept authority in their lives and thoughts, and not go wondering about things. It could even give indigestion.

The ludicrous thought that they are too young to be shown facts, needing only interpretations of one body, is more than countermanded by the fact that they are not too young to be cardinally influenced by sheer ignorance and propaganda mixed, the latter always reluctant to have its origins and standing shown. Let us be clear, it IS ignorance to be left in the dark about basic diversities, and to have genuine divergencies clothed as ‘out’ by authority.

The young are often particularly ruthless on propaganda, and it is true that if the thing were opened up, and they were allowed in this sphere to be fully human in spirit, rather than harassed education department trainees, there might be some trouble for those whose love is propaganda more than truth. If however this is not so, there should be no undue trouble for teachers who, loving truth, orient their own minds so that what they hold, can and does stand!

Some students indeed may feel they must chose this friend or that or this idea or that or this conduct or that, and become tense; but are we to TELL them which friends ? and the reciprocal parties likewise ? Should we wait until they are 18 to suggest that choices are made, right and wrong, and that life is real and earnest ? In short, some specialise in rushing to 'decisions', some in avoiding them at all costs, in one field of personal life and another; some are more judicious and consider what is being presented, and then think their own thoughts. Practice in seeing the need, and using the skills is precisely what preparation for life entails. There is no use making ludicrous psychological generalisations and then applying the result to just one field, as if one phase of personality is the same for all; or delay is the summit of experience.

Why some people have even been known to change their minds, on seeing fresh evidence, and this without considering that the skies have fallen, either metaphorically or actually.

xx) P.3, Part E last para:

This is perhaps the best case of begging the question. SINCE the accused is guilty, THEREFORE the jury must vote him so, but it is free to register whether or not it likes him. Religion is non­factual, goes the presumption; therefore since science is not, therefore the two are disparate, and evolution cannot be challenged. Just do it!

Thus the knowledge, the philosophy, the method of teaching, the prohibition on rational comparison, all goes by assumption to the glorious conclusion where it starts: what is in question, is answered and applied. That is simply an exercise in applied presumption.

'SCIENCE' (read, some theories in fact at odds with scientific method) is in practice to be taken for granted, and religion is to be taken somewhere else; and so all are happy. Rational theory, in fact, is to be replaced with irrational; while what satisfies scientific method is to be replaced with what does not:

and all this because propaganda says.
 

Ø        And this, once again: it has something... to do
with ... education ?
 

CIRCULAR PART F: p. 4

xxi) This is without doubt the high point of the propaganda. It seizes the would-be entrant into school grounds, who might... (horror) talk, maybe at lunch-time. The children must be preserved from non-Party line teachers and teaching. The purity of their delusion must be preserved; and as with all delusions, this will involve highly directive methods.

Now we come to MOTIVES: IF then the motive of the creationist lunchtime speaker is to enlighten with a rational ground contrary to the preferred and official mythology which starts with what contravenes laws compelled by evidence, preferring what in fact follows them, then presumably that 'levity' from an unhobbled speaker is unacceptable.

Thus the noose tightens: any and every avenue of challenge and correction being removed, we have a Hitler style youth camp, which knows all the answers but answers none of the questions. If this were to appear as a story, it would be at least be as witty as Nineteen Eighty Four; as history it embellishes the story. It is total thought control. Suitable for a Liberal PARTY?

Yet there is more. CREATIONIST LITERATURE, like free enterprise material in a Communist youth camp, is RETAINED WITH THE DIRECTOR OF THE CAMP. This in the hollow persuasiveness of the document, is deemed to be 'sensible'. This was the official line in the original document; and later efforts at attenuation neither seem adequately implemented, nor incorporate what is necessary: the removal of the numerous errors in principle or fact.

It appears then that the youth camp of S.A. is repugnant to all fair dealing, all reason; but rather looms as an outstanding and blemishless example of unfettered propaganda. You win by definition; everything you want is right by definition; everything you don't is wrong by the same means; and all challenge, or even comparison, whether by outside word or inside speaker, is vetted. Would it not be rather simpler to SHOW what is DEFINED, and to return to integrity ? In the view of your correspondents, honesty will always remain the best policy, and abuse of power will ever languish. It is of course an option, in the short term.

IN SUM : THESE NUMEROUS REASONS represent perhaps some of the more obvious deficiencies of the Circular to Principals of January 5, 1988.

Considerable force in found in these elements now to follow. As with Hitler, it is well to recognise force, even when in the end it must be treated. If you see a submarine periscope, you may ignore it; but you may come to find this unwise.

As to this notorious Circular to Principals, then:

·       It is an anti­democratic, unprofessional, unethical affront to the integrity of Principals, in religion, morals and pedagogy; and through them to that of teachers, through these to the scope for the use of reason, teaching resources and independent thought on the part of students.

·       Further, there is incorporated an undefended and indefensible libel on the character of God as presented in the Bible; and remaining is an optional 'god' of its own suffered by the self­contradictory world­view which dominates the Circular, and would dominate others by its means.

·       If THIS can be tolerated, what can not ? Other tyrannies in Europe have caused enough trouble, unresisted, without this one being conveniently suffered in this land, once renowned for its liberty and love of it.

·       It defames religion; is unscholarly in generalisation on religion; misrepresents religion, represses information, dictating acceptable and unacceptable thought and dispensing a primer on religion, the latter without saying so, on the basis of contradictory premises; and of course, multiply breaches international agreements to which Australia (whether or not wisely) is party.

 

ENDNOTES for Part 4:

*6

That is, as a means of ARRIVAL. Both logically and experimentally, the Parisian Professor rejects it.

*7

Excursion on Irrationality

It is necessary further to characterise the manipulation of evidence to suit philosophy. To this end, we now cite a section from SMR, pp.150-151 (blue font, below), concerning the procedurally corrupt Cult of the Forbidden, a topic on which the author once lectured in what is now one of South Australia's Universities. Slight changes are made to adapt the passage to the present purpose and place.

·       This excursion into scientific theory and its nature, scientific method and its formulation, and current controversy and its analysis is presented to stimulate you into thought. Culture is not a sufficient condition for thought and acute analysis is always in order. It is what can make certain responses more incisive, sharp, clear and arresting.

·       It helps remove confusion. Further, discoveries can the more readily be made when the cult of the forbidden is not followed. Evidence must be pondered and conclusions subjected to the discipline of reality in such a sphere.

• The wrong-headed trend to reject culturally, as at one tertiary institution in this State, at which I taught, because it is "not convenient", and not because it is wrong, without indeed giving it due rational interaction with those who present it, is in essence a form of cult. Is not what is culturally dictated in the dereliction of duty towards reason and evidence, a cult ? And in how many universities does one find evidence from Staff or students, of this deplorable cultic

phenomenon: creation, or the grand issues of reality are forbidden.

• What however is the 'cult of the forbidden' ? It is that cultural negativity, fear or subtlety (depending on motive) whereby certain matters are (ostensibly) ruled in advance of all evidence, 'out of court' - the court of culture. Whether it be deemed to be politics, religion or other field, the result is a mental crimping that too readily becomes downright dishonesty if not, indeed, hypocrisy. Certain things are out of cultural bounds, being inconsistent with desire, ethos, illusion or delusion; irrespective of their truth.

• With religion, it may involve the detestable folly of pretending that evidential procedures are irrelevant, and, worse still, that it is illegal to be logical and alert with evidence and reason, lest emotions be roused. This subordinates truth to convenience and not for long may one justifiably expect the continuance of such folly, or of any society where it distinctively rules.

·       Reality is a dangerous enemy with whom to trifle by such policy and contempt. By this means, irrelevant irrationalities and absurdities - such as is organic evolution in terms of scientific method - may be `allowed', in that by a mythical oversight, their merely mythical powers are ignored; whereas the more scientifically oriented view of creation is `excluded' as `religious'. (Cf. pp. 211-222, 226-234, 330-334 SMR.)

·       Christianity with open heart and incisive mind is quite freely available for `inspection' - and meets any intelligently administered critical test with overwhelming results, that are as unified as they are unique; and it alone systematically meets logical requirements of consistency and rationality (Chapters 1, 3 and 10 SMR).

·       Thus this cult of the forbidden has become an anti-logical discriminatory device, protective of irrationalisms and, in educational circles, often excluding the only logical answer even from consideration!

As to irrationality, not only is scientific method obviated, not merely is verification ignored on philosophical obtuse grounds of mere predilection, but the very possibility of knowing any truth to proclaim is voided in the naturalistic model: what is not there, can neither be known nor proclaimed. To be there, it requires the absolute beyond relativity, and to proclaim relativity absolutely in its absence is mere confusion, and contradiction in terms cf. 422Qff., 374-386, SMR Ch. 3, Barbs ... 6   -7.

 It amounts to suppression of what is consistent, removal of what is verified and exclusion of what works.

*8

It is defamatory in this:

	i) through its (arrant and prescriptive) generalisation on religion.
	ii) its mention of it and encompassing of it relative to the processes which, contrary to evidence, it wants. See The Shadow of a Mighty Rock, pp. 308­312. 179­197.

*9

Here we are advised in the Circular that the party not desired by the writer - that is the believers that God created and that is why things that do not create themselves observationally, or by any known principle, so that if they did, it would be against all known principles both of logic and of data oriented science: these are amiss. In what?

It is alleged they seek towards finding what they want, selectively. However, there is no need. The selection, to use computer terms, is one of select-all. ALL is selected for all there is makes the same noises, the same testimony, the same observational contribution. What created the universe and its kinds is not now active in this matter; and what is required is not apparent in the realm of the visible; only the testimony to what it would have required is there.

On the other hand, evolutionists as a matter of simple observational fact are CONTINUALLY seeking to tout this or that in a desperate, and quite objectively, frustrated effort to show something in the realm of the natural, the visible, which CAN or WOULD or COULD do this work of creation, some hyperlink, some transmutation which broke forth and made up its codes and conditions and the whole inter-related integration of code and execution, concept and architecture, molecular control and disposal, genetic design proficiency, behavioural relevance and the integration this and all in the realm of life.

They do not find it; in fact, it was the notable biologist, Professor Oxnard of Chicago and then Perth, who intimated that the elevation of possibility or prospect in the area of human background, this or that find as BEING IT, the unholy grail (our term), the missing part or section needed, is almost axiomatic. That is, the endless procession of dramatic claims and dramatic failures to justify them, in the area of HUMAN background is commonplace, almost ludicrous. That is a testimony of a factual kind.

Let us recall his words (SMR p.205): "There has never yet been announced a new find that was not a human ancestor" - a truly professorial touch of irony.

On the contrary, as noted in SMR (loc.cit.), with Lord Zuckerman, he helped to show the untenability of facile claims in the Australopithecene area relative to man. Zuckerman for his part was astonished as also noted in SMR, to find that white-coated scientists could be so exceedingly reluctant to receive the testimony of advanced research of his team over years, because it was not what they wanted to hear. It was distinctly excluding the Australopithecine efforts at fabricating a background for the arrival of man! For an interesting particular case, we may noted that even Richard Leakey of African fame had this to say of an earlier view, now dismissed in favour of greater realism and sobriety: "I am staggered to believe that as little as a year ago I made the statements that I made" - SMR p.235.

As to the assumption on selectivity, then, the converse is true, except in this: Gradualistic Evolutionism CANNOT selectively do much, for it has no RELEVANT evidence to select for transmutation. ANY selection which resolutely contradicts a theory, on the other hand, is fatal when it comes to evidence. W.R.Thompson (q.v.­ SMR, pp.193ff.), Stephen Jay Gould (q.v.), R. Goldschmidt, Heribert Nilsson and Michael Denton (q.v.), for example, not to mention Løvtrup (q.v.) and Sir Fred Hoyle, exhibit quite systematically at the evidential level, and this cumulatively, the folly of gradualism. This account of it has been outpoured over decades, and seems now to be approaching its anguished peroration.

For the instantaneous evolutionary hypothesis (and those in this general category), it must be observed:

i) it gives suitable obeisance ­ though it has been long delayed ­ to what creationists in principle, have been saying on design and its coherent institution;

ii) it is a logical recess! (See ­ SMR trilogy: pp. 129­166, 199­201, 218­235, 303­315; 2nd Edition, op.cit., pp. 315A­316A, 1031C: also *7 above.)

*10

For the demonstration that Scientific Method excludes the hypothesis of organic evolution, or organic evolutionism, see SMR, pp. 129­159, 226­240; also 199­203, 931­939; and 234­252J, 329­330 and That Magnificent Rock Ch.1 supra.

*11

See SMR pp. 125­128, 232­234; also 199­203, 308­311, 578­582, 660­675, and pp. 422J­L.

In the next three titles, prepared on different occasions, there are elements of similarity, but simply because their contents have been released and their thrusts are, if complementary, by no means identical, it is felt best to let the reader choose how to utilise them.

You may now GO to next section of this Chapter, for its completion.