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
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In conjunction with Ch. 8, below, the reader may well consult |
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Ch. 1 above, on creation; |
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Worn-Out World and Coming King Ch. 4, |
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SMR Chs. 1 and esp. 2, |
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Delusive Drift or Divine Dynamic Ch. 7 |
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Stepping Out for Christ Ch. 9, |
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Secular Myths, Sacred Truth Ch. 7 |
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Calibrating Myths Ch. 1 |
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Beauty for Ashes Ch. 3; |
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Deliverance from Disorientation Ch. 7 |
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News 84, 94, Ancient Words, Modern Deeds Ch. 9, Divine Agenda Ch. 7 |
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and see
indexes on relevant topics including creation and evolution. |
Chapter 8
Remodelling or Transforming -
Report on the Political Extravaganza
in the Field of
Religion in
- how to relate to
intrusion where angels fear to tread
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.
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(Cf. pp. 198-206, 214-233 and esp. 195-199, 219, 244, 261, 263, 271-272. |
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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
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- It has a special language of its own, which helps the apartheid.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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
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
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
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.
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..
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- We shall, after our detailed review, revert to the categories of vital impact here:
a) The Children's
Crusade for
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
- 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.
- 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.
- 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
"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.
- There are a few errors in this p.1
statement of the Circular, then. Firstly, rational debate is precisely
what creationists throughout
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.
- 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
As
"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.)
- 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
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 -
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.
- 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.)
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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."