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II. IGNORED PRESENTATIONS

Concern re: The infamous -  Circular to Principals,
South Australian Ed. Dept. Jan. 5, 1988, cf. pp. 188-242 supra.


This mischaracterises religion as well as creation, and sanctions monopolistic powers preventing free, rational discussion in science or elsewhere
in the government school system, even model presentation and scientific objectivity
in dealing with organic evolution, which sits enthroned by the will of Caesar.
Slight revision or addition may be made relative to the originals. No reasoned ground for rejection has been given, merely appeal to authority - in the end, their own.

  • It should be emphasised that never has any rational ground for this ignoring of challenge to the unfair and irrational government sanctioned practice been given, over ten years, merely the desire and reference to what this or that body thinks in RESULT: NEVER the thought itself.


It continues to have its schools pour out propaganda, DESPITE the necessary ground for preferring creation in science to organic evolution; it continues to prevent rational discussion of the issue in science. Liberty is replaced with pabulum, pre-chewed to the specifications of the stomach of the Party.
 

  • This is doubtless a result of at last two causes: there IS no rational answer as shown repeatedly in this site; and secondly, there is no excuse.


 

  • Meanwhile, the government school scene is in this, a disaster area, appearing rather like the country area in S.A. where in 1999 there has been the location of a factory, pouring out fumes around 300 m. from a SCHOOL.


 

  • Result claimed: windows of nearby houses shut, children with constricted throats, reduced freedom to breathe, large absentee rate from sickness. THAT is merely from a polluting source 300 m. away.


 

  • BUT THIS, it  is from a pollutant source WITHIN THE ACTUAL SCHOOL, per courtesy of this politically accepted folly that uses authority instead of reason, even in science. If it were otherwise, one would have been glad to have debate accepted, discussion extended. Alas, the only answer to reason so far, in a decade, has been this: I cannot reason with you. The ground given for this statement from one who became Minister of Education ? : He lacked  enough knowledge!


 

  • So it goes, and so the children go. THIS is oppression and sadness, seizing up thought for cultural convention. Moreover, what other State has the gall, effrontery and folly to define religion in order to define creation out of the school scene, with a definition gratuitous, gullible, academically not covering all cases, unsustained and unsustainable, bursting into philosophy like a novice, declaring for this also, the sovereign will of this extraordinary government.


THIS is invasion of the State's human resources.

When one reads from Psalm 144:11-15 of the blessedness of the godly nation - on the daughters grace on the sons straight growth in godliness, on the people the grace of the Lord, one realises the more sharply how great the grief, the sabotage when even FREEDOM is imperilled, liberty is lassoed, corralled, sequestrated by the State. Although the establishment theories of organic evolution so sedulously and seditiously taught in their monopolistic grandeur, are myths, alas, their results are no myth... in the hearts of the young, built by God and bruised by man.
 
 

  • Now let us ponder the first presentation selected, from those given to Government in this State, as a ground for change of the academic duress to academic liberty.


 

1. THE CULTURAL DOMINION OF THE STATE
. .

A REPORT ON THE PROGRESS AND CONCERNS OF A PETITION FROM HUNDREDS OF PROTESTANTS: The Ministers or Pastors of various churches have participated. Two Premiers have been challenged, the current one by several Church leaders, including the aboriginal President of an Australia-wide denomination. Like the writer, that Pastor had no desire for Western dream-time injections into young aboriginal people, in the form of the metaphysical abstraction of organic evolution.

Interestingly, he provided a fascinating document from the history of New South Wales, in which appeared a published account of extensive observations on the beliefs of aborigines at that time (last century) as recorded by eyewitnesses. Much of it involved a clear belief in creation in the rather early days *1 of N.S.W. settlement.

Alas, the State's intrusive crusade for its preferred philosophy, and indeed, in no small measure as we have shown, its own metaphysics of religion, despite its numerous antinomies in logic, and rebuffs in observation, shows little restraint. The State bull crashes where it will, and shows here little regard for niceties, but especially that pleasantness known as freedom.

In an article in The Advertiser, which came when the Government was being actively confronted on this area, Simon Davies questioned whether Australia might not be in the very vanguard of the world in one respect: a certain desolation of privacy, the limitation of freedom relative to State control. Here it is not guns, not tanks, but information and surveillance that concerns him.

There are other Caesars who specialise in that.

There is however one area that he did not mention: that of religion. Recently, hundreds of people, some of them Ministers, presented their protest to the Premier concerning the notorious Circular to Principals of the Education Department, run out in 1988. They protested the misuse of the powers of education, administered by this State, to forward unscientific and religiously intrusive doctrine in Schools, even to the point of formal counsel to Principals, coming from 'higher authority'.

This protest is that this 'Circular to Principals' prevents due answer in schools to certain propaganda presented to children in Science Classes, and excludes free, rational debate in other Classes.

The field is the evidence of creation, versus the 'faith' (as eminent Professor Karl Popper quite evidently regarded it) of the laws of evolution. The fact is that the exclusion of proper, logical debate and fair­minded evidential review in the face of the considerable variety of approaches represents an assault on democracy, on the free rein for ideas and the facility for what stands logically, to do this openly.

It has something of the assault impact formerly associated with Russian indoctrination; and as we will see later, the activities of a distinguished Russian scientist, earlier enabled to visit Adelaide, led to a startling reflection in this area.

The Petitioners have this to say:

WE REQUEST THAT THE CIRCULAR BE WITHDRAWN. IT IS AN OFFENCE TO OUR RELIGION, TO THE USE OF REASON AND TO OUR LIBERTY, AS WELL AS A MISUSE OF AUTHORITY. IT MISCHARACTERISES BOTH THE BIBLE AND THE STATUS OF THE VARIED EVOLUTIONARY THEORIES. BY THIS MEANS, IT TAKES SIDES IN AN AREA OF FREQUENT INTERNATIONAL DEBATE AT TERTIARY LEVEL, AND TENDS TO SLANT STUDENT MINDS PRIOR TO THAT TIME. IT DOES NOT RENDER REASON, WHICH IS ONE THING: IT MERELY 'TAKES A POSITION' AND ISSUES A DEMAND.

THIS IS INTOLERABLE IN OUR SOCIETY, A MISUSE OF TAX MONEY AND OF THE LIBERTY OF TEACHERS, INCLUDING PRINCIPALS: A SUPPRESSION OF THAT OF STUDENTS.

NO ADDITIONS WILL REMOVE THE STATEMENTS MADE WHICH, WE BELIEVE, MUST NOT BE ALLOWED TO STAND. WE WISH THE REMOVAL OF THIS CIRCULAR ALSO, LEST ITS AUTHORITARIAN INTRUSION BECOME AN EXAMPLE OF THINGS TO COME...

Merely one of many elements of the presumption in this doctrinaire Circular comes by comparing its tone with that of the famous Symposium of the Wistar Institute, relating to mathematical and biological sciences. At this meeting, outstanding world scientists, evolutionists, acknowledged that the theories of evolution they considered simply did not have a working means of formulation, a way to be put which would bridge the gap between rational thought and theory entertained *2. Honesty constrained them to admit this. An account of the debate is to be found in the Adelaide University Library. (See Moorhead and Kaplan, in Bibliography, SMR.)

We do not object to a proper review of the evolution of evolutionary theory at a suitable level in schools: it would be refreshing and an eye­opener to the history of desperation in thought and it has very humorous aspects ­ like that of Professor Nilsson in his vast tome of thousands of pages on evolution.

After a life­time at it, heartily sick of trying to pretend that what was taught was what the evidence provided, he ended with the view that orchids arrived... all at once. It is marvellous how like creationists the more realistic evolutionists can sound, when desperate Evidence confronts them. The deficiencies were excellently reviewed by the learned Professor Thompson in his introduction to the Everyman's edition of ORIGIN OF SPECIES, at its centenary. If he was ruthless with Darwin's brainstorm, at least he was factual and realistic. It lay, as increasingly it is seen to do when factually and conceptually regarded, at the hand of scholar after scholar, in abysmal ruins.

No, the fact is that informed historical review of the writhings and twistings of this unhappy theory would be in order, if the matter is to be treated in government schools at all. It is not to this we would object ; but to what appears the dictatorial intrusion into rational debate, pre­judging by a mere wave of the educational hand: it is this which is our concern. No nation is wise that lets culture rule, no democracy which lets its name become a shroud, while a corpse lies within. Error must be exposed, the better to fall; and truth has no fear from freedom.

By this method of the Circular, education is cheapened, appearing very hard to distinguish from oily propaganda; and those of us who have lived long enough to retain memories of the reek of dictatorship which was so evident in Germany in World War II, do not savour this.

This challenge to the government's abuse of power, in so controlling this area, is multi-denominational; nor is it limited to the Petitioners. Certainly we conceive the Bible, being truth, has no trouble standing by its claim that all things in their 'kinds' were created. It is indeed frequently stated: for example in Colossians 1, in Ephesians 3:10, throughout Isaiah, in Revelation 4:11, while Matthew 19 finds Christ applying Moses' teaching here to a topic in view.

Accordingly we note with no surprise the evidential fact that there appears a SUDDEN AND MASSIVE advent of many kinds of varied life, swarming and highly differentiated and developed, in the so­called CAMBRIAN AGE. This however is the very one supposed, as a representative layer, to be near... to the beginning...

Famed scientist, Stephen Jay Gould has quite recently published a book, WONDERFUL LIFE: THE BURGESS SHALE, in which he stands in awe at the very prodigy of life found in this supposed first, or near to first step in earthly life; indeed, he alleges that though it is well known, the earlier examination of these deposits (the ones he investigates personally are in Canada) has involved an element of slanting, doing less than justice to the sheer wonder of what he finds the evidence on the field to be.

(For further on this, see Ch.1 above, Lectures on Creation, Section 2, The Crux of Things:
Point 7.)

This is scarcely verification of the GRADUALISTIC ideas; and with the famed Professor Hoyle of Cambridge vehemently criticising the mathematics of gradual evolution, one is scarcely impressed with what amounts to 'creation on the spot' evolutionists ­ still without God !

People like Agassiz, Cuvier, Nilsson, Goldschmidt, with Drs Morris and Gish and Professors Slusher and Wilder Smith, have in effect long provided a witness or a warning, as have - dealing this way or that - Professors Eden (cf.SMR pp.136ff., 156ff., dealing with elemental, ineluctable, factual realities in language), Weisskopf and Schützenberger. It is one that conflicts with the inflated claims of covert religionists who intrude their philosophies, their views with an arbitrary authority that is void, into the field of science. This might not be quite so terrible if only they noted, or were at least aware of the switch to a spurious 'religious' button, a sort of existential leap without logic. This is as non­scientific as it is non­scriptural.

Unfortunately, in the Circular here, the authority which seems to push Principals towards this style of thing constitutes, if analysed, a sort of partial religious establishment. It would be quite easy to distil out of the Circular a series of assumptions, and to make a CREED of it and this, in a 'free' country! No, this establishment of thought needs very quickly to be removed.

That such religious bents should be so indulged with such educational adventurism, as the Circular appears to provide, and be so propagandised with such monopoly on teachers, is objectively reminiscent of Hitler youth days, and reminds one of Mao. In Germany, equally disastrous theories
were put forward (the studies in eugenics, how to make the best, mot 'evolved' race, on behalf of the 'superior' race, were no mere chatter), as has also been the case in Russia. Darwinian intoxication, harmful to the brain, is not limited to theoreticians; nor are theoreticians limited to harmless ones, in terms of physical action.

Now however, to an amazing extent, the Bible is received back with no little acclaim in Russia. While the Chief Executive has shown a face far from Communism in the matter of his own religious beliefs, the phenomenon of a Russian parliament of deputies stopping proceedings in order to claim Bibles in the foyer is remarkable reading.

A noted Russian scientist, Dr Dmitri Kouznetsov visited Australia in 1991 and on September 6 addressed a meeting at Adelaide University. His cry was for freedom, openness in education, not indoctrination in the proclivities of a State or other philosophy. Science should have the dignity of freedom, not the drabness of direction. After all, one might add, this gives undue and perilous scope for politicians, many of whom blatantly and patently, but some covertly, tend towards absolutism, paternal or tyrannical. They may thus program things for their pet philosophies, philosophers - as Lysenko illustrates with Stalin; and throw weight behind the views of cliques or coteries, political, scientific or manipulative.

In all this, freedom has great possibilities for therapeutic merit.

Dr Koutnetsov himself had been converted to creationism by the evidence before becoming a Christian. As winner of the prestigious Lenin Science Award, and holder while in his thirties, of 3 earned bio-science doctorates, he symbolised what he declared. And that, to our point? It was not only the conviction that the Creation Model far better fitted the facts, without twisting, torture or torment, but that there was more freedom with the scientific treatment of the concept of creation in Russia than is the case in the U.S..

That freedom of ideas should take plant again in Russia better than in our vaunted soil - and not unsoundly at that, for in two world wars much blood has been shed for it - is an expression of the notorious decline in our land, in so much like the U.S.. It is to he hoped that the Australian trend towards independence will not so readily be thwarted as in our present CULTURAL DOMINION OF THE STATE, biting at the heels of the people of this land, like a dog with rabies.

It is to be noted that our State, S.A., has not only put a half-nelson on the children with its distasteful and arrogant force rather than education in this matter, it has also mischaracterised the Bible in its crass generalisations on the topic of religion. It is one thing to defend a thesis on a field; it is quite another to act as if a pseudo-divine wisdom required neither research nor justification. THAT is where vilification begins, and freedom ends. Is this fever to infect this people? Epidemics can have ravaging consequences, and often, to prevent them, what is needed first is cleanliness, not the pollutions of intemperate thought.

This however is not all. It is not merely an unscholarly assault on religion via rash generalisation, it is an attack on academic traditions of great value, a usurpation of the freedom of debate in the field of PROVOKED controversy, to aggravate it: it is also discriminatory and a gratuitous attack on the Biblical basis, which many keep on the wholly defensible grounds not only of faith, but of reason, uniquely indicating it. Such things need freedom of access, not petty dictation by what is woefully taken to be: THE CULTURAL DOMINION OF THE STATE. In fact, it is not human culture which is the topic, but what underlies man. Those who, being informed and able, so suffer the State to arrogate such dominion, may well deserve such domination.

It is far better that these things be taken freely; conviction may be aided by liberty, and those who love scientific method may well prefer the liberty to check these things out for themselves, as Dr Kouznetsov wisely urged, without discrimination or merely authoritarian direction as to results... Perhaps when one has suffered, as millions have done for so long in Russia, from the pigheaded princelings who dominated in such power and often in such luxury for so long, one begins the better to appreciate the purpose and calling of liberty.

It is not the holding of views, but THIS METHOD of implementing them, to which we object.

In sum, then, we request the removal of this invidious DECS document, the opening of free debate (if the area is to continue at all, at this school level), and the use of appropriate terms in teaching regarding scientific method and the theoretical standing of this theory.

We seek a position where students may freely reason and debate rationally, maintain positions, if they so desire, and this not without reasonable encouragement, and be free amongst well supplied evidence of all types: being unrewarded for mere conformity, and not presented with examinations based in their very structure, on mere presupposition. This we conceive to be or readily to become... demeaning, devitalising and immoral.

We seek the end of this undiscriminating discrimination, and of the State's vile intrusion into an area in which it appears as both barren and arrogant, as if being elected conferred on its rulers, untempered wisdom, serene knowledge and the end of human affairs in law, rule and dogma. Does it not even occur to such rulers that it is for them to open doors to rational endeavour, rather than announce what lies behind them; and provided presentation be not personally vicious, directed to the hurt of people as its aim, but intended well and defended ably, there is no room for State deification, apotheosis, blending with the mind of the Almighty per se, whether in adjudicating for Him, or assaulting Him or putting Him, as done in the Circular, very definitely if bucolically, "in place".

As for the Circular, never let it be said that protest after protest has not been made, on radio, in the press, in the Education Department, now DECS, to the Opposition but more particularly to the government in power. We are not here reviewing the government's intentions: but its performance, whatever the intention. Better results than these are urgently needed.

Unless these things be soon changed, this government may soon - while claiming concern about discrimination - with full knowledge, become the greatest perpetrator of discrimination in the State.

It is hard to believe that in one High School in this State, there was felt - very possibly because of the Circular - to be no freedom for a Christian group (often attended by a sympathetic Deputy Principal) to have at LUNCH- TIME, a film on Creation... After one has read the Circular, however, the effort required is significantly reduced.

Before presenting the SUMMARY OF ISSUES, we shall consider a comparison, in this field, with the once much-vaunted French MAGINOT LINE, directed against German invasion, with the utmost confidence; one which, being so long well-received by the French, was cavalierly treated by the Germans, who ... put it to the test.

Endnotes

*1

  • The article is reproduced from The Sydney Morning Herald, Saturday, November 4, 1882. It reported on the monthly meeting of the Royal Society of New South Wales. A paper was read entitled, "NOTES ON THE ABORIGINES OF NEW HOLLAND". It dealt with the period from 1844 of which the speaker reported this: "I had the privilege of taking some interesting notes from the blacks of this colony on the subject of their religious belief. These notes were necessarily and mainly taken from the most intelligent of those natives... No missionaries ever come to the southern district at any time, and it was not until many years later that the missionaries landed in Sydney on their way to Moreston Bay..."
  • He proceeds: "the notes which I took later on upon the religious belief of the whole of the aborigines of this continent are perfectly true and consistent with their own traditions." He notes that he has met with fresh confirmations in general belief in a Supreme Being in all parts of New South Wales.
  • Later in his paper, Mr Manning, the speaker, refers to a note in an aboriginal grammar, sent back to England by Archdeacon Gunther. It recorded the missionary's certainty that the aborigines could not have derived the beliefs he noted during his work, from white men, as they had had no communication with them. The beliefs in question included the concept of creation in that they referred to a Being who "made all things", in whom was the outcome of life. He made at the first and would judge at the last.
  • The point for us is simply this: that this very early report merely confirms other testimony printed more recently to the same effect. There has repeatedly been attested at least a notable belief among many aborigines, in the Creator.
  • It is therefore not without reason that distaste at the racial or cultural level may enter into the minds of some aborigines, when they are abused with the Circular's prejudices, imposed so cavalierly, a Western dream-time. (See Index, SMR.)
  • This contemporary secular missionary effort is not at all voluntary in this: that the alternative in education is far from readily obtained. It costs to diverge from the State philosophy; and doubtless it is worth it. Nevertheless, being the victim of others' dreams can be more of an imposition than imposing. It can strike differentially.

 

   *2

  • Involved are the nature of what observably happens, something to be recorded in the books of the naturalistic; and on the other hand, the nature of what for 'Nature' is claimed. These parallel lines do not meet.
  • Believers in creation of course on the other hand attest that it has finished happening, the act of institution of the designs in their intensity and complexity - creation. Confirmation comes in a predicted inability to find it happening, now. This is a fair, normal and rigorous test.
  • This is in fact what does happen: that is, such creation does not happen. Respectively, this involves anti-verification of naturalistic evolution and verification of creation. The facts unlike some of the theories, are perfectly free to do what they will. They do.
  • It is for this very reason that one of my children, some years ago, at that time even in a State High School was NOT taught the theory of evolution, it being a degraded and non-scientific theory. Part of the reason was this: events illustrative of it, signifying it, DO NOT HAPPEN. Since the School at that time had an enormous and interesting stress on the EMPIRICAL, showing the students WHAT HAPPENS and letting them see FOR THEMSELVES, as basic and essential to science: therefore the simple fact that as far as evolution is concerned in the laboratory, it very transparently does not happen, there was nothing to be said. In Mars, outer space, fossil series, demonstrable method, tests, power, verification: the same! They do not EVEN make life WITH intelligence and power!
  • It is this, in context of the NON-FREEDOM to debate the issue LOGICALLY in science (or freely anywhere without exclusivistic presuppositions in Government school time), that is doubly unbecoming for what is NEVER shown to happen. It makes the sort of discussion permitted rather like a debate in which one party has a microphone, while the other is shut in an outside toilet block. Free? Yes, within decreed confines that exclude rational interchange and mock equality as well as science


 

2. THE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT'S MAGINOT LINE: OR
DECS AND THE CIRCULAR MESS

The French, as we now see, trusted foolishly in their massive Maginot Line, designed to keep out the Germans at the frontier. Germany simply invaded behind it and took it. The South Australian Government in its noted Circular, this abusive, intrusive Education Document, trusts foolishly in a doctrine on the one hand, concerning religion, and on the other, concerning creation­evolution. No FREE AND LOGICALLY DEBATED CONTRARY THOUGHT is permissible. No intelligent interchange occurs. They KNOW. Clichés masquerade as thought. Protest and criticism alike are vainly disregarded. Education is nullified in these crucial dimensions, and the Department of Misinformation acts in peace as if at war.

However, it is not good enough to misdefine religion in general, or to mischaracterise Christianity in particular, through erratic and undisciplined generalisation, through the direction of a Government Department. We did not elect a pope, a dictator or a guide to souls. We would also prefer education which has more regard for the normal canons of logic, and provides a better force of example, both with reason in general and with scientific method in particular... and this not in name, but in demonstrable, attestable fact. It is not platitudes which we need; but practice.

It is not good enough to idealise the competing and often catastrophically contradictory current theories of evolution, to misapply scientific method, to misuse reason by defining in advance what students must believe and teachers receive or accept as parameters*1, before they speak; or to patronise the people of God by the mere scratch of a pen or sound of a key, astir within the Education Purlieus of this State.

Quite the contrary! Facts must be presented, the realities of contrary evolutionary theories must be made apparent, their mutual criticism, the one of the other; as also where some of these theories now accept creationist premises long held. Reasons must be presented likewise, reasoned student responses should be encouraged, if we are to have education rather than a lurid mix of discrimination and indoctrination . And this ? it is by some fearful, lurid, bureaucratic mistake, masquerading as secular education. Conceivably, the whole area could be omitted; but if it is included, it must be treated openly, rationally and adequately. It should be regarded as a matter of education, befitting a Minister for Education, whatever his department should now be called. It is no service to youth to replace their minds with the preferences of his culture, sub­culture or person.

Examinations, including those of year 12, should not be discriminatory in their presuppositions, thus giving an unfair advantage to those who share the cultural canons adopted; a command educational establishment should be abolished. In short, liberty should continue to bat. It is far safer than being pseudo­omniscient.

Children should be taught, encouraged to think, and in particular, made aware of the demanding requirements of scientific method. This area should serve as an example, not a repudiation of it!

As Dean Brown has stated, we have raised several important principles. This was his pre-election view, expressed in writing. Their importance, there stated, however has not been sufficient to induce him to receive even for a few minutes, the representatives, four of them Christian Ministers, of the hundreds who have petitioned his Government for review. Review? It was not timely, he said before embarking on over 1000 days of inaction.

Freedom is not the least of them. There have been those who, in two World Wars, thought liberty of the body worth protecting; and there are those who now consider liberty of the mind should not be prostituted for simplicity or sold for convenience.

There are even those who consider gratuitous insult ought not to be offered to the children who, with or without their parents, hold otherwise. Ostensibly at least, the United Nations in its Convention on Child Rights, to which this country has for some years been a party ­ whatever the faults of that statement ­ might be among them.

The acts prejudicial to information, to participation and to free and equal education, involved in this dogmatic direction to Staff and students, are notorious: and in particular, Convention Articles Numbers 12, 13, 17 and 19 appear violated.

Far more importantly to us and to those who hold with us, this shameful indoctrination not only flaps the wings of political potency against various major Church Confessions, but this prejudice given such astounding licence in the field of State education, is against the clear teachings of the Bible.
 

People do not HAVE to believe the Bible; but when they

assault its premises, one would at least hope that

something of at least spurious reason

would be offered to help dignify

the occasion

and the oppression which is coming into vogue,

just as it now has long been put into practice:

whatever the intention.


 

When however the presentation by

AUTHORITY is or purports to be a

GENERALISATION on the

VERY NATURE OF RELIGION*2 -

and this is manifestly nothing other than contrary dogma, without justification:

then this is, if anything could ever be, vilification.
 

Is then the Government of this State acting in some sense criminally ? Such a question is for lawyers. It is acting unprofessionally in its ostensible description of, but actual indictment of religion in general.

That such religious bents should be so indulged with such educational adventurism, and so propagandised with monopolistic exclusiveness is objectively reminiscent of the Hitler youth days, in which similar, and of course equally disastrous, views were put forward, as has also been the case in Russia. The common content of evolutionary mythology ­ that is of a theory constructed without exacting regard to actual evidence, or discipline by it, or in disregard of it, to satisfy a yearning or desire ­ in these cases is not accidentally related to human conduct.

That is one more reason for protest, in view of the corruptive force on morals which this unscientific mythology involves. As to the views on the Bible expressed in the Circular, a rather drab and antiquated form of theological radicalism, a relativism, as if those who teach that all is relative, somehow had access to absolute truth in order to so declare it: this is not merely illogical, but presumptuous. As a base for the behaviour of Principals and teachers, it is laughable.

It is not mirth, however, whatever its elements, which is our main concern. The misuse of authority often has a mirthful side; but equally, the results can be murky, as Macbeth found in Shakespeare's so just expression of the moral issue of overweening dictatorship. The extent and intent of it are separate questions.

The presumption of the State in characterising the Bible as is done in the Circular, and in speaking there in terms of one vein of former theological fervour, of 'meaning stories' and the rest, is in total opposition to the Biblical claims of absolute, factual truth as to what it declares to be such. As to the Bible, it denounces those who reject God's absolute verifiable, continual, unique prophetic coverage of fact (Isaiah 41,43,48 for example) and mocks the opposition for its clamorous, emptily self-confident projections.

That is fine for God to do; the Maker can contend with the miscreant creature. We merely note that this current assault on Biblical Christianity is unwarranted, unevidential, unconformed to scientific method, a breach of liberty in this State, an attack on our academic traditions, a usurpation of the freedom of debate in the field of provoked controversy, and a discriminatory and direct attack on the Biblical basis which many keep, often on stated and wholly defensible grounds not only of faith, but of reason ­ indeed, of reason as supporting nothing else.

While such a position can be presented, published and defended (see The Shadow of a Mighty Rock*3 for example), it is not our present desire to do to the government what it is illicitly doing to the children. It is indeed to be hoped that at least some of the government is unaware of the ludicrous contradiction involved in officially ...

TALKING against discrimination -

while being perhaps this State's most gross, and certainly its most extensive violator of the same. The position is not improved by the tender age of those so treated.

We request therefore the removal of this infamous Circular by the S.A. Education Ministry, the opening of free debate (if the area is to continue for study at all), the use of appropriate terms in teaching, regarding the scientific and theoretical standing of the theory being indoctrinated so shamelessly, and this in its major and conflicting varieties; as of creation within the same stringencies of method. We seek the due teaching of scientific method along with this subject, should any of it continue, so that students may decide for themselves, without fear or favour, the current state of their thinking or beliefs, and act freely.

Maginot lines have a place for hype, hypothesis and possibly hubris; but it is better to get back to education in this case.

The opposite is here the case, while in terms of the rigours of the method, evolutionism is at an impasse so great as justly to call forth from prominent non­creationist scientists, titles such as Darwinism: The Refutation of a Myth, and Evolution: a Theory in Crisis; and comments such as:

  • "The deficiencies are real. They will never be filled... The idea of evolution rests on pure belief." (SMR citation, p.109, emphasis added, from a Scandinavian academic, author of a vast biological treatise in this area.)
  • "We believe that there is a considerable gap in the Neo­Darwinian theory of evolution... of such a nature that it cannot be bridged within the current conception of biology" (SMR p.129). This contribution came from a Professor Mathematics at the University of Paris at an international symposium.
  • Further (SMR p.309), an academic leader in this field states this: "The Darwinian myth" is deemed "the greatest deceit in the history of science", defying both "Nature" and "experimental conditions" in their provisions.
  • "Why", he asks of the Darwinian theory, "has it not been abandoned ?
  • Noting Darwin, he states "they follow Darwin's example ­ they refuse to accept falsifying evidence." (SMR p. 252C.)
  • A Cambridge professor of physics attacks in depth those theories which do not reckon with the inability of "natural process" to "generate" the vast "information content of even the simplest living system". (SMR p.252A.)
  • Of gradualism here, a Harvard professor in life science declares, after investigations of RAW MATERIALS, that it is "literally incomprehensible" (SMR p.234). Indeed, he is as one subjected to outraged affront by such a thought. Listen to his expostulation on p. 260, Wonderful Life. 
     
    • "How could such a view of life as a single progressive chain,
      based on replacement by conquest and extending smoothly
      from the succession of organic designs through the sequence of human technologies,
      possibly accommodate anything like our modern interpretation of the Burgess fauna ?"

      he asseverates by his rhetorical question!
  • Of the same area, the noted Cambridge professor declares, "evidently nonsense of a high order". "The fossil record stubbornly fails to deliver one single bit of evidence in support of ...'phyletic gradualism' which is supposed to be a prediction of the micromutation theory" (SMR p.203).
  • A leader in research, FRS, showered with scientific honour, in this field, observes of this hypothesis, astonishingly bereft as it is of confirmation, validation and any normal support from the proven methods, that is here, scientific method:
     

"To establish the continuity required by theory, historical arguments are invoked, even though historical evidence is lacking. Thus are engendered those fragile towers of hypothesis based on hypothesis, where fact and fiction intermingle in an inextricable confusion" (SMR p.200).

  • From a Berkeley academic in biological science comes this protest

on the glib and glossy substitute of imagination for relevant evidence,

in the gradualistic organic evolutionary gyrations:

  • "Incessant repetition of this unproved claim, glossing lightly over the difficulties, and the assumption of an arrogant attitude towards those who are not so easily swayed by fashions in science, are considered to afford scientific proof of the doctrine" on gradualism and organic evolution. (Cf. SMR p. 252B.)
  • But let us revert to a very distinguished New Zealand biological academic and writer in this field:

 

Again we find the refrain of fact versus myth -

 

·            "If the evolutionists were 'looking down the right road',
    it was certainly not a road derived directly from the facts of nature", and

·            "Can we accuse anti­evolutionists like Agassiz of 'looking down the wrong road' ... ?" ;

or,

·            "It was again the same basic contradiction between observation ­ which spoke for discontinuity ­ and the idea of evolution by natural selection ­ which demanded continuity of nature ­ that lay at the heart of Darwin's angst in the Origin.... How could it be otherwise when they admitted as did Darwin himself that the crucial evidence in the form of connecting links was emphatically absent ?" ­ Denton, op.cit., pp. 354­5.


Indeed (op.cit. pp. 353-4):

"The concept of the continuity of nature has existed in the mind of man, never in the facts of nature. In a very real sense, therefore, advocacy of the doctrine of continuity has always necessitated a retreat from pure empiricism, and ... it has always been the anti-evolutionists, not the evolutionists, in the scientific community who have stuck rigidly to the facts..." (Italics added.)

·       Further, to revert to the former Director of the Commonwealth Institute of Biological Control at Ottawa:

    • "Darwin in the Origin was not able to produce palaeontological evidence sufficient to prove his views but... the evidence he did produce was adverse to them; and I may note that the position is not notably different today" (SMR p.200).

 

  • Moreover, "the inference to design is purely... a posterior... based on a ruthlessly consistent application of the logic" (Denton, SMR p.116).
  • As to this theory providing ever­increasing evidence for itself,
    "nothing could be further from the truth" (    Denton, op.cit. p.77),
    despite "the overriding supremacy of the myth".
  • For theoreticians who specialise in the extrinsic visible field, it is an excessively failed case to have nothing visible to show:
    this is a specialty shop without goods.
    (For details of those cited see SMR at pages noted.)

    "Myth", "greatest deceit", refusal to "accept falsifying evidence" -
    it sounds uncommonly like a Biblical denunciation of follies such as 'Nature' worship. Those who so decry are amongst the leading scientists in their fields. If you want negatives on this concept, it is like a mass of them inside your camera, unfortunately often ... lost when protagonists of evolutionary myth, roughly open the  back of the camera, so that they are not published where they ought to be.

    Such is the case, however, when one simply exposes these their statements made of the situation, WHEN FACTS are in view! Myth, the fanciful attribution of powers where they do not belong, is in cold, realistic fact what is the nature of such ultra-scientific theories that fit facts the way Cinderella's sisters' feet fitted the neat last required. The very effort is grotesque.
  • On the other hand: the assertion that the visible is not equipped to be,
    or active as author of itself,
    is not merely logically, experimentally and rationally fulfilled before our eyes constantly,
    as well as unrestingly attested by rational and confirmatory results in all directions.

    It is quite simply what the Bible in fact asserts (Hebrews 11), as to the arrival of the created universe. It came from what had what it took; which the visible logically and observationally lacks. As to the visible universe, what it is good at, is being what it is; what it finds withheld from it, is the power to make itself into what it would be*4 .

 

What observationally is found is that the visible sphere lacks the powers to do this very thing, which it does not do. No coherent exposé of such an act or any observation of it has ever occurred.

Verification is perfected for creation just as perfectly as evolution is anti-verified.

Small wonder there is such patent audacity, pertinacity and tenacity on the part of those who want to 'educate' the young into such fields without opposition, with monolithic powers of legislation replacing both thought and transparency!

It is worth emphasising that all quotations above are from biologists of advanced or eminent standing. With the exception of Dr Thompson, none is known as a creationist; and the latter was of great scientific eminence.

The demonstration that, on the other hand,  creation fits scientific method uniquely is presented in detail in The Shadow of a Mighty Rock, esp. Chs. 1­2, with a useful summary on pp. 145ff., and a relevant Extension at the end of Ch.2, in the Supplement S1-S34, in pp. 421ff., and 251ff.. The logical requirements that this doctrine of creation in turn is part of what is necessarily the communication of God Almighty, in the Bible, is also first presented in the same publication. This, it stands in the starkest contrariety as to FACTS and their scientifically correct interpretation, as a basis for thought. It is not only confirmed, verified, it stands with just that bleak indifference to illogical constructions and patently unempirical pretence, not to say pretension, which has marked the magic of meanings without mastery from the first.

Such matters merely increase what is a major contention here presented. And this? It is that in this educational field, people should be free to think, that youth should be neither oppressed nor disenfranchised; and that the government has neither authority nor ethical propriety in substituting preferred philosophy masquerading as science, any more than it has logical propriety in avoiding logical grounds in favour of clichés, as though the latter did service for thought. People must be given opportunity to test, to learn, to select, from a just curriculum in Government Schools. If this people permits the present position to continue: in a democracy, it will deserve with increasing gravity, what it gets. Indeed, it is beginning to get it already.
 
 

ENDNOTES

*1 It may be added that this cultural self­indulgence by the government of the day is not merely gratuitous, with nothing that could feasibly even pose as rationally stated grounds, mere begging of the question being deployed, chosen 'definitions' determining the issue. It is also a mockery aggravated by a failure to distinguish between vast and relevant diversities in religions, which indirectly leads to a caricature of what the Bible states concerning the actions and intentions of God. For this erratic definitionalism, there is neither excuse nor extenuation: it is unscholarly.

*2 As the above­mentioned publication shows clearly; the concept that scientific method and the Bible are at some kind of variance is both prejudice and presumption.

*3 As to the relevant teaching of the Bible see The Shadow of a Mighty Rock, pp. 482­498, 177­199; or in this file, infra at pp. 293-338; and as to Scientific Method and its impasse with this Government's approach, see the same work, pp. 145­153, 931ff., and Index. It is here relevant to note the SMR was first published in 1992, reaching the Government soon afterwards; and that the 2nd Edition, together with That Magnificent Rock were both placed on the Web, November 1996. (Update note: The Kingdom of Heaven - see Ch.1 et al. - followed in July 1997.)

*4 This is no unusual situation; it confronts us too, all the time; although we, being more creative, can affect some works within the models provided, and with the imagination, itself a work provided at another level; as is the power to defile or deface the evidence and reject its portent, at another level again. There are worlds within worlds, scenes and scenarios; there is mind, matter and spirit. Reductionism is an alternative mind style to realism.
 
 

3. THE PROBLEM OF POLITICAL PAPACY

WHEN a State elects, or is visited with a government which claims absolute authority in religious matters, there is always a problem. It is one which could justly be termed that of 'political papacy". NOT religious in their essence, such a government nevertheless may aspire to direct the thought, or the understanding of people in religious spy This it may do either absolutely or in significant part. It is not a question of keeping people from murdering one another, or mugging as an objective: the State now moves on to keeping the thoughts of the people, in named situations such as education, where the Government thinks it best they should be.

WHO however gave the government the right to do this ? Force sometimes helps, but then might is not right. Propaganda may for a time subdue people: but subduing is most unlikely to be total. Many will normally protest or present a determined opposition. In our democracy, the government has acted in this way of dictatorial tyranny: but few there are who protest. It is true that hundreds of people have done so, some Ministers including the President of a denomination but percentage­wise, there are few.

For a State, the condition which tends to follow is one of voluntary servitude, one step nearer to political papacy! HAVE the government by mighty works, by the presentation of religious laws which they can show they know and which operate, have they EARNED the right to do this? ASSUREDLY not! Was it granted to them? Scarcely: the issue did not even arise in the election!

Is it then a cultural norm in this country for such political domination in the field of religion? On the contrary, it is a gross departure from the Australian insistence, vigorous insistence, for which it is famed, on freedom and independence. To view religion as meaning stories, myths, legends, subsisting in a realm... other than fact, may seem a worthy thought for a government, should it wish itself to play God. Yet to issue a Circular to Principals to constrain their conduct, on such grounds, seems the work of comic impudence in some Gilbert and Sullivan opera: fiasco not service. To do so without warrant, gratuitously is, in a word, political papacy.

If then the religious ways which are forced upon the State education process IMPACT NEGATIVELY with or even contradict the religion with which the country was, if any, founded; and if they do so in crass, gross and wholly unsubstantiated ways; and IF the government will not even allow dialogue on the matters, or arrange interview, or provide closely reasoned grounds: what then! Yet if it instead aborts approach, ignores hundreds of petitioners and pursues its ways saying ­ IT IS NOT TIMELY OR SEASONAL TO CONCERN OURSELVES WITH YOUR MATTER (in essence what has over improvident years been the case in S.A.): then politics is becoming imperious indeed. It is time for freedom-loving people to call such a Government to account. THAT time is now.
 
 

RELIGION BY POLITICAL DECLARATION ­ THE POLITICAL BULL IN THE CHINA SHOP

To take a case, the Christian religion, in the Bible which throughout the history of the church has continued as its supreme written source book, more, its doctrinal base and security, contains references to things that have been SEEN and HEARD. These are numerous, solemn and substantial. You find this for example in John 3:11 and in Acts 4:20.

Thus both Christ directly and Peter and John state that they speak what they have seen and heard. In the latter case, this follows the account of a miraculous raising of one lame from birth, occupied in begging alms, but categorically cured, with the sermon which followed and a priestly arrest of the apostles. We speak what we have SEEN and HEARD, they say indeed, they go further. WE CANNOT BUT SPEAK THE THINGS WHICH WE HAVE SEEN AND HEARD.

Here is a religion, as the very title of that book, The Acts of the Apostles indicates, dealing with FACTS, EVENTS and OPERATIONS VISIBLE AND AUDIBLE, PHYSICAL AND PRACTICAL, as well as with their SOURCE and His teaching. Nor is this all. In the case of the CENTRAL FIGURE of this religion, He is proclaimed on a CENTRAL OCCASION (Pentecost) to have been UNABLE TO BE DETAINED BY DEATH, so that His flesh did NOT ROT (Acts 2:30­333).

THIS Christ, did NOT have His flesh rot (cf. Luke 24:39 ­ "Handle me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see Me to have").
Paul in I Corinthians 15 pronounces that a failure to receive (15:1­3) that what it was that was buried, was raised from the grave, is a failure to
receive Christianity at all, and constitutes an ENTIRE REJECTION of it ( I Corinthians 15:13­15).

The fact that this CENTRAL FIGURE, the Lord Jesus Christ is also attested as the Son of God who was PRIOR to incarnation, in the very FORM of God, thinking it nothing to snatch, to be equal with God (cf. John 10:30, 5:19­23), makes the case more than central. It is basic, inalienable, definitive. To act against this with the assault of mere political authority is to act to the uttermost against Jesus Christ (cf. Mark 8:31­32, Luke 24:37­40, John 20:25­29). Political assassins (or would­be assassins) of Christianity should at least seek mandate, or cease.
 
 

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE ?

  • In sum: The present State Government has acted against this whole area in a general way, through unscholarly, undefended and indefensible words, pushing a preferred if weird philosophic base, in the Circular to Principals, first sent out in January 5, 1988, but remorselessly continued by the present incumbents. This has divorced religion from the realm of fact as such, in statements as crass as careless. This is attested liberally in - "The Situation" pp. 193ff., above, which reviews the Circular in considerable detail.
     

THAT serves as excuse, in turn, for refusing to have creation dealt with at all in Science; or in FREE debate, elsewhere in Government Schools (free debate does not set up discriminatory conditions at the outset!). It directs by arbitrary definition.

As we have seen, THAT means that the Christian religion of the Bible is a priori rejected at the heart of it, and this without evidence, without argumentation to the point, and without even a willingness on the part of Government to meet with the Petitioners or even representatives of them: or to review the vilification with which they are now long involved. Even GOD is willing to "reason together" (Isaiah 1:18, I Peter 3:15) ­ but in this, not this Government. They do not find it TIMELY, over the passing years, to do so.

For any form of ethics or responsibility, it is necessary for this Government to arise to meet this situation. It is of course necessary, should it persist in this discriminatory prejudice and coup, that it formulate the matter for its next e