BULLETIN ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY EIGHT

THE MOTHER IS NOT MULTIPLICITY NOR IS NOTHING ALL

For a brief corrective in plain speaking
which is both rational and verified, see the end of this topic here.

In the latest Creation magazine (June, 2020), a fine article appears dealing with the evasive atheistic, materialistic many world, many universes approach of the proponents of such views, ones imagining an option to replace the requirement of creation. Such a marked contingent of irrelevance, evasion, irrationality and begging of the question perhaps deserves a short and abrupt characterisation in terms as inevitable as cogent.

1st

For a test, when there are null data, the result is illusory; when the imaginary data have no backing, the outcome is a myth.

Such approaches in the realm of the question: Where did it all come from, this our world ? as the original theme and matter for explanation, can suffer variously or even multiply in their degrees of irrelevance, and ignoring of the question.

Thus such approaches furnish or supply no evidence whatsoever, just like a fairy tale. It appears as if from nowhere: like its account of this world with all the fantasy of one of the Arabian nights. In terms of scientific method, properly involving explaining, clarifying, comparing, collating evidence and seeking to verify some evidence-based hypothesis with due research, ready for confirming or annihilation of that hypothesis, what results ? It is this: the matter has no place in this domain whatsoever, being simply an imaginative outburst. It reminds one of a major golfing tournament in which a frustrated former champion, having narrowly missed a number of shots, lost yet more shots in his score because he went after one ball and hit it again in midair, as if to recover a desperate situation. It altered things, indeed (two strokes penalty for breach of the discipline and meaning of the game, according to the rules).

Frustration, however, in science, golf or any ordered procedure, is not available as a relevant method. Fulfilment outside the task parameters, point, procedures is a psychological outburst, not a logical possibility.

Science can have much to contribute when it uses self-discipline to adhere to its method; which in turn has given it its dignity; but it deserves nothing but rebuke when it abandons its method, and becomes merely a mixture of bad philosophy and wishful thinking, shamelessly  intrusive, a decisive defect and one often not even admitted despite the enormity of deception involved, consciously or unconsciously.

2nd

Making merry with many does not supply one, or any.

We learn of strange preoccupations in this sphere. Thus we learn there must have been very large collection of universes/worlds as a basis if we are to account for ourselves coming into being, as if one small pocket of order (this world) could co-exist with some type of utterly undirected disorder, as a type of essence. But again there are insuperable problems here. An essence concentrates and focusses the alleged nature of something held in mind, whether it has any objective existence or not. It does not concentrate what is statedly UN-characteristic of the object which the mind (or eye) brings up.

This excrescential account of mental inventiveness in the human race amounts simply to a re-statement in irrelevant terms of the question of the cause/background in illusory terms. It makes several assumptions. First, it is that since we are alleged to have come from a brimming chaos of lawless mix, then this would be the sort of one that would work. So might a river work when you are dying of thirst in a desert; but this does not create the river, which as in this case, remains precisely where it originated, namely in the human mind. It does not address the question of what is here and how at all came both to be and to be what it is.

What under the principle of sufficient cause in a real world, is to work - oh, and in this world in particular ? How get it all!  Inventive ideas do not invent objective reality: it is time we returned to reality and the need for a number of features to bring mental focus, such as here, to physical and objective existence. They include elements such as: work, skill, a comprehending mind, a will to act, coherent thought, system-producing mentality, materials and existence in palpable terms. Having mind 'arise' (standard evasion talk) in matter, law 'arise;' in matter, imagination to 'arrive' in man, logic to 'arise' in method, is not a statistical question. These terms merely mutiny against logical thought, avoid it, bypass it, and put a question each time and place when it is an answer that is required, not a question, which is being re-stated.

New categories are not part of an answer, where there are no productive powers in operation, nor is duplication a way of getting something never shown in any physical source, such as brilliant technology, in what cannot think, and for that matter, in terms of explanation, simply is neither  accounted for nor even there. That is the model, modelled on nothing and coming to nothing, a work of mental vacuity and endued with self-contradiction as an actress with preparation, as if she lived by it and actually failed to act.

Also needed is potential, for if a collation or system or collection or whatever is being (invalidly) imagined to start with in this 'explanation' which explains nothing and lacks this feature, it by definition CANNOT work. That is then and there precluded, in such a model. If however what is imagined is envisaged to have this quality of potential, then the whole question of origin is simply being begged. To get, from nothing and nowhere, the potential for everything - and that means what is says and that to which it is addressed, namely the physical, moral, mental, intellectual, imaginative, the willing and the wilful, indeed all the works of our spirits in their inventiveness of attitudes, systematic and otherwise: then we have double trouble. Then the invalidity is not merely to ignore the question - ignoratio elenchi, the logical error - but to do so with a blatant disregard, as if we had asked not for a scientific answer, but a bed-time story.

Another subtler effort to clear the decks of the rational need was in his own measure, invented by the philosopher, Immanuel Kant. Thus instead of rose-coloured glasses to colour what one sees (in illusion, deliberately induced for some purpose), he invented categorically conceived glasses, or data-altering devices. Categories of various natures are proposed to be supplied by our own minds, and this in such a way as not only to fail to add their kind to what we receive, but as to leave us unaware of the self-deception imposed on us. We contribute our own innate categories, in the formation of material that comes to mind, but they are not in operation as they are within us, in terms of the raw material that is outside us. 

But this endeavour to separate us from the objectivity of existence (with which we nevertheless successfully act day by day), has two immediately obvious errors. First, to know and tell truth, you need not to be separated from reality in this mind-creating concepts scenario. If you are deemed to be so, however, your hypothesis (as with the case of Kant) is based on extensive manipulation and you cannot see the data themselves. How then tell it right when it is automatically being hidden from actuality ?

Thus if your mind is so adding, and you receive the resultants of this internal distortion for your procedures, coming from your own self, then you annul your own basis for such assertions. Your basis is bankrupt of objectivity, your mind fiddles, so how can you happily (or even in some grief) proceed to tell us about it all, when distortion and addition is not only your basis, but your guaranteed basis! Further, if causation, for example, is to be explained, that is, how it got here as a principle of procedure, HOW is this with any logical force to be done ? Why, you have to explain ITS origin, make a case against it. You have to explain causality, how it came, by using it!

By what means do you do this ? By the use of the principle of causation, saying, Well, this caused that, and then this happened, making the other occur. In other words:

TO ACCOUNT FOR CAUSATION SO AS TO MAKE IT APPEAR ILLUSORY,
YOU HAVE TO USE IT TO DO SO!

This is merely to take time with groundless foolishness, that is, a  matter of accounting without anything in the account or even a means of putting it there (cf. SMR Ch. 5). Further, if you put it or any potential there to start your universe, you violate the nature of your model. You are in explaining how the universe arrived, to show the grounds, not elaborate from fantasy. Your imagination is not the issue. Your universe is. It needs to be faced.

It is clear that causation is inherent in what is there, logically, since efforts to dislodge it MUST use it for any rational case whatsoever, to dismiss it as it is. You can scarcely invalidate something by using it to invalidate itself.  If it be invalid, the proponent him/herself so makes such efforts, such a modelling,  to be futile. If it is not, then that is what we act on daily, and works as shown in detail in The Shadow of a Mighty Rock, even manifests itself on all sides.  We return to operational reality, and are done with the hypothesis of imposed unreality.

Then, despite and without such illusory philosophical devices, we proceed to pass all the rigours of scientific method with flying colours. There is no point in inventing a model in which what is impossible is the cause of all things, but on the contrary, there is a need to find what is actual, attested and verified as such. The Bible, in fact, as shown in the work above for example, holds instructions, just as physically does our DNA, how to understand, how we are placed and what we may do about it.

Thus in this tale of atheism, it supplies no answers, no explanation, and in this instance, just talks about what the imagination suggests would have been required, if we did not start with nothing but unknowable somethings, which avoids the issue. Not only is this theory self-defeating as shown, it does not tell us whee THESE shrouded potentials came from, so begging the question entirely.

Causelessly to import all the potential and principles required, including logical cohesion and interaction, and then to pretend we are talking of something outside the mind, is not only to beg the question, it is to invent another world. From the inventive mind of man, it is then capable of export into a visible, tangible, force occupied, logic revering, law-abiding structure as if an after-dinner dream took possession. Worse, it resembles more closely a no-dinner substitute. This however does not create the dinner, and we are left famished of any rational account, disciplined declaration of how it all originated, came to be. It is then simply to re-state the question in irrelevant terms of wish-fulfilment. You do NOT explain things by just imagining them or what has power to produce them.

Self-contradiction is no basis for rational thought: if you can use valid causation to disprove causation, then causation is no more invalid. You necessarily fail if you try to show it so. It is a crucial weapon in your initial action, and if it were invalid, it would leave only a blip, a dither of conceptual clash and systematic inconsistency. If you cannot know the actual truth, then any attempt even to state your hypothesis cannot contain it, and so you fail even to communicate truth about what you want to say. What you do not have, you cannot convey.

With God, you do have this however, and its movement from mind to objective reality, God's mind, the mind adequate for creation of minds, is subjectible to test on all sides in terms of the expected explanation. The felicity of the result on the biblical model  is continually confirmed. Relevant issues are readily covered in terms of the Bible as in every aspect of reality, as we have found in the trilogy noted above, as confirmed in  many others of our works on this site. Not only does there come a rigorous answer to the question here put, the origin of our universe, but with it far more with all the readiness of truth.

There come likewise then, the meaning, the purpose, the condition we are in, the escape from it needed, the necessity of due testing of these things, and of acting as directed by the One knowledgeable enough to make us, but to solve the problems with which we have placed ourselves. He does not do it by force. He did not make us that way.  It is a magnificence that is revealed in His model, His plan, His purpose, His request that we test everything and abide by the result.

There come likewise then, on this model, the creation of man and his subordinate creativity from the creativity of God, ultimate, eternal and with no limits to power, the ultimate source, resource and therefore, the meaning, the purpose, origin of man who in turn is the origin of the revolt which leaves this human being with disturbed dis-vision and confusion. Here is frankly declared the disrupted and diseased condition we are in as a race, and the escape from our plight which is needed, and the prescribed manner of acting as directed by the One knowledgeable enough not only to make us, but to solve the problems within which we have placed ourselves.

More staggeringly unique and relevant in this explicatory model, God does not do it by force. He did not make us that way.  His solution to our derangement does not take us that way. He acts in terms of our design, our observable abilities and facilities, functions and powers: to the point, in answer to the self-exhibiting realities. It is a magnificence that is revealed in His model, His plan, His purpose, His request that we test everything and abide by the result.

Thus  not only are all these things equipped with observable results, and logical necessities, but also exposed, is a recommendation of  something in terms of method of enquiry. God in this biblical model thunders like a teacher both challenge and answer. He insists on the necessity of due testing of these things, as in Isaiah 41:21ff., 43:8ff., 44:6-8,23ff., 46:6-10, 48:3ff.. In this region of Isaiah the prophecies are intense - 40-66, as for that matter are they found in sites like Isaiah 9, 13, 21, 23, 32 and so on. You also have examples of the divine forecasts, not one of which has ever  been falsified, whether of the permanent fall of Babylon, its (then) coming ignominy, transforming coming of Cyrus, appointed prophetically first by name, in Isaiah 44-45, thus to join all the prophecies and fulfilments at a gross or a detailed level (cf. SMR Chs. 8     . Also thus exposed are forecasts from millenia ago, precisely fulfilled in our present world, indeed in this author's lifetime, to an astonishing degree.

We gain, then in this biblical creationist model, the one self-confirming continually, the charge to TEST all things, the insistence on any approach that works effectively to explain happenings at any time found in our time, which fulfils itself, does not buckle under test: what nothing surpasses. That is the method in science: check all ports, don't omit any points, see what happens and has happened, and find the nearest approach to answering: how and why did it happen, what is its explanation. Do not allow prejudice or distaste, or lust or obstinacy to move you. FIND IT, the happenings. EXPLAIN them, give reasonings and verifications... that is it precisely.

We are also shown the need to be acting as directed by the One knowledgeable not only enough to make us, but to solve the problems amid which we have placed ourselves. He does not do it by force. He did not make us that way.  It is a magnificence that is revealed in His model, His plan, His purpose, His request that we test everything and abide by the result. Not only have His counsels been repeatedly disregarded, but hated and His people harassed, murdered, slaughtered in large numbers, as in the famed St Bartholomew's day massacre in France, as in the stadium of Rome, exactly as in the Inquisition and repeated episodes fulfilling John 15:22  -16:4.

All these things cohere both together, when examined, and with scrupulous consistency and accuracy, with the field of data, both logical and psychological, and in the various disciplines of research.

3rd

In some contexts, there is safety in numbers,  but not when you have to begin, or the numbers are irrelevant.

The argumentative assertion that there must have been vast amounts of worlds/universes to allow an atypical corner called this our earth, to be utterly different statistically, is likewise a futile and to the point, a dysfunctional assertion. This idea is subject at once to the point that if you are going to imagine getting (from nowhere and nothing in this explanation, or explanatory quiver as it is more properly called), you are going to have to start.

If you don't start, you cannot finish and so have no explanation. If you do start, then there must be a first to everything, including the first world/universe. No statistics can explain this utter divergence between what is to be made, and what is asserted of it. IF it is to a chaos-to-order, chance-to-law, nothing to something transition, then imagining it does not help. Nor does it explain. You can imagine an ice cream, without being able to lick it. Imagination in the mind is not provision in the objective world. Surrender to subjectivity simple avoids the issue.

What is to be explained is then ONE THING and what is used to explain, the answer is the exact opposite, untested and self-contradictory imaginations being not reason, but techniques of evasion, violating every requirement of reason. If you want more, you multiple the 'problem' (equals find intractable difficulty in explanation). In the multiplicity of universes case, you start with just one, one of course that works, then proceed with more than one, each itself needing correlation with the others in their immensity of elements and syntheses, co-ordinations (so as to be called by the same name as the assessable group). You diversify and multiply the first of your universes, with the usual problems of having no means not amounting to begging the question, or evading the point. Having other universes to add in imagination as your base for a beginning, thus merely makes a ludicrously irrelevant problem.

However, to multiply your problem is no solution to it.

4th

There remains past all this, one simple fact. NOTHING is all you logically have to start with, if your scenario or model is of this godless kind; something is what your explanation has to end with: and there is nothing in between. This is ostensibly assigned to explain how this universe 'arose', one universe eminently investigable and empirically self-attesting, possessed of all its characteristics in systematic and testable areas of prodigious breadth.

All the talk of this and that GIVEN, simply ASSUMED basics, which are then bred with the human mind with all sorts of efforts to invent what has no account, and needs entire accounting, is self-contradiction. It amounts to cheating, like simply putting a golf ball in a hole, perhaps even saying, See, it can be done. But that is precisely what in the domain of an analogous test, how to account for the golf holes, the intention to match them with a ball struck, and so forth, is irrelevant. The effort to drop the ball manually into the hole may have its own difficulties (though they are admittedly small), but the 'explanation' is a mere muddle of the obvious (in this case) and the question is avoided.

It is so like the show, Yes, Minister, when after talking round about but not ON the question put to him, he is asked it again. What! he exclaims in effect, didn't  I just answer that ? No, you abounded in verbal harassment, but missed the point entirely. NOW could we have it, would be a possible rejoinder.

Mouthing an answer (in the scenario examined in this Bulletin) is not making one.

To explain you need to start not with the answer simply assumed, whether all at once, in potential, in dribs and drabs as evolutionalists often love to do (though Stephen Jay Gould honestly rejects this and prefers a more abundantly cohesive set of features imagined to arrive all at once, as it were in blobs, but for no reason from nowhere, if one is to keep to the point).

Man's mind can be very inventive, but transferring its thoughts to the outer physical world will be vetoed by reality, unless you ADD power, potential, productive facilities, skill. It is on a par, to ignore this, just as is done in atheism, materialism and their ilk. It is indeed on a par with a child WANTING an ice-cream and having neither time nor ingredients nor skill nor money with which to get it.

It is a case then of wishful thinking, and in this general case, begging the question quite outrageously.

The NEED for an ANSWER remains unmet by such imaginations. Magic is not here permissible. It is a dream alternative. Life is no dream.

What is to be supplied is something, to the point, and it is to be obtained from rationally construable sources. That is the issue  if you are to provide an explanation.

Nothing being productive of what it is, that is of nothing, will not and cannot perform even to the point of relevance to the question. So it must be something with which to start, this being logically the only other alternative; and it  must, moreover, be something adequate for the entire result in any and every dimension (or else by definition, it could not do the task and we would be left with a systematically futile attempt to answer, the 'explanation' then failing to supply any universe at all).

There not only IS but CAN logically be no other answer than that of the eternal, all-sufficient Being, there always for whom time is an invention, universe a form of labour, from whom logic, and order, and law themselves, and personality, and imagination and discursive thought capacities arrive at His will in any desired product, and are maintained by it. God as explained in the trilogy above in detail, is and always in this null environment, must be in order to be at all. As non-produced God He is the necessary and only answer, and without this there would be a lapse in logic. To be and not to be produced, spells eternity.

In effect, if ever no God, then never any God at all, in this model, for production then having no basis,  not only would it leave no answer to the question of this world's origins. It would turn God into a mere participant in a system, and hence not the explanation for any and so nullify a necessity. But mercifully we are not left in such an irrational situation.

We are, in our present model, applying reason, not using it to disestablish it in a fervour of self-contradiction*1.

Indeed, the Maker of time cannot be extinguished by events in it, any more than I by events in one of my books. His existence as Creator of all the temporary structures of our universe overarches them, and is free for them and from them as He will. It is necessary not to mix models, and talk in terms of what simply clashes with any one of these, as if to import periods of unreason by confusion.

God of course may equally participate in our system, in a suitable format, but never depend on it or its special characteristics. The resurrection, in which as Peter pointed out (Acts 2:23-24), Christ defeated results of voluntary participation in our created world, was irresistible; for death in our system COULD not hold Him. Time is subject to Him, not vice versa. That is one of the focal features of what it is to be the Creator of this  whole world with its causative demands. 

Meanwhile His word continues yearly to attest His living power, as it is fulfilled in things small and great. That is to be expected on the One on whom all depends, including possibility, program and culmination. Verification in this as in all, is part of our present model, and tracing it is a matter of joy at its splendour and super-abundance. Fascinatingly, God not only is the answer, but has the answers even to the abundantly verificatory point of telling us both the pivots of history and its culmination, including a massive splendour in events to come, indicative of its nearness.

Indeed, there is simply no problem about HIS coming to be, since His eternity is necessary, without any interruption, if any explanation is to be supplied. Here the necessity is compulsive, the adequacy is indefeasible, the opening for denial is null. It all ends, without Him, where with atheism, just it begins: with nothing.

The utter answerability of every objection to the God of the Bible is shown in the theme of SMR, and the verification and validation of the Bible, as of Jesus Christ, the Messiah is there shown. Scientific method is only one of the type of answers, but it makes a contribution when not abused, one both clear and crucial. It serves substantially in the validation, verification domain.

Philosophy confirms it, and history agrees. As to imaginative scenarios about the lack of evidence, they MUST in each bit, be accounted for, if seriously intended, and to merely assume them, is like adding to your cattle kingdom by stealing from neighbours, and not even admitting it, while claiming great power and finesse for yourself. This applies not only to the contra-model confusion about beginnings, but in the other misplaced origins in the imaginary evolution, never observed, never with a shimmer of DNA  being observably produced, always faced with its starting and stopping in the past, precisely as the Bible declares of life production. Indeed, this fallacy is a matter of, observation bypassed, removal of the worst confusedly being presented with arrival of the best, or most developed from nowhere*2. This is effectually a gap in the account. Removing failure to compete does not create anything but a gap. This is simple evasion to build such loss into the equivalent of manufacturing premises. .

IN SUM, YOU CANNOT GET SOME FROM NONE
WHEN NONE IS ALL

A Short Overview

In sum: there is an operating system for the universe, incorporating all the laws of chemistry, physics, astronomy, mathematics and so forth, and as a part of this, incorporating all the vital laws - that is, the laws appertaining to life -  is the vital operating system, and both - though in much differential, synthesised - are ingeniously brought into one marvellous unity in backdrop for the entirety. Thus we find this:

GENERAL OPERATING SYSTEM PLUS VITAL OPERATING SYSTEM = ONE ACTUAL OPERATING SYSTEM, ONE ORGANISED, SYNTHESISED, AND THAT WORKS WITHOUT BLUNDER, FAILURE OR DEFAULT. It is a profound, intensive, closely and brilliantly assembled case of conceptual cohesion and functional performance. It leaves no sign of cluttering, cluntering, inadequate efforts on the way, at any level.

Beyond this fascinatingly functional groundwork is what is given to use it. For one, this is the human race made up of persons, thoughts, estimates, inventors, artists, interpreters, haters and lovers at levels from the puny to the profound: persons. The personal is a wonderful invention, making declarative sense of the whole: for the heavens DO declare the glory of God and the expanse of space does show His handiwork, as in Psalm 19. The showing is indirect, to be sure, but implicitly declarative because of the scope, quality, surpassing knowledgeability, personal flexibility for our race, and capacity to seek even to attack our source, or relish the same, granted to this, our capacities in this prodigiously ingenious personal construction, par of the work of institution of our race. We are made to be able even to reject the way we are made, but we cannot successfully annul it.

The task to make such liberty as we use, has none who can commence it. The One who succeeded in doing such a thing is technically so far beyond us, that remarkable as our facilities are, they are not only dwarfed by the Creator's,  but incomparably less. To replace His capabilities shown in what has no other origin, you would merely need to substitute His equal. But where is this to be found in the vacuities and question begging extravaganzas offered by atheism in its model!

Thus creationism as such has no logical competitors in this, for in scientific method, to take one phase of research, in atheism and materialism, that is, the no go for God bunch, there is a strange lurch in this field. Instead of answering the question of what is the explanation of what is, what is evidenced reality, the choice settles on telling  what did not happen, and then failing  to give an explanation for the arrival of even this imagined, mental image. Thus matter, when it was made, and since, has never been found, discovered to be able make mind or spirit or to have what it is evidenced to take to do so. Starting with what is not observed instead of with what is, and then bringing this invention into the field for what is in effect, not only non-evidenced, but not even relevant in origins, is story-telling on another question, instead of study on this one.

In scientific method, on the precise contrary, you observe what DID happen and your task is to explain it.

Creationists in general. on the other hand, start with nothing given from nowhere except for one named entity, avoiding thus both begging the question, simply inserting whatever they want and avoiding the question concerning what is found, not merely mentally imagined. For some other world it might do; but in scientific method we are simply looking to account for this one, and hence need to keep to the point.

Indeed for their vacuity in a universe ex-God, and the request to account for it scientifically as far as possible, and of course logically in mode: to give ground for this  to operate in the atheist model chosen, those  propounding this are simply avoiding the point of the argument - ignoratio elenchi is the name of this logical error. This actual ground for actuality, moreover, is eternal, for if this One were ever not there, then there would be the same violation of terms as the others exhibit. So this One is eternal. The normal nomenclature for this Master of multiple, and rigorous intellectual disciplines, all synthesised in action, the fruits of which appear explicitly in use in what He (necessarily in the case) made: it is God. For logic to work in this field, this Being is indispensable, and has the qualities and features materialists lack in their model. That is in an addition to their other reductionism, in their study of what is not there, and what does not spawn mind and spirit observationally or in terms of discernible means to do so. This fallacy they try to insert into their illicit, question-begging account of origins.

That a starting point not based on the question of evidence, is well along the trail, is of course begging the question; to deliberately select an entity which NEVER shows ability, proclivity or even event, in which it is productive of life and personality and logic and aesthetics, and language, is a simple error. Yet it is also a crucial and a profound one, which tends for many to hide the issue. Of all conceivable worlds, WHY and HOW THIS ? It is NOT, why some mental image not graced with evidential reality objectively could be conceived. The ability for this actual case, in contradistinction to the fictitious mental image, in this model of thought  has to be invented from the void. This in that setting has to be in terms of a potential for that to occur, which is far from nothing, and a mere substitute of profound requirements, side-stepping the issue with what is not differentiable from fantasy, myth and fable.

This then appears as part of the nothing left in the materialist account. It has no explanation, and its methods are not based on evidence to be explained, nor therefore is science its domain, or cogent thought its core. It is then, mere subterfuge, known or unknown in the operators involved. Indeed, to start with what lacks proven or even observed powers, appears a type of perversity. Thus, in such a model, one does not start with what has been observed, far less explain its existence or that of the universe: you start instead with what has NEVER been observed and create what has NEVER been seen, as a starting ground, which itself is in the model, from nowhere. This means that such methods are not in the smallest regard, scientific. In those terms one starts with what is known to be unobserved in part or whole or principle or performance, in short or long term, matter as a source of mind and spirit (including entrepreneurial ability and personal orientation). They then proceed from the irrelevant arrival of this unknown to enable it to perform what in the real world,  it is not found to be able to do, or to possess potential to do. It is as if the word 'not' is omitted. We are enquiring concerning what IS found. NOT with what is NOT.

Compare the legitimate task: to find SOMETHING which demands an explanation, and to use rigorous testing methods and verifications or otherwise in order to establish or refute it, and start again if this occurs. The insidious substitute on the other hand: this starts with something that exists in your freely roving imagination, but has never been observed, and fails to explain the arrival of even of that. It is a cornucopia of irrelevance, spurious alternative enquiry, and a scenario of fables, just as Paul predicted in II Timothy 4. If you reject God, then this approach is simply one way of substituting for the question, an idea, for observation in terms of  objective reality, an unyielding negative to facing the issue, answering the question. For starting from a rationally construable beginning, explaining each step you need to account for the existence of that beginning as well as for each ensuing step.

To avoid question begging, the God-negating model must start with what is void premises, allowing in only what is rationally construable, observationally provided. What is never operationally discernible and contrary to all that IS discerned is an irrelevant side-stepping of the issue, as if for an antic!. This merely provides an answer to a far different question, namely: Can you imagine in a different observed world, what could have been if logic did not matter, and observations were entirely otherwise in the crucial regard of the question being put ?

Where from ? The creationist answer tp this can be thus: It is from a cause adequate.

To the question: what is adequate ? The answer is: an entity with all the powers exhibitive in our own particular world, resident within the all-sufficient Being (courtesy to what is necessary being). The question might be put: what do we observe which would be comparable at all to what this creation from the Creator entails ?

The answer: it is our own function and phenomenon of creativity in which many are involved often daily, with all the sub-steps it entails. It is an operation of our spirits, the results of which are observable, the methods of which are investigable, the results of creativity include, in their place, our own origin. Our own creativity is not a distant or irrelevant feature for comparison witth the work of God, but directly relevant.  It is therefore a relevant starting point, with a relevant Starter of our whole created system, the Creator of it, both its twofold operating system of law and logic, and the operators personal life and abilities, facilities and entire personal facade. It is such a function which operates  as in our daily experience, we humans being equipped with all the shades of expressiveness, response, decision in the use of law, ability to gouge out the laws inherent (in part at least) in our own operating systems, to re-state and examine them, together with our mental and spiritual, volitional and positional aspects.

In terms of scientific method (to take one aspect of the issues in view), the Creator, eternal and adequate, and so not having to 'arise' as in vague theories which cannot explain what they want to insert into the scenario, while exhibiting an ignorance which is astonishing in view of its also avoiding the question in view, effective creationism proceeds differently, and unequivocally.

Thus in this model, this Being is duly considered in terms of verification or lack of it. The hundreds of volumes on this site answer that from many features and facets, both in short summaries and longer dissertations. The works of God start with such items as the double operating system noted, continue with the branches of reality operative, and hence to be explained, continue further with the whole orb of human thought, imagination, ideas, ideals, oddities and profundities, sensitivities and sensibilities, all observable, and requiring studious review, and not simple dismissal in a shower of reductionism. Each investigation confirms what the 'model' of Creator who speaks.

There is also explicit speech. This is both the Bible and the work of the Spirit of God in those closely communicative conditions which are so frequent and often staggeringly confirmed, in Christian life. The challenge: prove Me wrong! resounds frequently in the Bible, God not only permitting test, but inviting it and assigning shame if it is not made, or heeded when it is made, as in Isaiah 41, 44, 45, 46. Christ put the matter simply, securely and precisely (Matthew 5:17-20).

In terms of initiative of this Being, the Creator whom logic demands, there is what is called the Gospel, sending His Eternal Word, a living Being in infinite unison with His Sender, together with individual distinctiveness in His being, to a multi-pronged mission. It was to live in exhibition of the divine nature, mockery and even execution on human behalf to atone for our multitudes of multiple sins, wilful defects, irrational surges and distortions of truth, not to omit the hideous betrayals of each other and all but unimaginable depths of cruelty and heights of pride; and so provide ready approach to peace and beauty for those of the human race who did not will otherwise (cf. John 3:19, Colossians 1:19). Many participate and have participated ; but none who refuse the remedy, as in a cancer case, receive the offer, and so live eternally.

That is the distinctive gift offered. You see much of this readily in John 3, Colossians 1 and Isaiah 49-55. That 243 volumes are put together in this site on such topics in harmonious totality is merely one of the expressions of verification: and of course their contents in their various verificatory examinations. And this is merely one of histories many verificatory presentations in the field over the thousands of years since the Eternal Word became man and fulfilled to the last particle, all the predicted facets of His mission, not only beginning at the first (cf. Genesis 3:15), but in expansive detail in the prophets*2.

Despite all this, there has been evidenced a veritable passion to escape such testimony, a response which the Bible in advance has accounted for, as in Romans 1:17ff., Ephesians 2 and 4 and almost innumerable Old Testament passages as in Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, while fulfilments of vast and short terms prophecies attest the truth in their quantity and quality.

To give a reason for the faith, as in I Peter 3:15, is a part of the affirmed love of God, relative to Christians; and as in seeing a star, this is something to communicate; and again, as with an antibiotic, it is a pleasure to acknowledge it, while it works, which this Gospel has never ceased to do. Nor has alteration had to occur, as in philosophies, which fail, exposed, and proceed to be replaced by another and yet another effort: but each where it began, in the mind of man, and nothing stands without the answer operative, namely Almighty God.

 

NOTES

*1 See for example, Bulletin Eighty Two,  and The Splendour of the Biblical Coverage of the Meaning and Matrix of Man, Ch. 5, and more broadly, Bulletin 162, and SMR pp, 149ff., with 140ff..

*2 Consult for example: WHYNOT  1-3, SMR Chs.-  9, MJC Ch. 12,  as in DBSA...   Volume 10, Ch. 14, Volume 11, Ch. 2, Ch. 5, Ch. 17, See in particular list concerning prophecy, SMR Ch. 9 part m.

It may be opportune here to add a short and simple outline of what IS  rational and verified.

GETTING THINGS STRAIGHT

Matter is a multiply legislated, intensively formatted entity which may be transformed into energy, in accord with governing mathematical law, and moulded into life by the mathematically brilliant, staggeringly miniaturised, multiply synergised and chronologically fitting commands mostly in DNA, a code compressive of information, of which in our  life, it contains the equivalent of some 1000 volumes of encyclopedic data. This is done by a format of commands as constructive and impelling in the DNA ordering system, as in the receptors of matter, the same symbols being uttered and received in the same coding content so that in this matching mutuality, you have the equivalent of intelligence, to command and to obey with a singularly obvious unitary resultant called mankind.

However that is merely the operating system side of human knowledge, experience and ability. Man has also mind, a conceptually articulate and analytical facility, and spirit, a determinative capacity including will, won't and imagination, in many aspects of life. This includes the ability to hate, distort the nature of, and refuse the co-operation with his Maker, to deny His existence and to seek to  replace Him. It also includes the limited but much used ability to hate, murder, manipulate, afflict and subvert others. Both at the human level and divine response this leads to irrational rebellion, and correctives, and often to a distant disdain for the corrective, restorative offer from the Divine Mind. This tends to lead to very present results, observable in the Old Testament and predicted by the only Saviour in the world, Jesus Christ, as in Matthew 24 for example.

Many of His and the Old Testament's predictions have already come to pass and none is known ever to have failed to come in its time.

Researchers such as Dr Werner Gitt*1, Director of a German specialist body concerned with information not least, Dr J.C. Sanford*2, Professor Emeritus of Cornell University and Dr Nathanial Jeanson*3, his highly relevant Ph.D. from Harvard University, in part summed in their works, respectively in Without Excuse, Genomic Entropy and Replacing Darwin, have much in common. All verify the never broken Second Law of Thermodynamics, which in a closed system and observationally on earth, proclaims that
entropy increases,
that is, specialised systems tend to degrade, diminish, approach entropy over time, to wear out. This shown to apply to DNA, which in the human case involves massive copying for every fresh generation of babes, and many  mutations in each generation, in net resultant putting a time limit to man on earth. Indeed, Christ said that if His return to earth (Matthew 24:22), as planned and predicted for thousands of years, and long before He came to earth, were to be delayed, no flesh could "be spared". Predicted multiplication of wars and their rumours, plagues and disorder with hatred and horror (Luke 21:11) merely exacerbate the underlying ruin for our race.

This in turn emphasises the fact that not only has the DNA a time limit for efficacy, but life one for misuse, and that hence it is a magnificent feature, just as is the DNA in its place, that there is another order: that for salvation, which also resolves man's ruinous position. It is called the  Gospel or good news (cf. Acts 4:11-12), and involves repentance (Luke 13), redemption (Matthew 20:28, Romans 3:23ff.) and eternal life (John 3:15-19).

Turning to eschatological things, it would also seem that in the millenium (Psalm 2, Isaiah 59, Psalm 72) which intervenes between the rapture of the Church as in Matthew 24 and the final judgment, that the ship of  State will sail forth, to fish and lead on to hunting, looking for those yet to be found (cf. Jeremiah 16:16), there being complete harmony and unity between all His people, Jew or Gentile (cf. Galatians 3:28, Isaiah 66), with no contrary galleon or enterprise permitted (Isaiah 33:21-24, Isaiah 11:1-10, Habakkuk 2:14).

 

NOTES

*1

Dr Gitt's work before retirement was Director and Professor at the Department of Information Technology at the German Federal Institute of Physics and Technology (Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt).

 

*2

Re Professor Sanford, see Bulletin 39, WAHAB  15.

 

*3

Re Dr Jeanson, see Bulletins 111, 121.