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Chapter One

 

ON BEING BOTHERED

 

On p. 192 of Hawking's pretentious and pretending  A Brief History of Time, it is reported that he is to be found musing about things, as so often, this time wondering why the universe ever went to the trouble of coming into existence. Why, he asks, does the universe ever go to all the trouble of existing, why does it BOTHER to do it ? That is his question.

There are a number of logical errors already in this. First, the universe is imagined as THERE and being there, ABLE to bother, or not as the case may be, whether to go to all the trouble of existing. So, not existing, it is yet there, and in its non-existence it has apparently the glorious liberty which what is NOT THERE obtains, to consider questions of such weight and significance as this. Will it exist, or troubled by the thought of whether it is worth it, will it not bother! After all if nothing, what is not there, what as a universe does not exist, is to consider whether it stirs it sufficiently to go about existence. What then ? nothing must then = something ...

bullet 1) something that is there in order to consider,
 
bullet 2) something able to penetrate questions of existential weight and importance,
being alert to consequences and contingencies at the least,
 
bullet 3) something able to summon the powers to bring existence for itself,
as it secures a place in being existent, at will, which it must have in order to address
whether or not to bother.
 
bullet 4) an entity so that what is there must also have the power to make law, this must also reside
in its ample breast or equivalent amidst nothing, so that the universe, which is full of laws,
including those of a linguistic kind for the DNA to  operate,
and the symbol-substance sequence which lets desire turn into actuality, can get on with it,
as it visibly  does.
 
bullet Moreover ...
 
bullet 5) Further, the power and competence to make consequences for breach of law where capacity
(which it must also create, to cover the actual universe) is granted for this, that
must also be found, duly manifested on the base of all this much ado about nothing.
 
bullet 6) But if it be said, There may be many universes, first the term is misused.
universe' refers to the entirety of all that is there, ONE directed in its being.
But if verbally you ignore this, and have a lot of universes sticking around
while begging the question (for they are THERE, while the question is HOW did this come to be ?,
how did EACH of these, as noted every one with its laws, manners, protocols or procedures, come to be),
there are of course results to be faced.

Thus, this not merely multiplies the question instead of answering it,
but magnifies its scope and mocks the question, for if ONE is the question,
MANY involve repetitive instances of the staggering miracle of having what is not there do ANYTHING.
It must now do it, and bother to use the preferred term in use,
almost habitually in the BUSINESS of making universes,
and THEN composing them all, despite their diverse systems,
in some grand harmony of systems, despite their all
arising without ground, discipline, meaning or direction.
It does not matter how often a mini-mind attempts maxi-products, it is not within its scope.
 
bullet Cars may go up more or less hills in inclination, but they cannot thread needles or bake potatoes.
You need what is apt,  fitting and functional to work in the symbolic for sustainable action (as in DNA),
for otherwise, even if you gained some movement in a given direction, even if nothing
could provide ANYTHING for the experiment, it would be undone by the pressure
of actuality. There is no sensitivity to the area of hypothesis,
no conservation of organised order, and even if there were,
there is nothing till life begins, and after it does, removal of failure is not ingress of success.

You are always limited by what your hypothesis presents from the first,
and failure to have editing built in for any DNA meaning to continue,
merely ensures rapid dismantling of any atypical movement in any one direction.
Such editing is built in as a pre-condition in actuality, to prevent disappearance of DNA.

Remorselessly the non-directional NATURE present in the hypothesis,
must hold the reins, and no talk of cutting off the least, advances the most
towards a given purpose. You remain stuck at the level of relevant competence in place.
Further, there is no such level, for competence is not a chaotic consequence.
The moment it began to become so, the hypothesis would be ruined,
except that it could not begin with anything,  anyway, so that it is pre-ruined.
 
bullet And what is this entity ? It must there also have, point 7), a capacity to survey, investigate, cogitate and contain,
correlate and adapt things of the most significant and demanding type, things of rigour and not rigor,
for the task is now simply greater and more comprehensive than ever, and NOTHING,
a universe or several of the thing, which is not there cannot expect
to have all its ingredients like space (and diverse space or other correlation
depending on the supposed universe type vis à vis its neighbours.

In fact it must have what God has, the power to make elements and compounds,
atoms and molecules, components and circuitries in atoms, substance and existence
of what is not Himself at all, capacity to think and so correlate systems,
all  supposedly existent with prodigious  lack of any type  or kind or trend,
and system itself in unorganised chaos, void of law, reason, ground, is
once again a matter of begging the question. You can scatter defective minds
void of logic as you will, but never will they produce what coheres
in the symbolic world of logic, semantics and specification-symbol
definitional correspondence.

In fact, chance can do nothing with nothing to enact system, always multiply breached
when it raises its head to become system; and it operates for that matter,
only within the concept of a non-directed, non-handled system, left to itself,
for chaos has NO being, since anything regular would be irregular to the concept.
Chance means leaving the system alone, but getting the system is the question
(cf. Ancient Words and Modern Events Ch.13 ).
Producing it by any means from the non-systematic, except that is, by systematic means,
again begging the question, is mere wishful thinking, and irrelevant verbiage.

What more is to the point ?
 
bullet Now these 7 logical flaws, and number 8), of a multiple begging of the question,
presenting for suppositions what contradicts the initial and illogical gratuitous supposition,
proceed to make not something out of nothing merely,  but  MUCH out of it.
In this, they merely enable us in meeting the assumptions made, and finding what must be available
for the various purposes as above, to rehearse some of the very necessities of causation concerning God.

This is so, whether you conceive of the Creation as integrated universes
(and then of course call the whole thing the 'universe' according to the meaning of the term),
or realise that they very nature of the case is to account for ALL, and to do so logically.
 
bullet Why logically ? and this is the error number 9).
It is because LOGIC (though fallaciously here)
is being used in principle to make the case for an answer (even though none is supplied).
Dismiss directly or indirectly your method of argument and you cannot consistently then use that
concerning the site and situations in view. When you DO use it logically
for a logically investigable universe, then there is no problem.
 
bullet Thus, 10),  no answer relevant to the question is supplied.
All these things are put together with no shadow of ground, empirical or rational,
but just on the idea that IF they were all there, and IF they operated in ways relevant
to investigative reason (as Hawking  pretends to do, but does not),

then miracles of composition of the conceptual background to creative harmony might be found.
 
bullet They might, if present was what has what it takes for not only this (and now comes error number 11),
but the rational power of man to investigate what responds to rational investigation,
being of the same mould and relevant to it. That is the fault which is simply that the concepts
which debar the actualities are precisely a denial of the empirical realities.
Theory and empirical findings in our universe are either alike amiss, or jointly present,
depending on grounds presented or else made subject of erratic omission.
When as in the Hawking type of process, you produce what is as far as you can get
from the logical needs, using void for vigour, chaos for order, irrationality for reason,
nothing for something, drop in agencies for identified agencies, this is simply the nadir
of scientific method and the use of the scalpel of logic for a pitch-fork,
but an illusory one.

Correction  all this self-contradictory mess merely highlights some of the substantive, empirically based, logically consistent points which must be made for what CANNOT proceed from nothing, since by definition it has neither potential nor past nor hope nor power, nor wit nor existence nor direction to do anything at all, but rather abhors direction, being unequipped. Give it means such as bring something into existence from some potential, then it is something with potential that is in view; and since this, to repeat it cannot have, the misuse of terminology is merely an addition to the minus case. If it DID have this facility, if it did DEVELOP, then it could not scientifically be described as nothing, but only as something with potential. The amusing folly remains, that you find  'evolution' used freely of things by wit and intelligence over years of labour on the part of man, being termed something which 'evolves' when that supposes an inherent capacity, not the application of outside intelligence. The confusion in terminology is now like a multi-car crash on icy roads, freezing even thought.

Moreover, if as in desperation such eruptions into thought should be imagined, like  volcanoes which merely spread ash and devastation, or it be said that  aliens MAY have done this and that, helped create, it merely exhibits the force of the initial invalidity; for if nothing contains aliens, it does well, like a bankrupt controlling the finances of a nation. It further exhibits the SIMPLE FACT that you need intelligence and capacity and thought and ability to ruminate, cogitate and conceptualise  in order to have AS A RESULT, what incorporates sophisticated information systems of programmatics. Inventing aliens with intelligence does not resolve how you would create them, from nothing.

They not only involve systematic co-ordination (NOT unsystematic non-co-ordination and no order, for order is not nothing), but the type of thing needed in any logical system, to produce codified results, systematic co-ordination and these as a mode. Bringing them in brings out the subterfuge of outsourcing what you have not begun to show able to exist ANYWHERE. Concoctions like this do nothing to cover the coherence of the entirety.

Thus by logical inadvertencies and contradictions does Hawking, like someone doing a graph in reverse order, show the need of God in the very efforts to dismiss Him. When the case is so, people often become desperate to deal without God, in philosophy, allied with consuming results to match, in fact; and this applies to nations as to individuals. Hence the extravagant extremities of thought and action, Communism a prime example,  as its earthly heaven held in view, transmutes downwards into a zealous closeness to hell*1, and individuals, who after all thought of the thing, readily become like devils, incompetent socially, inhuman morally, invisible ethically with many still trying to sell or yell their product into being. This they proceed to pursue with misplaced zeal, whatever good things may seem to need slaughter for this accomplishment, and however many individuals, or tens of millions need to be mauled in the conditioning process to enable you, as Solzhenitsyn shows so well, to believe the lie (II Thessalonians  2:11). Such conditioning, often effective, leads many to distrust the very acrid stench of armed strength playing the bully, and proceed unsuccessfully trying to apply to God, their harassing principles and irrational imaginations.

In other words, just as the principles of negation soar into searing action with the young, in dynamically disadvantaged schools, resulting from such pugilistic and atheist movements, as in many respects in much of Australia, the USA and Europe, so  disastrous indoctrination replaces in this field, education with its knowledge of all the actualities. As the acid rain develops, it is so with the old, many confused, as with the young, so  with many like unleashed pups, as with the strong; and as they rort the weak, so they contort the old and young alike in distortive doctrines and heavy propaganda. A new flag ? but of course. A new constitution, how far ? An old deception (Genesis 3:1) for a new generation ?  what more obvious! The time comes, as the Bible says, when an active delusion blights the unwary, and human wisdom capitulating to desire, fires its guns at its own ship (II Thessalonians 2:10-11).

Just imagine the confusion: in ORDER to ponder the universe and its proclivities (which should have been the universe and its existence), persons or intelligences or uncaused causations, are introduced, from nowhere. And if proclivities are in view, then it needs scientifically to be empirically evidenced ones, as in meeting the case of deciding whether to bother to create a universe. Indeed, multi-partite or not in conception, it is so in fact, with organs within systems which are already multi-partite. Turn once more to reality, and one notes that there is also there,  an incredible seeming series of layer upon layer of action and reaction, order and response, lower levels of means and their integration with more advanced ones. Layers of functional authority and ramifying subtleties of interactive unities are already empirically obvious. These have a multitude of capacities, none of which can be assumed without begging the question on the one hand, and avoiding its nature on the other.

System, intra-systematics, outflowing systematics, direction, interpretation and  execution,  all sites poised like so many students in a Lecture hall, this  is the finding. They and their abilities and the lecturer and his do not come in their symbolic exchanges leading to examination by some kind of systematic chaos, disorderly chatter or uninvited intelligence, voided for the occasion. Rather is there purpose in the unities, mind in the correlations, significance in the symbols (written by students, or teacher and executed in various ways in the lab); and having these results with only a cause deficient in everything, this is confusion's very masterpiece, to quote from Shakespeare.

Thus the universe has to be there already in order to "bother" and the  same applies to all romanticising  re aliens, in need of the same type of logical basis as is man,  such as is frequently indulged in, turning in the end out of nowhere's address and nothing's basis, processes or features or foci, for meaning. Moreover, Hawking is looking for some possible meaning and talks not only of hope for an all-embracive meaning, but of one so  compelling as to MAKE everything happen, conform, despite the null base even before things ever were, or could be, or had the advantage of existence. Thus, on this, in the beginning nothing did amazing things and invented in the process meaning and law and logic. A great feat, but the agent here, who of course has to exist before doing ANYTHING, is usually called GOD, existence being one of the necessary features for action that anything (else) could be.

On this febrile fiasco, however, the envisagement would be this. Man is to have this ARRIVE as the end comes, like a Messiah without mind, or matter, or spirit, or understanding, or personality, or purpose, coming in from the cold, to his warmth. God from nothing and then everything from nothing's product. The meaningless in nature becoming the most meaningful by development from the qualities that are not there from the first, including nothing in kind. It is a kind of belated teleology, the more hideous in that it has no genealogy, or basis, but blind belief or hope or a feeling for wonderful things, of which this universe is brimming, as a kind of relief.

Meaning, then,  from non-mind, non-purpose, non-existence, working with no ground for existence, suppositious in  kind, placement and contrary in concept, itself can be found in this whirl in the wilderness. WHAT is meaning that it should grace the investigation, when not grace and goodness and purpose and will but nothing, is the here suppositious basis ? Is nothing logical ? Is the breach of causality which is basic to all argument for just and unjust use of it, to be allowed and then disallowed in glorious irrational effrontery ? or vice versa! Actually, what is the basis, but the God who IS there, for hoping for a 'meaning', since the hypothesis majors in absent meaning as basic, and efflorescences of what is not there a specialty.

Here one sees that appalling result of trying to go without God: that what is obviously HIS prerogative, and irrelevant to stripped down versions of whatever is without meaning or role,  duly comes into an utter confrontation in the presentation of Hawking.

Here we discern the thought that it is not only THERE (in hope of some kind) but so commanding in character (though its absence is systematic in the ground rules at the start) that it may one day become commandeering, explanatory and sovereign concerning the universe. The illumination of the Hawking virtual religion thus has its apotheosis in hope of this kind. It is not only unbased, but contrary to initial exclusion. You do not get rich by awaiting a mint falling by chance into your field; for you need mints for this to be, with their conceptual and cognitive, symbolic and actualisable elements, each and every one, in synthesis coordinated. Envisaged the PRECISE opposite may be fun, and concocting contrary consequences may appeal, but perversity in seeking of cause where it is not only missing but denied, and then supplied surreptitiously at last, is an exercise in futility so great, as to point to a final horror, such as the Bible foretells for all such false prophetic imaginations (cf. Jeremiah 23).

What then ? A compelling, constraining, a sovereign cover and meaning, intense, immense, this Hawking envisages as a possibility in due time. For this he looks, we find; but it is merely accelerating the process of bringing God in His sovereignty back, having failed to execute Him after all. Poured with some blurred kind of retrospectivity, this Being moves, this conceptual quietus and explanation flows into the products of nothing and equivocation, which are mutually supportive, actually null. At last comes the Producer and generation of both nothing (where it belongs, such as in man's supposed power to displace God, who even made his mind), subordinated to the system, in turn subordinated to nothing and good for nothing), this romance in its libretto sending away every other approach. It is like a student reunion, but this time with God under a different name, and in man-dated circumstances, all resting on nothing.

Here is the parallel to Mary Magdalene weeping because she supposed Christ gone for the moment. But here with the word of Hawking,  it is rejoicing that God Himself is to be evacuated. It is just that it does not work, and what does work, as in this matter of meaning, comes back in such ludicrous contradiction of the conditions of the Hawking hypothesis, as to attest clangour with the Lord, consuming all thought of perspective. Effort alone, however is not enough.  CANNOT be escaped. Indeed, what is made by God has this unconquerable trend, like a spy in a foreign country letting some of his own native language slip in, of moving into what is contrary to his pretended role, but in accord of his actual nature.

What then, IS equivocation, a locking in on a series of impossibilities,  as in Alice in Wonderland, before breakfast, to so preoccupy readers that they do not notice that not one of the hypothetical stabs in the dark, the empirically unaided blasts of imaginative engineering, has any logic to it  ? The technical term may be  'equivocation' for such barren dipping and weaving in various ideas instead of just facing any one of them, but one prefers mobile avoidance, as a term, since NOTHING is there about which to equivocate in this case, the source and the logic in view being one, both just nothing.

This becomes equivalent - however much may be (musingly) pondered concerning universes that  slip in  from nowhere - to infantile frolicking: since as is covered in Romans 1, where truth is shown being held down by this reckless wrestling with words which by themselves do nothing. Such is the nature of the quasi-religious zeal;  this is its sadly apparent nature. God there has designated this putative process, this irrational escape exit; man has put it into action. The one declares it; the other visibly does it!

Godless from the first, runs the human hypothesis, and with nothing to portend or to which to refer, the products of what is not there, what do they do ? It is this. They go on to accomplish the same, nothing. It did not happen, only a verbal wind. In fact, we need something not only apt, but adequate. Thinking of the least likely is neither wise nor workable. What then ? It MEANS that from this one, able to be conceived, and able to be conceived logically since it all works by logic, there comes all the power and logic and law and causality, or its equivalent, in a massive input (as always from nothing). At the last Hawking in much appears to want just this to enter into systems, and then rule! But it has nowhere to be, from which to enter in his hypothesis, for no one universe has ground, and more have only more irrationality to cover.

Yet it seems he would like this King Constraint (though he does not call it thus). It appears to come with auspicious greatness to interpret the meaningless, and to grow up from nothing to show up, a real achievement; this he seems to desire, this or its constraining equivalent. But what if logic be countermanded in the nothing beginning, for there is no place for it in nothing or the irrational. Then there is nothing with which systematically to argue, logic evacuated; and those of this persuasion merely surrender without debate. If logic is not valid, neither is their talk; but if logic be valid, as in consistent reasoning, then there is anything but surrender left for the godly; for then there is only triumph for the divine forces, the field left systematically vacant of any other contender. With logical validity gone, how would they reason ? When the conditions of discourse are nullified, why use them  ? Once again, nothing has not got what it takes, originally, finally or methodically.

What then ? if the validity of logic be denied than efforts to  account for it by logic are futile in advance; but if they are deemed valid, then they are used in violation of hypothesis. THAT is why the Big Bang as John Hartnett (e.g. Lively Lessons in Spiritual Service Ch. 5) so often shows, is a failure with fudge factors thrust in when it does not work.

That is why the free writing of DNA systems is NEVER seen, since the universe is not so gifted. But they are found. That is because, just as the universe needed a sufficient and eternal cause (if ever nothing were all, then it would always be so, and that is not the case), so it needed script for building living creatures over their generations. Very simply, such script is never found from the integuments of the universe (or elsewhere in the natural order except in intelligence at work), and there is reason for it: it involved conceptual  correlation of  symbol and actuality, and codification involving systematic power for instruction to  BECOME deeds of service. This is accomplished and the visible language is how it is done. It is run not by default as in nothing hypotheses and their equivocal equivalents, and not by defect.

Rather is it run by linguistic acumen, detailing and demanding their tasks, their order, cohesion, conceptual correlation and practical incorporation with a precision that makes surgery look rough. Moreover  from  this source, there is provided scope for an (actual, observable) continuation in successive generations over time, which makes exquisite furniture look scrappy and temporary by comparison, and a result which includes so much sophistication as even to allow man to dabble in confusion in non-correlative logical flora, that never flowers, and to make vacuous claims. Far is he from even copying the sensitive and astute technology in his own body, even with the power both to have and to use it, conferred and in process!

He may of course, turn back to God and His creation and his own situation, and the necessity of salvation from his provocative position on this earth, and this is freely available. It has been paid for unlike many social experiments, and that is part of the situation that now is, and will be till all is finished JUST as it was begun. Meanwhile, it continues as it began, before the energy's availability began to run down (second law of thermodynamics) and the DNA purity began to include more and more cumulative errors which, and not evolutionary mythical arising, is the actuality we are facing. This deterioration of the human genome over time, empirically found, leads on naturally with assured death, given scope, for the race (Genomic Entropy, Professor J.C. Sanford). Actuality is a limited thing when you ignore its origin, and the critical criteria logically required for it. It is a 'treat with ígnore' type of social gaffe and strategy, which in this case is not only deadly, but a profound folly in the face of inescapable fact.

It is well that Christ in judgment following mercy is commissioned to intervene before that day (Matthew 24:22).

Simply, the world was made and what is to endure in it, and  beyond it, needs to be remade (John 3, Titus 1), with recall, not for producer's error this time, as with  some manufacturers', but  this recall is for product with will, willing amiss! (cf. Romans 5).

See on such topics, The gods of naturalism have no go! but remember that God is not despatchable, though man is, and according to your faith,  so be it. God has known all things (that is why we do not find stages in the rocks of things by the billion not working, being faulty prototypes); and He knows who are His. Since He wishes for all (Colossians 1:19ff.), but is no tyrant or deceiver like so many dictators in politics and universities (Matthew 23:37), who WILL NOT ALLOW students to be  taught realities, but insist on vagrant ideas amid even more vagrant ideologies, then there is no way anyone can fail to find Him, who really in heart wants Him. God is the God of reality, not fantasy, and that is why constituted and our personal reality exists,  and is not, as with the Hawking approach,  a verbal fantasy. It is an inherent fault in mankind to hide from God in the present lapsed condition of the race, and  as in Romans 1, that is the biblical ground for brilliance (in some things) so often being found not only in strange error, wilful horrors, but even in a maze of errors which no amount of schooling can make logical.

Alas, this is but one of the false directions which plague man who, when not worshipping gurus or football stars or money or pride or ambition or academia, all given free licence, which ruin very often the minds of children and devitalise the thought of man, which claim crowds, may even seek the evil to despoil the good with venom and hatred. These varied but basically similar moods in man, unresisted by many, are leading to false religion and foolish substitutes (cf. Romans 1, Acts 17) to the degree that another point in Christian Apologetics arises.

The question becomes NOT WHY is there so much perfection and so much pain, so much that is starkly wonderful and so much more that is unutterably painful, so much readily understandable and so much as if it were rebuke in this world of ours. Rather, it is staggering that it STILL EXISTS. It is not HOW it came that is a hard question, but HOW it comes to be that it is still here with such enormities, whether as here of mind, or on bodies, or on millions dead or gratuitously dying in agony, proceeding as if a norm to be countenanced and a price to be paid for development of power or heart or something else. God has both made and challenged, the greater height of man: the more altitude to lose in free fall, the worse the calamity when falling and not caught. The fall  has been very free, resulting in man being increasingly bound and battered (cf, Isaiah 1)  till,  as Christ predicted, his very continuance in being is under threat. ONLY the salvation of the Creator can redeem man, and only through the appointed channel (just as the body has the channel of DNA for each successive generation) of the Gospel is this grace, this amazing grace of God to be found.

The inimitable God (the Creator is naturally inimitable in terms of what He has made, but not without scope for what is made in His image, that is apt for fellowship with Him) has answers for every question of challenge and wonder, but without Him, every effort always fails. This has been the history of philosophy without Him, increasingly is the history of man as he often snarling, seeks to sever from Him; and its pyres continue to burn.

 

NOTE

*1

See for example Spiritual Refreshings Ch.  3 (News 97),  4 (News 98) esp. *2, 8, 9, 11, 16 (and generic dyspepsia in alogisms), 13; News 150 (people crushers), and Index.