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CHAPTER SIX

 

DEFINITION OF CREATION

Discernment of Creation

Reasoning and Rationalising

 

THE DIALOGUE

 

What is creation*C  ? said John.

We talked about that earlier, responded Charles.

I mean, define it.

Circling around what happens and how its products accrue, then ...

Yes, define it, Charles.

It is a work of at least a person with perspective, perception, purpose and power to act, in an environment enabling this power to be effective, or in making such an environment in the first and final case, where the creation in question is the entire environment.

We need to refine that into an environment of language.

You try.

It is a work, then, let us build, of at least a person with perspective, perception, purpose and power to act, in an environment enabling this power to be effective, or in making such an environment in the first and final case, where the creation in question is the entire environment. It involves on thing, whether this be a universe, a mind, a multiplicity of minds in one set up and system, one race, one world, on cosmos, one DNA, one picture, or one fork.

Creation is such a work involving spirit and means, mind and material for its expression, envisionment and aptitude to express in the relevant terms for the purpose; and the generic behind it is creativity.

What of God then ? HE IS THE Creator, and it is His nature to be creative at will, not by necessity, for nothing can bind Him on whom all depends. He can create and finish, if so desiring, in a day, or 6 days, for a thousand years or 7000 years, as He will, this at first, then keeping in the maintenance phase, which is separate though allied to that of the creation.

Yes I see, just as there are ways to preserve painting, so there are ways to make them, and to confuse the two displays a lack of understanding so profound as to beggar description.

Alas, it is so; but then sin makes folly king and God far off, and sin is common as dirt, and tends to locate there. The sublime is never good enough, the good is never bad enough, and all things tend to sink into a confused epic, suitable for cynics or dreamers, each inventing a world which is not here, by means that are not stated, instead of the one that is here. You even have people trying to have nature come from nowhere and compress itself into no space so that in time it can express itself; and naturally this runs into endless non-verifications and non-validations, as I saw in such works as LIGHT DWELLS WITH THE LORD'S CHRIST  ,  Cascade of Truth ...  6,
Lively Lessons ...  Ch.  5, Dig Deeper ...  Ch. 1, SMR, TMR,  and
Deity and Design ... Sections   2 and   8,   with Ch.   3, *3.

Yes, the big bang is a big academic bankruptcy in inadequate conception, inadequate causality and contradiction of its predictions and what is found. As theories go, it is a big bounder, shamelessly pursued in lieu of logic.

It is. That is the creation of a fallacious idea. Even that is a creation, but a futile one.

1) Creation involving material things  is what is found

bullet when components of one limited kind or another,
 
bullet are combined to make a composite proposition with qualities,
small or great,  beyond what either individually or in unguided synthesis, 
has or can muster, without outside intervention;
 
bullet and this type of thing is proliferated as many times as desired
and within the capacity of the creating party,
 
bullet with guided input, combined with visionary dynamic,
 
bullet which may impel aspect upon aspect,
 
bullet to make up a whole,
each sub-unit constrained to this end by the mind of the creator;
 
bullet and that is at whatever level of understanding it might be desired,
 
bullet which in turn, is controlled for synthesis, co-ordination or correlation
with whatever further  or higher purposes might be in mind.

This list of such actions may be small or great, depending on the case.

Thus the movement and flow and characterisable action is to construct each part in subordination to controlled and controlling constraints, for its sub-unit stature as for its synthesis, till the total enjoys the summit of fulfilment for the purpose in mind. That is Grade 1 creation.

So we take our leave of Charles, John and their dialogue. But we still have work to do.

 

GRADES OF CREATION

2) Now we come to Grade 2.

Creation without material things as components, is parallel in this, that considerations, items: thoughts, approaches, perspectives, ideas, understanding are deployed in such a style that what is present in each part is not sufficient to control the construction with others, in and by themselves, of what is presented, lacking the hierarchical controls which intimate more than was, or was apparent. What is input is unapparent correlation, intimation, or innovation, if the principles do not incorporate the ideas or ideals in view. It is not what has to be, but what is made to be; it is not the outcome of a system, but the input of the systematiser. It may be of things evil or good, brilliant or stultified, but if it meets this definition, it is creation.

Design is merely one of its ingredients (cf. Deity and Design ... Sections    2 and 8). Design is itself creatable; but creation not being limited to this element, but incorporating general purpose and profundity of vision, of whatever type, material or spiritual, moral or immoral, righteous or evil, and not only mode of being but thrust for that mode, it is the broader concept, and its work is found by investigation for the evidence of such elements. In this, it is like anything else: you find the criteria which attach to its characterisability, and in a good definition, it is sui generis.

3) Next comes the final of priority, just as it was firstly of actuality, for history.

Creation without limit  as to the deployment of desired categories, dynamics, energic inputs, intellectual brilliance, formulae and forms, scope for innovation and categories of containment (since only God is without limit, all limits requiring Him as their logical source) is the prerogative of the only one in or beyond our little earth, cosmos, universe, space-time-gravity-electromagnetic combination. It is He, who lays the foundations for foundations, just as the earth is caused to underlie a house; and this applies whether these items, elements and usages be material or moral or spiritual. Their input in whatever form and for whatever purpose or purposes, is Grade 3 creation.

The last (3), naturally, because not only supernatural, but what alone gives ground for the natural, unique, and the name most generally recognised, is that of GOD.

He, the Creator of the universe and every phase and node, principle and dynamic, mode of operation whether material or personal, that is within it, is called God, or the Creator, and is both.

One particular creation of God is the remedy for man's diversification of orientation towards Himself, and for the errors which come where God is not discerned. This is known as the Gospel and is attested as is nothing else concerned this Creator God (cf. SMR, TMR, Department of Bible ... Vol. 3, Ch. 2). In terms of this, God may be called the Creator-Redeemer God. 'Creation' at this level is His only; and only He is sufficient for it, all else being subject to death and dissolution. Free entry into His kingdom gives eternal life, which He is keen to dispense (John 3:16, 5:24, Colossians 1:19ff.). As man is made relevant to Himself, he is not dismissed except in terms suited to liberty, sanctioned in love, derogative of mercy.

The Lord grants the first two of these, and man often methodically and with irreproachable levels of stubbornness, if faults could be rated, provides the third. In this way, he is able to achieve damnation, that dreadful meeting place of sins paraded, held fast, not repented of, not covered by redemption, and an  evacuated mercy, sent out like the cat at night.

Having considered first the nature of creation, in particularity and in principle, its minimal causative components and its criteria, in association with earlier work noted, and defined it, we come to the next part: this is to identify it.
 

IDENTIFICATION OF CREATION

Sometimes we speak of getting more definition at level of sight. "I am getting more definition now," someone reports as a distant object is studied, in order to find what it is.

In science, there is a very considerable work on definition of principles,  terms, identification of cases, differentiation of the mergeable and specification  of what you mean.

It is not always followed, and many are the cases where historical obstinacy have dashed the progress of science, as the unhallowed hopes of the 'committed' to this or that theory, cling to it against all evidence, and with a marvellous degree of systematic obscurantism. Spontaneous generation was one great case, phlogiston was another, the four bodily fluids was yet another, and the case heralded by Galileo, yet another. Such things are the topic in Creation Magazine, the last for 2013, pp. 20ff.. It was the most notable comparative anatomist, Lord Zuckerman, who in his work, The Ivory Tower, spent time marvelling at the inability of many scientists, in despite of scientific method, refusing to be corrected in terms of multivariate analysis of materials in views. Aloof from reality, they became, for all their emphasis in theory, estranged from reality.

It is ALWAYS necessary to think for oneself, lest one pick up intellectual diseases which spread like many other types of disease, with amazing rapidity, often requiring prodigious seeming effort to eliminate them. In the meantime, they may physically eliminate millions as their faulty logic and desperado abuse of science proceeds.

Let us  avoid all this and think. This has been in various ways already, but this is a particular approach to be considered selectively, like one instrument in an orchestral whole, which adds its own special sound.

Íf you are a good surgeon, say Smith, someone newly trained might remark on your skill. Suddenly an issue arises; some patient is in trouble. There is need for inspection, and the experienced doctor doing this is quite certain that Smith could not have done such a job as that. He is aware of the level of skill in Smith, and this one has systematic defects which only a nervous notice could be conceived to have engendered.

It is not Smith's work, that's for sure, he says. Investigation shows bad record keeping, and that Smith, then on holiday, was in fact wrongly named as the surgeon concerned.

Let us go further. A certain surgeon becomes immensely specialised and innovative, say Dr Christiaan Barnard, simply as an illustration. The method is notable, the flair i profound, the dexterity is characterisable, and the thing is of its own kind, fascinating and defined by its agent.

Someone comes upon an obviously slack piece of work, showing confusion of mind and ignorance of the relevant techniques, fouling up the entire matter. THAT, says one, is NOT the work of Dr Barnard.

Again, in the very early days of this development, someone finds a case which he had never seen in type before, a patient of a former surgical operation, and seeing the method, skill and result, says, Ah! yes that is a Barnard job, it has his finger-prints on it all right!

We tend to go by evidence,  and the more demanding the topic, the more certain the evidential signal. Papers concerning E=MC2  would not be numerous in the year of its announcement. The finger of Einstein is in this, someone who sees the demonstration remarks.

Again, you hear music and it is either Bach or a well-known jazz musician. Ah! Back all right, comes the assessment.

In literature, an unknown play is found. Who wrote it  ? That, no one but Shakespeare has that peculiar style, fluency in word with brevity in impact, chastising in soliloquy, settled vices, or exposing ramifications in the hearts of men through his characters, commanding in development, and yet delicate in touch, combined with an overall strong moral flavour, a sense of justice and folly, with a vast coverage of biblical doctrine apparent as well (cf. The Gospel in Shakespeare, by Hubert V. Little). To all this, a sense of pity and folly, profundity and purpose, touching on huge issues with a deftness that is yet not an outage from the play in progress, these are but some of the features. Ah! Shakespeare, one might say of a putative lost play.

The more the style is unique, personal, like a face or finger print, the more certain can an identification be. When it comes to writing, we have no qualms about taking it that either man or some more superior being did it.

When it comes to man, the combination of the angelic, the demonic, the brilliant, the daft, the dim and the discerning, the passion and the peaceableness, the arousal to tempests and the quiet forgiveness, the utter unforgiveness and the seeking for pardon, the intellectual heights and the love of the irrational, while parading reason, stark sacrifice for God and stark  sacrifice of those whom some religion finds upsetting, or whose death seems desirable to forward its detestable confusions: all these together are a virtual trademark of the human race.

Identification has many facets as a topic, but it does not lack criteria.

Thus when we find a work of such a kind as this:

bullet when components of one limited kind or another,
 
bullet are combined to make a composite proposition with qualities,
small or great,  beyond what either individually or in unguided synthesis, 
has or can muster, without outside intervention;
 
bullet and this type of thing is proliferated as many times as desired
and capable for the creating party,
 
bullet with guided input, combined with visionary dynamic,
 
bullet which may impel aspect upon aspect,
 
bullet to make up a whole,
each sub-unit constrained to this end by the mind of the creator;
 
bullet and that is at whatever level of understanding it might be desired,
 
bullet which  in turn, is controlled for synthesis, co-ordination or correlation
with whatever further  or higher purposes might be in mind:

creation is the type  that  does this.

Whether it is programmed, like tinned fish, or not, does nothing to alter the case, simply adding an additional component in resolution, command and analysis, with synthetic performance plans.

You can consider a ribbon (created as a ribbon, but not startling in that, many factories could have made it), and then you are in a dress shop, and Madam seeks a hat. Seeing a certain flair in the countenance of that lady, and having a certain flair of her own, the seller of chapeaux wraps it this way and that, touches it up with various short features,  stands back and behold, the hat!

But it is too delicious! says the lady.

Only two hundred dollars, says the seller.

But you did that in two minutes! complains the lady.

Undoing it in 30 seconds, the seller says, but you can buy the ribbon for 50 cents.

But I do not want the ribbon, it is the hat you made.

That, madam, it is creation, and for this I charge.

Madam pays here money and leaves. She wanted the hat and found no other way to get it.

It is so with creation,  for it involves means and purpose, imagination and understanding, depending on HOW creative the  creator was.

 

IDENTIFICATION OF CREATOR

 

A sandal on the beach  ? it constructed itself from sand ? Not really. A pen is discovered just beyond the waves. it maybe was formed by sea-weed ? Not a chance. It has gold engraving which would wash off in no time,  a producer's name is found on it, and it writes. Sand did it ? Such a supposition is contrary to all comparison, cause and consequence (cf. Causes, SMR Ch. 5). It is not scientific, or reasonable, whereas someone dropping it recently covers the case entirely. It is a creation.

There are considerations based on empirical reality, imaginative capacity and close observation of what happens and does not happen. These norms are consulted in effect, and while miracles are by no means denied (reasonably), yet without them, there are certain IDENTIFICATIONS of creation; and for that matter, even if it were a miracle, that is a creation  also, without such subjugation to means: no less creative for that.

Meet the definition of a dance, and there it is. Of a heart attack (of whatever kind) and there it is. We judge in terms of criteria. It is no mark of wisdom to pretend otherwise. When the challenge is vast in type, unparalleled in mode, particularised in consequence, then without hesitation the cause may be ascribed to match the criteria. If you see a certain  wound, of a certain thickness and breadth, with razor sharp edges little smoothed, and marks of precise depth, you do not need to be pompous to pronounce that a sharp object made it. If you find a feathered creature, singing beautifully, with two legs and sharp movements, aerial capacity and living exhibitions of decisions and flittings of one type and another,  you do not need to feel embarrassed to call it a bird.

Since  birds do not empirically make themselves from matter, and matter cannot even be prodded to make life (The gods of naturalism have no go! Ch. 21), you can determine that this bird was a creation. No alternative (as above, even a miracle) will alter that. It meets the definition. You may prefer things doing things that they don't do, and invent another universe for your theory; but we are in this particular one, where this is what happens, cause and effect not being optional, but practical; and whether the effect be staggering and challenging in kind, or not, the principle is the same.

Many things may happen through things unthought of; but this does not make a collation of cause and consequence that DOES CONTINUALLY happen dismissible on the ground of ignorance. IF it is other than this, let the difference be shown by the relevant criteria. Otherwise, if it fits, wear it.

Thus in scientific method, you go for the allied phenomena, the adjunct operations, and only if this is not found to be as adequate as thought, do you seek otherwise. You do not lightly make atmospherics of some idea without evidence*1, let alone contrary to known and received scientific law, such as having things work in another universe with a Third Law of Thermodynamics*2, where things go in the exact opposite way to the increase of entropy,  decrease of available energy trend in this one. In this new and imaginary universe, original creations may ooze out of sand or come with the wind, there being a indisputable, frequent and marvellous trend in that direction. That would indeed be different.

In THIS universe, however, this is not so, and to imagine that it is so is merely to invent what is never found (and hence has no law): this theory itself a creation indeed, but one contrary to available information. Such is the idea of organic evolution, which as Professor Karl Popper pointed our (SMR pp. 145ff.), HAS NO LAW. You cannot make up a law about the way a thing will happen when it is NEVER FOUND  TO HAPPEN! That is the silliness of the thing.

So with creation: if you DO have the criteria, then that is what it is. When these are lacking, it is some more ordinary process. When you do have what is never found to act in this way without intelligence, or to provide strictly internal grounds for so acting, and the creation case is nevertheless indicated, so that the relevant criteria are met, then you have creation.

You have what is covered by the  criteria of creation (conformable), in keeping with the modes of creation (causatively coherent), unattainable by any other natural process, and you assign creation without undue mental trauma. Nothing is lost by acknowledging the obvious*2A.

Now you have yourself. It is an item not readily forgotten, on which you should have an enormous data bank, of which you are not ignorant. By the same criteria as before, you meet the requirements of creation to a superb degree, in the mode of production of your body, the command codes merely adding reducibility of the  mode to a generic, to the creative exhibit. Hence you stand ready to confess: it is a creation. Egotism, fear, hope, wiliness, wildness and many other motives may now confuse the issue. That is nothing to do with logic, but with the psychological realm. Reason is unperturbed by these illicits.

You are a creation, by definition, That is the way our universe is, and all connected with it. That is a measure of its coherence to causality, its standing in logic, whether this be internal to man or externalised in the symbols and processes found in the universe: the two in accord and requiring one systematically unifying source. There is now neither confusion nor difficulty, and indeed every ramification is covered *3.

Now part of the definition of creation, we have found through investigating its ways, involves the one doing it, briefly termed the creator. When you come to the macro-level, there is no ground for forsaking logic, in terms of which you must reason about any component, view or theory, idea or hypothesis. Your body is a creation, and it had a creator; that is the operative word for this type of thing, the denominative for the verb. What is the creator of man like ?

We have pursued such topics in detail in such works as SMR and TMR, and need not repeat here, where we are simply considering one aspect which deserves some degree of specialisation. But what of the mind of man, by which he can consider these things, apply them and find out whether they work or not, whether for example such things as creations exist and where, and how ? This in the case of mind in man is an additional creation, but it is at a higher level, since it can understand and not merely happen,  correct itself if so desired, and make amends  for error, surveying the material and yet living in its own specialties, while applying them with address.

If so desired ? Man also has in his being and functional powers a third arena and area. It is the ability to decide, weigh, prioritise, rationalise in dishonesty, confuse himself, confuse others, find vision  to match results, or reject it, kill those who disagree; decide which and when and why, or take whatever path of action meets the desire, approach, perspective and will of man.

Man has what in one word is called spirit. This may ignore mind, and love to do that, or work with it, and being patient reap results at high levels.

Such is man,  a threefold creation. But he is more than that. Put those three capacities together in three units and you still do not have man. They must be unified systematically, made mutually cohesive and operationally efficient, created as an ensemble. That is a fourth creative component in the production of man. Fifthly, he has to have imagination, so that he can create, which he often does, whether in medical, philosophical, engineering, architectural, literary, maritime, or astronomical levels. He is a creative creation.

The requirements of that creator, capitalised since it is of a different order, and indeed not limited to any TYPE, since all systems require their making, and so the ultimate has to be back of all, and must be, or logic is denied, and so argument nullified by those so acting, at once, their case then registered in this, among lost causes.

Moreover, the Creator goes beyond even the gifted teacher in DEGREE. The latter tries to bring out from within the student, the relish for, understanding of and versatility for creativity; but cannot invent it, where the capacity is not already planted, as is the case with some disorders.

To invent the capacity, in a created ensemble, to cause something to be creative, is a quintessence of creation, the power directly to spawn and sponsor this facility, functionality and marvel. Here is a domain of utter majesty and style, capacity and wonder. So far from mere automatic control, as they might seek over the prisoners in North Korea, such as do not enjoy the luxury of giving the orders, this is a provision for freedom of topic, style, purpose, product choice and contribution. It may be adverse to the fact of the Creator, to His design, a current speciality increasingly in domain of man, moving towards a savagely resistant human race; or it may not: that is the way with freedom.

Unhappily for man, the more you abuse the human heart with irrationality, lust for power or position or whatever else directs or incites passion, and enforce it on others so that you will not feel so alone as logic then leaves you, the worse is your warping. Then the time comes when man is averse to God; but God is creative here too, and has presented a Gospel of grace which for a man believing, or woman, or child, relieves, like a spiritual antibiotic but here a personal one without mere conformity, and enables restoration to God.

This brings us to the sixth element of creation, that of the Gospel.

Creation  we know; we do it constantly; we are aware of its ways, works, modes and results. We can define it. When we do, there are features demonstrated. Creation and creator are an ensemble found. They are not found apart.

 

NOTES

 

*C

See TMR Ch. 1, and The gods of naturalism have no go!.

*1  Keys to the Comfort of the Kingdom of Christ, Ch. 5 gives a coverage of some of the more irrational aspects of such a case, using a modern development, abs illustration..

*2

See TMR Ch. 1, as marked.

 

*2A

See further exposition in these areas and arenas in Dip Deeper, Higher Soar, Divine Glory Delights the More , Ch. 2.

*3

See for example,  Deity and Design ...   2,  and    8; and

LIGHT DWELLS WITH THE LORD'S CHRIST.

See also: SMR 262ff., 284ff..